The Four Winds(114)

A hand clamped around Loreda’s bicep, squeezed hard. “Sorry, boys,” Elsa said. “My daughter had a rough day. Don’t pay her any mind.” She hauled Loreda back toward their cabin.

“Dang it, Mom,” Loreda hollered, yanking free. “Why did you do that?”

“You get pegged as a union rabble-rouser and we’re finished. Who can say there wasn’t a grower spy in that group? They’re everywhere.”

Loreda didn’t know how to live with this gnawing anger. “We shouldn’t have to live like this.”

Mom sighed. “It won’t be forever. We’ll find a way out.”

When it rains.

When we get to California.

We’ll find a way out.

New words for an old, never realized hope.



TENSION BEGAN TO TAKE up space in the valley. It could be felt in the fields, in the relief lines, around camp. The lowered wages had frightened and unsettled them all. Would it happen again? Nobody was saying the word out loud, but it hung in the air anyway.

Strike.

At night, in the growers’ camps and the ditch-bank settlements, field foremen began to show up, clubs in hand. They walked from cabin to cabin and tent to tent and shack to shanty, listening to what was being said, their appearance designed to have a chilling effect on conversation. Everyone knew that there were spies living among them, people who had chosen to stay in the growers’ good graces by passing along names of anyone who expressed discontent or stirred up trouble.

Now, after a long day spent picking cotton, Loreda was slumped on her bed, watching her mom heat up a can of pork and beans on the hot plate.

She heard footsteps outside.

A piece of paper slid under the cabin door.

No one moved until the footsteps went away.

Then Loreda launched herself off the bed and grabbed the paper before her mother could.

FARMWORKERS UNITE

A call to action.

We must fight for better wages.

Better living conditions.

A coincidence our wages are cut now?

We don’t think so.

Poor, hungry, desperate folks are easier to control.

Join us.

Break free.

The Workers Alliance wants to help.

Join us Thursday at midnight in the back room at the El Centro Hotel.



Mom grabbed the paper, read it, crumpled it.

“Don’t—”

Mom lit a match and set fire to the paper; she dropped it to the concrete floor, where it burned to ash.

“Those people will get us fired and thrown out of this cabin,” Mom said.

“They’ll save us,” Loreda argued.

“Don’t you see, Loreda?” Mom said. “Those men are dangerous. The farmers are opposing unionization.”

“Of course they are. They want to keep us hungry and at their mercy so we’ll work for anything.”

“We are at their mercy!” Mom cried.

“I’m going to that meeting.”

“You are not. Why do you think they’re meeting at midnight, Loreda? They’re scared. Grown men are scared to be seen with the Communists and union organizers.”

“You’re always talking about my future. Your big dreams for me. College. How do you think I’m going to get there, Mom? By picking cotton in the fall and starving in the winter? By living on the dole?” Loreda moved forward. “Think about the women who fought for the vote. They had to be scared, too, but they marched for change, even if it meant going to jail. And now we can vote. Sometimes the end is worth any sacrifice.”

“It’s a bad idea.”

“I can’t take being kicked around and treated badly, barely surviving anymore. It’s wrong what they’re doing. They should be held accountable.”

“And you, a fourteen-year-old girl, are the one to make them pay, are you?”

“No. Jack is.”

Mom frowned, tucked her chin in. “What does Mr. Valen have to do with this?”

“I’m sure he’ll be at the meeting. Nothing scares him.”

“I’ve said all I’m going to on this subject. We are staying away from union Communists.”





THIRTY-ONE





On Thursday, after ten hours of picking cotton, Loreda’s entire body hurt, and tomorrow morning, she would have to get up and do it all again.

For ten percent less in wages.

Ninety cents for a hundred pounds of picked cotton. Eighty cents if you counted the cut taken by the crooks at the company store.

She thought about it endlessly, obsessively; the injustice of it gnawed at her.

Just as she thought about the meeting.

And her mother’s fear.

Loreda understood the fear more than her mother suspected. How could Loreda not understand it? She’d lived through the winter in California, been flooded out, lost everything, survived on barely any food, worn shoes that didn’t fit. She knew how it felt to go to bed hungry and wake up hungry, how you could try to trick your stomach with water but it never lasted. She saw her mother measuring beans out for dinner and splitting a single hot dog into three portions. She knew Mom regretted every penny she added to their debt at the store.

The difference between Loreda and her mother wasn’t fear—they shared that. It was fire. Her mother’s passion had gone out. Or maybe she’d never had any. The only time Loreda had seen genuine anger from her mother was the night they’d buried the Deweys’ baby.