THE
SPECTRE
Peter Quince
I
WOULDN'T HAVE BOTHERED
if I hadn't found a slug. As it was I
dropped it into the slot and propped myself up against the phone. It took
me
some time to make it clear to the information clerk at the dairy that I
wanted someone who knew something about stock. Cows. At length she
connected me with an employee who trucked milk into the city from Palo
Alto.
I mentioned the breed of the cow, its weight, the amount of milk it
offered daily and asked how much it was worth on the market. He named
what he considered an approximate figure. I was about to hang up, then
as(ed, as an afterthought, if he had any idea what
a
child seven years of
age, weighing sixty-one pounds, would bring. The child, I P.Xplained
gravely, was not a milk-giver. The man sputtered and hung up. I
couldn't blame him. He must have thought I was mad. But really, I'm
not. You see, he had never heard of Wheatpatch, or of Laurie of the sprain–
ed
leg. He could not know that the sfock I was interested in included Annie,
an ailing milk-cow, and the blue-eyed, golden-haired Naomi, who died
that Annie might live.
Wheatpatch lies in that sparsely settled cotton country at the edge
of California's San Joaquin Valley. Wheatpatch is not a town; it is the
crossing of two dusty roads.. And last week I had never heard of it, and
now I think I shall never forget it.
I am a member of the Young Communist League of San Francisco.
Last week I was sent to an important section meeting taking place in Los
Angeles to represent our District Bureau. As there were no funds available
for traveling expenses I was given a dollar and told to take the freights.
I
never did get to the meeting. I was thrown off a "gondola" somewhere
~uth
of Bakersfield. I hit the highway.
It was an empty, treeless, desolate country that stretched about me.
The cotton stubble was burned in the fields by a searing sun. I walked,
too hot and disgusted even to swear. I paused before a weather-stained
wooden sign which indicated that Wheatpatch lay somewhere ahead. At
length, turning a curve, I sighted a lone tree bordering the road far in the
distance. Set back from the road were two dilapidated structures. It was
difficult to decide which might be the barn. My eyes returned to the tree.
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