“Now, Ike. Be careful. We got jobs. And a place here. That’s something.”
Loreda hid behind a tree to listen to the men gathered in the shadows.
“You remember the squatters’ camp. We’re living better now.”
Ike stepped forward. He was a tall, skinny pike of a man with a pale ring of gray hair beneath a pointed bald spot. “You call this living? This is my second cotton season and I can tell you already that I’ll work my ass off, as will my wife and children, and we will end up with about four cents left over after our debt is paid. Four cents. And you know I’m not being sarcastic. Everything we make goes to the store for our cabins and tents, our mattresses, our overpriced food.”
“You know they’re cheatin’ us with their bookkeepin’.”
“They charge ten cents per dollar for converting our chits into cash but we can’t cash ’em anywhere else. Every penny we make picking cotton goes to pay our debt at the company store. Ain’t no way to get ahead. They make sure we don’t ever have money.”
“I got seven mouths to feed, Ike,” said a tall man in patched overalls and a straw hat. “Most of us have family depending on us.”
“We can’t do anything. I don’t care what this Valen says. It’s dangerous to listen to him.”
Jack.
She should have known he’d somehow be a part of this. He was a doer.
Loreda stepped out from behind the tree. “Ike’s right. Valen’s right. We have to stand up for ourselves. These rich farmers have no right to treat us this way. What would they do if we stopped picking?”
The men looked nervously at each other. “Don’t talk about a strike…”
“You’re just a girl,” one man said.
“A girl who picked two hundred pounds of cotton today,” Loreda said. She held out her hands, which were red and torn. “I say no more. Mr. Valen’s right. We need to rise up and—”
A hand clamped around Loreda’s bicep, squeezed hard. “Sorry, boys,” Elsa said. “My daughter had a rough day. Don’t pay her any mind.” She hauled Loreda back toward their cabin.
“Dang it, Mom,” Loreda hollered, yanking free. “Why did you do that?”
“You get pegged as a union rabble-rouser and we’re finished. Who can say there wasn’t a grower spy in that group? They’re everywhere.”
Loreda didn’t know how to live with this gnawing anger. “We shouldn’t have to live like this.”
Mom sighed. “It won’t be forever. We’ll find a way out.”
When it rains.
When we get to California.
We’ll find a way out.
New words for an old, never realized hope.
* * *
TENSION BEGAN TO TAKE up space in the valley. It could be felt in the fields, in the relief lines, around camp. The lowered wages had frightened and unsettled them all. Would it happen again? Nobody was saying the word out loud, but it hung in the air anyway.
Strike.
At night, in the growers’ camps and the ditch-bank settlements, field foremen began to show up, clubs in hand. They walked from cabin to cabin and tent to tent and shack to shanty, listening to what was being said, their appearance designed to have a chilling effect on conversation. Everyone knew that there were spies living among them, people who had chosen to stay in the growers’ good graces by passing along names of anyone who expressed discontent or stirred up trouble.
Now, after a long day spent picking cotton, Loreda was slumped on her bed, watching her mom heat up a can of pork and beans on the hot plate.
She heard footsteps outside.
A piece of paper slid under the cabin door.