The Four Winds

RAIN FELL FOR DAYS. The land along the ditch bank became a pond. People started getting sick: typhoid, diphtheria, dysentery.

The burying ground doubled in size. Because the county hospital refused to treat most of the migrants, they had to help themselves as best they could.

Everyone was hungry and lethargic. Elsa spent as little as she possibly could on food, and still she watched their savings dwindle.

On this stormy winter night, Loreda and Ant were in bed, trying to sleep, burrowed beneath a pile of quilts.

Rain hammered the canvas, rippled the grayed fabric, and sluiced down the sides.

Elsa sat on an apple crate, writing in her journal by the meager light of a single candle.

For most of my life, weather was a thing remarked upon by the old men in their dusty hats who stopped to jaw with each other outside Wolcott Tractor Supply. A topic of conversation. Farmers studied the sky the way a priest read the word of God, looking for clues and signs and warnings. But all of it from a friendly distance, all of it with a faith in the essential kindness of our planet. But in this terrible decade, the weather has proven itself to be cruel. An adversary that we underestimated at our peril. Wind, dust, drought, and now this demoralizing rain, I fear—

Thunder exploded in a deafening craaaaack.

“That was a bad one,” Loreda said. Ant looked scared.

Elsa closed her journal and got up. She was halfway to the flaps when the tent collapsed around them. Water rushed in, sucked at Elsa’s legs. She shoved her journal in the bodice of her dress and reached out blindly for her children. “Kids! Come to me.”

She heard them clawing at the wet canvas, trying to find their way.

“I’m here,” Elsa said.

Loreda reached her, held her hand, kept one arm around her brother.

“We have to get out,” Elsa said, fighting to find the tent flaps.

Ant was crying beside her, clinging to her.

“Hang on to me,” Elsa shouted to him. She found the split in the fabric, wrenched the flaps open, stumbled out with the children. The tent whooshed past them, taking their belongings with it.

The money.

A gush of water hit Elsa so hard she almost fell.

Lightning flashed; in the light, she saw utter destruction. Garbage and leaves and wooden crates floated past, riding the torrent, there and gone in a second.

Holding tightly to her children’s hands, she slogged against the rising tide of water and made her way to the Deweys’ tent. “Jean! Jeb!”

The tent collapsed just as the Deweys crawled out.

The sound of people screaming rose above the howl of the storm.

Elsa saw headlights out on the road, turning. Coming their way.

She spat rain, pushed the wet hair out of her eyes, and yelled, “We need to go that way, toward the road.”

The two families stayed close together, all holding hands. Elsa’s boots filled with muddy water. She knew her children were barefoot in this cold, wet water.

Together they fought their way toward the headlights. There was a row of cars parked on the main road, headlights pointed at the camp. Halfway there, Elsa saw a line of people with flashlights. A tall man stepped forward, wearing a brown canvas duster and a hat that sagged in the rain. “This way, ma’am,” he yelled. “We’re here to help you.”

The Deweys made it to the row of volunteers. Elsa saw someone hand Jean a raincoat.

Elsa looked back. Their tent was gone now, washed away, but the truck was still there. If she didn’t get it now, she would lose it.

She pushed her children forward. “Go,” she said. “I have to get the truck.”

“No, Mom, you can’t,” Loreda shouted.