Elsa turned onto the muddy ruts and followed them. An irrigation ditch full of brown water ran the length of the field to her left.
The first tent they came to had a peaked roof and sloping sides; a stovepipe stuck out from the front like a bent elbow. The area in front of the open flaps was cluttered with belongings: dented metal wash buckets, whiskey barrels, gas cans, a chopping block with an ax stuck in it, an old hubcap. Not far away sat a truck with no tires. Someone had built up slatted sides and draped plastic over it all to create a dry place to live.
“Ewwww,” Loreda said.
There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the placement of the tents and shacks and parked jalopies.
Rail-thin children dressed in rags ran through the tent town, followed by mangy, barking dogs. Women sat hunched on the banks of a ditch, washing clothes in brown water.
One pile of junk turned out to be a dwelling; inside, three children and two adults huddled around a makeshift stove. A family.
A man sat on a rock, wearing only his torn trousers, his feet bare and black soled, his drying shirt and socks spread out in the dirt in front of him. Somewhere, a baby cried.
Okies.
Your kind.
“I don’t like this place,” Ant whined. “It stinks.”
“Turn around, Mom,” Loreda said. “Get us out of here.”
Elsa couldn’t believe people lived this way in California. In America. These folks weren’t bindle stiffs or vagabonds or hobos. These tents and shacks and jalopies housed families. Children. Women. Babies. People who had come here to start over, people looking for work.
“We can’t drive around wasting gas,” Elsa said, feeling sick to her stomach. “We’ll stay here one night, find out what’s going on. Tomorrow I’ll find work and we’ll be on our way. At least there’s a river.”
“River? River?” Loreda said. “That is not a river and this is … I don’t know what this is, but we do not belong here.”
“No one belongs in a place like this, Loreda, but we only have twenty-seven dollars left. How long do you think that will last?”
“Mom, please.”
“We need a plan,” Elsa said. “Getting to California. That was all we thought about. Clearly it wasn’t enough. We need information. Someone here will be able to help us.”
“They don’t look like they can help themselves,” Loreda said.
“One night,” Elsa said. She forced a thin smile. “Come on, explorers. We can handle anything for one night.”
Ant whined again. “But it stinks.”
“One night,” Loreda said, staring at Elsa. “You promise?”
“I promise. One night.”
Elsa looked out at the sea of tents and saw a break in them, an empty space between a ragged tent and a shack made of scrap wood. She drove into the empty area and parked on a wide patch of dirt tufted with weeds and grass.
The nearest tent was about fifteen feet away. In front of it was a collection of junk—buckets and boxes, a spindly wooden chair, and a rusted wood-burning stove with a bent pipe.
Elsa parked the truck. They got to work, set up their large tent, staked it in place, and laid the camp mattress in one corner, right down on the dirt floor, and covered it with sheets and quilts.
They unloaded only the supplies they would need for the night. Their suitcases, the food (all of it would need to be guarded constantly in this place), and buckets both for carrying water and for sitting on. Elsa built a small campfire in front of the tent and placed overturned buckets nearby as chairs.
She couldn’t help thinking that they now looked no different from everyone else here. She dropped a blob of lard into the Dutch oven, and when it started to pop, she added a precious chunk of ham along with a few canned tomatoes, a clove of garlic, and a potato cut into cubes.
Ignoring the buckets, Loreda and Ant sat cross-legged in the grassy dirt, playing cards.
When Elsa looked at her daughter, she felt an abiding sadness creep in. It was strange how you could stop seeing people who were right beside you, how images stuck in your head. Loreda was painfully thin, arms like matchsticks, knobby elbows and knees. One sunburn after another had left her cheeks full of freckles and peeling skin.
Loreda was thirteen; she should be filling out, not wasting away. A new worry. Or an old one, grown more vivid in the past hour.