The Four Winds

“Is not. Henry’s dog was named Spot. And—”

“Stay here,” Elsa said. She got out of the truck and closed the door behind her. In the first few steps, she felt a dream open up and welcome her in. A dog for Ant, friends for Loreda, a school bus that stops out front to pick them up. Flowers blooming. A garden …

As she neared the house, the front door opened. A woman came out, wearing a pretty floral-print dress beneath a frilly red apron, and holding a

broom. Her bobbed hair was carefully curled and a pair of wireless glasses magnified her eyes.

Elsa smiled. “Hello,” she said. “The house is lovely. How much is the rent?”

“Eleven dollars a month.”

“My. That’s steep. But I can manage it, I’m sure. I could pay six dollars now and the rest—”

“When you get a job.”

Elsa was relieved by the woman’s understanding. “Yes.”

“You’d best get in your car and head on down the road. My husband will be home soon.”

“Perhaps eight dollars—”

“We don’t rent to Okies.”

Elsa frowned. “We’re from Texas.”

“Texas. Oklahoma. Arkansas. It’s all the same. You’re all the same. This is a good Christian town.” She pointed down the road. “That’s the direction you want to go. About fourteen miles. That’s where your kind lives.” She went back into her house and shut the door.

A few moments later, she took the FOR RENT sign out of the window and replaced it with a placard that read: NO OKIES.

What was wrong with these people? Elsa knew she wasn’t as clean as she could be and was obviously down on her luck, but still. Most of America was. And she’d offered eight dollars a month. She wasn’t asking for charity or a handout.

Elsa walked back to the truck.

“What’s wrong?” Loreda asked.

“The house didn’t look so nice up close. No room for a dog. That woman said we could find a place up the road about fourteen miles. Must be a campground or auto court for people coming west.”

“What’s an Okie?” Loreda asked.

“Someone they won’t rent to.”

“But—”

“No more questions,” Elsa said. “I need to think.”

Elsa drove past more cultivated fields. There were few farmhouses out here; mostly the landscape was a quilt of new green growth and brown, recently tilled fields. The first sign of civilization was a school, a pretty one, with an American flag flying out front. Not far beyond that was a well-tended-looking county hospital with a single gray ambulance parked by the entrance.

“This is about fourteen miles,” Elsa said, slowing down.

There was nothing here. No stop sign, no farm, no motor court.

“Is that a campground, Mommy?” Ant asked.

Elsa pulled off to the side of the road. Through the passenger window she saw a collection of tents and jalopies and shacks set back from the road in a weedy field. There had to be a hundred of them, clustered here and there in community-like pods, but without any real plan or design. They looked like a flotilla of gray sailboats and abandoned automobiles on a brown sea. There was no road to the campground, just ruts in the field, and no sign welcoming campers.

“This must be the place she was talking about,” Elsa said.

“Yay! A campground,” Ant said. “Maybe there’ll be other kids.”