Loreda took the pouch in her hand, held it as her tears fell. “What do I do without you?”
Elsa tried to smile but couldn’t. She was too tired. Too weak. “You live, Loreda,” she whispered. “And know … every single second … how much I loved you.” Find your voice and use it … take chances … never give up.
Elsa couldn’t keep her eyes open anymore. There was so much more to say, a lifetime’s worth of love and advice to bestow on her children, but there was no more time …
Be brave, she might have said, or maybe she only thought it.
THIRTY-SIX
“She wants us to go home,” Loreda said. The unexpected word—home—gave her a bit of steadiness; something to hold on to. Grandma and Grandpa. She needed them now.
“That’s what she said.”
Jack held Ant, who had cried himself to sleep.
“Good. I won’t bury her here,” Loreda said. “And Ant and I can’t stay. Even if they are still having dust storms in Texas. We can’t stay here. I won’t stay here.”
“I’ll drive you back, of course, but…”
“Money,” Loreda said dully. Everything came down to that.
“I’ll talk to the Workers Alliance. Maybe—”
“No,” Loreda said sharply, surprised by the suddenness of her anger, the burning heat of it.
Enough was enough.
Goddamned enough.
Desperate times called for desperate measures. She knew what Mom had done for Jean at a moment like this.
“I know where we can get what we need,” she said. “Can I take your truck?”
“It doesn’t sound like a good idea…”
“It isn’t. Can I have your keys?”
“They’re in the truck. Don’t make me regret this.”
“I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Loreda rushed out of the hospital and drove Jack’s truck north. Look, Mom, a driving emergency, she thought, starting to cry again.
In town, she passed vigilantes driving up and down the streets with loudspeakers, telling people to get back to work or be arrested for vagrancy, promising hard labor.
She could do this.
She could.
And if she died or went to hell or went to jail, well, okay. She was, by God, going to get her mother home so she could be buried on the land she loved, and not here, in this place that had broken and betrayed them.
She pulled up in front of the El Centro Hotel and ran up to Mom’s room. There, she grabbed the shotgun, stuffed some clothes in a laundry bag, and went back down to Jack’s truck and drove north.
Not far from the Welty camp, she parked behind an Old Gold cigarettes billboard. She grabbed the shotgun and laundry bag and darted into the camp and past the empty guardhouse.
The camp was quiet; eviction notices fluttered on every cabin door. She snagged some boys’ clothes from a laundry line—a pair of wool pants, a black sweater—and found a floppy black hat in a mud puddle. She pulled the boys’ oversized clothes on over her faded dress and tucked her hair up under the hat, then smeared mud on her cheeks.
Hopefully she looked like a boy going rabbit hunting.