"Cliff Notes - Grapes of Wrath, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

Now there's a battle raging-the police versus the pickets. Abusive state troopers are trying to break the strike and drive the pickets away. If the strikers can stick together and hang on for a few more days, though, the fruit will begin to ripen. To get his peaches picked in time, the owner will then be forced to pay five cents a box. When Tom reveals that that's the pay he's earning, Casy is astonished. He realizes that the owner is using people like the Joads as weapons in the war against the strikers. As long as the Joads are willing to work, the strike cannot succeed. And when the strike is broken, Casy asserts, the rate of pay will be cut in half just like that!

"Tell the folks in there how it is, Tom," Casy says. "Tell 'em they're starvin' us and stabbin' theirself in the back."

If Tom took Casy's message back inside the ranch, would Ma, Pa, and the other Joads give up their jobs to help the strikers? Would other families abandon their work? Tom doesn't think so.

Suddenly, there are noises near the tent. Casy shuts off the lantern and goes outside. A bright flashlight beam catches him. Voices: "Stand where you are." "That's him."

Casy stares at the light. "Listen," he says, "you fellas don' know what you're doin'. You're helpin' to starve kids."

Those are Casy's last words. One of the intruders swings a heavy club at Casy, crushing his skull.

Tom grabs the dub and attacks. Five blows and Casy's killer lies dead in the brush. Then Tom receives a stroke, a glancing blow to his face, but strong enough to break his nose and tear his mouth.

In pain, Tom stumbles back to the family's quarters, somehow eluding his pursuers. In one impulsive moment, Tom has made himself a hunted man. You can't blame him for exploding. He admired Casy too much to let his death go unavenged. But the word that's spread the next day says that the unknown killer started the fatal fight. Posses are scouring the countryside looking for a man with a bruised face, Pa reports, and "fellas talkin' up a lynchin'."

Tom's account of Casy's death moves Ma to comment, "I wisht Granma could a heard," for in his final breath Casy utters words that repeat almost to the letter what Christ said on the cross.

Removing Casy from the scene breaks the strike at Hooper Ranch. When the family picks peaches the next day, they work for two-and-a-half cents a box. A day's work nets a dollar and forty-six cents, enough to let the family eat mush, but not much more.

Tom proposes to leave the family. He's in too much danger if he stays. His presence puts the family in jeopardy, too. But Ma won't hear of it. She still needs Tom to lean on. Besides, the remaining Joads are gradually falling apart. Al, for example, wants to run away. He thinks, selfishly, that he'd do better on his own. Rose of Sharon grows more touchy as her time draws near. Uncle John, not a tower of strength to begin with, blames the family misfortune on his sinning.

Ma never seems to tire of figuring ways to keep the family intact. Now she devises a plan for Tom's escape. That night the family will pack up and leave Hooper Ranch with Tom tucked into a cave of mattresses on the back of the truck. If guards stop them, they'll say jobs await them down at Weedpatch.

The plan works. Out they drive with no destination in mind except someplace as far as possible from the area where police will be looking for Tom. They stick to back roads to avoid being seen. Late that night Tom, peering out from his shelter, spots a sign at the roadside, "Cotton Pickers Wanted." Tom proposes that the family stop for the night. In the morning they can claim jobs and move into one of the nearby railroad boxcars being used to house pickers. With the whole family working in the cotton fields, it won't be long before they'll eat properly again.

But what about Tom? He mustn't be seen until his face heals.

As usual, Tom is resourceful. He figures out a way to stay with the family and also stay out of trouble. He'll hide in the brush and sleep in a culvert concealed by willows. At night, Ma can bring him food.

Because chill winds signal the approach of the cold and rainy season, it's hard to imagine that this arrangement can last very long. But for the moment, there's none better.

^^^^^^^^^^THE GRAPES OF WRATH: CHAPTER 27

Picking cotton is tiring work. Bent over all day, dragging a sack from row to row, pulling the boils off the plant, and carrying in the full sacks to be weighed tries even the sturdiest back muscles.

Basically, it's clean work, even though white fluff clings to your clothes, gets stuck in your whiskers, and stuffs your nose.

Watch out you don't get cheated. You're paid by the pound, and the scales may be rigged. But you can always throw a few rocks into your sack to make it heavier.

Fields are stripped of cotton in a hurry when hundreds of pickers, desperate for a few dollars, sweep across them. The money is good, but the work doesn't last long.

According to this interchapter, that's the whole cotton-picking story.

^^^^^^^^^^THE GRAPES OF WRATH: CHAPTER 28

Being in the right place at the right time often makes a difference in people's lives. The Joads, by a stroke of good luck--which they probably deserve by now--arrive in the cotton country of California just when the harvest begins. They are assured of many weeks' work. And they move into one end of a spacious railroad boxcar.

For days they eat right and have money left over for a few new clothes. Tom is safely concealed in nearby willows. Uncle John's thoughts turn away from his troubles and toward whiskey again, but he resists the urge to drink himself into a stupor. Rose of Sharon, growing ever rounder, has all the milk she can drink.