The Four Winds

“Elsa Martinelli,” she said. “We are new here.”

“The poor family lost everything in the flood,” Harald said.

“Ah,” Mr. Welty said. “Then you’re in the right place. Stock up on food to feed your family. Get whatever suits your fancy. Come cotton season, you will make plenty. Do you have children?”

“Two, sir.”

“Fine, fine. We love our children pickers.” He slapped a hand down on the counter hard enough to rattle the jar of candy by the register. “Give her some candy for her children, by God.”

Elsa thanked him, although she was pretty sure he didn’t hear, or wasn’t listening. Already he was turning away, walking out of the store.

The bell jangled.

“So,” Harald said, opening a book. “Cabin Ten. I will put you down for six dollars this month on credit. That’s for rent. Now, what else do you need?”

Elsa looked longingly at the smoked meat.

“Just take what you need,” Harald said gently.

Elsa couldn’t do that. If she did, she’d take it all, and run like a thief. She couldn’t let herself be seduced by the idea of credit. Nothing in this life was free, for migrants most of all.

Still.

She walked the aisles slowly, adding up every price in her head. She placed items in her basket with great care, as if they might detonate on impact: cans of milk, smoked ham, a bag of potatoes, a bag of flour, a bag of rice, two tins of chipped beef, a small amount of sugar. A bag of beans. Coffee. Some laundry and hand soap. Toothpaste and toothbrushes. A blanket. Two envelopes.

She carried the basket to the counter and withdrew the items one by one.

As she did so, a terrible sinking feeling filled her, a sense of impending doom. She had never bought anything she couldn’t pay for. Sure, the Wolcott family had bought things in town on credit, but that had been a convenience. Her father paid his tab promptly, from savings in the bank. The idea of asking for credit when there were no savings to draw upon felt to Elsa like begging.

“Eleven dollars and twenty cents,” Harald said, writing the total down in the book below the heading of Cabin 10.

At this rate, Elsa would accrue a lot of debt between now and April 26, when—hopefully—state relief would give her some help.

“You know,” she said quietly, “I only need one can of chipped beef.”

* * *

ELSA HAD NO SHELVING in the cabin, so she stacked the food carefully in the one box they had and tucked it under the bed. She’d withheld two cans of milk, a pound of coffee, and a bar of soap. Those items she put back in the bag she’d gotten at the store and carried it out of the cabin.

She got into her truck and drove south, past the town of Welty, to the ditch-bank camp, and parked on the side of the road. The field was a sea of standing water and mud, studded with debris. Goods, tree limbs, sheets of metal lay scattered and floating. With nowhere else to go, people had begun to move back onto the land and set up camp.

Elsa saw the Deweys’ big farm truck off to the right, half buried in mud. A group of people stood around it.

She carried the groceries across the field, her boots pressing down into the squishy mud, standing water lapping across her ankles now and then.

Jeb and the boys were busy hammering nails into salvaged sheets of plywood. The two girls sat in the back of the truck, playing with ruined dolls in muddy dresses. A broken chair leaned against the mud-clogged stove they had hauled all the way from Alabama, thinking it would go into a house.

They were living in the truck, all six of them.

Elsa saw Jeb and waved. He gave her an ashamed look. “Jean’s at the ditch.”

Elsa’s throat was too tight to allow for words, so she nodded and set the groceries down on the broken chair. Saying nothing, she picked her way through the muddy, debris-strewn field to the ditch.

Jean was at the bank, trying to draw water into a bucket. Elsa came up quietly behind her, feeling guilty that she’d gotten out of this place and ashamed at how grateful she was for it. “Jean,” she said.

Jean turned. In the split second before she smiled, Elsa saw the depth of her friend’s despair. “Elsa,” Jean said. “As you can see, the neighborhood has gone to hell without you.”

Elsa didn’t feel much like joking. “Nadine? Midge?”