The Four Winds

“Who is Grant?”

“A boss. He drinks too much to remember who uses his name.”

“Will you come with us?”

“I’ve got a bad reputation around here. They don’t like my ideas.” He flashed her a smile and walked back to his own truck.

He was gone before Elsa could thank him. She drove slowly onto Welty land, noticing that it was soggy from rain but hadn’t been flooded. The camp was situated between two cotton fields and set well back from the road. A guardhouse stood at the fenced entrance to the camp.

Elsa came to it and stopped.

A man stood there holding a shotgun. He was whippet-thin, with a pencil neck and an elbow-sharp chin. A hat covered close-cut gray hair.

“Hello, sir,” she said.

The man stepped up to the truck, peered inside. “You flooded out?”

“Yes, sir.”

“We only take families here,” he said. “No riffraff. No Negroes. No Mexicans.” He eyed the three of them. “No single women.”

“My husband is coming home tomorrow,” Elsa said. “He’s picking peas.” She paused. “Grant sent us.”

“Yep. He knows I’ve got an open cabin.”

“A cabin,” Loreda whispered.

“It’s four bucks a month for electricity, and a buck apiece for two mattresses.”

“Six dollars,” Elsa said. “Can I get the cabin without electricity or mattresses?”

“No, ma’am. But there’s work here at Welty and if you live in our cabins, you’re the first to get our jobs. The big man owns twenty-two thousand acres of cotton. Most of our folks live on relief until the cotton season. We have our own school, too. And a post office.”

“School? On the property?”

“It’s

better for the kids. They don’t get hassled so much. You want it or not?”

“She definitely wants it,” Ant said.

“Yes,” Elsa said.

“Cabin Ten. We take payment right out of your pay. There’s a store where you can buy goods and even get a little cash if you need it. On credit, of course. Go on.”

“Don’t you need my name?”

“Nah. Go on.”

Elsa continued on the muddy road toward a collection of cabins and tents, set up almost like a town. She followed the signs to Cabin 10 and parked beside it.

The cabin was a concrete and wooden structure that was about ten feet by twelve feet. The sides began as a layer of concrete block and then became metal panels with wood supports. There were no windows, but two of the upper walls had long metal vents that could be pushed up and locked in place on hot days.

They got out of the truck and went inside. It was gloomy, cast in shadows. A bare light bulb hung from a cord on the ceiling. “Electricity,” Elsa said, marveling.

A small hot plate on a wooden shelf and two rusted metal bed frames with mattresses took up half of the space in the cabin, but there was room for chairs, maybe even a table. There was a cement floor. A floor.

“Wowza,” Ant said.