The Four Winds(95)

He led them inside the small hotel, which smelled of decay and cigarette smoke and must.

It took Elsa’s eyes a moment to adjust. She saw a burgundy desk with a wall of brass keys behind it.

She followed Jack up to the second floor. There he opened a door to reveal a small, dusty room with a large canopy bed, a pair of nightstands, and a closed door.

He walked past them into the room and opened the closed door.

“A bathroom,” Elsa whispered.

“There’s hot water,” he said. “Warm, at least.”

Ant and Loreda shrieked and ran for the shower. Elsa heard them turn it on.

“Come on, Mom!”

Jack looked at Elsa. “Do you have a name besides ‘Mom’?”

“Elsa.”

“It is nice to meet you, Elsa. Now I must go back out to help.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“There’s no need. Get warm. Stay with your children.”

“Those are my people, Jack. I’m going to help them.”

He didn’t argue. “I will meet you downstairs.”

Elsa went into the bathroom, saw her children in the shower together, fully dressed, laughing. She said, “I’m going to help Jack and his friends, Loreda. You guys get some sleep.”

Loreda said, “I’ll come!”

“No. I need you to watch Ant and get warm. Please. No fighting with me.”

Elsa hurried back outside. Now there were several automobiles in the parking lot with their lights on.

Volunteers gathered in a semicircle around Jack, who was clearly their leader. “Back to the ditch-bank camp off of Sutter Road. We need to save as many of them as we can. The grange hall has room, and so do the depot and the barns at the fairground.”

Elsa climbed into Jack’s truck. They joined a steady stream of blurred yellow headlights in the falling rain. Jack leaned sideways, grabbed a ratty brown sack from behind Elsa’s seat. “Here, put these on.” He dropped the bag in her lap.

Fingers shaking with cold, she opened it, found a pair of men’s pants and a flannel shirt, both huge.

“I have something to tie the pants tight,” he said.

He pulled off to the side of the road at the destroyed encampment. Drenched, dislocated people walked toward the road, clutching whatever they’d been able to save.

In the darkness beside the truck, Elsa stripped out of her wet dress and into the oversized flannel shirt, and then put on the pants. Her journal fell out of her bodice, surprising her. She’d forgotten she’d saved it. She set it on the truck’s seat, then stepped back into her wet galoshes and out into the rushing water.

Jack yanked off his tie and fit it through the belt loops on her borrowed pants, cinching the waistband tightly. Then he took off his coat and put it around her shoulders.

Elsa was too cold to be polite. She put on the coat, buttoned it up. “Thank you.”

He took her by the hand. “The water is still rising. Be careful.”

Elsa held on to his hand as they slogged through the cold, muddy, rising water. Ruined belongings floated past them. She saw a broken-down truck with a pile of junk tarped in the back. And a face. “There,” she yelled to Jack, pointed.

“We’re here to help,” Jack shouted.

The black, shiny tarp slowly lifted. Huddled beneath it, Elsa saw, was a bony woman in a wet dress, holding a toddler. Both her face and the toddler’s were blue with cold.

“Let us help you,” Jack said, reaching out.

The woman pushed the tarp aside and crawled forward, holding her child close. Elsa immediately put an arm around the woman, felt how thin she was.

At the side of the road, volunteers—more now—were waiting with umbrellas and raincoats and blankets and hot coffee.

“Thank you,” the woman said.

Elsa nodded and turned back to Jack. Together, they trudged back to the camp.

Water and wind beat at them; mud filled Elsa’s boots with cold.

They worked through the long, wet night. Along with the rest of the volunteers, they helped people get away from the flooded encampment; they took as many as they could to warmth, got them settled in whatever buildings they could find.

By six in the morning, the rain and the flooding had stopped and dawn revealed the devastation caused by the flash flood. The ditch-bank camp had been washed away. Belongings floated in the water. Tents lay in tangled masses, ruined. Sheets of cardboard and metal lay scattered, as did boxes and buckets and quilts. Jalopies were up to their fenders in water and mud, trapped in place.

Elsa stood by the side of the road, staring at the flooded land.

People like her who had almost nothing had lost everything.

Jack came up beside Elsa and wrapped a blanket around her shoulders. “You are dead on your feet.”

She pushed the wet hair out of her eyes. Her hand trembled at the effort. “I’m fine.”

Jack said something.

She heard his voice but the vowels and consonants were stretched out of shape. She started to say, I’m fine, again, but the lie got lost somewhere between her brain and her tongue.

“Elsa!”

She stared at him, uncomprehending.

Oh, wait. I’m falling.



ELSA WAKENED IN JACK’S truck as it rattled to a stop in front of the boarded-up hotel. Elsa sat up, feeling dizzy. She saw her journal on the seat beside her and picked it up.