Loreda moved fast.
The last thing she wanted was to be walked into her classroom by her mother. She went to the Big Kids tent and peered inside.
There were about five desks. Two were empty. A woman wearing a drab gray cotton dress and rubber boots stood at the front of the room. Beside her was an easel that held a chalkboard. On it, she’d written: American history.
Loreda ducked inside and sat at the empty desk in the back.
The teacher looked up. “I’m Mrs. Sharpe. And who is our newest pupil?”
The other kids turned to look at Loreda.
“Loreda Martinelli.”
The boy in the next desk scooted so close his desk edge banged into hers. He was tall, she could tell. Lanky. With a dirty cap pulled down so low she couldn’t see his eyes. His blond hair was too long. He wore faded overalls over a denim shirt; one bib strap was untied and the corner flapped over like a dog’s ear. A winter coat hung on him, too big and missing most of the buttons. He pulled off his cap. “Lor-ay-da. I ain’t heard that name before. It’s pretty.”
“Hi,” she said. “Thanks. And you are?”
“Bobby Rand. You moved into Cabin Ten? The Pennipakers left just before the flood. The old man died. Dysentery.” He smiled. “Glad to have someone my age here. My pa makes me go to school if there’s no pickin’.”
“Yeah. My mom wants me to go to college.”
He laughed, showing off a missing tooth. “That’s rich.”
Loreda glared at him. “Girls can go to college, I’ll have you know.”
“Oh. I thought you were jokin’.”
“Well, I’m not. Where are you from, the Stone Age?”
“New Mexico. We had a grocery store that went bust.”
“Students,” the teacher said, rapping a ruler on the top of the easel. “You are not here to jaw. Open your American history books to page one-twelve.”
Bobby opened a book. “We can share. Not that we’re gonna learn anything that matters.”
Loreda leaned toward him, looked at the open book. The chapter heading was “The Founding Fathers and the First Continental Congress.”
Loreda raised her hand.
“Yes … Loretta, is it?”
Loreda didn’t correct the pronunciation of her name. Mrs. Sharpe didn’t look like much of a listener. “I’m interested in more recent history, ma’am. The farmworkers here in California. The anti-immigration policies that deported the Mexicans. And what about workers’ unions? I’d like to understand—”
The teacher rapped her ruler down so hard it cracked. “We do not talk about unionism here. That’s un-American. We are lucky to have jobs that put food on our tables.”
“But we don’t really have jobs, do we? I mean—”
“Out! Now. Don’t come back until you’re ready to be grateful. And quiet, as young women should always be.”
“What is wrong with everyone in this state?” Loreda said, slamming the book shut on Bobby’s finger. He yelped in pain.
“We don’t need to learn about what old rich men did more than one hundred years ago. The world is falling apart now.” She strode out of the tent.
What now?
Loreda marched through the grassy mud toward … what?
Where was she going? If she went back to the cabin, Mom would put her to work doing laundry.
The library. It was the only thing she could think of.
She walked out of camp and turned onto the paved road and walked to town.
In Welty, which was less than a mile away, she turned onto Main Street, where a series of awninged shops had obviously once offered everything a person could need if you had money. Tailors, druggists, grocers, butchers, dress shops. Now most of them were closed. A movie theater stood in the center of town, its marquee unlit, its windows boarded up.
She passed a boarded-up hat shop; a man sat on the stoop, one leg stretched out, the other bent. He draped an arm over the bent knee, a brown hand-rolled cigarette dangled between his fingers.
He peered up at her from beneath the brim of his tired-looking fedora.
A look of understanding passed between them.
Loreda paused for a moment outside the library. She hadn’t been here since the day of her haircut. It already felt like a lifetime ago.
Today she looked bedraggled, unkempt, skinny. At least she was wearing the relatively new hand-me-down dress, but the mud splattered lace-up shoes and socks were not a good look on anyone.
Loreda forced herself to open the door. Once inside, she stepped out of her muddy shoes, left them by the door.
The librarian looked Loreda up and down, from her dirty stockinged feet to the ratty lace of her hand-me-down collar.
Remember me, please. Don’t call me an Okie.
“Miss Martinelli,” she said. “I hoped you’d return. Your mother was so pleased to pick up your library card.”
“It was my Christmas present.”
“A fine gift.”
“I … lost the Nancy Drew books in the flood. I’m so sorry.”
Mrs. Quisdorf gave her a sad smile. “Nothing to fret about. I’m just glad to see you looking well. What can I find on the shelves for you?”
“I’m interested in … workers’ rights.”
“Ah. Politics.” She walked away. “Give me a moment.”
Loreda glanced at the newspapers spread out on the table beside her. One from the Los Angeles Herald-Express had the headline: “Stay Away from California: Warning to Transient Hordes.”
Nothing new there.
“Relief for Migrants to Bankrupt State.”
Loreda flipped through the pages, saw article after article that claimed the migrants were bankrupting the state by demanding aid. Called them shiftless and lazy and criminal, reported that they lived like dogs “because they don’t know any better.”
She heard footsteps again. Mrs. Quisdorf came up beside her and laid a slim book on the table beside the newspapers. Ten Days That Shook the World, by John Reed.
“John Reed,” Loreda said. The name struck a chord, but she couldn’t remember where she’d heard it. “Thank you.”
“A warning, though,” Mrs. Quisdorf said quietly. “Words and ideas can be deadly. You be careful what you say and to whom, especially in this town.”
* * *
THE CAMP’S LAUNDRY WAS housed in a long wooden building and had six large metal tubs and three hand-cranked wringers. And—miracle of miracles—clean, running water at the turn of a handle. Elsa spent her first morning in camp washing the sheets they had gotten from the Salvation Army and the clothes they’d worn in the flood, putting it all through a wringer instead of twisting the water out of each item by hand. When everything was clean, she carried the damp bundle back to her cabin and set up a makeshift laundry line and hung it all to dry.
Then she retrieved the letter she’d written last night and dropped it off at the post office. Just that—the fact that she could walk fifty feet and mail a letter—was a staggering bit of good fortune.
And now, shopping. Right here. In camp. What a convenience.
The company store was in a narrow green clapboard building, with a peaked roof and slim windows positioned on either side of a white door. She had to walk through mud to get there—mud everywhere, of course, since the flood and the rain—and climb two mud-streaked steps.
As Elsa opened the door, a bell tinkled overhead, sounding surprisingly gay.
Inside, she saw rows and rows of food. Cans of beans and peas and tomato soup. Bags of rice and flour and sugar. Smoked meats. Locally made cheeses. Fresh vegetables. Eggs. Milk.
One whole wall was clothing. Bolts of fabric, everything from cotton to wool. There were boxes of buttons and ribbons and spools of thread. Shoes in every size. Galoshes and raincoats and hats. There were cotton- and potato-picking sacks and canteens and gloves.
Everything was priced high, she noticed. Some things—like eggs—were more than twice the price they were in town. The cot
ton-picking sacks that hung from hooks on the wall were priced three times what Elsa had paid in town.
She picked up an empty basket.
In the back of the store, a long counter ran nearly from end to end; behind it stood a man with muttonchop sideburns and bushy eyebrows. He wore a dark brown hat, a black sweater, and pants with suspenders. “Hullo there,” he said, pushing the wire-rimmed spectacles higher on his nose. “You must be the new resident of Cabin Ten.”
“I am,” Elsa said. “We are, actually, my children and me. And my husband,” she remembered to add.
“Welcome. You look like a fine new member of our little community.”
“We were … flooded out of our … home.”
“As so many were.”
“Our money was lost. All of it.”
He nodded. “Indeed. Again, a common tale.”
“I have children to feed.”
“And rent to pay now.”
Elsa swallowed hard. “Yes. Your prices … they’re very high…”
Behind her, the bell tinkled again. She turned and saw a big man walk in. A toothy smile dominated his florid, fleshy face. He hooked his thumbs into the suspenders that held up his brown woolen pants and ambled casually forward, eyeing the goods on either side of him as he walked.
“Mr. Welty,” the store clerk said. “A good morning to you.”
Welty. The owner.
“It’ll be better when the damn ground dries, Harald. And who have we here?” He came to a stop beside Elsa. Up close, she saw the quality of his clothing, the cut of his coat. It was how her father had dressed for work—a man choosing clothes to make a statement.
“Elsa Martinelli,” she said. “We are new here.”
“The poor family lost everything in the flood,” Harald said.
“Ah,” Mr. Welty said. “Then you’re in the right place. Stock up on food to feed your family. Get whatever suits your fancy. Come cotton season, you will make plenty. Do you have children?”
“Two, sir.”
“Fine, fine. We love our children pickers.” He slapped a hand down on the counter hard enough to rattle the jar of candy by the register. “Give her some candy for her children, by God.”
Elsa thanked him, although she was pretty sure he didn’t hear, or wasn’t listening. Already he was turning away, walking out of the store.
The bell jangled.
“So,” Harald said, opening a book. “Cabin Ten. I will put you down for six dollars this month on credit. That’s for rent. Now, what else do you need?”
Elsa looked longingly at the smoked meat.
“Just take what you need,” Harald said gently.
Elsa couldn’t do that. If she did, she’d take it all, and run like a thief. She couldn’t let herself be seduced by the idea of credit. Nothing in this life was free, for migrants most of all.
Still.
She walked the aisles slowly, adding up every price in her head. She placed items in her basket with great care, as if they might detonate on impact: cans of milk, smoked ham, a bag of potatoes, a bag of flour, a bag of rice, two tins of chipped beef, a small amount of sugar. A bag of beans. Coffee. Some laundry and hand soap. Toothpaste and toothbrushes. A blanket. Two envelopes.
She carried the basket to the counter and withdrew the items one by one.
As she did so, a terrible sinking feeling filled her, a sense of impending doom. She had never bought anything she couldn’t pay for. Sure, the Wolcott family had bought things in town on credit, but that had been a convenience. Her father paid his tab promptly, from savings in the bank. The idea of asking for credit when there were no savings to draw upon felt to Elsa like begging.
“Eleven dollars and twenty cents,” Harald said, writing the total down in the book below the heading of Cabin 10.
At this rate, Elsa would accrue a lot of debt between now and April 26, when—hopefully—state relief would give her some help.
“You know,” she said quietly, “I only need one can of chipped beef.”
* * *
ELSA HAD NO SHELVING in the cabin, so she stacked the food carefully in the one box they had and tucked it under the bed. She’d withheld two cans of milk, a pound of coffee, and a bar of soap. Those items she put back in the bag she’d gotten at the store and carried it out of the cabin.
She got into her truck and drove south, past the town of Welty, to the ditch-bank camp, and parked on the side of the road. The field was a sea of standing water and mud, studded with debris. Goods, tree limbs, sheets of metal lay scattered and floating. With nowhere else to go, people had begun to move back onto the land and set up camp.
Elsa saw the Deweys’ big farm truck off to the right, half buried in mud. A group of people stood around it.
She carried the groceries across the field, her boots pressing down into the squishy mud, standing water lapping across her ankles now and then.
Jeb and the boys were busy hammering nails into salvaged sheets of plywood. The two girls sat in the back of the truck, playing with ruined dolls in muddy dresses. A broken chair leaned against the mud-clogged stove they had hauled all the way from Alabama, thinking it would go into a house.
They were living in the truck, all six of them.
Elsa saw Jeb and waved. He gave her an ashamed look. “Jean’s at the ditch.”
Elsa’s throat was too tight to allow for words, so she nodded and set the groceries down on the broken chair. Saying nothing, she picked her way through the muddy, debris-strewn field to the ditch.
Jean was at the bank, trying to draw water into a bucket. Elsa came up quietly behind her, feeling guilty that she’d gotten out of this place and ashamed at how grateful she was for it. “Jean,” she said.
Jean turned. In the split second before she smiled, Elsa saw the depth of her friend’s despair. “Elsa,” Jean said. “As you can see, the neighborhood has gone to hell without you.”
Elsa didn’t feel much like joking. “Nadine? Midge?”
“Nadine and them moved on. Jest started walkin’. Ain’t seen Midge since the flood.”
Jean got slowly to her feet, set the bucket of dirty water down beside her.
Elsa approached cautiously, afraid that she might cry. She understood at last what her grandfather had meant when he said, Pretend to be brave if you have to. She did that now, managed a smile even as she felt the sting of tears. “I hate you being here.”
“I hate it, too.” Jean coughed into a dirty handkerchief. “But Jeb is going to rig some kind of structure on the back of the truck. Maybe even make us a covered porch. It won’t be so bad soon. The land’ll dry.” She smiled. “Maybe you’ll come back for tea.”
“Tea? I think we should start drinking gin.”
“You’ll visit, though?”
Elsa glimpsed Jean’s fear, and it matched her own. “Of course. And you’ll let me know if you need me. Whenever. Day or night. We’re in Cabin Ten at Welty’s growers’ camp. Just up the road. I … brought you food.” Not enough.
“Aw, Elsa … how can I thank you?”
“You don’t need to thank me. You know that.”
Jean picked up her bucket. The two women walked back to the broken-down truck. How would the Deweys follow the crops in the coming months?
Elsa didn’t know how to leave them here, but there was nothing she could do. She knew that others were even worse off, without even a car to live in.
“It will get better,” Jean said.
“Of course it will.”
A look passed between them, a knowledge of their shared lie.
“We’ll drink gin and dance the Charleston, like them society girls,” Jean said. “I always wanted dance lessons. Did I tell you that? As a girl in Montgomery. I begged my mama for lessons. I’ve still got two left feet. You shoulda seen me at my weddin’. Jeb and me dancing was a terrible thing to see.”
Elsa smiled. “It couldn’t be worse than Rafe and me. Someday soon we will teach each other to dance, Jean. You and me, with mus
ic. And we won’t care who is watching or what they think,” she said. She pulled Jean into a tight hug and found it difficult to let go.
“Go on,” Jean said. “We’re fine here.”
With a crisp little nod and a wave to the rest of the family, she headed back across the soggy field. She saw her own stove, half buried in mud, lying on its side, the pipe gone. With each breath, she almost cried; each moment she held it back was a triumph. She found a bucket sticking up from the mud and picked it up and kept walking. Then she found a coffee cup and she picked that up, too.
In Welty, she walked to the gas station and washed out the bucket at the faucet by the pumps. She held her muddy boots under the water, cleaning them, too, and then she put them back on. All the while she was thinking about her friend, living in a truck in the middle of a sea of mud in the winter.
“Elsa?”
She shut off the water and turned.
Jack stood there, holding a sheath of papers. Flyers, no doubt, urging people to rise up in anger about the way they were treated.
She shouldn’t move toward him, not right out here in public, but she couldn’t help herself. She felt fragile and alone.
So alone.
“Are you okay?” he asked, meeting her more than halfway.
“I’ve been out … to the ditch-bank camp. Jean … and the children … are living…” On that, her voice broke.
Jack opened his arms and she walked into his embrace. He held her close, said nothing while she cried. Even so, his arms comforted her, his shirt soaked up her tears.
Finally, she drew back, looked at him. He let her go and wiped the tears from her face with the pad of his thumb.
“That’s no way to live,” she said, clearing her throat. Already the moment of intimacy between them was dissolving. She felt embarrassed for letting him hold her. No doubt he thought her needy and pathetic.
“No, it isn’t. Let me drive you home?”
“Back to Texas?”
“Is that what you want?”
“Jack, what I want doesn’t matter one whit. Not even to me.” She wiped her eyes, ashamed by the weakness she’d revealed.
“It’s not weak, you know. To feel things deeply, to want things. To need.”
The Four Winds Page 31