across miles
of rolling farmland; crickets fiddled sleepily and long-tailed
magpies chattered. One clear, frosty night Grandpa said, "Hark!
the ducks are flying south. Maybe we best follow."

7: THE BOY WHO DIDN'T KNOW GOD

Handbills blew around the adobe village, announcing that five
hundred cotton-pickers were wanted at once in Arizona. The Reo,
full of Beechams and trailing Carrie, headed south.

The surprisingly large grocery bill had been paid, a few clothes
bought, Daddy's ulcerated tooth pulled, and the Reo's patched
tires replaced with better used ones. The result was that the
Beecham pocketbooks were as flat as pancakes.

"Yet we've worked like horses," Daddy said heavily. "And, worse
than that, we've let Gramma and the kids work as I never thought
Beechams would."

"But we can't blame Farmer Lukes," said Grandpa. "With all the
planting and digging and hauling he's done, he says he hasn't a
cent to show for it, once he's paid for his seed. It's too deep
for me."

Down across Colorado, where the names were Spanish, Daddy said,
because it used to be part of Mexico. Down across New Mexico,
where the air smelled of cedar; where scattered adobe houses had
bright blue doors and strings of scarlet chili peppers fringing
their roofs; where Indians sat under brush shelters by the
highway and held up pottery for sale. Down into Arizona, where
Grandma had to admit that the colors she'd seen on the picture
postcards of it were not too bright. Here were red rocks, pink,
blue-gray, white, yellow, purple; and the morning and evening sun
set their colors afire and made them flower gardens of flame.
Here the Indian women wore flounced skirts and velvet tunics and
silver jewelry. They herded flocks of sheep and goats and lived
in houses like inverted brown bowls.

"We've had worse homes, this year," Grandma said. "I'd never
hold up my head if they knew back home." Along the road with the
Reo ran an endless parade of old cars and trailers. There were
snub-nosed Model T's, packed till they bulged; monstrous Packards
with doors tied shut; yellow roadsters that had been smart ten
years ago, jolting along with mattresses on their tops and young
families jammed into their luggage compartments. Once in a while
they met another goat, like Carrie, who wasn't giving as much
milk as before.

"All this great country," Grandma marveled some more, "and no
room for these folks. Half a million of us, some say,