The Four Winds

Elsa resettled the box of commodities in her arms and began the long walk back to the camp. It was late afternoon when she reached the field.

There were almost a thousand people living here now, more than four times the number that had been here when they had arrived.

Elsa splashed through ankle-deep mud toward her tent.

A few people were out and about, scavenging for anything that they could use.

She stopped at the Deweys’ tent. “Anyone home?”

The flaps were opened by Lucy. Elsa saw the whole family—all six of them—gathered inside. Jeb and the boys had been as unable to find work as everyone else.

Jean smiled tiredly, her hand resting on her big belly. The buttons of her dress gaped; one was missing. “Hey, Elsa. How did it go?”

Elsa reached into the box and withdrew two cans of milk, as well as a few slices of bread from the loaf she’d been given. It wasn’t much, and yet it was. The two families shared whatever good fortune came their way. “Here you go,” she said, offering the food.

“Thank you,” Jean said, giving her an understanding look.

Elsa returned to her own tent and ducked inside. The floor was mud now. No wonder people were getting sick. Ant sat on the mattress they all shared, doing his homework.

Loreda sat on an apple crate sewing a black button onto the purple dress she’d gotten at the beauty salon. At Elsa’s arrival, she looked up. “How was it?”

“Fine.” Elsa’s hands were so cold, she almost dropped the box.

Loreda got up and wrapped a blanket around Elsa, who sat down gingerly on the edge of the mattress.

“You should have seen how many people there were in line, Loreda,” Elsa said. “The soup kitchen line was twice as long.”

“Hard times,” Loreda said woodenly. It was what they always said.

“What would Tony and Rose say if they knew we were living on the dole?”

“They’d say Ant needed the milk,” Loreda said.

Elsa knew now how Tony had felt when his land died. There was a deep and abiding shame that came with asking for handouts.

Poverty was a soul-crushing thing. A cave that tightened around you, its pinprick of light closing a little more at the end of each desperate, unchanged day.

* * *

CHRISTMAS MORNING DAWNED BRIGHT and clear, the first dry day in nearly a week. Elsa woke to blissful quiet. She had slept in. They all had. These days there was no reason to rise before dawn. There was no work to be found and school was closed for the holiday.

She got out of bed slowly, moving like an old woman. Indeed, she felt like one. The combination of cold, hunger, and fear had aged her. All she wanted to do was climb back in bed with her kids and cuddle under the covers and sleep. It was her only escape. But she knew how dangerous escape could be. Survival took grit and courage and effort. It was too easy to give in. No matter how afraid she was, she had to teach her children every day how to survive.

She grabbed the water jug and went outside to make coffee.

The camp wakened with her. People came out of their tents, blinking mole-like at the unexpected sunlight. Folks smiled and waved. Someone was playing a fiddle. A banjo joined in. Someone somewhere began to sing.

Elsa wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and followed the music to a group gathered by the ditch, now swollen with fast-moving brown water. She found Jean and Midge standing together beside a tree. There were men sitting on rocks or fallen trees along the bank, playing the instruments they’d brought across the country. Women stood with buckets they’d filled and set down.

Jean and Midge began to sing. “Will the circle be unbroken…”

Others joined in.

“… by and by Lord, by and by.”

Elsa felt the music rise up in her. In it, she heard the best of her past, church services with Rose and the family, Tony playing his fiddle, box suppers, even the one time Rafe had danced with her at Pioneer Days.

She went back to the tent and wakened the children and hustled them out to the bank. The three of them stood alongside Jean and Midge.