The Four Winds(91)

There was a roar of approval from the crowd.

Loreda nodded. His words struck a nerve with her, made her think for the first time, We don’t have to take this.

“Now is the time, comrades. The government won’t help these people. It is up to us. We have to convince the workers to stand up. Rise up. Use any means at our disposal to stop big business from crushing the workers and taking advantage of them. We must stand together and fight this capitalist injustice. We will fight for the migrant workers here and in the Central Valley, help them organize into unions and battle for better wages. The time . . . is now!”

“Yes!” Loreda shouted. “Yes!”

Jack jumped down from the riser on the loft ladder, but just before he did, Loreda saw him look directly at her.

He strode toward her, making his way easily through the crowd.

Loreda felt the intensity of his gaze; she felt like a mouse paralyzed by the gaze of a hunting hawk.

“I thought I told you to stay in the truck.”

“I want to join your group. I could help.”

“Oh, really?” He towered over her, was even taller than her mom. She drew in a tight, ragged breath. “Go home, kid. You’re too young for this.”

“I am a migrant worker.”

He lit a cigarette, studied her.

“We live in the ditch-bank camp off Sutter Road. I picked cotton this fall when I should have been in school. If I hadn’t, we would have starved. We live in a tent. We wanted the jobs in the fields so badly that sometimes we slept in ditches at the side of the road to be first in line. The boss—that fat pig, Welty—he doesn’t care if we make enough to eat.”

“Welty, huh? We’ve been trying to unionize the migrant camps. We’ve met with resistance. The Okies are stubborn and proud.”

“Don’t call us that,” she said. “We’re people who just want jobs. My grandparents and my mom . . . they don’t believe in government handouts. They want to make it on their own, but . . .”

“But what?”

“It’s not going to work, is it? Us coming here for a better life and actually getting it?”

“Not without a fight.”

“I want to fight,” Loreda said, realizing as she said it that she’d been itching for this fight for a long time. This was what she’d run away to find, not her lily-livered father. This was the passion she’d lost. She felt the heat of it.

“How old are you, really?”

“Thirteen.”

“And your old man ran out on the family when he lost his job in . . . St. Louis.”

“Texas,” Loreda said.

“Kid, men like that aren’t worth shit. And you’re too young to be walking around on your own. How’d you get to California?”

“My mom brought us.”

“All by herself? She must be tough.”

“I called her a coward tonight.”

He gave her a knowing look. “Is she going to be worried?”

Loreda nodded. “Unless they went looking for me. What if they’re gone?” At that, homesickness gripped her; not the kind for a place, but for people. Her people. Mom and Ant. Grandma and Grandpa. The people who loved her.

“Kid, the people who love you stay. You’ve already learned that. Go find your mom and tell her you’ve been as dumb as a box of marbles. And let her hold you tight.”

Loreda felt the sting of tears.

A police siren wailed outside.

“Shit,” Jack said, taking her by the arm, dragging her across the barn, through the panicking crowd.

He shoved her up the ladder in front of him and pushed her into the loft. “There’s fire in you, kid. Don’t let the bastards put it out. Stay here till morning or you might end up in the hoosegow.”

He dropped down the loft ladder to the barn floor.

The door cracked open. Cops appeared in the opening, holding guns and billy clubs. Behind them, red lights flashed. Cops streamed into the barn, scooped up the papers and the typewriters and the mimeograph machines.

Loreda saw a cop hit Jack in the head with his club. Jack staggered but didn’t fall. Weaving a little, he grinned at the copper. “That’s all you got?”

The cop’s face tightened. “You’re a dead man, Valen. Sooner or later.” He hit Jack again, harder.

“Round ’em up, fellas,” the policeman said, as blood splattered his uniform. “We don’t want Reds in our town.”

Reds.

Communists.



ELSA WALKED BENEATH AN anemic moon into the town of Welty. At this hour, the streets were deserted.

There it was: the police station, tucked on a side street, not far from the library.

She didn’t believe that anyone in authority would actually help her, or even listen to her, but her daughter was missing. This was all she could think of to do.

The parking lot was empty but for a few cruisers and an old-fashioned truck. In the light cast downward from a streetlamp, she saw a bindle stiff standing beside the truck smoking a cigarette. She didn’t make eye contact but felt him watching her.

Elsa straightened to her full height, unaware that she’d become hunched on her walk here.

She moved past the vagrant and entered the station. Inside, the lobby was austere; one row of chairs against a wall, each one empty. Light shone down from the ceiling onto a man in uniform, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette, at a desk with a black phone.