The Four Winds

“Elsa Martinelli. I have two children. Anthony and Loreda. I registered last year on this date.”

The woman rifled through the red cards, pulled one out. “Here you are. Address?”

“Welty growers’ camp.”

The woman put the card in the typewriter and added the information. “All right, Mrs. Martinelli. Three people in the family. You’ll get thirteen dollars and fifty cents per month.” She pulled the card out of the typewriter.

“Thank you.” Elsa rolled the bills into as small a cylinder as she could and tightened her fist around them.

As she left the state relief office, she noticed a commotion down the street at the federal relief office. A crowd of people were shouting.

Elsa walked cautiously toward the melee, keenly aware of the money in her hand.

She stopped beside a man at the edge of the crowd. “What’s going on?”

“The feds cut relief. No more commodities.”

Someone in the crowd yelled, “That ain’t right!”

A rock sailed through the relief office window, breaking the glass. The mob surged toward the office, shouting.

Within minutes a siren could be heard. A police car rolled up, lights flashing. Two uniformed men jumped out holding billy clubs. “Who wants to go to jail for vagrancy?”

One of the policemen grabbed a raggedly dressed man, hauled him over to the police car, and shoved him in. “Anyone else want to go to jail?”

Elsa turned to the man beside her. “How can they just end the commodities relief? Don’t they care about us?”

The man

gave her a disbelieving look. “You tryin’ to be funny?”

* * *

AFTER LEAVING THE RELIEF office, Elsa walked to the ditch-bank camp on Sutter Road.

In the months since the flood, more people had moved onto this land. Old-timers pitched their tents and parked their cars and built their shacks on higher ground, if they could find it. Newcomers set up near the ditch. The ground was studded with spring grass and old belongings, some of which poked up here and there in the dirt. A pipe edge, a book, a ruined lantern. Most things of value had been dug up already or were buried too deeply to be found.

She came to the Deweys’ truck. They’d built a shack around it with scavenged wood and tar paper and scrap metal.

She found Jean sitting in a chair beside the truck’s front fender. Mary and Lucy sat in the grass beside her cross-legged, poking sticks into the ground.

“Elsa!” Jean said, starting to rise.

“Don’t get up,” Elsa said, seeing how pale her friend was, how gaunt.

Elsa sat down on the overturned bucket beside Jean.

“I don’t have any coffee to offer you,” Jean said. “I’m drinking hot water.”

“I could use a cup,” Elsa said.

Jean poured Elsa a cup of boiling water and handed it to her.

“The feds cut relief,” Elsa said. “People are rioting in town.”

Jean coughed. “I heard. Don’t know how we’re gonna make it till cotton.”

“We’ll make it.” Elsa opened her hand slowly, looked down at the thirteen dollars and fifty cents she had to feed her family until next month. She peeled off two one-dollar bills and handed them to Jean.