The Four Winds(89)

The quilts were tangled, but it was clear that Ant was in bed alone.

Loreda wasn’t in the tent.

Elsa went to the truck, banged on the side of the bed. “Loreda? Are you in there?”

She examined the bed, saw the boxes of goods they’d brought with them, things they’d thought they’d need: candlesticks, porcelain dishes, Ant’s baseball bat and mitt, a mantel clock. “Loreda?” she said again, her voice spiking in worry when she saw that the cab was empty, too.

Elsa stepped back.

He left you. I should do the same . . . get out of here before we’re all dead.

Go, then. Go. Be like your father. Run away.

Maybe I will.

Good. Go.

A chill moved through Elsa. She ran back into the tent.

Loreda’s suitcase was gone. So was her sweater and the blue wool coat she’d gotten at the salon.

Elsa saw a note peeking out from beneath the coffeepot. Her hand shook as she reached for it.

Mom,

I can’t take it anymore.

I’m sorry.

I love you both.



Elsa ran out of the tent and didn’t stop running until there was a stitch in her side and her breathing was ragged.

The main road stretched north and south. Which way would Loreda go? How could Elsa even guess?

Elsa had told her thirteen-year-old daughter to go, to run away and be like a man who didn’t want to be found. To go out into a world full of bindle stiffs walking the roads and riding the trains, gangs of desperate, angry men with nothing to lose, who lurked like packs of wolves in the shadows.

She screamed her daughter’s name.

The word rang out through the night and faded away.



LOREDA WALKED SOUTH UNTIL her shoe broke and her back ached, and still the empty road stretched in front of her, bathed in moonlight. How much farther to Los Angeles?

She had always dreamed of finding her father, just bumping into him, but now, standing here alone on the side of the road, she understood what her mother had said to her once.

He doesn’t want to be found.

How many roads were there in California, going how many directions, to how many destinations? So what if her father dreamed of Hollywood? That didn’t mean he’d gotten there, or that he’d stayed there.

And how far had she walked? Three miles? Four?

She kept walking, determined not to turn around. She was not going to go back and admit she’d made a mistake by leaving. She couldn’t stand this life anymore. Period.

But Ant would wake up and miss her. He’d think he was easy to leave, that there was something wrong with him. Loreda knew that because it was how she’d felt when Daddy had left.

She didn’t want to hurt her brother.

She saw headlights in front of her, coming up the road. A truck rolled up to her and stopped. It was an old-fashioned truck, with a square wooden and glass cab that appeared to have been stuck on the truck’s black chassis. The hinged windshield was open.

The driver reached over and rolled down the passenger window. He was as old as Mom, with a face that was like most men’s these days—sharp and bony. He needed to shave, but Loreda wouldn’t call him bearded. Just scruffy. “What’re you doing out here all by yourself? It’s midnight.”

“Nothing.”

His gaze flicked down to her suitcase. “You look like a girl who is running away.”

“What do you care?”

“Where are your parents? It’s dangerous out here.”

“None of your business. Besides, I’m sixteen. I can go where I want.”

“Yeah, kid. And I’m Errol Flynn. Where are you headed?”

“Anywhere but here.”

He looked up the road. It was at least a minute before he looked at her again. “There’s a bus station in Bakersfield. I’m headed north. I can give you a lift. I just have to make a stop along the way.”

“Thanks, mister!” Loreda tossed her suitcase in the back of the truck and climbed in.





TWENTY-FIVE





I’m Jack Valen,” the man said.

“Loreda Martinelli.”

He put the truck in gear and they drove north. The suspension on the truck was shot. The leather seat burped up and down at every bump.

Loreda stared out the window. In the brief flash of their headlights or in the glare of billboards lit up by streetlights, she saw people camped on the side of the road, and hobos walking with packs slung over their backs.

They passed the school and the hospital and the squatter’s camp, which lay shrouded in darkness.

And then they were past the places Loreda knew, past the town of Welty. Out here, there was nothing but road.

“Hey, what do you have to do this late at night?” she said. It occurred to her suddenly that she could have put herself in danger.

The man lit a cigarette, exhaled a stream of blue-gray smoke through his open window. “Same as you, I imagine.”

“What do you mean?”

He turned. For the first time she saw his entire face, the tanned roughness of it, the sharp nose and black eyes. “You’re running away from something. Or someone.”

“And you are, too?”

“Kid, if you aren’t running away these days, you aren’t paying attention. But no, I’m not running.” He smiled in a way that made him almost handsome. “I don’t want to get caught out here, either.”