The Four Winds

“Mom?” Loreda said, coming up beside her.

Don’t cry.

Don’t you dare cry in front of your daughter.

“It’s terrible,” Loreda said.

“Yes.”

And that awful smell pervaded everything. Died o’ dysentery. No wonder, if people drank the water that ran in that irrigation ditch and lived … this way.

“I’ll find work tomorrow,” Elsa said.

“I know you will,” Loreda said.

Elsa had to believe it. “This is not our life,” she said. “I won’t let it be.”

* * *

ELSA WOKE TO THE sounds of a new day: fires igniting, tent flaps being unzipped, cast-iron pans hitting cookstoves, children whining, babies crying, mothers chiding.

Life.

As if this were a normal community instead of the last stop for desperate people.

Careful not to disturb her children, she exited the tent and started a campfire and made coffee with the last of the water from their canteens.

Dozens of men, women, and children ambled across the field, toward the road. In the rising sun, they looked like stick people. At the same time, women walked toward the ditch and bent down for water, squatted on wooden planks that lay along the muddy shore.

“Elsa!”

Jean sat in front of her own tent, in a chair by a cookstove. She waved Elsa over.

Elsa poured two cups of coffee and carried them next door, offering Jean one.

“Thank you,” Jean said, wrapping her fingers around the cup. “I was just thinkin’ I should get up and pour myself a cup, but once I set down, I just stuck.”

“Did you sleep poorly?”

“Since 1931. You?”

Elsa smiled. “The same.”

People walked past them in a steady stream.

“They all heading out to look for work?” Elsa asked, checking her watch. It was a little past six.

“Yep. Newcomers. Jeb and the boys left at four and ain’t likely they’ll find anything. It’ll be better when they start weedin’ and thinnin’ the cotton. They’re plantin’ it now.”

“Oh.”

Jean pushed an apple crate toward Elsa. “Set a spell.”

“Where are they looking for work? I didn’t see many farmhouses…”

“It ain’t like back home. Around here the farms are big business, thousands and thousands of acres. The owners hardly step onto their land, let alone work it. They got the coppers and the government on their side, too. The state cares more about linin’ the growers’ pockets than takin’ care of the farmworkers.” She paused. “Where’s your husband?”

“He left us in Texas.”