The Four Winds

“You need a room?” he said in a heavily accented voice.

Loreda paused. Could she be arrested for just showing up? Or was this man an employee of the big farmers, here to identify rabble-rousers? Or was he a friend of Jack’s, here to make sure only the right people made it to the meeting?

“I’m here for the meeting,” she said.

“Downstairs.”

Loreda moved toward the stairs. Nervous, suddenly. Excited. Scared.

She touched the smooth wooden banister as she made her way down the narrow stairs, past a broom closet and laundry room.

She heard voices, followed the sound to a room in the back, its door open to reveal a crowd inside.

People stood shoulder to shoulder. Men, women, and a few kids. Bobby Rand waved at her.

Jack stood in the front of the room, commanded attention. Although he was dressed like many of the migrants around him, in faded, stained overalls and a frayed denim shirt beneath a dusty brown suit coat, there was vibrancy to him, an aliveness that was like no one she’d ever met before. Jack believed in things and fought to make the world a better place. He was the kind of man a girl could count on.

“… one hundred and fifty strikers were herded into cages,” he was saying in a passionate voice. “Cages. In America. The big farmers and their corrupt coppers and citizens-turned-vigilantes put your fellow Americans in cages to break a strike of workers who just wanted an even shake. Two years ago, a bunch of Tulare farmers shot into a crowd of people just for listening to strike organizers. Two people were killed.”

“Why are you tellin’ us this?” someone yelled. Loreda recognized him from the squatters’ camp they’d lived in. A man with six kids and a wife who had died of typhoid. “You trying to scare us off?”

“I’m not going to lie to you good people. Striking against the big farmers is dangerous. They’ll oppose us with everything they’ve got. And, folks, as you know, they’ve got it all: money, power, the state government.” He picked up a newspaper, held it out for everyone to see. The headline read: “Workers Alliance Un-American.” “I’ll tell you what’s un-American, and that’s big farmers getting richer while you get poorer,” Jack said.

“Yeah!” Jeb said.

“What’s un-American is cutting pickers’ wages just because the growers are greedy.”

“Yeah!” the crowd yelled back.

“They don’t want you to organize, but if you don’t, you’ll starve, just like the pea pickers did in Nipomo last winter. I was there. Children died in the fields. Starved. In America. The big growers are planting less because cotton prices are down, so they pay less. God forbid their profit diminishes. They aren’t even pretending to give you a living wage.”

Ike yelled out: “They think we ain’t human!”

Jack looked out at the crowd, made eye contact one by one with his audience. Loreda felt an electricity of hope move from him to the crowd. “They need you. That’s your power. Cotton has to be picked while it’s dry and before the first frost. What if no one picks it?”

“A strike!” someone called out. “That’ll show ’em.”

“It isn’t easy,” Jack said. “Cotton is spread out over thousands and thousands of acres and the growers stand together. They pick a price to pay and stick with it. So we need to stand together. Our only chance is to join forces, all of the workers. Everyone, everywhere. We need you all to spread the word. We have to shut down the means of production completely.”

“Strike!” Loreda yelled.

The crowd joined in, chanting, “Strike, strike, strike.”

Jack saw Loreda at the same time someone grabbed her arm. Loreda yelped in pain and wrenched free, turning.

Her mother stood there, looking angry enough to blow smoke. “I can’t believe you’d do this.”

“Did you hear what he said, Mom?”

“I heard.” Mom glanced sideways, across the room, saw how many people were here.

Jack pushed through the crowd, coming their way.

“Your speech was great,” Loreda said as he drew near.

“I noticed you showed up alone,” he said. “It’s late for a girl your age to be out by herself.”

“Would you say that to Joan of Arc?” Loreda said.