The Four Winds(121)

“I hear you’re making trouble, demanding gin,” Elsa said.

“One martini before I die. Don’t seem too much to ask.”

Elsa helped Jean swallow two aspirin and drink a glass of water, and then stroked her friend’s hot forehead. “Don’t you give up, Jean . . .”

Jean stared up at Elsa, breathing heavily, sweating. “You dance, Elsa,” she said, almost too quietly to be heard. “For both of us.” Jean squeezed Elsa’s hand. “I loved you, girlfriend.”

Not past tense. Please.

She heard Jeb start to cry.

“I love you, too, Jean,” Elsa whispered.

Jean slowly turned her head to look at her husband. “Now . . . where . . . are my babies, Jeb?”

Elsa had to force herself to move away, get out of the truck. The four Dewey children climbed up and gathered around Jean.

Elsa heard whispering. Elroy said, “I will, Ma,” as the girls cried.

And then Jean’s broken voice: “I had so much more to say to y’all . . .”

Loreda touched Elsa’s shoulder. “Are you okay?”

Elsa’s answer was a primal scream.

Once she started, she couldn’t stop.

Loreda pulled Elsa into her arms and held her while she cried for all of it—the way they lived, the dreams they’d lost, the future they’d so blindly believed in. For the children who would grow up not knowing Jean. Her humor, her gentleness, her steel, her hopes for them.

Elsa cried until she felt emptied inside.

She pulled away from Loreda, who looked frightened. “I’m sorry,” Elsa said, wiping her eyes.

“Sometimes it just . . . breaks you,” Loreda said. “It helps to get mad.”

“You’re right,” Elsa said. Enough. “If I wanted to find Mr. Valen and his Communist friends, would you know where to look?”

“I think so.”

“Where?”

“There’s a barn where they make flyers and stuff. Out at the end of Willow Road.”

“Okay.” Elsa drew in a deep breath and released it slowly. “Okay, then.”



LATER, WHEN NIGHT FELL across the valley and stars came out to blanket the sky, Elsa quietly herded her children out of the cabin and toward the truck. None of them spoke as they climbed into the vehicle and drove away. Each understood the danger of what they’d decided to do tonight.

“Turn here,” Loreda said.

Elsa turned onto a dirt road that cut through brown, uncultivated fields. At the end of the road, a gray-brown barn stood next to an old ranch house with broken windows and boarded-up doors. There were six or seven automobiles parked out front.

Elsa parked next to a dusty Packard. She and Loreda and Ant got out of the truck and walked toward the barn. Loreda pushed open the half-broken door.

The interior was lit by lanterns. There were several tables set up on the straw-covered dirt floor; chairs were placed randomly along the walls. At least a dozen people were at work: some at typewriters, others at mimeograph machines. Cigarette smoke thickened the air but couldn’t obliterate the sweet smell of hay.

Elsa and the children walked among the Communists; no one seemed to notice them. Elsa saw a paper come out of a mimeograph machine. “WORKERS UNITE!” was the bold headline. She smelled an odd odor of ink and metal.

They passed a small dark-haired woman wearing spectacles who paced as she dictated to another woman, who was typing. “We cannot allow the rich to get richer while the poor get poorer. How can we call ourselves the land of the free when people are living on the streets and dying of hunger? Radical change requires radical methods . . .”

Loreda elbowed Elsa, who looked up.

Jack was coming toward them.

“Hello, ladies,” he said, staring intently at Elsa. “Loreda,” he said, “Natalia is at the mimeograph machine. She could use some help.”

“You, too, Ant,” Elsa said. “Stay with your sister.”

Jack led Elsa outside, to a firepit around which was arranged a collection of mismatched furniture. Several ashtrays overflowed with bent cigarette butts. “So, Communists sit around a fire and smoke like everyone else,” Elsa said.

“We are almost human that way.” He moved closer. “What happened?”

“Jean died. There was no way for us to save her. The company store was closed to teach us a lesson and the hospital wouldn’t help. I even used a . . . baseball bat to get their attention. All I got was some aspirin. Oh, and they culled our names from the relief rolls today. If you can pick cotton, you have to. No state relief.”

“We heard. The growers bullied the state into it. They’re calling it the No Work, No Eat policy. They’re afraid that relief will allow you to feed your children while you strike for better wages.”

Elsa crossed her arms. “All my life I’ve been told to make no noise, don’t want too much, be grateful for any scrap that came my way. And I’ve done that. I thought if I just did what women are supposed to do and played by the rules, it would . . . I don’t know . . . change. But the way we’re treated . . .”

“It’s unfair,” he said.

“It’s wrong,” she said. “This isn’t who we are in America.”

“No.”