The Four Winds(59)

“Yeah. He’s been teaching me stuff. I guess he knew all along he and Grandma weren’t coming. He taught me all kinds of stuff—how to hunt for rabbits and birds, how to drive, and how to put water in the radiator. In Tucumcari, we pick up Route 66 west.” She reached into her pocket, pulled out a battered bronze compass. “He gave me this. He and Grandma brought it with them from Italy.”

Elsa stared down at the compass. She had no idea how to read it. “Okay.”

“We can be a club,” Ant said. “Like the Boy Scouts, only we’re explorers. The Martinelli Explorers Club.”

“The Martinelli Explorers Club,” Elsa said. “I like it. Off we go, explorers.”



AS THEY NEARED DALHART, Elsa found herself slowing down without thinking about it.

She hadn’t been back here in years, not since the day her mother had taken one look at Loreda and commented on her skin color. Elsa might have taken her parents’ criticism of herself to heart, but she would never let her children face it.

Dalhart had been as broken by the Depression and the drought as Lonesome Tree had; that much was obvious. Most of the storefronts were boarded up. A line of people stood at the church, metal bowls in hand, waiting for free food.

The truck bumped over the railroad tracks. Elsa turned onto Main Street.

“We’re not supposed to turn here,” Loreda said. “We go past Dalhart, not through it.”

Elsa saw Wolcott Tractor Supply: closed, the windows covered by wooden boards.

She pulled up in front of the house she’d grown up in. The front door was off its hinges, and most of the windows were boarded up. A foreclosure notice had been pounded into the front door.

The front yard was ruined. Black sand, dirt, dunes everywhere. She saw her mother’s garden, dead roses that had received more of Minerva Wolcott’s love than Elsa ever had. For the thousandth time, Elsa wondered why her parents hadn’t loved her, or why their version of love had been so cold and conditional. How did such a thing happen? Elsa had learned to love deeply on the day of Loreda’s birth.

“Mom?” Loreda said. “Did you know the people who lived here? The house looks abandoned.”

Elsa felt a shifting of time, an unpleasant sense of worlds colliding. She saw her children peering at her through worried eyes.

She’d thought it would hurt to see this place, but the opposite was true. This wasn’t her home and the people who’d lived here weren’t her family. “No,” she said at last. “I didn’t know the people who lived here . . . and they didn’t know me.”



THE ROAD OUT OF Texas was miles of sand-duned nothingness broken up by a series of small towns. In New Mexico, they saw more people traveling west, in old jalopies weighed down with possessions and children, in cars pulling trailers, in mule-and horse-drawn wagons. There were people walking single file, pushing baby strollers and wheelbarrows.

When night began to fall, they passed a man dressed in rags, walking on bare feet, hat drawn low on his head, a fringe of long black hair against his ragged collar.

Loreda pressed her nose against the window, watching the man. “Slow down,” she said.

“It’s not him,” Elsa said.

“It could be.”

Elsa slowed down. “It’s not him.”

“Who cares?” Ant said. “He left.”

“Shush,” Elsa said. It was too late in the day for this. They were all exhausted after hours of driving. The gas gauge showed that they were nearly out of fuel.

Elsa saw a gas station and pulled into it, sidled up to the pump.

Nineteen cents per gallon. One dollar and ninety cents to fill the tank.

Elsa did the math in her head, recalculated the amount of money they would have when they drove away.

An attendant came out to pump their gas.

Across the street was a small auto court, with jalopies and trucks parked out front. There were people seated on chairs in front of their rooms, with their loaded-down vehicles parked in attached carports. A pink neon sign—turned off—read: VACANCY and $3.00/NIGHT.

Three dollars.

“Stay here,” Elsa said to the kids.

She walked across the gravel parking lot to pay for the gas. There were a few people milling about in the falling night: a raggedy man standing over by the water pump, with a scrawny dog sitting on its haunches nearby. A kid kicking a ball.

A bell rang overhead as she opened the door. Her stomach growled loudly, reminding her that she’d given her lunch to the kids. She walked up to the cash register, which was operated by a woman with orange hair.

Elsa pulled her wallet out of her handbag and counted out one dollar and ninety cents and put it on the counter. “Ten gallons of gas.”

“First day on the road?” the lady asked, taking the money as she rang up the sale.

“Yes. Just left home. How can you tell?”

“You don’t got a man with you?”

“How—”

“Men don’t let their women pay for gas.” The woman leaned closer. “Keep your money somewhere besides your handbag, doll. There’s a bad element out here. ’Specially in the last few days. Keep an eye out.”

Elsa nodded and put her money back in her wallet. As she did so, she stared down at her left hand, at the thin wedding band she still wore.