The Four Winds

Loreda leaned out her bedroom window and screamed in frustration. Below her, the chickens squawked in response. “Fly away, you idiot birds. Can’t you tell we’re dying here?”

Stella was leaving.

Loreda’s best—and only—friend in Lonesome Tree was leaving.

The room seemed to close in on her, becoming so small she couldn’t breathe. She went downstairs. The house was still, no wind poking at the cracks, no wood settling onto its foundations.

She moved easily in the dark. In the past month they’d turned off the party-line phone—no money to pay for it—and now they were really out here all alone. She found the front door and went outside. A bright moon shone out, glazing the barn’s roof with silvered light.

She smelled the sunbaked dirt and a hint of chicken manure and … cigarette smoke? Following the smell of it, she walked around the side of the farmhouse.

Beneath the windmill, she saw the red glow of a cigarette tip rise and fall and rise again. Daddy. So he couldn’t sleep, either.

As she approached him, she saw his red eyes and the tear streaks on his cheeks. He’d been out here in the dark, all alone, smoking and crying. “Daddy?”

“Hey, doll. You caught me.”

He tried to sound casual, but the obvious pretense made her feel even worse. If there was one person she trusted to tell her the truth, it was her father. But now it was so bad he was crying.

“You heard the Devereauxs are leaving?”

“I’m sorry, Lolo.”

“I’m tired of I’m sorrys,” Loreda said. “We could leave, too. Like the Devereauxs and the Moungers and the Mulls. Just go.”

“They were all talking about leaving at the shindig tonight. Most folks are like your grandparents. They’d rather die here than leave.”

“Do they know we might actually die here?”

“Oh. They know, believe me. Tonight, your grandfather said—and I quote: Bury me here, boys. I ain’t leaving.” He exhaled smoke. “They say they’re doing it for our future. As if this patch of dirt is all we could ever want.”

“Maybe we could convince them to leave.”

Her father laughed. “And maybe Milo will sprout wings and fly away.”

“Could we leave without them? Lots of folks are leaving. You always say this is America, where anything is possible. We could go to California. Or you could get a railroad job in Oregon.”

Loreda heard footsteps. Moments later, Mom appeared, dressed in her ratty old robe and work boots, her fine hair all whichaway.

“Rafe,” Mom said, sounding relieved, as if she thought he might have run off. It was pathetic how close an eye Mom kept on Daddy. On all of them. She was more of a cop than a parent, and she took the fun out of everything. “I missed you when I woke. I thought…”

“I’m here,” he said.

Mom’s smile was as thin as everything else about her. “Come inside. Both of you. It’s late.”

“Sure, Els,” Daddy said.

Loreda hated how beaten her father sounded, how his fire went out around her mother. She sucked the life out of everyone with her sad, long-suffering looks. “This is all your fault.”

Mom said, “What am I to blame for now, Loreda? The weather? The Depression?”

Daddy touched Loreda, shook his head. Don’t.

Mom waited a moment for Loreda to speak, then turned away and headed for the house.

Daddy followed.

“We could leave,” Loreda said to her father, who kept walking as if he hadn’t heard. “Anything is possible.”