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(Continued)
Everybody in the camp got woke up by the commotion and come
runnin' over to see what was happenin'. One of them was a big man,
wearin' the overalls that farmers always wore. He walked straight up to the thief
layin' on the ground and pulled him up by his collar.
When he did that, we could see that the thief was a girl. She was dressed in pants and had on a coat three sizes too big for her and a hat pulled down over her ears. I could see she was about my age and I started
feelin' sorry that I'd smashed her with the door.
The man seemed to be her father. He started
a'shakin' her and he was yellin' pretty loud, too. She started cryin' and I felt ten times worse. If'n I knowed she was a girl, I wouldn't have been so rough on her. Still, she was
thievin' and that was wrong.
Her pa was still shakin' her and
yellin' in her face. The words he was callin' her shouldn't ought to be called at anybody, least of all his own daughter. I was
gettin' summat distressed as I ain't ever heard anybody that mad at their own kin.
Pa stepped forward and held his hand against the man's chest, not like he was
pushin' but just like he'd do with a horse to settle it down.
"Take it easy. No harm done here," Pa said quiet-like.
"She's a damned thief," the man yelled, and then he slapped her hard across the face.
Pa hauled back his fist and shot it right into the man's jaw. It dropped him like a rock and he fell on his back. The girl took that opportunity to skedaddle over to her ma.
"Now, sir, that is no way to treat a girl and it is no way for you to speak in front of my son here."
I thought the man would yell at Pa or he'd get up and try to fight him. But he didn't. Instead, he started to cry and he held his face in his hands and started
sobbin'. I was purely shocked at this turn of events. Pa let him go on for a short time, and then he reached his hand down to help the man up.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," the man gasped for breath.
"It's all right. You just shouldn't be
treatin' your girl like that. It ain't proper."
As the sun was now comin' up, everyone started to go back to their own camps to start up their fires again. The man walked slowly over to his own camp, and I was glad to see him put his arm around the girl's shoulders. She flinched back some, but he spoke to her quiet then she wrapped her arms around him. They stood there
holdin' on to each other, like family should.
As we boiled up some coffee and got the cornbread out for breakfast, Pa
tol' me that these folks had lost everything to the dust.
"Sometimes, you can't blame a person if they go too far, if they'd already been pushed too far," he said. He shook his head and I saw he was sad. I was sad, too.
We packed up our gear. Pa took the rest of the cornbread and went over to the family's campsite. He handed the package to the girl's mother, then talked to the man for a few minutes. I saw them shake hands and Pa came back and
tol' me to get in the truck.
Once we were headed down the road, Pa said, "We'll be
seein' those folks in a couple of days."
"Why, Pa? Are they comin' to visit us?"
"I'm hirin' John, that's his name, on for a few days."
"But, Pa, you said we just had enough for us to get by. You quit
hirin' people on last season."
"I know, I know," he said and didn't speak for a while.
Then, he said, "We just have enough to get by, that's true. But, if folks don't have enough to even live, then we just have to make do with a bit less."
"Yessir, Pa. I can see how's that's the right thing to do."
We drove on home mostly quiet the rest of the way. When we got home and Pa took Ma aside to tell her we'd be
havin' company, she shook her head, but not like she was sayin' no. She
tol' me to get out to the chicken coop and see if those hens didn't lay a few more eggs. She had some
bakin' to do.
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MARVA DASEF is a writer living in the Pacific Northwest, and she has ties to the West Texas region through her father. Marva's stories are based on tales her father told to his family, but are fictionalized accounts of events in his childhood.
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