In earlier years, she had dreamed of boldly reaching for him, changing how they touched each other, exploring his body with her hands and her mouth; then, upon waking, she’d felt frustrated and swollen with a desire she could neither express nor share. She’d waited years for him to see it, see her, and reach out.
Lately, though, that dream felt far away. Or maybe she was just too tired and worn out these days to believe in it.
She left their bedroom and walked down the hallway. She paused at each of the kid’s bedroom doors and peered in. The peacefulness in their sleeping faces squeezed her heart. At times like this, she remembered Loreda when she’d been young and happy, always laughing, her arms thrown open for a hug. When Elsa had been Loreda’s favorite person in the world.
She went into the kitchen, which smelled of coffee and baking bread. Her in-laws didn’t sleep anymore, either. Like her, they held on to the unproven hope/belief that more work might save them.
Pouring herself a cup of black coffee, she drank it quickly and washed out the cup, then stepped into her brown shoes—the heels almost worn away—and grabbed her sun hat.
Outside, she squinted into the bright sun, tented a gloved hand over her eyes.
Tony was already at work, taking advantage of the relative cool of the morning. He was putting up hay—what little there was—and doing it early because he was afraid the afternoon heat would kill their horses. Both geldings moved more slowly every day. Sometimes the lowing moans of their hunger was enough to make Elsa weep.
Elsa waved at her father-in-law and he waved back. Tying on her hat, she made a quick stop at the outhouse and then hauled water by the pailful to the kitchen for laundry. There was no reason to water the orchard or the garden anymore. By the time she finished carrying water, her arms ached and she was sweating. At last, she went to her own little garden. She’d hollowed out a square of ground directly below the kitchen window, in a narrow patch of morning shade. It was too small to grow anything of value, so she’d planted some flower seeds. All she wanted was a little green, maybe even a splash of color.
She knelt in the powdery dirt, rearranging the stones she’d set in a semicircle to delineate the garden. The latest wind had pushed a few out of place. In the center, still standing, was her precious calico aster, with its leggy brown stems and defiant green leaves.
“If you can just make it through this heat wave, it will cool down soon,” Elsa said, pouring a few precious drops of water onto the soil, watching it darken instantly. “I know you want to bloom.”
“Talking to your little friend again?”
Elsa sat back on her heels and looked up, blinded for a moment by the bright sun.
Rafe stood in a halo of yellow light. He rarely bothered to shave these days, so the lower half of his face was covered in thick, dark stubble.
He knelt on one knee beside her and laid a hand on her shoulder. She could feel the slight dampness in his palm, the way his hand trembled from last night’s drinking.
Elsa couldn’t help leaning into his touch just enough to make his hold feel possessive.
“I’m sorry if I woke you up when I got in,” he said.
She turned. The brim of her straw hat touched the brim of his, made a scratching sound. “It was nothing.”
“I don’t know how you can stand all this.”
“All this?”
“Our life. Digging for scraps. Being hungry. How skinny our kids are.”
“We have more than lots of folks have these days.”
“You want too little, Elsa.”
“You make that sound like a bad thing.”
“You’re a good woman.”
He made that sound like a bad thing, too. Elsa didn’t know how to respond, and in the silence of her confusion, he rose slowly, tiredly to his feet.
She stood in front of him, tilted her face up. She knew what he saw: a tall, unattractive woman with sunburned, peeling skin and a mouth that was too big, and eyes that seemed to have drunk all the color God allotted her.
“I need to get to work,” he said. “It’s already so goddamn hot I can’t breathe.”
Elsa stared after him, thinking, Look back, smile, but he didn’t, and finally she stopped waiting and headed in to start the laundry.
* * *
THE FIRST PIONEER DAYS celebration had taken place in 1905, back in the days when Lonesome Tree was a vast plain of blue-green buffalo grass and the XIT Ranch employed a thousand cowboys. Homesteaders had been drawn to this land by brochures that promised they could grow cabbages the size of baby carriages, and wheat. All without irrigation. Dry farming, it was called, and it was promised to them here.
Indeed.
Loreda was pretty sure the party was really about men celebrating themselves.
“You look beautiful,” Mom said, coming into Loreda’s bedroom without even knocking. Loreda felt a rush of irritation at the intrusion. She bit back an angry remark about privacy.
Mom came up behind her; for a moment their faces were reflected together in the mirror above Loreda’s washstand. Beside Loreda’s tanned skin and blunt-cut black hair, Mom’s pallor was remarkable. How was it that Mom’s skin never tanned, just burned and peeled? She hadn’t even bothered to do anything with her hair beyond braiding it in a coronet. Stella’s mom always wore cosmetics and had her hair pinned and curled, even in these hard times.
Mom didn’t even try to look good. The dress she wore—a floral flour-sack housedress with a button-up bodice—was at least a size too big and just exaggerated how tall and thin she was.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t make you a new dress or at least buy you some socks. Next year. When it rains.”
Loreda couldn’t imagine how her mother could even say those words anymore. Loreda pulled away, smoothing the waves she’d coaxed into her chin-length hair and ruffling her bangs. “Where’s Daddy?”
“He’s hitching up the wagon.”
Loreda turned. “Can Stella spend the night after?”
“Sure,” Mom said. “But you’ll have to do your chores in the morning.”
Loreda was so happy, she actually hugged her mother, but Mom ruined it by hanging on too long and squeezing too hard.
Loreda yanked free.
Mom looked sad. “Go downstairs,” she said. “Help Grandma pack up the food.”
Loreda bolted out of the bedroom and hurried down to the kitchen, where Grandma was already busy packing up the pot of minestrone soup. A plateful of her cannoli with sweetened ricotta filling waited on the table. Both of which only the other Italian families would eat.
Loreda covered the tray of desserts with a dish towel and carried it out to the wagon. She climbed up into the back and sat close to her father, who put his arm around her and held her close. Grandma and Grandpa took their places up front. Mom was the last one to climb up into the back of the wagon.
Ant tucked in close to Mom and talked constantly, his high-pitched voice rising in excitement as they neared the town. Daddy, she noticed, was uncharacteristically quiet.
Lonesome Tree appeared on the horizon, a meager town squatted on a table-flat plain, surrounded by nothing.
Only the water tower stood tall against the cloudless blue sky.
Once, patriotism had run high in town. Loreda remembered how the old men used to talk about the Great War at every community gathering. Who fought, who died, and who grew the wheat to feed the troops. Back then, Pioneer Days had been an expression of the farmers’ pride in themselves and a celebration of their hard work. Americans! Prosperous! They’d draped the stores of Main Street in red, white, and blue bunting and planted American flags in the flowerpots and painted patriotic slogans on the windows. The men had gathered to drink and smoke and congratulate each other on winning the war and turning grazing land into farmland. They drank homemade hooch and played music on their fiddles and guitars while the women did all the work.
Or that was how Loreda saw it. In the week leading up to the celebration, Mom and Grand
ma Rose cooked more, made more homemade macaroni, did more laundry, and had to darn or repair every scrap of clothing that was to be worn. No matter how dire times were, how tight money was, Mom wanted her children to look presentable.
Today there was no bunting (too hot to put up, she figured, or else some woman finally said, Why bother?), no flowers or flags in the flowerpots, no patriotic slogans. Instead, Loreda saw hobos gathered around the train depot, wearing rags, their back pockets turned inside out in what were being called Hoover flags. A shoe with holes was a Hoover shoe. Everyone knew who to blame for the Depression but not how to fix it.
Clop-clop-clop down Main Street. Only two automobiles were parked out here. Both belonged to bankers. Banksters, they were called these days, for the way they cheated hardworking folk out of their land and then went bust and closed their doors, keeping the money people had thought was safe.
Grandpa maneuvered the horse and wagon up to the schoolhouse and parked.
Loreda heard music wafting through the open doors and the sound of stomping feet. She launched herself out of the wagon and hurried to the schoolhouse.
Inside, the party was on. A makeshift band played in the corner and a few couples were dancing.
Off to the right were the food tables. There wasn’t a lot of food out, but after the years of drought, Loreda knew it was a feast the women had worried and slaved over.
“Loreda!”
Loreda saw Stella moving toward her. As usual, Stella and her younger sister, Sophia, were the only girls in the room in pretty new party dresses.
Loreda felt a pinch of jealousy and put it aside. Stella was her best friend. Who cared about dresses?
Loreda and Stella came together as they always did, grasping hands, heads tilted together.
“Say, what’s the story, morning glory?” Loreda said, trying to sound in the know.
“I’m behind the grind, don’tcha know?” Stella answered.
Stella’s parents came up behind the girls, stopped to talk to the Martinellis.
Loreda heard Mr. Devereaux say, “I got another postcard from my brother-in-law. There’s railroad work in Oregon. You should think about it, Tony. Rafe.”
Like women had no opinions.
And her grandfather’s reply: “I don’t blame nobody for leaving, Ralph, but it ain’t for us. This land…”
Not that again. The land.
Loreda pulled Stella away from the grown-ups.
Ant ran past them, wearing a gas mask that made him look like an insect. He bumped into Loreda and giggled and ran away again, arms outstretched as if he were flying.
“The Red Cross donated a big box of gas masks to the bank—for the kids to wear during dust storms. My mom is handing ’em out tonight.”
“Gas masks,” Loreda said, shaking her head. “Jeepers.”
“It’s getting worse, my dad says.”
“We are not talking about gas masks. This is a party, for gosh sakes,” Loreda said. She reached out, took hold of Stella’s hands. “My mom said you can spend the night tonight. I got some magazines from the library. There’s a picture of Clark Gable that will make you swoon.”
Stella pulled back, looked away.
“What’s wrong?”
“The bank is closing,” Stella said.
“Oh.”
“My uncle Jimmy—the one in Portland, Oregon? He sent my dad a postcard. He reckons the railroad is hiring, and there’s no dust storms out there.”
Loreda took a step back. She didn’t want to hear what was coming.
“We’re leaving.”
NINE
Loreda leaned out her bedroom window and screamed in frustration. Below her, the chickens squawked in response. “Fly away, you idiot birds. Can’t you tell we’re dying here?”
Stella was leaving.
Loreda’s best—and only—friend in Lonesome Tree was leaving.
The room seemed to close in on her, becoming so small she couldn’t breathe. She went downstairs. The house was still, no wind poking at the cracks, no wood settling onto its foundations.
She moved easily in the dark. In the past month they’d turned off the party-line phone—no money to pay for it—and now they were really out here all alone. She found the front door and went outside. A bright moon shone out, glazing the barn’s roof with silvered light.
She smelled the sunbaked dirt and a hint of chicken manure and … cigarette smoke? Following the smell of it, she walked around the side of the farmhouse.
Beneath the windmill, she saw the red glow of a cigarette tip rise and fall and rise again. Daddy. So he couldn’t sleep, either.
As she approached him, she saw his red eyes and the tear streaks on his cheeks. He’d been out here in the dark, all alone, smoking and crying. “Daddy?”
“Hey, doll. You caught me.”
He tried to sound casual, but the obvious pretense made her feel even worse. If there was one person she trusted to tell her the truth, it was her father. But now it was so bad he was crying.
“You heard the Devereauxs are leaving?”
“I’m sorry, Lolo.”
“I’m tired of I’m sorrys,” Loreda said. “We could leave, too. Like the Devereauxs and the Moungers and the Mulls. Just go.”
“They were all talking about leaving at the shindig tonight. Most folks are like your grandparents. They’d rather die here than leave.”
“Do they know we might actually die here?”
“Oh. They know, believe me. Tonight, your grandfather said—and I quote: Bury me here, boys. I ain’t leaving.” He exhaled smoke. “They say they’re doing it for our future. As if this patch of dirt is all we could ever want.”
“Maybe we could convince them to leave.”
Her father laughed. “And maybe Milo will sprout wings and fly away.”
“Could we leave without them? Lots of folks are leaving. You always say this is America, where anything is possible. We could go to California. Or you could get a railroad job in Oregon.”
Loreda heard footsteps. Moments later, Mom appeared, dressed in her ratty old robe and work boots, her fine hair all whichaway.
“Rafe,” Mom said, sounding relieved, as if she thought he might have run off. It was pathetic how close an eye Mom kept on Daddy. On all of them. She was more of a cop than a parent, and she took the fun out of everything. “I missed you when I woke. I thought…”
“I’m here,” he said.
Mom’s smile was as thin as everything else about her. “Come inside. Both of you. It’s late.”
“Sure, Els,” Daddy said.
Loreda hated how beaten her father sounded, how his fire went out around her mother. She sucked the life out of everyone with her sad, long-suffering looks. “This is all your fault.”
Mom said, “What am I to blame for now, Loreda? The weather? The Depression?”
Daddy touched Loreda, shook his head. Don’t.
Mom waited a moment for Loreda to speak, then turned away and headed for the house.
Daddy followed.
“We could leave,” Loreda said to her father, who kept walking as if he hadn’t heard. “Anything is possible.”
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING, ELSA woke well before dawn and found Rafe’s side of the bed empty. He’d slept in the barn again. Lately he preferred it to being with her. With a sigh, she got dressed and left her room.
In the dark kitchen, Rose stood at the dry sink, her hands deep in water that she’d hauled from the well and poured into the sink. A large cracked mixing bowl lay drying on towels on the counter beside her. Towels Elsa had embroidered by hand, at night, by candlelight, in Rafe’s favorite colors. She had thought that making a perfect home was the answer to making a marriage happy. Clean sheets scented with lavender, embroidered pillowcases, hand-knit scarves. She’d filled hours with such tasks, poured her heart and soul into them, using thread to say the words she could not utter.
A pot of coffee sat on the woodstove, pumping a comforting
aroma into the room. A tray of rectangular chickpea panelle was on the table and a tablespoon of olive oil popped in a cast-iron pan on the stove. Beside it, oatmeal bubbled in a pot.
“Morning,” Elsa said. She removed a spatula from the drawer and lowered two of the panelle into the hot oil. These would be the midday meal, eaten like a sandwich, squeezed with precious drops of preserved lemon.
“You look tired,” Rose said, not unkindly.
“Rafe isn’t sleeping well.”
“If he’d stop drinking in the barn at night it might help.”
Elsa poured herself a cup of coffee and leaned against the cabbage-rose-papered wall. She noticed the corner of the flooring where the linoleum was coming up. Then she went to turn the panelle over, seeing a nice brown crust on them.
Rose moved in beside her, took over the cooking.
Elsa began to take apart the butter churn. The parts needed to be washed and scalded and put back together in a precise, numbered order and then stacked for the next use. It was the perfect chore to keep one’s mind occupied.
A centipede crawled out of its hiding place and plopped onto the counter. Elsa took out a pair of knives and chopped it into pieces. Sharing the house with centipedes and spiders and other insects had become commonplace. Every living thing on the Great Plains sought safety from the dust storms.
The two women worked in companionable silence until the sun came up and the children stumbled out of their bedrooms.
“I’ll feed them,” Rose said. “Why don’t you take Rafe some coffee?”
Elsa was grateful for her mother-in-law’s insight. Smiling, Elsa said, “Thank you,” poured her husband a cup of coffee, and went outside.
The sun was a bright yellow glow in a cloudless cornflower-blue sky. Instead of noticing the latest destruction to the land—broken fence posts, damage to the windmill, dirt piles growing in size—she focused instead on the good news. If she hurried, she would be able to do laundry today, bleach everything into whiteness. There was something about fresh sheets hanging on the line that lifted her spirits. Perhaps it was simply a vision of having accomplished a thing that improved her family’s life, even if no one noticed.
The Four Winds Page 9