This
is a family of six; a man, his wife and four children. They
live in a tent the color of the ground. Rot has set in on the
canvas so that the flaps and the sides hang in tatters and are
held together with bits of rusty baling wire. There is one bed
in the family and that is a big tick lying on the ground inside
the tent.
They have one quilt and a piece of canvas for bedding. The sleeping
arrangement is clever. Mother and father lie down together and
two children lie between them. Then heading the other way, the
other two children lie, the littler ones. If the mother and
father sleep with their legs spread wide, there is room for
the legs of the children ....
The
tent is full of flies clinging to the apple box that is the
dinner table, buzzing about the foul clothes of the children,
particularly the baby, who has not been bathed nor cleaned for
several days .... There is no toilet here, but there is a clump
of willows nearby where human feces lie exposed to the flies
the same flies that are in the tent.
Two
weeks ago there was another child, a four year old boy. For
a few weeks they had noticed that he was kind of lackadaisical,
that his eyes had been feverish. They had given him the best
place in the bed, between father and mother. But one night he
went into convulsions and died, and the next morning the coroner's
wagon took him away...
They
know pretty well that it was a diet of fresh fruit, beans and
little else that caused his death. He had no milk for months.
