“From Communists?”
“I don’t see anyone else here, do you?”
He led them inside the small hotel, which smelled of decay and cigarette smoke and must.
It took Elsa’s eyes a moment to adjust. She saw a burgundy desk with a wall of brass keys behind it.
She followed Jack up to the second floor. There he opened a door to reveal a small, dusty room with a large canopy bed, a pair of nightstands, and a closed door.
He walked past them into the room and opened the closed door.
“A bathroom,” Elsa whispered.
“There’s hot water,” he said. “Warm, at least.”
Ant and Loreda shrieked and ran for the shower. Elsa heard them turn it on.
“Come on, Mom!”
Jack looked at Elsa. “Do you have a name besides ‘Mom’?”
“Elsa.”
“It is nice to meet you, Elsa. Now I must go back out to help.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“There’s no need. Get warm. Stay with your children.”
“Those are my people, Jack. I’m going to help them.”
He didn’t argue. “I will meet you downstairs.”
Elsa went into the bathroom, saw her children in the shower together, fully dressed, laughing. She said, “I’m going to help Jack and his friends, Loreda. You guys get some sleep.”
Loreda said, “I’ll come!”
“No. I need you to watch Ant and get warm. Please. No fighting with me.”
Elsa hurried back outside. Now there were several automobiles in the parking lot with their lights on.
Volunteers gathered in a semicircle around Jack, who was clearly their leader. “Back to the ditch-bank camp off of Sutter Road. We need to save as many of them as we can. The grange hall has room, and so do the depot and the barns at the fairground.”
Elsa climbed into Jack’s truck. They joined a steady stream of blurred yellow headlights in the falling rain. Jack leaned sideways, grabbed a ratty brown sack from behind Elsa’s seat. “Here, put these on.” He dropped the bag in her lap.
Fingers shaking with cold, she opened it, found a pair of men’s pants and a flannel shirt, both huge.
“I have something to tie the pants tight,” he said.
He pulled off to the side of the road at the destroyed encampment. Drenched, dislocated people walked toward the road, clutching whatever they’d been able to save.
In the darkness beside the truck, Elsa stripped out of her wet dress and into the oversized flannel shirt, and then put on the pants. Her journal fell out of her bodice, surprising her. She’d forgotten she’d saved it. She set it on the truck’s seat, then stepped back into her wet galoshes and out into the rushing water.
Jack yanked off his tie and fit it through the belt loops on her borrowed pants, cinching the waistband tightly. Then he took off his coat and put it around her shoulders.
Elsa was too cold to be polite. She put on the coat, buttoned it up. “Thank you.”
He took her by the hand. “The water is still rising. Be careful.”