The Four Winds

“You see now,” Jack said. “A fight like this isn’t romantic. I was in San Francisco when the National Guard went after strikers with bayonets.”

“People died that day,” Natalia said. “Strikers. They called it Bloody Thursday.”

“We have to fight them, though,” Loreda said. “With whatever we have. Like when Mom took the baseball bat into the hospital to get aspirin for Jean.”

“Yeah,” Jack said, looking grim. “We do.”

THIRTY-FOUR

On the morning of the sixth, just before dawn, Elsa and the children climbed into one of the waiting Welty trucks.

The workers were quiet, subdued. People were reluctant to make eye contact. Elsa didn’t know if that meant they were with the strike or against it, but they all knew about it. Strike talk was everywhere. Careful words, spoken in dark corners. Everyone who worked in the valley knew a strike was happening today. Which meant the growers knew.

“I want you and Ant always in my sight,” Elsa said as the truck pulled up in front of the cotton field. Jack’s truck was parked in the middle of the road; he, Natalia, and several of their comrades waited for the strikers, held picket signs. The gate to the field was open.

“Fair pay! Fair pay! Fair pay!” Jack chanted as the workers climbed down from the truck.

Several cars and trucks appeared on the road behind Jack and Natalia, drove slowly forward. In minutes, Jack and his comrades would be caught between the strikers in front of them and the growers behind them, hemmed in on either side by fenced cotton fields.

The workers stopped en mass, stood clustered together, facing the Communists.

The first car stopped behind Jack’s truck. Three men got out; each one held a rifle.

A truck stopped beside it. Two more men jumped onto the road.

A third truck rolled into place and Mr. Welty stepped out, holding a shotgun. He walked forward, stopped about three feet behind Jack, and faced the strikers. “Wages are lowering today to seventy-five cents for a hundred pounds of cotton,” Welty said. “If you don’t take the wage and pick, there are plenty who will.”

Five armed men fanned out behind him, guns at the ready.

Jack turned to face Welty, walked boldly toward the owner, went toe to toe with him, became the tip of the arrow of the strikers.

“They won’t pick for that,” Jack said.

“You don’t even work for me, you lyin’ Red,” Welty said.

“I’m trying to help these workers. That’s all. Your greed is un-American. They aren’t going to pick for seventy-five cents. That’s not a living wage.” Jack turned to the workers. “He needs you to pick but he doesn’t want to pay you. What do we say?”

No one answered.

Welty’s men smacked their gun barrels against their palms.

“They’re smarter than you are, Red,” Welty said.

Elsa knew what they were supposed to do now; they all did. Jack had told them at the barn. Go into the fields peaceably. Sit down.

If they didn’t move, didn’t act, this strike would be over before it began and they would lose and the bosses would be even stronger.

Elsa placed a hand on each of her children’s shoulders. “Come on, kids. Into the field.”

They walked forward, moved through the crowd and then emerged from it, three lone figures, out in front, moving toward the entrance to the field.

The spiked barbed wire that topped the chain-link fencing glittered in the sunlight; an armed man stood at the parapet of the gun tower, his rifle aimed at the workers.

“See?” Welty said to Jack. “This little lady knows who pays her. Seventy-five cents is better than nothing.”

Elsa walked past Jack and Welty wit

hout looking at either man. She and her children walked into the cotton field.