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"And can Nico and Vicente come, too?" Rose-Ellen asked. "They're my best friends." The woman looked at Nico and Vicente with cold eyes. "I can't ask all the children," she answered. "Thank you, ma'am," Rose-Ellen stammered. When they were out of sight down the road, she threw the roses into the dust. Nico snatched them up again.
These bogs weren't at all what Rose-Ellen and Dick had expected, but only wet-looking fields of low bushes. There was no chance to look at them now, for everyone was hurrying to get settled. The padrone led them to a one-room shed built of rough boards and helped dump their belongings inside. Grandma stood at the door, hands on hips, and said, "Well, good land of love!
"But the funniest thing I saw," Rose-Ellen said later, "was a cow lying in the bayou, with purple water hyacinths draped all over her, as if it was on purpose." After a few days, though, even this peekaneeka grew wearisome to the children; while Daddy and Grandpa grew more and more anxious about an angry spat-spat-spat from the Reo.
That evening people from all parts of the camp gathered to discuss the renewed orders: Italians, Mexicans, Americans, Indians. "They says to my mother," a little Indian girl confided to Rose-Ellen, "'You no cover up your grub, we throw him out!" She laughed into her hands as if it were a great joke. "They do nothing but talk," said Angelina. Next day the camp had a surprise.
Rose-Ellen said, "Hurry, Grampa, everything's getting cold." But she understood. He was thinking that their dear old house was no longer theirs. Something strange had happened to it, called "sold for taxes," and they were allowed to live in it only this summer. Grandma blamed the shop. It had brought in the money to buy the house in the first place and had kept it up until a few years ago.
It's an experiment they are trying, and we are having the chance to work with them. We can buy this place and pay for it over a long term of years. We've got the Christian Center and the government to thank." "Why, maybe after a while we could even send for the goods we stored at Mrs. Albi's!" Grandma cried dazedly. "You mean this is home? Home?" shrieked Rose-Ellen.
Grandma and Rose-Ellen and Jimmie walked home with her, and Grandma's eyes widened at sight of the two-roomed Garcia house. Ten people lived and slept, ate and cooked there, and it looked as if it had never met a broom or soapsuds. The Martinez home was different, perfectly neat, even to the scrubbed oilcloth on the table.
She hated to have anyone see that flapping canvas room, but the heap of supplies was heavy. "Please. We're working in the grapefruit," she said. The grocer's face lost its smile. "Oh, we don't deliver to the camps," he snapped. "And it's strictly cash." Grandma handed him the coins, and she and Rose-Ellen silently piled their purchases into the tub they had bought.
All day the air had been heavy, still; weatherwise pickers watched the white sky anxiously. In the middle of the night, Rose-Ellen woke to the shriek of wind and the crack of canvas. Then, with a splintering crash, the tent-poles collapsed and she was buried under a mass of wet canvas. At first she could hear no voice through the howling wind and battering rain.
They left, skipping past the mountains of empty shells outside. Next day the children went to church school alone. The grown folks were too tired. And on Monday Dick and Rose-Ellen went up the road to the school in the little village. It was strange to be in school again, and with new schoolmates and teachers and even new books, since this was a different state.
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