So he explained about the mess hall and how I could cook my own stuff, with the pots there in the kitchen, and about the bathhouse and the rest of it. Now, a ranch has a cook and the pickers board with him, but at that time they were on their own, with three or four splitting it up in a cooking team. “And what do I get for all this?”
“The pay is ten cents a box, if you work by the box, or thirty cents an hour, if you want it that way, plus four cents a box.”
“Which pays best?”
“By the box, if you can pick.”
“Any great trick to it?”
“Well, it’s pretty hard, for a beginner, and there’s quite a few tricks to it. If I were you, to start, I’d try the hourly rate. We don’t expect too much, the first day or two, and if you don’t last, at least you have something in your pocket when you leave.”
“Do many Americans last?”
“Except for the fruit tramps, practically none.”
I’ve played football games till I thought I’d drop, I’ve hung on to freights till my hands were numb, I’ve taken my share on the chin. But for that kind of stuff, that day picking lemons, on the Green Hills Ranch, Whittier, California, topped anything I ever saw or hope to see. You stand on a stepladder that you move from tree to tree, with a pouch slung under one arm, your ring in one hand, your nippers in the other, and pick fruit. Where you first feel it is your back, from the reaching and being off balance all the time. Next you get it in your arms. In boxing, you have to shoot your punches straight instead of swinging them, or the other guy will lay all over your wrists with his elbows and make you arm-weary. That’s how it is reaching for those lemons. They’re off to one side, they’re over your head, they’re under your knees, they’re any place but straight in front, easy to your hands, so you can size them and cut them and pouch them without any work. At last you get it in the legs, from the strain, heavy aching pains that start back of your thighs and creep down past your knees and into your heels. Long before lunch I was so far gone I thought I’d pass out, and wondered how the women pickers, the fruit tramps’ wives, could stand it like they did. Then pretty soon a guy passed out, right on top of his ladder. First he was leaning over backwards, reaching for fruit, and then he was leaning too far. It crossed my mind, why didn’t he throw out his leg, to catch himself? Then he hit, flat. A girl screamed and scrambled down her ladder. Then she fell. Then a dozen people were around them yelling for a truck. It backed up and took them aboard. Then it was lunchtime and I opened my beans, but by the time I got my back straightened up so I could eat somebody said: Ole. How the afternoon went I can’t tell you, except now and then I’d get a box full, and carry it to the end of the row, and start back, and a Mexican would yell something at me in Spanish, and I’d go back and mark my number on it, in chalk. After a while, off in the trees, I kept hearing a motor, where somebody was trying to start it, and it would cough and die. Then there’d be an argument in Spanish and another whine from the starter and another cough. At last I couldn’t stand it any more and went over there. I thought it was the fuel pump, and sure enough, wrapped around it was a wad of rag they’d used to wipe it off with, just frazzed threads but enough to foul it. I pulled them out, had them start it, and it went. I went back to my ladder. At least that was one less thing to go crazy about.
At last it came time to quit. I rode back with a couple dozen Mexicans, went in the store, bought some canned stuff and Nescafe, and went to the mess-hall kitchen. I heated it up, whatever it was, and ate it. Then I went to the bathhouse and showered. Then I went to the bunkhouse, took off my clothes, and at last stretched out on my bunk. I had it all to myself, as I’d had the kitchen, because the Mexicans were all outside, laughing and smoking and talking, and hadn’t even thought about eating yet, let alone sleeping. I had my mind on one thing, and that was sleep. Inside me were twitches, jerks, and hysteria, all trying to break loose, but I fought them back, and was just getting quiet when three Mexicans came in with Holtz and began jabbering in Spanish. Then they came over. Holtz said: “What’s this about that spray?”
“What spray?”
“That you fixed.”
“I thought it was a fire boat.”
“What ailed it?”
“Fuel pump. Tell them next time they wipe it off use something that won’t fall apart in a bunch of ravelings like an old flour bag.”
“You understand machinery?”
“Little bit.”
“You want a job? A regular job?”
“Yeah. What is it?”
“Tower man on that spray. Tower man is foreman of the gang, three men and yourself. These boys, they kind of went for the way you helped them out. If you want to try it, it’s sixty cents an hour, start tomorrow morning.”
“If you’ve got water, oil, and gas, I’ll make it go.”
“Then O.K. And one other thing.”
“Which is?”
“You stuck. That impressed me.”
I slept for a month. On the food, it turned out I didn’t have to cook it, as tower man was a company job, and I could board with Mrs. Emory, wife of the irrigation boss, who had one of the cottages beyond the ravine, two or three hundred yards from the fruit tramps’ camp. She was expecting another addition to the family, so she was glad to make some extra cash, and fixed my lunch box and let me eat the other meals with the family. When I came in from work I’d shower, dress, and go to supper. Then I’d go back to the bunkhouse and go to bed. By that time the Mexicans would be hooking it up with phonograph, radio, guitar, or whatever they had. They’re the noisiest breed of man on earth, but I slept through it like I was doped. Then after a while I didn’t sleep so long. I’d wake up around four or five, with everything dark out there, or maybe the moon still shining, and the birds warbling in the trees, like they do all night in California, and begin to think.
I’d think about my father, and try to remember what he’d done for me, and forget the other things, so I wouldn’t feel so bitter. I’d think about my aunts, and how silly they were, and want to laugh and want to cry. I’d think about my mother, the one time I saw her, and about Miss Eleanor, and how proud she’d been of me for beating up the organist. It seemed funny anybody’d ever been proud of me. I thought about Easton, and she seemed a million miles away. I thought about Margaret, and the miserable way I’d treated her. I thought about Helen, and that was just a stab through my heart. And down under it all I kept thinking about this thing I’d lost, that Buck had given his life for, and kept wondering if I’d ever get it back.