The Four Winds

“Oh.”

Elsa was acutely aware of how ragged she looked. All that effort to present herself for work meant nothing to this woman.

“Follow me.”

Inside, the house was grand: oaken doors, crystal fixtures, mullioned windows that captured the green fields outside and turned them into a kaleidoscope of color. Thick oriental carpets, carved mahogany side tables.

A little girl came into the room, her Shirley Temple curls bouncing pertly. She wore a dress of pink polka dots and black patent leather shoes. “Mommy, what does the dirty lady want?”

“Don’t get too close, dear. They carry disease.”

The girl’s eyes widened. She backed away.

Elsa couldn’t believe what she’d heard. “Ma’am—”

“Don’t speak to me unless I ask a direct question,” the woman said. “You may scrub the floors. But mind you, I don’t want to catch you shirking and I’ll check your pockets before you leave. And don’t touch anything but the water, bucket, and brush.”

TWENTY

Loreda woke to the smell. It reminded her with every indrawn breath that they had spent the night in the last place on earth she wanted to be.

Loreda stayed in bed as long as she could, knowing that the clarity of day would reveal images she didn’t want to see, but finally, the aroma of coffee urged her up. She eased away from Ant, who grumbled, and put a holey sweater on over her dress.

She stepped into her shoes and opened the tent flap, expecting to find her mother sitting on an overturned bucket by the campfire, drinking coffee. But neither Mom nor the truck were here. Instead, she found a glass of water and her mother’s note.

Loreda looked out toward the road, across the flat, brown field rutted by foot and tire tracks and a cluster of tents and vehicles. The field—probably fifty acres altogether—held a hundred tents and dozens of trucks that had become homes. She saw hovels that had been cobbled together of scrap metal and wooden boards. Women moved through the camp herding ragged children, while mangy dogs ran through, barking for food or attention. Folks had lived here a long time, long enough to string laundry lines and create yards full of junk. No one would want to live this way, and yet here they were. The Great Depression.

For the first time, she understood. It wasn’t just banksters running off with people’s money or a movie theater closing its doors or people standing in line for free soup.

Hard times meant poverty. No jobs. Nowhere else to go.

Jean stepped out of her tent and waved at Loreda.

Loreda walked toward her, strangely glad for an adult nearby. “Hey, Miz Dewey,” Loreda said.

“Your mama left about an hour ago, lookin’ for work.”

“My mom has never had a real job.”

Jean smiled. “Spoken like a teenager. It don’t matter, though. Experience, I mean. The jobs out here are field jobs, mostly. They won’t hire us in diners and stores and such. They want them jobs for themselves.”

“It’s just wrong.”

Jean shrugged, as if to say, What difference does that make? “When times is tough and jobs is scarce, folks blame the outsider. It’s human nature. And raht now, that’s us. In California it used to be the Mexicans, and the Chinese before that, I think.”

Loreda stared out at the debris-strewn camp. “My mom never gives up,” she said. “But maybe this time she should. We could go to Hollywood. Or San Francisco.” Loreda hated how her voice broke on that. Suddenly she was thinking of her dad and Stella and her grandparents and the farm. More than anything right now, she wanted to be home, to have Grandma give her one of her no-nonsense hugs and slip her a bite of something.

“Come here, honey,” Jean said, opening her arms.

Loreda walked into the woman’s embrace, surprised by how much it helped, even from a stranger. “You’ll have to grow up, I reckon,” Jean said. “Your mom probably wants you to be young, but them days are gone.”

Loreda held back tears. She didn’t want to grow up, certainly not in a place like this.

She looked up at Jean’s kind, sad face. “So, what should I do?”

“First, go to the ditch and carry lots o’ water back. You got to boil and strain it before you drink it, mind. I’ll give you some cheesecloth. Doin’ laundry would help your mom out.”

Loreda left Jean standing outside the tent and picked up a pair of buckets and walked to the ditch. A line of women was already squatted along the banks, or on wooden planks in the brown water, washing clothes. Children played at the edges of the dirty water.