The Four Winds(102)

“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 cotton-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.”