It was almost a hundred years since the first wagon crossed the country, but Jesse's dad didn't know that. Didn't care. It was just that the farm was gone. The topsoil left for parts unknown, the rest of it to the bank.
So there they were, bumping down the highway in an unsprung farm wagon pulled by two ugly mules. Headed for California like everyone else and without a dime to the six of them. They begged a little, stole a little, earned a little.
They didn't have to buy gas. The mules grazed the roadside weeds. But the humans had to eat. Everyone got to eat at least once a day. That was the rule.
``A man or a woman or a child - they have to eat every day,'' Don said. And Maggie nodded her head and served up flour gruel to each one of them.
But they weren't ready for the cold.
It hit them in New Mexico. In the icy high desert nights they huddled together on the mattress. Don collected newspapers and he wrapped each child in a cocoon of old news, but still they couldn't sleep. The cold was killing them.
When Don wasn't there one morning Jesse started to cry.
``Daddy's left us,'' he wept. But Maggie said, ``Don't worry son, your dad's coming back.''
And he did come back. In his arms a cardboard box full of fruit jars. For days they dined on canned tomatoes and they all got sick and weak and were forced to spend much time crouching in the weeds casting about for something to use as toilet paper.
Next time Don left in the night he didn't come back for days and Maggie moved the wagon on. Jesse woke up one night to find his dad shaking in the wagon bed beside him. A new quilt covered them. Next day Jesse drove the team and Maggie walked behind, her burned face gone mad. Don hid in the wagon.
Jesse set the kids to begging. They did quite well.
``Our dad is gone,'' they said sadly, and tired women sawed off slices of bread to give them.
In the town of Tehachapi a preacher's wife gave them a bundle of sandwiches wrapped in newspaper. The newspaper carried a story of a robbery and killing at a lonely ranch to the east. The old man had his gun wrested from him and he and his wife were both shot dead in their own kitchen.
Jesse couldn't read. He wrapped his littlest sister in the newspaper and she slept securely in its shelter.