The Four Winds(93)
Loreda knew this distance between them was hers to cross. “I’ve been as dumb as a box of marbles, Mom,” Loreda said, moving toward her.
A little laugh erupted from her mother; it sounded like joy.
“Really. I’ve been a real crumb to you, Mom. And . . .”
“Loreda—”
“I know you love me, and . . . I’m sorry, Mom. I love you. So much.”
Mom pulled Loreda into her arms, held her tightly.
Loreda clung fiercely to her mother, afraid to let her go. “I was afraid you’d leave when I was gone . . .”
When Mom drew back, her eyes were bright and she was smiling. “You are of me, Loreda, in a way that can never be broken. Not by words or anger or actions or time. I love you. I will always love you.” She tightened her hold on Loreda’s shoulders. “You taught me love. You, first in the whole world, and my love for you will outlive me. If you had not come back . . .”
“I’m here, Mom,” Loreda said. “But I learned something last night. And I think it’s important.”
ELSA GRASPED LOREDA’S HAND, unable to let go, and let her daughter lead her back to the tent and pull her inside.
“I can’t wait to tell you where I was,” Loreda said as she unbuttoned her coat.
The reunion was over, apparently. Loreda was on to new business. Elsa couldn’t help smiling at the quick change in her daughter’s demeanor.
Elsa sat down on the mattress beside Ant, who was still sleeping. “Where did you go?”
“To a Communist meeting. In a barn.”
“Oh. That is hardly what I would have guessed.”
“I met a man.”
Elsa frowned. She started to get up. “A man? A grown man? Did he—”
“A Communist!” Loreda sat down beside Elsa. “A whole group of them, really. They were meeting in a barn north of here. They want to help us, Mom.”
“A Communist,” Elsa said slowly, trying to process this new and dangerous information.
“They want to help us fight the growers.”
“Fight the growers? You mean the people who employ us? The people who pay us to pick their crops?”
“You call that pay?”
“It is pay, Loreda. It buys us the food we eat.”
“I want you to come to a meeting with me.”
“A meeting?”
“Yes. Just listen to them. You’ll like what—”
“No, Loreda,” Elsa said. “Absolutely not. I am not going and I forbid you to go. The people you met are dangerous.”
“But—”
“Believe me, Loreda, whatever the question is, communism is not the answer. We’re Americans. And we can’t get on the wrong side of the growers. We’re close enough to starvation as it is. So, no.”
“But it’s the right thing.”
“Look at this tent, Loreda. Do you think we have the luxury of fighting our employers? Do you think we have the luxury of waging a philosophical war? No. Just no. And I don’t want to hear about it again. Now, come, let’s get a little sleep. I’m exhausted.”
RAIN FELL FOR DAYS. The land along the ditch bank became a pond. People started getting sick: typhoid, diphtheria, dysentery.
The burying ground doubled in size. Because the county hospital refused to treat most of the migrants, they had to help themselves as best they could.
Everyone was hungry and lethargic. Elsa spent as little as she possibly could on food, and still she watched their savings dwindle.
On this stormy winter night, Loreda and Ant were in bed, trying to sleep, burrowed beneath a pile of quilts.
Rain hammered the canvas, rippled the grayed fabric, and sluiced down the sides.
Elsa sat on an apple crate, writing in her journal by the meager light of a single candle.
For most of my life, weather was a thing remarked upon by the old men in their dusty hats who stopped to jaw with each other outside Wolcott Tractor Supply. A topic of conversation. Farmers studied the sky the way a priest read the word of God, looking for clues and signs and warnings. But all of it from a friendly distance, all of it with a faith in the essential kindness of our planet. But in this terrible decade, the weather has proven itself to be cruel. An adversary that we underestimated at our peril. Wind, dust, drought, and now this demoralizing rain, I fear—
Thunder exploded in a deafening craaaaack.
“That was a bad one,” Loreda said. Ant looked scared.
Elsa closed her journal and got up. She was halfway to the flaps when the tent collapsed around them. Water rushed in, sucked at Elsa’s legs. She shoved her journal in the bodice of her dress and reached out blindly for her children. “Kids! Come to me.”
She heard them clawing at the wet canvas, trying to find their way.
“I’m here,” Elsa said.
Loreda reached her, held her hand, kept one arm around her brother.
“We have to get out,” Elsa said, fighting to find the tent flaps.
Ant was crying beside her, clinging to her.
“Hang on to me,” Elsa shouted to him. She found the split in the fabric, wrenched the flaps open, stumbled out with the children. The tent whooshed past them, taking their belongings with it.
The money.
A gush of water hit Elsa so hard she almost fell.