The seedlings took well and when they were big enough we all helped to transplant them into the ploughed fields. There were extra men and boys, most of them negroes, who travelled from farm to farm at this time of year, earning enough to last until harvesting. Careful with the roots, we dug out each small plant and placed them in large buckets, which two men lifted together into the back of the truck. These were then driven to the field, where each plant was tamped into the earth until there was row upon row of dark-leafed tobacco. It felt good to be out in the sun working. I thought of the Joads, of Jim’s book which I’d left in my trunk. I wore a pair of old overalls, and the soil beneath my fingernails was thin and dry. Roy explained that tobacco plants thrived in poor soil, only the dirt mustn’t be allowed to harden and cake along the young roots. Transplanting and harvesting were the two most labour-intensive times of the year—early spring and late summer. Harvesting could take up to a month, because leaves were harvested on each plant from the bottom up, individually, and then strung on a stick, hung in the curing barn and, once dried, graded leaf by leaf before being tied into hands and taken to auction. He told me about when he was a boy and they had to tend a fire in the curing barn—a fire that lasted four or five days. ‘Now we use an oil heater, though Dad’s always still in there, keeping an eye on the temperature.’

He told me more about his boyhood then, about Sally, the negro woman who had cooked for them and done their laundry, and how she had left when he was twelve, accused of stealing. His ma swore then she’d have no more negroes working in the house.

‘What was it she stole?’ I asked.

‘I can’t recall,’ Roy said. ‘But Ma wasn’t used to doing all the housework. It’s too much for her to do alone, but she’s stubborn. Once she’s decided something, there’s no going back on it.’

I was sad when we were done transplanting the tobacco and I had to stay in the house with his mother once more. If I had been able to work side by side in the fields with Roy, maybe we would have come to understand one another better.

Whenever there was a lull in the housework—often in the afternoons, between washing up after lunch and the preparations for dinner, when all the beds had been made and the floors swept, the laundry hung, the cupboards aired and the rugs beaten—I walked out to the horses in their paddock beyond the stables with a softened apple or carrot I had stashed in my apron pocket.