Кристин Ханна - The Four Winds

“Why are you telling me that?”

“I didn’t want you to think I just … ran off. I wouldn’t do that to you.”

“That’s an odd thing to say to a woman you barely know.”

“If you’ll notice, I’m trying to change that, Elsa. I want to know you. If you’ll just give me a chance.”

“You scare me,” she said.

“I know,” he said, still holding her hand. “The growers are scared, the townspeople are angry, the state is bleeding money, and people are desperate. It’s a volatile situation. Something’s gotta give. The last time it exploded, three union organizers were dead. I don’t want to put you in danger.”

The funny thing was, Elsa hadn’t meant that at all. She was afraid of him as a man, afraid of the things she felt when he looked at her, afraid of the feelings he had awakened in her.

“Aren’t you a union organizer?” she said.

“I am.”

It made her think for the first time about the danger he was putting himself in. “So, I am not the only one who needs to be careful, am I?”

THIRTY

All that long, hot summer, Elsa and Loreda did their best to find work. They didn’t dare leave the growers’ camp to look elsewhere, and didn’t want to use relief money for gas, so they stayed in Welty and found what work they could. On days when there was no work, Elsa did her chores and then walked Loreda and Ant to the library, where Mrs. Quisdorf kept them busy with books and projects. With the kids safe at the library, Elsa often walked to the ditch-bank camp and sat with Jean by the muddy water or the buried-in-dirt truck and talked.

“Where is he?” Jean said on a particularly hot day in late August. The camp smelled to high heaven in this heat, but neither one cared. They were just happy to get a little time together.

“Who?” Elsa said, sipping the lukewarm tea Jean had made.

Jean gave Elsa that look, the one they’d perfected with each other. “You know who I mean.”

“Jack,” Elsa said. “I try not to think about him.”

“You need to try harder,” Jean said. “Or just admit he’s on your mind.”

“I don’t have a good history with men.”

“You know the thing about history, Elsa? It’s over. Already dead and gone.”

“They say people who don’t heed history are doomed to repeat it.”

“Who says that? I ain’t never heard it. I say folks who hang on to the past miss their chance for a future.”

Elsa looked at her friend. “Come on, Jean,” she said. “Look at me. I wasn’t pretty in the best of times—when I was young and well fed and clean and wore fine clothes. And now…”

“Ah, Elsa. You got a wrong picture of yourself.”

“Even if that is true, what does a person do about it? The things your parents say and the things your husband doesn’t say become a mirror, don’t they? You see yourself as they see you, and no matter how far you come, you bring that mirror with you.”

“Break it,” Jean said.

“How?”

“With a gosh dang rock.” Jean leaned forward. “I’m a mirror, too, Elsa. You remember that.”

C OTTON ’ S READY .

Word spread through the Welty camp on a hot, dry day in September. Airy white tufts floated above the crop, lifted into the clear blue sky. Notices on each cabin and tent advised the folks to be ready to pick at six in the morning.

Elsa dressed in pants and a long-sleeved blouse and made breakfast, then woke the children, who now sat on the edge of their bed, eating hot, sweet polenta, chewing it silently.

It broke Elsa’s heart that they would be picking with her today. Especially Ant. But they hadn’t had a meeting about it, not this season. Last year they’d been naïve; Elsa had thought she could keep her children in school while she made enough money to feed and house and clothe them. Now she knew better. They’d been in the state long enough to understand: Cotton was their lifeblood. Even the children had to pick.

They’d had no choice but to fall into the cycle the growers wanted them in: living on credit, building up debt, and never making enough, even with relief, to break out. They had to pick enough to pay off this year’s debt, so they could start living on credit again in the winter when the work vanished.

She rolled up their cotton sacks and filled their canteens and packed their lunches, and then hurried the kids out of the cabin to the row of waiting trucks.

“You,” the boss said, pointing at Elsa. “Three of you?”

No, Elsa wanted to say.

“Yes,” Loreda said.

“The kid’s scrawny,” the boss said, spitting tobacco.

“He’s stronger than he looks,” Loreda said.

The boss leaned over to the truck bed beside him and pulled out three twelve-foot-long canvas picking bags. “Go to the east field. A buck and a half apiece for the bags. We’ll put ’em on your account.”

“A dollar fifty! That’s highway robbery,” Elsa said. “We have our own bags.”

“If you live on Welty land, you use Welty bags.” He looked at her. “You want the job?”

“Yes,” Elsa said. “Cabin Ten.”

He threw them the three long sacks.

Elsa and the kids climbed into the truck with the other pickers and were driven five miles to another Welty field, where each was assigned their own row. Elsa unfurled her long, empty bag and strapped it to her shoulder and let it splay out behind her, then showed Ant how to do it.

He looked so small in the row. She and Loreda had spent time explaining the work to him, but he would have to learn as they had—by getting bloody hands.

“Quit starin’ at me like that, Ma,” he said. “I ain’t a baby.”

“You’re my baby,” she said.

He rolled his eyes.

A bell rang to start them off.

Elsa stooped over and got to work, reaching into the spiny cotton plant, wincing as the needle-sharp pins stuck deep into her flesh. She pulled off the bolls, separated them from leaves and twigs, and stuffed the white handfuls of cotton into her bag. Don’t think about Ant.

Over and over and over she did the same thing: pick, separate, shove into bag.

As the sun rose higher in the sky, Elsa felt her skin burning, felt sweat scrape the sunburn and collect at her collar. Behind her, the bag became heavier and heavier; she dragged it forward with every step.

By lunchtime, it was well over one hundred degrees in the field.

The water truck rolled forward, positioning itself at the end of the rows, which meant they had to walk nearly a mile for a drink of water.

Elsa saw how many workers were lined up outside the field hoping for work, standing for hours in the hot, hot sun. Hundreds of them.

Desperate enough to take any wage to feed their families.

Elsa kept picking, hating with every moment, every breath, that her children were out here picking alongside her.

When her bag was full, she muscled it out of her row and over to the line at the scales.

Loreda came up beside her. They were both red-faced and sweating profusely and breathing hard.

“Would it kill them to put in a bathroom?” Loreda said, sopping her brow.

“Hush,” Elsa said sharply. “Look at all the people waiting to take our jobs.”

Loreda looked out over the line at the entrance. “Poor folks. Even worse off.”

A truck rattled up the dirt road, dust clouding up around it. The sides were painted with a white cotton boll and read WELTY FARMS.

The truck came to a rattling stop. Mr. Welty climbed out. He was a big man, powerful-looking, with a shock of white hair that looked like cotton tufts beneath his felt fedora. Behind him, in the bed of the truck, were coils of barbed wire.

Everyone stopped working, turned.