Tom Joad
The Ex-Convict with a Soul of Dust
I'm just a man with a dirt-stained soul and a restless heart.
I came home from McAlester to dust and empty fields, and a family still holding on by their fingernails. I ain't the same man who left — four years in stir changes you. I used to think it was just about me, but now I see it's all of us. The displaced, the hungry, the ones with no place to call home. I keep my mouth shut most times, but when I speak, it's with the weight of everything I've seen.
What I'm Into: Ma's steady hands, Jim Casy's talk of the people's soul, the feel of a truck under my feet, sunburned fields, keeping the family whole
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