It was better than writing about the new and terrifying truth of life: their money was gone.
Their belongings, their tent, their stove, their food. Gone.
Still, someone had left a pale blue dress and a red sweater hanging over the dresser. Small blessings.
Moving slowly—everything hurt after last night—she slipped into the new clothes and still-muddy galoshes and went to the room next door to find her children. When no one answered her knock on the door, she went downstairs.
The street in front of the hotel was cordoned off to traffic. The Red Cross had set up a tent, as had the Salvation Army and a local Presbyterian church. She saw Ant and Loreda handing out food on trays. The sight of them helping others when they themselves had lost everything made her proud. After all they’d suffered—the hardship, the loss, the disappointment—there they were, smiling and handing out food. Helping people. It gave her hope for the future.
Jack stood in a nearby tent, talking to a woman in a beret. Elsa headed toward him.
He gave her a smile. “Coffee?”
“I’d love some.”
He pulled out a chair for her. She saw stacks of flyers on the table around him. Unionize Now! Communism Is the New Americanism. Some of the flyers were in Spanish. A sign-up sheet asked for people to join the Workers Alliance. There was one name on it: Loreda’s.
“Offering a little radical ideology with the coffee?” she said, crumpling the sign-up sheet into a ball. “My daughter is not signing this.”
He sat down near her, scooted closer. “Loreda has been following me around like a bird dog on the scent.”
“She’s thirteen.” Elsa glanced at the people gathered in the street. “She could get in trouble just talking to you, let alone joining the Communist Party. The growers don’t want unions.”
“A sad comment on the times. This is America, after all.”
“Not the America I know.” She turned to him. “Why communism?”
“Why not? I’ve done my time in the fields. I know how hard life is for migrant workers. Big growers helped elect FDR. He’s beholden to them. Ever wonder why his policies help almost all workers except farmworkers? I want to make it better.”
He looked at her. “I have a feeling you know struggle. Maybe you can tell me why most of the folks coming into the state don’t want to unionize?”
“We’re proud,” she said. “We believe in hard work and a fair chance. Not one for all and all for one.”
“Don’t you think a little all-for-one might help your folks?”
“I think what you want will cause trouble.” Elsa finished her coffee and handed him her empty cup. As he took it from her, she noticed his ratty wristwatch, which didn’t tell the right time. It surprised her, that small insight. She’d never known a man who didn’t care about time. “I appreciate your help, Jack. Truly. Your people were the first to help us, but…”
“But what?”
“I don’t have time for communism. I need to find a place for us to live.”
“You think I don’t understand, Mrs. Martinelli, but I do. Better than you can imagine.”
The way he said her surname surprised her somehow; he made it sound exotic almost, tinged with an accent she didn’t recognize. “Call me Elsa, please.”
“Will you let me do one thing for you?”
“What?”
“Will you trust me?”
“Why?”
“There’s no why to trust. It either is or isn’t. Will you trust me?”
Elsa stared at him, looked deeply into his dark eyes. There was in him an intensity that unnerved her; maybe she would have found him frightening in her life before all of this. She remembered the day she’d seen him proselytizing in the town square and getting punched by the police, and the bruises she’d seen on his face when she saw him outside the police station. He and his ideas came with violence, there was no doubt about that.
But he’d saved her children and given them a place to stay. And, strangely, beneath the fierceness she saw in him, she sensed pain. Not loneliness, exactly, but an aloneness she recognized.
Elsa stood. “Okay,” she said, her gaze steady.
He led her to the Red Cross tent, where Loreda and Ant were handing out sandwiches.
“Mommy!” Ant cried out at the sight of her.
Elsa couldn’t help smiling. What in the world was more restorative than a child’s love?
“You should see how good I’ve been at food, Mommy,” Ant said, grinning. “And I didn’t eat every donut.”
Elsa ruffled his clean hair. “I’m proud of you. And now Mr. Valen promises to show us something interesting. Explorers Club outing?”
“Yay!”
Loreda said, “Let me get our new stuff.” She ran back to the Communist tent and returned with a box full of clothes and bedding and food.
Jack touched Elsa’s arm gently. When she looked up at him, she saw a surprising understanding in his eyes, as if he knew how it felt to lose everything, or maybe just to have nothing to lose.
“Follow me. I’m in that truck.”
Elsa walked with her children to their own muddy truck and climbed in. The truck bed held the few goods and belongings they’d never unpacked; things they didn’t need in this broken-down version of their life.
As they headed north following Jack, storm damage was evident everywhere; splintered, fallen trees, rocks and rubble in the street, slumps of land that covered roadways. Water in gullies, in puddles, in falls by the street.
People walked in a steady stream along the side of the road, carrying whatever they had left.
They passed another ditch-bank camp that was destroyed. A sea of mud and belongings, but already people were slogging back onto the wet land, digging through the mud and standing water for their belongings.
At a sign that read WELTY FARMS, Jack pulled over to the side of the road and parked. Elsa did the same. He walked over to her side of the truck. She rolled down the window.
“This is Welty’s camp. He houses some pickers here. I heard that a family left yesterday.”
“Why would a family leave?”
“Someone died,” he said. “Tell the man at the guardhouse that Grant sent you.”
“Who is Grant?”
“A boss. He drinks too much to remember who uses his name.”
“Will you come with us?”
“I’ve got a bad reputation around here. They don’t like my ideas.” He flashed her a smile and walked back to his own truck.
He was gone before Elsa could thank him. She drove slowly onto Welty land, noticing that it was soggy from rain but hadn’t been flooded. The camp was situated between two cotton fields and set well back from the road. A guardhouse stood at the fenced entrance to the camp.
Elsa came to it and stopped.
A man stood there holding a shotgun. He was whippet-thin, with a pencil neck and an elbow-sharp chin. A hat covered close-cut gray hair.
“Hello, sir,” she said.
The man stepped up to the truck, peered inside. “You flooded out?”
“Yes, sir.”
“We only take families here,” he said. “No riffraff. No Negroes. No Mexicans.” He eyed the three of them. “No single women.”
“My husband is coming home tomorrow,” Elsa said. “He’s picking peas.” She paused. “Grant sent us.”
“Yep. He knows I’ve got an open cabin.”
“A cabin,” Loreda whispered.
“It’s four bucks a month for electricity, and a buck apiece for two mattresses.”
“Six dollars,” Elsa said. “Can I get the cabin without electricity or mattresses?”
“No, ma’am. But there’s work here at Welty and if you live in our cabins, you’re the first to get our jobs. The big man owns twenty-two thousand acres of cotton. Most of our folks live on relief until the cotton season. We have our own school, too. And a post office.”
“School? On the property?”
“It’s
better for the kids. They don’t get hassled so much. You want it or not?”
“She definitely wants it,” Ant said.
“Yes,” Elsa said.
“Cabin Ten. We take payment right out of your pay. There’s a store where you can buy goods and even get a little cash if you need it. On credit, of course. Go on.”
“Don’t you need my name?”
“Nah. Go on.”
Elsa continued on the muddy road toward a collection of cabins and tents, set up almost like a town. She followed the signs to Cabin 10 and parked beside it.
The cabin was a concrete and wooden structure that was about ten feet by twelve feet. The sides began as a layer of concrete block and then became metal panels with wood supports. There were no windows, but two of the upper walls had long metal vents that could be pushed up and locked in place on hot days.
They got out of the truck and went inside. It was gloomy, cast in shadows. A bare light bulb hung from a cord on the ceiling. “Electricity,” Elsa said, marveling.
A small hot plate on a wooden shelf and two rusted metal bed frames with mattresses took up half of the space in the cabin, but there was room for chairs, maybe even a table. There was a cement floor. A floor.
“Wowza,” Ant said.
“This is great,” Loreda said.
Electricity. Mattresses. A floor beneath their feet. A roof over their heads.
But … six dollars. How in the world could she pay for this? They’d lost every cent they had.
“Are you okay, Mom?” Loreda asked.
“Can we go exploring?” Ant asked. “Maybe there’s other kids here.”
Elsa nodded distractedly, stood there. “Go on. Don’t be gone long.”
Elsa left the cabin after them. She could see several cabins and at least fifty tents spread out across five or six acres. People milled about, gathering firewood, chasing children. It looked more like a town than a ditch-bank camp, with signs that pointed the way to toilets and laundry and school.
The good fortune of being here was tempered by her fear of losing it. How long could she live on credit?
She went back to her truck and picked up the box of supplies Loreda had gathered from the Salvation Army. Clothes, shoes and coats for the children, sheets, a single frying pan. And some food—enough for two days if they were careful.
What then?
She carried it into their cabin and closed the door.
“Hey,” Jack said, seated on one of the beds.
Elsa almost dropped the box in surprise.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you. It seems I couldn’t stay away.”
“I thought you weren’t supposed to be here.”
“I have a fondness for breaking rules.”
Elsa set the box on the floor and sat down beside him. “I don’t know how I’ll pay for this. I’m grateful. Truly. It’s just…”
“It costs money you don’t have.”
“Yes.” It felt good to say it out loud. “We lost everything in the flood.”
“I wish I had money to give you, but a job like mine doesn’t pay much.”
“I’m surprised it pays at all.” She looked at him. “What is your job, exactly?”
“I work for the Workers Alliance. The Popular Front. Whatever you want to call it.”
“The Communist Party.”
“Yes. There are about forty of us on the payroll across the state. Support in Hollywood is high right now, with what’s going on in Europe. I write for the Daily Worker, sign up new members, lead study groups, and organize strikes. Basically, I do whatever I can do to help people who are being taken advantage of by the capitalist system. And I spread the word that there’s a better way.” He met her gaze and returned it with a steady one of his own. “How did you end up living in that camp? As a single woman…”
She tucked her hair behind one ear. “You’ve heard my story before, believe me. We left bad times in Texas and found it worse in California.”
“Your husband?”
“Gone.”
“So, he’s a fool.”
Elsa smiled. She’d never quite thought of it that way, but she liked it. “That’s my position, yes. And you? Are you married?”
“Nope. Never been. Women tend to be scared of the trouble I bring. The big, bad Communist.”
“Everything is frightening these days. How much more trouble can there be?”
“I’ve been in prison,” he said quietly. “Does that scare you?”
“It would have. Once.” Elsa was unused to the way he stared at her. “I’m not going to get any prettier, you know.”
“You think that’s what I’m thinking when I look at you?”
“Why do you take the risk? Of communism, I mean. You must know it won’t work in America. And I see what it costs you.”
“For my mother,” he said. “She came here at sixteen because she was starving and had been disowned by her family because of me. I still don’t know who my father is. She worked like a dog to support us, doing whatever she had to do, but each night, at bedtime, she kissed me good night and told me I could be anything in America. It was the dream that had brought her here and she passed it on to me. But, it was a lie. For people like us, anyway. Folks who are from the wrong place, or have the wrong color skin, or speak the wrong language, or pray to the wrong God. She died in a factory fire. All of the doors were locked to keep the workers from taking cigarette breaks. This country used her up and spit her out and all she ever wanted was for me to have opportunities. A better life than she’d had.” He leaned toward her. “You understand. I know you do. Your people are starving, dying. Thousands are homeless. They can’t make enough money picking to survive. Help me convince them to strike for better wages. They’ll listen to you.”
Elsa laughed. “No one has ever listened to me.”
“They will. We need someone like you.”
Elsa’s smile faded. He was serious. “What good is a strike if you lose your job? I have children to feed.”
“Loreda is a firebrand. She would love—”
“She needs to be in school. Education is what will give her a better life, not joining the Communists.” Elsa got slowly to her feet. “I’m sorry, Jack. I’m not brave enough to help you. And please, please, keep your people away from my daughter.”
Jack rose. She could see the disappointment in his eyes. “I understand.”
“Do you?”
“Of course. Fear is smart until…” He headed for the door, paused as he reached for the knob.
“Until what?”
He looked back at her. “Until you realize you’re afraid of the wrong thing.”
* * *
THAT NIGHT, WHILE THE children slept, Elsa got her journal out of the box that had been in the truck. She turned through the pages. The children had been right that writing helped. Words jumped out at her: rain, baby in a lavender blanket, no work, waiting for cotton, the demoralizing rain. Tonight, later, she would write about her constant fear, how it strangled her all the time and the constant effort it took not to show it to her children. Writing about it would remind her that they had survived. As bad as the flood had been, they were still here.
Although this journal meant the world to her, now it was the only paper they had. She ripped a sheet out and wrote a letter to Tony and Rose.
Dear Tony and Rose:
We have an address!
We are—at last—out of our tent and into a home with real walls and a floor. The children are enrolled in a school that is a stone’s throw away from our own front door. We feel so blessed. That’s the good news. The not so good news is that a flood destroyed our tent and most of our belongings. Imagine that, a flood. I know you’d love a little of that water to come your way.
Lord, I miss home so much sometimes I can hardly breathe.
How is the farm? The town? You both?
Please write to us soon.
Love,
Elsa, Loreda, and An
t
TWENTY-EIGHT
Last night, they’d eaten a meal that almost filled their bellies and which had been cooked on an electric hot plate inside a cabin with four walls and a roof overhead and a floor to stand upon. After supper, they’d climbed into real beds on real mattresses that weren’t on the floor. Loreda had slept deeply, with her little brother tucked in close, and awakened the next morning refreshed.
After breakfast, they each dressed in the new garments and shoes they’d gotten from the Salvation Army and stepped outside into a bright sunlit day.
The Welty camp was situated on a few acres tucked in between cotton fields. Although the camp hadn’t flooded, evidence of too much rain was everywhere. The grass had been stomped into mud, but Loreda could see it would be a green pasture under better conditions. Now many of the trees, scattered randomly throughout the camp, were broken-limbed by the storm. Ditches full of muddy water ran here and there. Ten cabins and about fifty tents created a makeshift town in the center of the camp. Between the cabins and the first of the tents, Loreda saw a long building that was the laundry, and four restrooms—two for women and two for men—each of which had long lines of people waiting their turn. Most important, there were two faucets at each entrance. Clean water. No more hauling water from the ditch, boiling and straining it before each use.
At the company store, more people waited in line, mostly women, standing with their arms crossed, children close by. A hand-painted sign pointed the way to the school.
“What if I said we’d start tomorrow?” Loreda said glumly.
“I’d say you were just bumping gums,” Mom said. “I’m going to do laundry and get some food and you’re going to school. End of story. Start walking.”
Ant giggled. “Mom wins.”
Mom led the way toward a pair of tents positioned at the far end of the camp in a grove of spindly trees. She paused beside the largest of the tents, which had a wooden sign posted out front: LITTLE KIDS SCHOOL.
The tent next door read: BIG KIDS SCHOOL.
“I reckon I’m big,” Ant said.
Mom said, “I don’t think so,” and eased Ant toward the Little Kids tent.
The Four Winds Page 30
