The Four Winds(44)

Elsa held Ant’s hand. Together they climbed the steps up to the schoolhouse. Inside, the children’s desks had been pushed out of the way, positioned along the walls. Plywood covered several of the broken windows. Someone had set up a row of chairs facing a portable movie screen.

“Oh, boy,” Ant called out. “A movie!”

Tony led the family to a row in the back, where they sat with the other Italians who were left in town.

A few more folks filed in, no one saying much. A couple of the older folks coughed constantly, a reminder of the dust storms that had ravaged the land this fall.

The door banged shut and the lights went out.

There was a whir and clatter of sound; a black-and-white image appeared on the white screen: it was a howling windstorm blowing through a farm. Tumbleweeds cartwheeled past a boarded-up house.

The caption read: 30% of all the farmers on the Great Plains face foreclosure.

The next image was of a Red Cross hospital, beds full, gray-uniformed nurses tending to coughing babies and old people. Dust pneumonia takes a terrible toll.

In the next image, farmers poured milk into the streets, where it disappeared instantly in the arid dirt.

Milk sells for below production costs . . .

Haggard, ragged men, women, and children drifted across a gray screen, looking ghostlike. A Hooverville encampment. Thousands living in cardboard boxes or broken-down cars or shacks cobbled together from cans and sheet metal. Folks standing in soup lines . . .

The movie snapped off. The lights came back on.

Elsa heard footsteps, boot heels clacking confidently on the hardwood floor. Like everyone else, Elsa turned.

Here was a man with presence, dressed better than anyone in town. He moved the makeshift movie screen out of the way, stepped over to the blackboard, picked up a piece of chalk, wrote Farming methods, and underlined the words.

He turned to face the crowd. “I’m Hugh Bennett. The President of the United States has appointed me to his new Conservation Corps. I’ve spent months touring the farmland of the Great Plains. Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas. I got to say, folks, this summer it was as dire in Lonesome Tree as anywhere I’ve seen. And who knows how long the drought will go on? I hear only a few of you even bothered to plant a crop this year.”

“Don’t you reckon we know it?” someone yelled, coughing.

“You know there’s been no rain, friend. I’m here to tell you it’s more than that. What’s happening to your land is a dire ecological disaster, maybe the worst in our country’s history, and you have to change your farming methods to stop it from getting worse.”

“You sayin’ it’s our fault?” Tony said.

“I’m saying you contributed,” Bennett said. “Oklahoma has lost almost four hundred and fifty million tons of topsoil. Truth is that you farmers have to see your part in it or this great land will die.”

The Carrington family got up and walked out, slamming the door behind them. The Renke family followed.

“So, what do we do?” Tony asked.

“The way y’all farm the land is destroying it. You dug up the grasses which held the topsoil in place. The plow broke the prairie. When the rain died and the wind came up, there was nothing to stop your land from blowing away. This here is a man-made disaster, so we got to fix it. We need the grasses back. We need soil-conservation methods in place.”

“It’s the weather and the damn greedy banksters on Wall Street, closing their banks, taking our money, that’s what’s ruining us,” Mr. Carrio said.

“FDR wants to pay y’all not to plant next year. We’ve got a conservation plan. You’ve got to rest some of this land, plant grass. But it isn’t enough for one or two of you to do it. Y’all have to do it. You have to protect the Great Plains, not just your own acreage.”

“That’s it?” Mr. Pavlov said, standing up in a huff. “You’re telling ’em not to plant next year? Grow grass? Why don’t you just light a match on what’s left? The farmers need help.”

“FDR cares about the farmers. He knows you’ve been forgotten. He has a plan. To start with, the government will buy your livestock for sixteen bucks a head. If possible, we’ll use your cattle to feed the poor. If not, if they’re full of dirt, which I’ve seen out here, we’ll pay you and bury them.”

“That’s it?” Tony said. “You brung us all the way down here to tell us the disaster is our fault, we need to plant grass, which ain’t a crop that makes money, in land too dry to grow anything, in a drought—seeds we can’t afford—and oh, yeah, kill your last living farm animal for sixteen lousy bucks.”

“There’s a plan for relief. We want to pay you not to grow crops. Might even get the banks to forgive mortgage payments.”

“We don’t want charity,” someone called out. “We want help. We want water. What good is keeping our houses if the land is useless?”

“We’re farmers. We want to plant our crops. We want to take care of ourselves.”

“Enough,” Tony said. He shoved his seat back and stood up. “Come on. We’re leaving.”

When Elsa glanced back, she saw the disappointment on Bennett’s face as more families followed the Martinellis out of the schoolhouse.





THIRTEEN