Ant popped his head out of the window of the cab of the truck. “I’m here, too!” he chirped. “Don’t forget me!”
Elsa felt a rush of love for these children of hers, a soul-deep sense that was akin to longing; she drew in a deep breath, exhaled, and smelled the dry Panhandle Texas air that was as much a part of her life as God and her children. She’d been born in this county and always thought she’d die here. “This is home,” she said. “I thought you’d grow up here and be the first Martinelli to go to college here. Austin, I thought. Or Dallas, a place big enough to hold your dreams.”
“This will always be home, Mom. Just because we’re leaving doesn’t change that. Look at Dorothy. After all her adventures, she clicked her heels together and went home. And really, what choice do we have?”
“You’re right.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, remembered another time when she’d been scared and felt alone, back when she’d been sick. That was the first time her grandfather had leaned down and whispered, Be brave, into her ear. And then, Or pretend to be. It’s all the same.
The memory calmed her. She could pretend to be brave. For her children. She wiped her eyes, surprised by her tears, and said, “Let’s go.”
She returned to the truck, took her seat, and banged the door shut beside her.
Loreda settled in beside her brother and opened up a map. “It’s ninety-four miles from Dalhart to Tucumcari, New Mexico. That should be our first st
op. I don’t think we should drive at night. At least, that’s what Grandpa told me when we were studying the map.”
“You and Grandpa picked out a route?”
“Yeah. He’s been teaching me stuff. I guess he knew all along he and Grandma weren’t coming. He taught me all kinds of stuff—how to hunt for rabbits and birds, how to drive, and how to put water in the radiator. In Tucumcari, we pick up Route 66 west.” She reached into her pocket, pulled out a battered bronze compass. “He gave me this. He and Grandma brought it with them from Italy.”
Elsa stared down at the compass. She had no idea how to read it. “Okay.”
“We can be a club,” Ant said. “Like the Boy Scouts, only we’re explorers. The Martinelli Explorers Club.”
“The Martinelli Explorers Club,” Elsa said. “I like it. Off we go, explorers.”
* * *
AS THEY NEARED DALHART, Elsa found herself slowing down without thinking about it.
She hadn’t been back here in years, not since the day her mother had taken one look at Loreda and commented on her skin color. Elsa might have taken her parents’ criticism of herself to heart, but she would never let her children face it.
Dalhart had been as broken by the Depression and the drought as Lonesome Tree had; that much was obvious. Most of the storefronts were boarded up. A line of people stood at the church, metal bowls in hand, waiting for free food.
The truck bumped over the railroad tracks. Elsa turned onto Main Street.
“We’re not supposed to turn here,” Loreda said. “We go past Dalhart, not through it.”
Elsa saw Wolcott Tractor Supply: closed, the windows covered by wooden boards.
She pulled up in front of the house she’d grown up in. The front door was off its hinges, and most of the windows were boarded up. A foreclosure notice had been pounded into the front door.
The front yard was ruined. Black sand, dirt, dunes everywhere. She saw her mother’s garden, dead roses that had received more of Minerva Wolcott’s love than Elsa ever had. For the thousandth time, Elsa wondered why her parents hadn’t loved her, or why their version of love had been so cold and conditional. How did such a thing happen? Elsa had learned to love deeply on the day of Loreda’s birth.
“Mom?” Loreda said. “Did you know the people who lived here? The house looks abandoned.”
Elsa felt a shifting of time, an unpleasant sense of worlds colliding. She saw her children peering at her through worried eyes.
She’d thought it would hurt to see this place, but the opposite was true. This wasn’t her home and the people who’d lived here weren’t her family. “No,” she said at last. “I didn’t know the people who lived here … and they didn’t know me.”
* * *
THE ROAD OUT OF Texas was miles of sand-duned nothingness broken up by a series of small towns. In New Mexico, they saw more people traveling west, in old jalopies weighed down with possessions and children, in cars pulling trailers, in mule- and horse-drawn wagons. There were people walking single file, pushing baby strollers and wheelbarrows.
When night began to fall, they passed a man dressed in rags, walking on bare feet, hat drawn low on his head, a fringe of long black hair against his ragged collar.
Loreda pressed her nose against the window, watching the man. “Slow down,” she said.