by Elise Hooper
I stared at the orange and yellow paint streaking his hand before placing my hand in his. This was the state of our relationship: a handshake.
“Tell the lil’ fellas I’ll head over to see ’em one of these weekends while you’re gone.”
I nodded, suddenly desperate to get out of that room, that building, away from the shadowy figures in his new paintings, away from the feeling of failure I got when I looked at him. I swallowed back tears, let go of his hand, and fled.
PAUL AND I left Berkeley in my station wagon. He drove so I could lean out the window and take photos. Dust-covered jalopies carrying oil cans, battered suitcases, and washtubs lined the highways wherever we went. It looked like people were wearing their homes inside out. Tables, trunks, sideboards, bedding, even a goat in a pen—all could be seen strapped to the sides of the old jalopies. Sometimes the wheels of the vehicles were barely visible underneath all the rakes and shovels tied to the sideboards.
Our days on the road started early, when the air was cool and we’d find people working in the fields. Then, as the day heated up, we’d knock off for a few hours, eat, review our notes, and plan our travel routes. When we weren’t hanging around a greasy spoon overlooking a stretch of highway, we spent hours in the car together, sometimes talking, sometimes watching the miles tick past in silence.
Paul’s upbringing on a small farm in Iowa gave him a passion for protecting the individual farmer, whom he viewed as under siege by the rise of big business, especially in California. With his Midwestern wholesomeness and professorial air, he was an unlikely rebel, but his determination to defend the underdog workers appealed to me. Listening to him made me feel smarter and worldlier. I devoured everything he told me.
When we arrived at a site, I’d take several establishing shots from the roof of the car to show the field or encampment. One early evening when the sun still blazed overhead, I bent over to pass Paul the camera and put my hand on the ridge of the car’s roof to climb down from my perch. Pain seared through me as the metal rim of the roof rack, heated from the sun, burned my palm. I pulled away, crying out, and lost my footing. With the Graflex still clutched in my hands, I crashed off the side of the car, straight into Paul’s arms. He caught me easily. In the grip of his large hands, I felt safe. He didn’t release my waist right away but looked down at me.
I let out a nervous laugh. “Just what we need, a photographer with a broken leg.”
“Are you hurt?”
The burning of my palm turned my stomach, but I swallowed past it. “No, just clumsy, but then again, that’s nothing new.”
“You’re not clumsy at all. You always look quite graceful weaving through the fields,” he said, lowering me to the ground. Nothing on the camera appeared damaged, but he checked the lens and the pleats of the bellows before handing it back to me.
I could feel my face reddening beyond what the heat called for. With the camera hanging around my neck, I ducked and wiped my sweaty palms down my denim trousers, shuddering as my burned hand stung. Despite the pain or maybe because of my light-headedness resulting from it, an unexpected desire to reach for Paul and place his hands back on my waist overcame me. I held back the urge and escaped into the fields.
A FEW DAYS later, we stopped in Yuma, a dusty pile of buildings at the border where Mexico meets California and Arizona. At a gas station, I stepped out of our car to stretch my legs. A truck, rusty and dented, pulled in behind us. Three men hung off the back and clambered down when the rig stopped. A scrim of red dirt covered the truck’s faded green paint. One of the men, sucking on a piece of straw, circled it, checking the tires. When he saw me, he tipped his cap.
“Where you from?” I asked.
“Oklahoma. Got blowed out.”
“Blown out?”
“Yes, ma’am. Ain’t you heard ’bout the storm?”
“No.”
With one foot balanced on the back bumper, he took the hay out of his mouth, now soggy at the end, and eyed me. “Ev’things blowed off in the wind and made the sky’s dark as night all the time. Nothin’ there now. Reckon them banks are havin’ a field day, forclosin’ on everythin’, sellin’ it all off. Mark my words, the day of the small fella’s gone.” As he finished speaking, the bumper under his foot lurched to life. Diesel exhaust bellowed out of the tailpipe.
“Where are you heading now?”
He shrugged, pulling himself onto the back of the truck to find a spot within the lumpy tarps.
The truck became smaller and smaller as it huffed its way into the distance. I leaned into the window of our car. Paul was consulting a map. “Have you heard anything about a dust storm?” I recounted my conversation with the man from Oklahoma.
“Hmmm. Yuma’s usually an entry for Mexican migrants. I’ll check my notes, but I think 1933 is when I first started noticing an uptick in white migrants in California.” He looked behind us in the direction of Arizona. “Hold on a sec,” he said, swinging open his car door and getting out to approach one of the filling attendants. “Excuse me, think you can keep a tally of people coming through here? I want to know where they’re coming from.”
The attendant, a young boy I figured to be about fifteen, scrutinized Paul with a dubious expression. “How am I supposed to know where they’re from?”
“Check their license plates. Or just ask them and keep a list. If I’m not back later today, I’ll return tomorrow and want to see that list.” He handed the kid a one-dollar bill.
The boy’s eyes widened as he took in the money, a smile spreading across his freckled face. “Sure, mister.”
Paul pulled a pencil from his breast pocket and jotted a few more things down on the piece of paper, instructing the boy to collect as much information as he could from the people who stopped. We returned the next day. Paul ran a finger down the crinkled piece of paper the boy gave him. Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas—people were arriving from states in the middle of the country, all looking for work. “If this list is any indication of even a fraction of the people arriving, this spells trouble. The state’s not ready for this.”
From Yuma, we headed north, stopping in migrant encampments along the way. Outside of Bakersfield, we pulled off the highway to check on a dirty Model T stranded at the side of the road. Inside the automobile sat a weary couple, both hollow-eyed.
“Need some help?” Paul asked.
They looked back and forth at us with blank expressions. I stepped forward, thinking the woman might be more likely to speak with another woman. “Where you from?”
“Texas Panhandle,” she whispered, eyes red-rimmed. The rabbit fur collar on her wool coat hinted at better days.
“We got family comin’ ’long to help us,” her husband said, his light gray eyes faded within the dusty creases of his face. “Been ditched and stalled here for a bit. Now we’re stranded.”
While Paul continued to talk with them, telling them who we were, I held up my camera. The husband nodded, so I stepped back to take some photos. After a few minutes, we took our leave and settled back into the station wagon. I pulled out my notebook and wrote down the words I’d been repeating silently: ditched, stalled, stranded.
“More people from the middle of the country,” Paul said with a sigh, before pressing the clutch and turning on the ignition.
We returned home. After I spent a few days hidden in my development room, we reviewed the photos from our trip. I said, “I think there’s a different story than we expected unfolding in front of us.”
“What story is that?”
I shifted in my seat, tucking my right foot underneath my bottom so I could be higher to see the photos better. He waited. I swallowed, amazed that he took my opinions so seriously. After all, he was the expert on labor migration. “Well, I’m not sure,” I confessed. “I thought we were telling a story about migratory labor, up from Mexico, but that’s not what we’re seeing, is it? Not with all of these people arriving from the middle of the country.”
Paul nodded, res
ting his chin on his hand as he took in my work. The photos showed a migrant encampment in a Bakersfield dump. Parked jalopies sagged under layers upon layers of bedding, frying pans, and wooden water buckets. Bony children leaned against the muddy tires, glaring toward the camera.
“It’s a present-day westward migration.” I reached for a photo of a canvas-topped truck, placed it in front of him, and tapped on it. “See? The new covered wagon.”
He folded his hands across his chest. “Dorrie, I think you’re onto something.”
I startled at his use of my nickname. He’d never called me that before. When he realized I was staring at him, he flushed, pulled three photos in front of him, and studied them. Though I resumed sifting through the photos, all I could think about was the unexpected comfort I took in him calling me Dorrie. I smiled to myself and snuck another peek at Paul. I was starting to wonder about the story between us.
Chapter 27
Our next trip was to the Sacramento Valley. One afternoon, after I walked through the gate of a peach orchard where I’d been photographing several families at work, I found Paul leaning against the hood of the car, bent over his notes. He glanced at me, his frown vanishing, and grinned. “I thought I’d never get you out of there.”
“Sorry, I got drawn into following the children. Good Lord, the malnutrition, the flies. One mother told me she just buried her child because of tonsillitis. Tonsillitis!”
Paul nodded and straightened. He pried his glasses from his face, placed them down on his notebook and, blinking in the sunshine, he stretched his hands skyward. His face looked different without his glasses. Vulnerable. Younger. The undersides of his wrists faced me, appearing above the cuffs of his shirt. Pale and soft. Without thinking, I reached for his hand and placed it on my cheek. My gaze met his, though my heart pounded. Around us, the heat of the day silenced the usual sounds of the fields. No birds, no running water, no voices. Just the low drone of insects, yet even that seemed muted. It was just us. He caressed my cheek and along my neck until he reached my shoulder. Then he pulled me into his chest and kissed me. My white cotton shirt clung to my back, damp with perspiration, but I didn’t care. We were stuck together, and I liked it, the breathless feeling of our lips together, his chest and arms tight around me. Paul felt solid, like a force. In his arms, I felt protected and shielded. Safe. I wanted to stay here, despite the itchy smell of dust and heat clinging to us, yet I stepped away. “Let’s go somewhere.”
He nodded, desire filling his eyes. Without speaking, we loaded my equipment into the trunk and slid into the front seat side by side. He shifted the vehicle into first gear. We rolled down the road. Streaks of white shot through the pale blue of the afternoon sky. I rolled down the window, exhaling as the wind blew strands of my hair out of my face. With my other hand, I ran my palm up his arm to his shoulder. He reached for it and kissed each of my knuckles, his eyes still on the road. He lowered our entwined hands to his thigh. I stared at them.
Nothing felt surprising anymore.
This wasn’t the flash of attraction I’d experienced with Maynard. It was less of a shock of electricity, more like the pull of gravity, timeless and predestined. There was a steadfastness, a sturdiness to Paul that was new to me, certainly nothing like what I’d encountered before. I bit my lip. Maynard. For as long as I could remember, our relationship had been precarious. Maybe that had been the beauty of it. He’d always felt dangerous and surprising to me, an unpredictable force in my otherwise orderly existence. But the thing that had once burned incandescent between us had grown cool and dull. God, I’d been so young when I met him, so eager to be loved.
I glanced at Paul’s face. Rumors circulated about his wife, Katherine. People whispered about her beliefs in open marriage, her involvement in multiple affairs. I’d caught glimpses of her here and there around Berkeley. Blond hair, pastel-colored dresses with peplum waists, handbags that matched her shoes. The rumors were hard to believe, but at the same time, Paul had given off an air of loneliness ever since I first met him.
We arrived in the empty parking lot of an auto court. He turned off the ignition. An intensity hung in the air around us despite the outward calm of the scene. Though we stared straight ahead at the stucco exterior of the building, we may as well have been standing at the edge of a bridge, contemplating jumping. I think I swung my door open first, but Paul stopped me by grabbing my arm.
“I’m getting one room.”
“Yes.” As soon as the words left my lips, I knew I’d made a choice from which there would be no return.
I STARTED CALLING him Pablo. The nickname made us both giggle. He often spoke Spanish in the fields; the language sounded musical and romantic. For the next few days, whenever I called him this, he flushed. I’d hit the right spot, and he enjoyed all that the insinuation implied. Our trip was nearing its end. With San Francisco about one hundred and fifty miles away, we would be home the following evening. Over the course of the summer, everything had changed.
We drove north toward the city. Paul said, “I’ve been thinking.”
I turned my face to the steady line of empty horizon to my right and stared out the window. I did not want to think.
“I’m prepared to ask Katherine for a divorce.”
There it was. The word I had been dreading. Divorce. I swallowed. “Already?”
“Why not? Nothing’s going to change. I don’t want to be apart from you any longer.”
Though the station wagon motored forward, I felt like I was sinking. I closed my eyes.
“Come on, look at me. You know this is the right thing to do.”
I moaned. “Is it? God, it feels right to us, but you have Katherine, I’ve got Maynard. For crying out loud, we’ve got five children between us. Do you think they’ll think this is the right thing? I’ve seen the heartbreak that results from”—I couldn’t even say divorce aloud—“this kind of thing firsthand.”
He downshifted, our speed slowed, and the car rolled to the side of the road. The air was motionless and heavy between us. “Maybe not at first, but they’ll come to understand,” he said.
“I don’t know.”
“About us?”
“What am I going to do about Maynard?”
“You two have been living separately for the last three years.”
“I know, but I feel responsible for him.”
“He’ll be fine.”
I raked my hands over my face. “Will he? He’s sixty. He’s ill.”
“He’s a survivor.”
But I didn’t want Maynard just to survive. He was so talented. “He could have been such a success if he had been more ambitious. I never pushed him as I should have.”
Paul rested both hands atop the steering wheel and sighed. “Sometimes we can’t fix the people around us, no matter how much we try.”
He was wearing short sleeves and stretched his arm out to me. Cords of muscle ran under his skin and flexed as he reached for me. I shimmied along the seat and rested against him, leaning my head onto his shoulder. I didn’t have to fix a damn thing about Paul. What a relief. There were too many other things to fix in life. “I dread this whole business, but I’ll talk to Maynard when I get home.”
“What about your portrait business?”
I pulled my head off him. “What do you mean?”
“I’m going to Washington, D.C., next week and plan to get you a government job. A new division’s getting started, and I think I can have you hired as a staff photographer.” He looked over at me. “I should bring a couple of your prints to show them. Maybe some of your shots from Nipomo.”
I stared at the windshield. Splotches dotted the glass: dead bugs, dust, grime. I shuddered. “You think I should close my portrait studio?” I repeated. A trickle of sweat ran down my spine.
“Well, sure, don’t you? It really hasn’t been open for ages. You’d just be making it official.”
“But I supported my family for years with that business.”
He reached over and caressed the back of my neck. “We will support our families together now. I’ll help.”
I nodded but closed my eyes. Even though I hadn’t made any portrait appointments in months, the idea of giving notice to all of my clients to tell them that I was closing down permanently made me feel as though I were made of concrete. All those times Maynard received a rejection notice from a gallery, each time he came home tight, each time I smelled perfume on his collar, I knew I had the means to independence if I ever needed it. I hated to give that up, yet was there another choice? I glanced at Paul and softened. Since meeting him, I was a new woman. I’d never imagined finding such a partnership, a true meeting of the minds. Our timing was terrible, but if I’d learned one thing so far it was that life could be unpredictable and full of heartbreak. When beautiful moments present themselves, you have to seize them. Though I had no doubt in my mind that Paul was worth seizing, I feared what I’d be dropping as I grasped onto him. Only so many things can fit in the palms of one person.
Chapter 28
With me at the wheel, Maynard and I drove out to El Cerrito to retrieve the boys together. We were both quiet. We’d moved into our new rental house that morning. It hadn’t taken long since we didn’t have much anymore. I’d left most of my things in my studio and suspected Maynard had done the same. Though it looked as if everything was returning to normal, nothing was normal. I put down a box in the small attic bedroom and turned to find Maynard watching me. I should have explained what was happening with Paul, but I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. Not yet. I wanted one day of the four of us together—one day—before I smashed it to smithereens.
