The Four Winds(68)

“I don’t want money from the government,” Elsa said. She didn’t want them to think she’d come all this way for government handouts. “I want a job.”

“Yeah,” Jeb said. “None of us want to live on the dole. FDR and his New Deals programs done good things to help the workin’ man, but us small farmers and farmworkers sorta got forgot. The big growers got all the power in this state.”

Jean said, “Don’t worry. Y’all can learn to live with anything if you’re together.”

Elsa hoped she managed a smile, but she wasn’t sure. She got to her feet, shook their hands, and watched the entire family walk over to that small, dirty tent.

“Mom?” Loreda said, coming up beside her.

Don’t cry.

Don’t you dare cry in front of your daughter.

“It’s terrible,” Loreda said.

“Yes.”

And that awful smell pervaded everything. Died o’ dysentery. No wonder, if people drank the water that ran in that irrigation ditch and lived . . . this way.

“I’ll find work tomorrow,” Elsa said.

“I know you will,” Loreda said.

Elsa had to believe it. “This is not our life,” she said. “I won’t let it be.”



ELSA WOKE TO THE sounds of a new day: fires igniting, tent flaps being unzipped, cast-iron pans hitting cookstoves, children whining, babies crying, mothers chiding.

Life.

As if this were a normal community instead of the last stop for desperate people.

Careful not to disturb her children, she exited the tent and started a campfire and made coffee with the last of the water from their canteens.

Dozens of men, women, and children ambled across the field, toward the road. In the rising sun, they looked like stick people. At the same time, women walked toward the ditch and bent down for water, squatted on wooden planks that lay along the muddy shore.

“Elsa!”

Jean sat in front of her own tent, in a chair by a cookstove. She waved Elsa over.

Elsa poured two cups of coffee and carried them next door, offering Jean one.

“Thank you,” Jean said, wrapping her fingers around the cup. “I was just thinkin’ I should get up and pour myself a cup, but once I set down, I just stuck.”

“Did you sleep poorly?”

“Since 1931. You?”

Elsa smiled. “The same.”

People walked past them in a steady stream.

“They all heading out to look for work?” Elsa asked, checking her watch. It was a little past six.

“Yep. Newcomers. Jeb and the boys left at four and ain’t likely they’ll find anything. It’ll be better when they start weedin’ and thinnin’ the cotton. They’re plantin’ it now.”

“Oh.”

Jean pushed an apple crate toward Elsa. “Set a spell.”

“Where are they looking for work? I didn’t see many farmhouses . . .”

“It ain’t like back home. Around here the farms are big business, thousands and thousands of acres. The owners hardly step onto their land, let alone work it. They got the coppers and the government on their side, too. The state cares more about linin’ the growers’ pockets than takin’ care of the farmworkers.” She paused. “Where’s your husband?”

“He left us in Texas.”

“That’s happenin’ all over.”

“I can’t believe people live this way,” Elsa said, and immediately regretted her words when Jean looked away.

“Where can we go that’s better? Okies, they call us. Don’t matter where we’re from. Nobody’ll rent to us, but who can afford rent anyway? Maybe after cotton season you’ll have enough money to head out. We didn’t, though, not with four kids.”

“Maybe in Los Angeles—”

“We say that all the time, but who knows if it’s better there? At least here there’s pickin’ jobs.” She looked up. “You got enough money to waste it on gas going somewheres else?”

No.

Elsa couldn’t listen anymore. “I’d best go look for work. Will you keep an eye out on my children?”

“Course. And don’t forget to register with the state. Tonight I’ll introduce you around to the other women. Good luck to you, Elsa.”

“Thank you.”

After leaving Jean, Elsa carried two buckets full of fetid water from the ditch and boiled it in batches, then strained it through cloth.

She scrubbed her face and upper body as well as she could in the shadowy tent and washed her hair and put on a relatively clean cotton dress. She coiled her wet hair into a coronet and covered it with a kerchief.

This was the best she could do. Her cotton stockings were sagging but clean and the holes in her shoes couldn’t be helped. She was grateful not to have a mirror. Oh, there was one somewhere, buried in one of the boxes in the back of the truck, but it wasn’t worth rummaging around for.

She left a glass full of clean water inside the tent for the children and checked that they were still sleeping.

She left Loreda a note—Looking for work/stay here/water in glass is safe to drink—and headed out to the truck.

She drove out to the main road.

Every farm she came to had a line of people out front, waiting for work. More people walked single file along the road, looking. Tractors churned up the soil in brown fields; here and there, she saw a horse-drawn plow working the land.