“Not without a fight.”
“I want to fight,” Loreda said, realizing as she said it that she’d been itching for this fight for a long time. This was what she’d run away to find, not her lily-livered father. This was the passion she’d lost. She felt the heat of it.
“How old are you, really?”
“Thirteen.”
“And your old man ran out on the family when he lost his job in … St. Louis.”
“Texas,” Loreda said.
“Kid, men like that aren’t worth shit. And you’re too young to be walking around on your own. How’d you get to California?”
“My mom brought us.”
“All by herself? She must be tough.”
“I called her a coward tonight.”
He gave her a knowing look. “Is she going to be worried?”
Loreda nodded. “Unless they went looking for me. What if they’re gone?” At that, homesickness gripped her; not the kind for a place, but for people. Her people. Mom and Ant. Grandma and Grandpa. The people who loved her.
“Kid, the people who love you stay. You’ve already learned that. Go find your mom and tell her you’ve been as dumb as a box of marbles. And let her hold you tight.”
Loreda felt the sting of tears.
A police siren wailed outside.
“Shit,” Jack said, taking her by the arm, dragging her across the barn, through the panicking crowd.
He shoved her up the ladder in front of him and pushed her into the loft. “There’s fire in you, kid. Don’t let the bastards put it out. Stay here till morning or you might end up in the hoosegow.”
He dropped down the loft ladder to the barn floor.
The door cracked open. Cops appeared in the opening, holding guns and billy clubs. Behind them, red lights flashed. Cops streamed into the barn, scooped up the papers and the typewriters and the mimeograph machines.
Loreda saw a cop hit Jack in the head with his club. Jack staggered but didn’t fall. Weaving a little, he grinned at the copper. “That’s all you got?”
The cop’s face tightened. “You’re a dead man, Valen. Sooner or later.” He hit Jack again, harder.
“Round ’em up, fellas,” the policeman said, as blood splattered his uniform. “We don’t want Reds in our town.”
Reds.
Communists.
* * *
ELSA WALKED BENEATH AN anemic moon into the town of Welty. At this hour, the streets were deserted.
There it was: the police station, tucked on a side street, not far from the library.
She didn’t believe that anyone in authority would actually help her, or even listen to her, but her daughter was missing. This was all she could think of to do.
The parking lot was empty but for a few cruisers and an old-fashioned truck. In the light cast downward from a streetlamp, she saw a bindle stiff standing beside the truck smoking a cigarette. She didn’t make eye contact but felt him watching her.
Elsa straightened to her full height, unaware that she’d become hunched on her walk here.