The Four Winds

“Open it!” Ant said, bouncing to his feet.

Elsa carefully unwrapped the gift, not wanting to rip the newspaper or lose the strips of cloth that bound it all. Everything mattered these days.

Inside lay a slim leather-bound journal full of blank paper. The first few pages of the book had been ripped away and the cover was water damaged. Several pencils—sharpened down to stubs—rolled out and plopped onto the ground.

Loreda looked at her. “I know you have stuff you need to say, but we’re kids so you stay quiet. I thought maybe writing it down would ma

ke you feel better.”

“I thought that, too,” Ant said. “I got the pencils from school! All by myself.”

The journal reminded Elsa of who she’d once been: the girl with the bad heart who had read books and dreamed of going away to college to study literature. She’d dreamed of one day writing.

Do you have some hidden talent of which we are all unaware?

Elsa hated that she heard her father’s voice now, of all moments, at this time when her love for her children almost bowled her over and she thought, even in the midst of all this hardship and failure, I have raised good children. Kind, caring, loving people.

“I’ll write something,” Elsa said.

“Will you let us read it, Mommy?” Ant asked.

“Maybe someday.”

1936

One thing was left, as clear and perfect as a drop of rain—the desperate need to stand together … They would rise and fall and, in their falling, rise again.

—SANORA BABB, WHOSE NAMES ARE UNKNOWN

TWENTY-FOUR

On the last day of January, a cold front moved into the valley and stayed for seven days. The ground turned hard; fog lay for hours every morning. There was still no work.

Their savings decreased, but Elsa knew they were the lucky ones; they’d saved cotton money and there were only three of them. The Deweys had six mouths to feed and soon it would be seven. The migrants who had just arrived in the state, most of them with nothing, were trying to survive on federal relief—paltry amounts of food handed out every two weeks. They lived on flour-and-water pancakes and fried dough. Elsa could see the ravages of malnutrition on their faces.

Now it was past suppertime, which had been a cup of watery beans and a slice of skillet bread for each of them. Elsa sat on an overturned bucket by the wood-burning stove, with the metal box open on her lap. Ant sat beside her, taking his daily nibble off his Christmas Hershey’s chocolate bar. Loreda was in the tent, rereading The Hidden Staircase.

Elsa counted their money again.

“Elsa! It’s time!”

She heard Jean shout her name. Elsa stood up so fast she nearly upended the box of money.

The baby.

Ant looked up. “What’s wrong?”

Elsa ran into the tent and hid the box of money. “Loreda,” she said. “Come with me.”

“Where—”

“Jean’s having her baby.”

Elsa ran to the Deweys’ tent. She found Lucy outside, crying. “Loreda, take the girls to our tent. Tell them to stay with Ant and not to come back until you come to get them. Then come back to help me.”

Elsa entered the Deweys’ dark, dank tent.

A single lantern glowed, barely banishing the shadows. She saw gray lines in the dark: a pile of food stores, a makeshift washbasin.