Chương 151: They Headed West

At the last pass in the Appalachian Mountains, the road suddenly becomes straight.

Following the map, Arthur had been traveling through the mountains for the past few days, making many deals with the mountain people, and was now finally about to reach the plains of eastern Ohio.

The scenery here is completely different from that in the mountains.

There were no mine shacks, and no miners covered in coal dust.

On both sides of the road are vast fields of farmland. The drainage ditches are dug straight, the field ridges are evenly angled, and even the rusty harvesters abandoned in the fields are parked neatly.

But there's no one here.

After driving for twenty miles, Arthur did not see a single living person in the fields.

Occasionally, I would pass by a few farmhouses with their doors and windows wide open, the inside of which had been moved clean and tidy. The weeds in the yards grew very tall, but you could still vaguely see traces of how they had been carefully trimmed.

At 2 p. m., Arthur crossed the border of Stobonville County. He stopped at an intersection.

A huge wooden notice board stood at the intersection. A middle-aged man in a gray court uniform was carrying a bucket of paste and standing on a small wooden stool, pasting notices onto the board.

Arthur opened the car door and walked over.

The bulletin board, which was over three meters long and wide, was densely covered with white paper. New paper was layered on top of old paper, and in some places, it was stacked four or five times thick.

Arthur stood in front of the board, his gaze sweeping over the standard format documents printed in lead type.

That was a court-issued notice of compulsory auction.

Land area: 160 acres. Debt: US$2, 400. Creditor: Ohio First Agricultural Trust.

Auction date: November 15th.

Arthur read out the contents of one of the cards, then looked at the one next to it.

Land area: 90 acres. Outstanding debt: $1, 800. Creditor: Ohio First Agricultural Trust. Auction date: November 15th.

He looked at more than a dozen in one go. They were all from the same creditor bank, and all were being auctioned on the same day.

The clerk who posted the notice jumped off the stool, shook the paste off his hands, and glanced at Arthur.

"Which piece of land have you taken a fancy to, sir? We'll all be raising our paddles together at 10 a. m. on the 15th in the county court lobby. But I advise you not to bother; these plots have already been reserved by large companies in bulk. It's just a formality."

"Are the courts managing to auction off so many farms in one day?" Arthur offered him a cigarette.

The clerk took the cigarette, lit it with Arthur's famous match, and took a deep drag.

"No judge is needed; it's all assembly line work. The bank sends us hundreds of overdue lists, we check the names, stamp them, and issue eviction orders. I drive around the county every day putting these things up at intersections. Last month I put up four hundred, and this month I'll probably put up six hundred."

"Where did the people who were driven away go?" Arthur asked.

The clerk pointed to the highway to the west with his finger holding a cigarette.

"California, isn't it said to be paradise? Or maybe you'll die on the street. Who knows?"

The clerk picked up the glue bucket and walked towards his car.

"I just put on the stickers. I make fourteen dollars a week to support my wife and kids. That's all I care about. Good luck, out-of-towner."

The car started, and the court clerk drove away.

Arthur stood in front of the bulletin board. He took out a notebook from his coat pocket and removed the cap from his pen.

He wrote in his notebook: The form of violence has changed. In the mountains, capital hires detectives to shoot; in the plains, capital hires court typewriters to kill. Here, malice is dressed in respectable suits, precisely delivered through the postal system and gavel. This is an organized clearing.

Arthur put away his notebook, returned to the pickup truck, and continued westward.

Around four o'clock in the afternoon, he understood what the direction the clerk was pointing meant.

Caravans began to appear on the highway.

It started as a beat-up Dodge truck with its chassis extremely low.

On the roof of the vehicle, three yellowed mattresses, a wooden rocking chair missing a leg, and even a blackened iron pot were tied together with thick hemp rope.

The truck bed was crammed with old boxes and packages, and several children in patched clothes sat in the middle of the boxes, swaying with the bumps of the truck.

Arthur turned the steering wheel and overtook on the left. As he drove alongside the truck, he got a clear view of the cab.

A bearded man gripped the steering wheel tightly with both hands, his eyes fixed blankly ahead.

The woman in the passenger seat was holding a baby in her arms. The expression on her face was not sadness, but a numbness of utter exhaustion.

This is just the beginning.

The further west you drive, the more cars there are on the highway.

Model T Fords, dilapidated Buicks, and even horse-drawn wooden carts.

All vehicles were overloaded to their physical limits, and all locomotives were steadfastly pointing westward.

This migrating army of bankrupt farmers flowed slowly along the asphalt road of National Highway 300, like a long gray river.

No one spoke, no cars honked. Only the labored panting of engines and the noise of tires crunching over gravel filled the air.

Arthur slowed down and blended into the convoy.

A Ford sedan in front suddenly pulled over. A lot of white smoke was billowing from the hood. The radiator had boiled over.

A man jumped out of the car, kicked the tire in despair, and then crouched down on the embankment, holding his head in his hands.

A woman and two boys, about seven or eight years old, got out of the car, holding empty metal buckets and looking blankly at the desolate fields around them.

There is no water source here.

Arthur parked the pickup truck behind them.

He got out of the car, walked to the back of the pickup truck, and picked up a spare bucket of five gallons of water.

He walked up to the Ford that had broken down, unscrewed the bucket lid, and handed the water to the man squatting on the ground.

"Add water after the engine cools down a bit. Keep the rest for yourselves."

Arthur spoke calmly.

The man looked up, his face covered in a mixture of engine oil and sweat. He glanced at Arthur's well-tailored coat, then at the clean bucket of water.

"We don't have the money to pay you, sir," the man said hoarsely.

"This is a gift." Arthur placed the bucket at his feet.

"Why?" The man didn't thank him; instead, he was full of suspicion.

Arthur didn't explain further. He pointed to the farm tools tied to the roof of the man's cart.

"That plow is very well maintained. You can tell you're a good farmer."

After saying that, Arthur turned around, walked back to his pickup truck, started the engine, and rejoined the slowly moving convoy.

When it was completely dark, Arthur drove the car into an abandoned gas station.

The fuel pump's meter had been smashed, and broken glass was scattered on the ground.

Arthur parked the car on the leeward side and lowered the tailgate. He took a portable kerosene stove from his toolbox, lit it, and placed a can of meat on it to heat it.

The car lights on the road were still flashing intermittently. The convoy did not stop even at night.

After finishing his dinner, Arthur leaned against the carriage and lit a cigarette.

He opened his notebook and, by the dim light of the kerosene stove, wrote down the first formal paragraph of the book's manuscript: They headed west. They left the land they had cultivated for generations to the court's seal, and stuffed their last sustenance into a leaky car.

They headed west, because the west was the place where, according to legend, there was work and oranges.

No one told them that under the California sun, private property had already been stamped on their property.