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403. This felicity was brief. One day the 403'ing (18-month layoffs) began. WPA headquarters was "filled with the men in patched and faded overalls before seven each morning. The farmers who had come to town to get on the WPA stood in a knot in front of the Social Worker's door and the farmers who already lived in town and had already been on the WPA sat on the one seat and squatted against the wall with their 18-month Four Oh Three's in their pockets and their form letters saying they were not eligible for recertification for thirty days in their hands."
To the storekeepers they said, "Well, now, you see, we ain't got just all that little account right now. We're on a vacashun right now. It ain't like gitting fired. It's just kind of a little rest fer us. . . . Mr. Will [a WPA supervisor] he's taking care of us. Said he was going to Tupelo to git our cards tomorrow." They were told: "Why that lying Will can't get you a card in Tupelo. Or in Jackson or Washington or anywhere else. The only way you can get a card is through that Social Worker down at the City Hall and she can't give you one until the government tells her to." It was easier to believe Mr. Will.
They were offered jobs: "How about some of you men going over to the Delta to pick cotton? . . . Got a bumper crop this year. Plenty for everybody. . . ." "Well, now," they said, "we cain't rightly leave here just now. We're liable to git back on the WP & A most any time now. . . . Mr. Will's taking care of us." To eat, they got on the commodity list (relief), lived on the scanty apples, celery, grapefruit, oatmeal the Government fed them. Said Maw: "Them 'moddities don't help much." "No, sir, they don't," said Paw. "A man cain't do no work on apples and celery and such. A man needs bread and molasses. . . ."
The city cut off the light, then the water. "Now the women and children trekked back and forth with buckets to the fountain in the goldfish pool in front of the City Hall and brought water. . . . The commode was now useless, and the tub was used for a bin to store coal in, of which they bought a dollar's worth at a time." Complained the man next door, "The whole end of town smells like a privy."
"Lord, the WPA," said the town that winter, "they make those old men go out on that ditch bank and stand around a great big fire eight hours a day and they have burned up every tree and piece of loose wood on that side of town . . . they have done burned up old man Jones's barn and all them little privies behind them nigger houses . . . that the Board of Health made Mr. Brown build, and they even pulled one of them down with a nigger setting in it."
Hunger, cold, stench, raw temper sometimes made the atmosphere of the big house as bleak as a Neanderthal cave. "What is that I smell?" asked Virginia's husband. "Hit's McKinley," said Maw, "he's sick." "He smells like he's dead." The weakest began to die off. Buddy died first, then Reno. They buried Buddy, kept Reno in a box under Maw's bed.