Dreams her father had encouraged before he left to follow his own.
Loreda bent her legs and wrapped her arms around her ankles. She could handle the dying farm and adults who lied to her. She could even handle her father abandoning them—her—but this …
Ant. Her baby brother, who curled up like a potato bug and sucked his thumb, who ran like a marionette, all arms and legs akimbo, who looked up at her at night and said, “Tell me a story,” and hung on every word.
“Ant,” she whispered, realizing it was a prayer. The first one she’d even begun in years.
The windmill shook. She looked down and saw her mother ascending, rattling the boards as she climbed up.
Mom sat down beside her, let her legs dangle over the edge.
“I’m not a baby, Mom. You can tell me the truth.”
Mom took a deep breath and exhaled it. “We were talking about your dad’s tent because … we’re leaving Texas as soon as Ant is better. Going to California.”
Loreda turned. “What?”
“I talked it over with Grandma and Grandpa. We have a bit of money and the truck runs. So, we will drive west. Tony is still strong. He’ll find work, maybe on the railroad. I could do laundry for people, I hope. I hear Pamela Shreyer got work in a jewelry store. Imagine that. Her husband, Gary, is tending grapes.”
“And Ant is coming with us?”
“Of course he is. As soon as he’s better, we’ll go.”
“It’s a thousand miles to California. Gas is nineteen cents a gallon. Do we have enough for that?”
“How do you know all of that?”
“After Dad left, when I was supposed to be studying Texas history, I studied maps of California. I thought about—”
“Running away to find him?”
“Yeah. Turns out I’m stupid, but not that stupid. California is a big state. And I don’t even know for sure that he went west. Or that he stayed west.”
“No. We don’t know any of that.”
Loreda leaned against her mother, who put an arm around her.
Leaving. Loreda thought about it for the first time, really thought about it. Leaving home.
“I wanted you to grow up on this land,” Mom said. “I wanted to grow old here and be buried here and watch over your children’s children. I wanted to see the wheat grow again.”
“I know,” Loreda said, with a sting of realization: there was a part of her that wanted that, too.
“We don’t have a choice,” Mom said. “Not anymore.”
* * *
A WEEK LATER, MOST of the chicken coop was still buried in dirt, as was one whole side of the barn. The cows had been sold and taken away and the farm had been transformed by the eleven-day dust storm into a sea of brown waves. It was too much work to dig out from all that dirt, especially now that they were leaving. The big, wooden-slat-sided truck bed had been loaded with a few of the things they thought they’d need in their new life—the small wood-burning stove, barrels of goods and food, boxes of bedding, pots and pans, a gallon of kerosene, lanterns.
Elsa walked like a Bedouin up and down the dunes, past the windmill. At last she found some yucca, growing wild, its fibrous roots exposed by the wind and erosion.
She hacked up the roots, ripped them out of the ground, and dropped them into a metal bucket.
Back at the house, she saw Loreda seated at the kitchen table with Tony, maps laid out around them.
“What’s that?” Rose said, coming out of the kitchen. She’d canned two chickens for the trip. That, along with the last of the canned vegetables, a sugar-cured ham, and some preserved Russian thistles, should get them to California.
“Yucca. We can boil it and eat it.”