The Four Winds(21)

“I don’t.”

“You can’t just leave,” Mom said.

“Too late for us. A family can only bury so much. Tell your folks I said goodbye.”

Will turned and walked back to his dusty car and climbed into the driver’s seat. The metal door clanged shut.

Mom clicked her tongue and snapped the reins and Milo began plodding forward again. Loreda watched the jalopy drive past them in a cloud of dust, unable suddenly to think about anything else. Leaving. They could go to one of the places she and Daddy talked about: San Francisco or Hollywood or New York.

“Glenn and Mary Lynn Mounger left last week,” Daddy said. “They headed for California, just up and left in that old Packard of theirs.”

It was a long moment before Mom said, “You remember the newsreel we saw? Breadlines in Chicago. People living in shacks and cardboard boxes in Central Park. At least here we’ve got eggs and milk.”

Daddy sighed. Loreda felt the pain of that sound, the hurt that came with it. Mom would say no. “Yeah, I reckon.” He dropped the flyer to the floor of the wagon. “My folks would never leave anyhow.”

“Never,” Mom agreed.



THAT NIGHT, LOREDA SAT out on the porch swing after supper.

Leave.

The sun set slowly on the farm around her, night swallowing the flat, brown, dry land. One of their cows lowed plaintively for water. Soon, in the darkness, her grandfather would start watering the livestock, carrying buckets of water from the well one by one, while Grandma and Mom watered the garden.

The creaking whine of the porch swing chain seemed loud amid the quiet. She heard the jangling of the party-line telephone come from inside the house. These days, a phone call meant nothing fun; all anyone talked about was the drought.

Except her father. He wasn’t anything like the farmers or shopkeepers. Every other man seemed to live or die by land and weather and crops. Like her grandfather.

When Loreda had been young and the rain reliable, when the wheat grew tall and golden, Grandpa Tony smiled all the time and drank rye on the weekends and played his fiddle at town parties. He used to take her by the hand and walk with her through the whispering wheat and tell her that if she listened, there were stories coming from the stalks themselves. He would get a clump of dirt in his big, callused hand and hold it out to her as if it were a diamond and say, “This will all be yours one day, and it will pass to your children, and then to your children’s children.” The land: he said it the way Father Michael said God.

And Grandma and Mom? They were like all the farm wives in Lonesome Tree. They worked their fingers to the bone, rarely laughing and hardly talking. When they did talk, it was never about anything interesting.

Daddy was the only one who talked about ideas or choices or dreams. He talked about travel and adventures and all the lives a person could live. He’d repeatedly told Loreda that there was a big beautiful world beyond this farm.

She heard the door open behind her. The aroma of stewed tomatoes and fried pancetta and cooked garlic wafted her way.

Daddy came out onto the porch, closed the door quietly behind him. Lighting up a cigarette, he sat down on the swing beside her. She smelled the sweetness of wine on his breath. They were supposed to be conserving everything, but Daddy refused to give up on his wine or his hooch. He said drinking was the only thing keeping him sane. He loved to drop a slippery, sweet slice of preserved peach into his after-supper wine.

Loreda leaned into him. He put an arm around her and pulled her close as they glided forward and back. “You’re quiet, Loreda. That ain’t like my girl.”

The farm transitioned around them into a dark world full of sounds: the windmill thumping, bringing up their precious water, chickens scratching, hogs rooting in the dirt.

“This drought,” Loreda said, pronouncing the dreaded word like everyone did around here. Drouth. She fell silent, choosing her words with care. “It’s killing the land.”

“Yep.” He finished the cigarette, stubbed it out into the pot full of dead flowers beside him.

Loreda pulled the flyer out of her pocket, unfolded it with care.

California. Land of milk and honey.

“Mrs. Buslik says there’s jobs in California. Money lying in the streets. Stella said her uncle sent a postcard saying there’s jobs in Oregon.”

“I doubt there’s money lying in the streets, Loreda. This Depression is worse in the cities. Last I read, over thirteen million folks were out of jobs. You’ve seen the tramps that ride the trains. There’s a Hooverville in Oklahoma City that’d make you cry. Families living in apple carts. Come winter, they’ll be dying of cold on park benches.”

“They aren’t dying of cold in California. You could get a job. Maybe work on the railroad.”

Daddy sighed, and in that exhalation of his breath, she knew what he was thinking. That was how in tune she was with him. “My parents—and your mom—will never leave this land.”

“But—”

“It’ll rain,” Daddy said, but there was something sorrowful about the way he said it, almost as if he didn’t want rain to save them.

“Do you have to be a farmer?”

He turned. She saw the frown that bunched his thick black brows. “I was born one.”

“You always tell me this is America. A person can be anything.”