The Awakening Read online

  “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