Tom Joad kills the vigilante

Tom Joad kills the vigilante who murdered Jim Casy in a single, explosive act of retribution, an event that seals his own fate as a hunted man and completes his moral transformation from a paroled killer into a conscious soldier for the dispossessed. The killing is not premeditated; it erupts from the same instinct that drove Tom to kill Herb Turnbull years before, but its context and consequence are radically different. Where the first killing was a drunken, personal fight, this one is a political execution, a direct response to the murder of a man who had become Tom's spiritual mentor. The act forces Tom into hiding, separates him from his family, and propels him toward the fugitive life of an organizer, fulfilling the trajectory Casy had set in motion.

Background and the Murder of Jim Casy

Tom had slipped out of the Hooper ranch peach camp to investigate the strike that had been broken by the arrival of strikebreakers. Following a stream, he found Casy living in a tent with other striking workers. Casy, recently released from jail, had become a strike leader, and he explained to Tom the brutal economics of the situation: the growers had offered two and a half cents a box, a wage no man could live on, and when the workers refused, they were driven off by police. Now the growers were paying five cents to strikebreakers like the Joads, but as soon as the strike was fully broken, the wage would drop back to two and a half cents. Casy urged Tom to spread the word inside the camp, but Tom was pessimistic, knowing his father would not give up meat for the sake of other men. As they talked, the other men grew nervous, sensing something in the night. A high, shrill whistle sounded, and then flashlight beams caught the group. A voice identified Casy: "That's him. That shiny bastard. That's him." Casy tried to reason with the men, telling them they did not know what they were doing, that they were helping to starve children. A short, heavy man stepped into the light carrying a new white pick handle. Casy repeated his warning, and the heavy man swung the club into the side of Casy's head with a dull crunch of bone. Casy fell sideways out of the light, his head crushed flat and oozing.

The Killing

Tom stood frozen for a moment, looking down at the preacher's body. The flashlight beam crossed the heavy man's legs and the white new pick handle. Then Tom leaped silently. He wrenched the club free from the man's grasp. His first blow missed and struck a shoulder, but the second crushing blow found the head, and as the heavy man sank down, three more blows found his head. The lights danced about; there were shouts and the sound of running feet crashing through brush. Tom stood over the prostrate man until a club reached his own head, a glancing blow that felt like an electric shock. Then he was running along the stream, bending low, with footsteps splashing behind him. He turned and squirmed up into a poison-oak thicket, then emerged into an orchard, still hearing the calls and pursuit. He slipped through a fence and lay still among blackberry bushes, panting hoarsely. His nose was crushed, and a trickle of blood dripped from his chin. He bathed his face in the cool water of an irrigation ditch, feeling the sting and burn. The black cloud that had crossed the sky passed, and the night grew quiet again. Tom crossed the ditch, wrung out his clothes, and crept back to the Joad house, where he lay shivering under his blanket, his torn face throbbing with pain.

Consequences and Flight

The next morning, Tom's bruised and swollen face told the story. Ma saw it and knew immediately he was in trouble. Tom told his family what had happened: Casy was leading the strike, the vigilantes came for him, they killed him, and Tom went nuts and clubbed a man. He did not know if he had killed him, but he thought so. The family understood the danger. Pa reported that the people in the camp were talking about little else, that posses were out, and that men were talking up a lynching. The story had already been twisted: the vigilantes were saying Tom had struck first. Tom knew his face was a giveaway; anyone would recognize him. Ma devised a plan to hide him in the truck under a mattress, and the family fled the Hooper ranch that night. They drove to a cotton-picking camp, where Tom hid in the brush beside a stream, living like a rabbit, while the family worked. Ma brought him food each night, leaving it in a culvert. But Ruthie, in a fight with another child, boasted that her brother had killed a man and was hiding, and Ma knew Tom had to leave for good. In their final meeting in the blackness of his vine-covered cave, Tom told Ma he had been thinking about what Casy said, about a man having only a piece of a great big soul, and about the scripture from Ecclesiastes: "Two are better than one." He told her he was going to do what Casy had done. When Ma worried that they would kill him, he replied, "They gonna drive me anyways. They drivin' all our people." And then he spoke his famous farewell: "Wherever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. If Casy knowed, why, I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad an'—I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry an' they know supper's ready. An' when our folks eat the stuff they raise an' live in the houses they build—why, I'll be there." He took the seven dollars Ma offered and disappeared into the night, leaving his family to face the flood alone.