The Awakening

  “Amanda,” Grace said, interrupting her daughter’s daydreaming, “is that possibly your Dr. Montgomery?”

  Amanda turned to look. It was he, coming from the direction of the fields. This was it, she thought. He was coming to apologize and to…Dare she hope for more?

  “Amanda,” Grace said, and there was concern in her voice, “I don’t know Dr. Montgomery personally, but it’s my guess from the way he’s walking that he’s angry.”

  Amanda smiled. “Angry at himself, perhaps. I think he’s found out his coming here was useless. He’s a very proud man and I’m sure he’ll hate admitting he was wrong.”

  Amanda stood and smoothed her skirt. “I hope you won’t mind if I invite him to tea. I think I’ll order lemonade. It’s a little joke we share.”

  “Whatever you say, dear, but Dr. Montgomery looks to me to be—”

  “There you are!” Hank yelled when he was several feet away. He was in shirt sleeves and he was so soaked with sweat he looked as if he’d been caught in a rainstorm. “I told you to stay inside for safety’s sake but here you are for anyone to see. You believe anyone who lies to you but you can’t believe me when I tell you the truth.”

  Amanda blushed crimson and refused to look down at her mother. She opened her mouth to reply but Hank’s hand clamped down on her forearm and started pulling her. “Stop it!” she managed to say. “This is my mother and—”

  “How do you do, Mrs. Caulden. Amanda is coming with me. I am going to show her how her father treats the people who work for him.”

  “By all means, do,” Grace said, looking at this man with interest. No one had told her Dr. Montgomery was such a handsome, virile young man.

  “I do not want to go with you,” Amanda said.

  “You go on your feet or bottom end up.” His eyes were blazing and he hadn’t shaved in days. He looked almost frightening.

  “I will not—”

  Hank bent, put his shoulder to her stomach and heaved her over his shoulder.

  “Release me!” Amanda yelled, beating his back with her fists.

  Hank slapped her behind. “I’m too tired to be beaten.”

  “Mother, help me!” Amanda cried.

  “Cookie, Dr. Montgomery?” Grace Caulden asked, holding out the plate.

  “Thanks,” he said, took a handful, then turned on his heel and left.

  Grace went back to reading, and it was hours before she stopped smiling.

  “Put me down,” Amanda said.

  Hank set her to the ground then grabbed her forearm and began pulling her behind him. “I want you to see something,” he said.

  “I was told not to go to the fields.”

  He stopped and turned on her. “You still won’t think for yourself, will you, Amanda? You believe what everyone tells you, no questions asked. How your father has treated the pickers in the past years has been so bad people are talking of murder in order to make it stop, but that doesn’t affect you. Caulden spends five minutes telling you he’s a good man and you believe him over hundreds of other people.”

  “But he’s my father, he—”

  “You can’t make a person good because you want to believe it. You can’t will it to happen.” He turned and started pulling her again. “I want you to see why unions are being formed.”

  Amanda was as angry as he was now and thought she’d love to see him drive off a cliff in his little yellow automobile. Her anger kept her from at first realizing what was before her.

  She smelled the place first. It didn’t take a breeze to bring the smell to her. It was a hundred and five degrees and the humidity was high as they got closer to the irrigated fields. Suddenly she knew she didn’t want to see what lay ahead in the tented city on the horizon. “Wait,” she said, jerking back and halting. “I don’t want to go.”

  “Neither do I. I want to take a bath and maybe get ready to go to a dance tonight, but they can’t and I can’t and you can’t.” He began pulling her again.

  On the east end of the hop fields was an enormous flat meadow that was now covered with tents and crude little shelters. There were also piles of filthy straw here and there. Garbage was everywhere: bones, rotting meat, horse manure. The flies were thick, and Amanda saw the skinned head of a sheep at the door of one tent, maggots crawling over it.

  Hank had her arm firmly in his hand. “Your father rents the tents for seventy-five cents a day. Considering that a grown man works all day in this sun and this humidity and makes about ninety cents, that’s a little steep, wouldn’t you say? The ones who can’t afford the tents buy straw and live on it. There is no provision for garbage.”

  He pulled her down the road to the center of the stench, and for a moment Amanda could only stare. Here were the outdoor toilets. There was a line of fifteen to twenty people waiting before each toilet, and as Amanda watched, one pregnant woman in the back of a line stepped aside and vomited. Amanda’s own stomach turned over and she was still yards from the toilet.

  “Your father has provided nine toilets for two thousand eight hundred people,” Hank said. “Each one’s a two-holer. The men and women share the toilets—they’re only laborers, so who cares about privacy? They’re just animals. Yesterday the pickers tried keeping the grounds clean by disposing of their garbage in the toilets, but the holes are only two feet deep. They were full by last night. Caulden doesn’t provide any cleaning. Would you like to go inside one, Amanda? There’s excrement on the floor an inch deep. As you can see, the smell makes the people sick. Stay here long enough and you’ll get to see someone soil his pants or her skirt. The filth is giving everyone dysentery.”

  Amanda’s defiance was leaving her. She had never seen anything like this, never imagined anything like this. Hank didn’t have to pull her when they walked away. He stopped by a well pump.

  “There are two wells for all the workers, but they’re pumped dry by sunup, and the next closest well is a mile away. They don’t get much rest as it is, but they lose what little they have by going for water.”

  He began walking toward the fields, his hand still clutching her forearm. He led her to the hop fields. On one side the workers had pulled down the tall, steeple-like trellis that supported the hop vines and on the other side the trellis was still up. The field was covered with men, women and children hurriedly pulling down the vines and stuffing them into bags. It was unbearably hot here and the heat waves shimmered in the humidity.

  “Would you like to work in that heat, Amanda? A man died from the heat yesterday. So far four kids have been taken out on stretchers. There’re no toilets out here, so the pickers can either not go all day or take the hour or so to walk back to the camp and wait in line for the toilet. And do they drag their one-hundred-pound bag of hops with them or leave it and let someone steal it? They go there,” Hank said, pointing to the unpicked rows. “Of course that means that when they reach that part of the field they have to pick while walking in human excrement.”

  Amanda could say nothing. She could barely stand up in the intolerable heat. She made no resistance when Hank began pulling her again. He led her to a wagon, took money from his pocket and handed it to the man standing at the back of the wagon. “How about a cool glass of lemonade, Amanda?” he asked and handed her a filthy glass with a hot liquid in it.

  She didn’t dare refuse him. She took a sip, then grimaced. With great difficulty she swallowed the awful-tasting drink.

  “Citric acid,” Hank said. “Lemons cost more. With citric acid your father can make gallons for pennies, sell it for five cents a glass and make hundreds of dollars of profit.” He took the glass from her and offered it to a sweaty, tired-looking little girl of about eight years. The child drank it greedily and looked at Hank with adoring eyes before turning back toward the fields.

  “Your father sells food too, and the only water they get is one glass for one bowl of stew. You want a second glass you have to buy another bowl of stew. You can’t buy the water by itself—and Caulden sure as hell doesn’t
give away the water for free.”

  He began pulling her again, but this time Amanda walked beside him. He didn’t have to hold her to him. She had to see all of it, had to see part of the world she had never known existed. She had sat in her room year after year while the hops were picked and had never even wondered about the people picking them.

  Hank led her to the weigh station but they couldn’t get close because everywhere were men and women frantically dumping their heavy canvas bags full of hops on the ground and stripping the vines and leaves off. There was pain and anguish written on the faces of the people, as if they were fighting for their lives.

  “It takes a man many hours to pick a one-hundred-pound bag of hops, and then he drags his bag to be weighed and have it credited to his name, but your father has set up inspectors to tell the pickers the hops aren’t ‘clean’ enough. So the pickers have to waste precious hours pulling off vines and string and tossing out unripe hops. Usually a man can pick two hundred fifty to four hundred pounds a day, but your father has it so a man can only get a hundred pounds a day. He works all day in this sun, no water, no toilet, and he earns from ninety cents to a dollar ten.”

  He turned to face her. “You know why your father demands such clean hops? Two reasons: one, he doesn’t have to pay for the weight of a few leaves and string, but, most important, the second reason is because he wants the worker to quit. Your father is awfully clever, Amanda. I wonder if you got your brains from him. He came up with an ingenious way to cheat these people. The going rate across the country for hop picking is a dollar a hundred pounds. Your father, in his ads, promised top wages and a ‘bonus.’ His wages are ninety cents a hundred-pound bale and a ten-cent bonus for every bale picked. This ‘bonus’ is to be paid to the people who stay the whole harvest time. If a worker quits before all the hops are in, he loses his ‘bonus.’ Already a thousand Japanese have left. They wouldn’t work in this filth. For every person who quits, your father gains ten cents on a hundred pounds. Multiply ten cents by thousands of bales by thousands of people. What you’ll get is one hell of a lot of cigars for Caulden and”—he looked her up and down—“one hell of a lot of silk dresses for you, Amanda.”

  Hank’s fury was spent now and his shoulders slumped. “You can go home now, Amanda. Go home and sit under a tree with your pretty mother and enjoy what your father provides for you.”

  “Wh-what is going to happen here?” she managed to say. Her voice was hoarse. The horror of what she was seeing was just seeping into her.

  “I don’t know. This is worse than I was led to believe. Whitey has been doing a lot of talking. The workers are terrified of losing their jobs, but seeing your six-year-old kid pass out in the heat does something to you. And as hard as these people are working, what with the wages so low and the food and water so expensive, they’re spending what they’re making. Some of them are already in debt to your father. Tempers are beginning to boil. I think they’ll go to your father soon.”

  “He won’t listen,” Amanda said, watching a little girl pull vines off hops. She was about three years old, and the seat of her pants, showing under her dirty dress, was soiled. Amanda didn’t feel like defending her father. The man who could allow something like this year after year couldn’t be defended.

  Hank lifted one eyebrow at her. “No, he won’t listen, but I’m going to try to persuade him. I worry what will happen if some changes aren’t made.”

  “You?” Amanda said. “But this morning I saw Sheriff Ramsey come to our house. Sheriff Ramsey will…” She trailed off.

  “Shoot first,” Hank said. “I’m aware of that. I want you to go back now, Amanda. I don’t want Whitey to know who you are. Stay in your room. Better yet, why don’t you and your mother go to San Francisco for a few days?”

  Amanda could only look at him. Coward, she thought, I have always been a coward. At fourteen I was afraid to stand up to Taylor, and at twenty-two I’m afraid to stand up to my father. She turned away from him and started back toward the ranch house. Maybe she could make up for lost time.

  Hank watched her go. It wasn’t her fault, he knew that, but he’d wanted her to see what he was fighting. He made a little prayer that she’d take his advice and go away somewhere. But he didn’t have time to worry about Amanda. He had to find Whitey and see what that fanatic was planning. These people were just hot enough and angry enough that it wouldn’t take much to push them over the edge.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The door to the library was open, but it wouldn’t have mattered to Amanda if it were closed. She walked into the room. Her father sat at the desk, papers before him, Taylor bent over him.

  Taylor straightened and frowned at her. “Amanda, you are supposed to be in your room. I told you—”

  Amanda looked only at her father. “There is going to be violence if you don’t change what is happening in the fields.”

  J. Harker looked at her, his only movement his mouth working on his cigar.

  “Amanda, you are not to speak of things you know nothing about,” Taylor said. “You are to go to your room this instant and—”

  “Shut up, Taylor,” Amanda said. “This is family.” Her father leaned back in his chair and Amanda met his gaze equally. The smells of the toilets and the rotting garbage were still in her nostrils. “The union leaders are talking about bloodshed, and your blood is whose they want to see first.”

  “Amanda,” Taylor said, recovering from his shock, “you cannot—”

  She turned to look at him. “Sit!” she ordered, as if he were a pesky little dog. She glared at him until he obeyed her, then she went to her father’s desk, put her hands on it and leaned forward. “You’ve got away with your thievery for years now, but this year is different. I think the pickers could put up with the filth and the lack of water, but they won’t put up with the way you’re cheating them of their money. If you don’t start paying, they’re going to start shooting.” She looked at her father and their eyes were alike, both angry and stubborn.

  “Amanda, I—” Taylor began.

  Amanda glanced at him. “You keep quiet or you leave.” She looked back at her father. “Well?”

  J. Harker gave a snort of derision. “I have fifteen men working for me in the fields. They tell me what’s going on, and if they can’t reach me to ask permission, they carry guns and they know how to use them. Bull has more men posted around the area. Let them talk all they want, but the blood spilled will be theirs, not mine.”

  Amanda stood back. She had no intention of asking why he had so little humanity and she could see it was no use trying to persuade him. She would have liked to threaten him. But she knew of nothing that mattered to him except the ranch. If she threatened to leave home if he didn’t clean up the camp, it would mean nothing to him. Hank had been correct: a man who could shun his wife and exile his daughter was capable of anything.

  J. Harker’s eyes looked triumphant.

  “Winning is everything to you, isn’t it?” Amanda said. “No matter who gets in your way, who you have to step on to get there, you have to win. You’re not going to win this one. You may starve a few poor, uneducated migrant workers today, but tomorrow you’ll lose. Your day is over.” She turned on her heel and left the room. She couldn’t bear to be near the man any longer.

  Taylor caught her on the stairs. “Amanda,” he said softly, “I didn’t mean—”

  “Yes you did,” she said, glaring at him. “You meant every degrading, humiliating thing you’ve ever done to me. For years you’ve tried to make yourself just like my father. He has thousands of helpless pickers to tyrannize while you had only one isolated, lonely girl who was eager to please. Well, Taylor, just like those workers are fed up, so am I.”

  “But, Amanda, I love you.”

  “No you don’t. You don’t even know me. You love a wooden doll you’ve carved into what you think a female should look like. When you want me, you pull me out of my room; when you have no more need of me, you send me back to
my room with a little list to keep me busy.” She didn’t want to waste more time talking to him but continued up the stairs.

  “Amanda,” he said, moving in front of her, “what are you going to do? I mean, our engagement is—”

  “Off,” she said, then halted and gave him a look of great patience. “First I am going to do what I can to help the pickers. I will…” She paused, searching for an idea of what she could do. “I am going to make them lemonade—free lemonade. And when the hops are picked I’m going away.”

  “With him?” Taylor shot at her. “I’m not as blind as you seem to think.”

  She looked at Taylor as if she’d never seen him before. “You may not be blind, but I have been. If Hank will have me, yes, I’ll go away with him, but it’s not likely he’ll want me. Now, will you please move out of my way? There are people fainting from the heat even while we stand here arguing about inconsequential matters.” She moved past him.

  “Inconsequential!” he half shouted up at her. “My whole future is being decided by the whim of a woman lusting after some two-bit—”

  Amanda whirled to face him. “You’ll get the ranch, I’m sure of it. Where else is my father going to find a mirror image of himself? Neither of you men need me. But let me give you some advice, Taylor. You ought to leave here. You ought to leave today. Now. You should go get Reva and keep going and never look back. Reva will be good for you. She’s just loose enough to counteract that piece of steel you call a spine. Now, I must go, and to tell you the truth, Taylor, I don’t really care what you do.”

  She hurried up to her room, tore off her heavy silk dress and put on the lightest-weight white blouse and dark cotton skirt she owned. When she was dressed, she pulled clothing from drawers and her closet. She had no suitcase, so she went to her father’s bedroom and pulled his from the top of the closet. She stuffed her clothes into the case and went downstairs. She didn’t look at the house, for there was no feeling of sadness at leaving it. There was only a feeling that there was freedom outside the door.