Кристин Ханна - The Four Winds

“Strike!” Loreda yelled.

The crowd joined in, chanting, “Strike, strike, strike.”

Jack saw Loreda at the same time someone grabbed her arm. Loreda yelped in pain and wrenched free, turning.

Her mother stood there, looking angry enough to blow smoke. “I can’t believe you’d do this.”

“Did you hear what he said, Mom?”

“I heard.” Mom glanced sideways, across the room, saw how many people were here.

Jack pushed through the crowd, coming their way.

“Your speech was great,” Loreda said as he drew near.

“I noticed you showed up alone,” he said. “It’s late for a girl your age to be out by herself.”

“Would you say that to Joan of Arc?” Loreda said.

“You’re Joan of Arc now, are you?” Mom said.

“I want to go on strike, Jack—”

“Loreda,” Mom said sharply. “It’s Mr. Valen. Now go upstairs and let me speak to him. I’ll deal with you later.”

“You can’t make me—”

“Go, Loreda,” Jack said evenly. He and Mom stared at each other.

“Okay, but I’m striking,” Loreda said.

“ Go, ” Mom said.

Loreda turned away and trudged up the stairs. She didn’t care what her mother said. She didn’t care how much trouble she got in or how dangerous it was.

Sometimes a person had to stand up and say enough was enough.

“HOW LONG HAVE YOU been back in Welty?” Elsa asked Jack when they were alone.

“A week or so. I was going to send word to you.”

“Oh, I’d say you sent word.” She stared at him, wishing that things were different, that she was different, that she had her daughter’s fire and courage. “She’s a fourteen-year-old girl, Jack, who snuck out in the middle of the night and walked a mile to get here. You know what could have happened to her?”

“What does that tell you, Elsa? She cares about this.”

“What does that prove? We all know it’s wrong, but your solution won’t make our lives better. You’ll just get us fired, or worse. Our survival hangs by a thread, do you get that?”

“I get it,” he said. “But if you don’t stand up, they’ll bury you, one cent at a time. Your daughter understands that.”

“She’s fourteen,” Elsa said again.

Jack lowered his voice to match hers. “A fourteen-year-old who is picking cotton all day. I assume Ant is, too, because it’s the only way for you to feed them.”

“Are you judging me?”

“Of course not,” he said. “But your daughter is old enough to decide for herself about this.”

“Says the man with no children.”

“Elsa—”

“I’m making the decision for her.”

“You should teach her to stand up for herself, Elsa. Not to lie down.”

“And now you are definitely judging me. If you thought I was a brave woman, you’ve misjudged me.”

“I don’t think so, Elsa. I think you believe it, though, which is tragic.”

“Stay away from Loreda, Jack. I mean it. I won’t let her be a casualty in this war you’re playing at.”

“No one is playing, Elsa.”

She walked away.

He started to follow her.

“Don’t,” she snapped, and kept walking.

Outside, she grabbed Loreda’s arm and half dragged her out to the street, where they began walking home in the dark. Automobiles rumbled past them, headlights bright.

“Mom, if you’d listen to him—”

“No,” Elsa said. “And neither will you. It’s my job to keep you safe. By God, I’ve failed at everything else. I will not fail at that. Do you hear me?”

Loreda stopped.

Elsa had no choice but to stop, too, and turn back. “What?”

“Do you really think you’ve failed me?”

“Look at us. Walking back to a cabin smaller than our old toolshed. Both of us skinny as matchsticks and hungry all of the time. Of course I’ve failed you.”

“Mom,” Loreda said, moving close. “I’m alive because of you. I go to school. I can think because you want to make sure I always do. You haven’t failed me. You’ve saved me.”

“Don’t you try to turn this around and make it about thinking for yourself and growing up.”

“But it is about that, Mom. Isn’t it?”

“I can’t lose you,” Elsa said, and there it was: the truth.

“I know, Mom. And I love you. But I need this.”

“No,” Elsa said firmly. “No. Now start walking. We have an early wake-up.”

“Mom—”

“No, Loreda. No. ”

LOREDA WOKE AT FIVE-THIRTY and had to force herself out of bed. Her hands hurt like the dickens and she needed about ten hours of sleep and a good meal.

She put on her tattered pants and a shirt with long, ripped sleeves and trudged out to get in line at the bathroom.

The camp was strangely quiet. People were out and about, of course, but there wasn’t much conversation. No one made eye contact for long. A field foreman stood at the chain-link fence, hat drawn low, watching people. She knew there were more spies about, listening for any talk of a strike.

She got in line for the bathroom. There were about ten women in front of her.

As she waited, she saw a flash of movement back in the trees. Ike, at the water pump, filling a bucket. Loreda wanted to walk right over to him, but she didn’t dare.

She finally made it to the front of the line and used the bathroom.

She exited from the back door, closing it quietly behind her. She looked around, didn’t see anyone loitering or watching. Trying to look casual, she strolled over to the water pump.

Ike was still there. He saw her coming and stepped aside. She bent over and washed her hands in the cold water.

“We’re meeting tonight,” Ike said quietly. “Midnight. The laundry.”

Loreda nodded and dried her hands on her pants. It wasn’t until she was halfway back to her cabin that she felt a prickling of awareness along the back of her neck. Someone was watching her or following her.

She stopped, turned suddenly.

Mr. Welty stood there in the trees, smoking a cigarette. Staring at Loreda. “Come here, missy,” he said.

Loreda walked slowly toward him. The way he looked at her, through narrowed eyes, sent a shiver down her spine. “Yes, sir?”

“You pick cotton for me?”

“I do.”

“Happy for the job?”

Loreda forced herself to meet his gaze. “Very.”

“You hear any of the men talking about a strike?”

Men. They always thought everything was about them. But women could stand up for their rights, too; women could hold picket signs and stop the means of production as well as men.

“No, sir. But if I did, I’d remind them what it’s like not to have work.”

Welty smiled. “Good girl. I like a worker who knows her worth.”

Loreda slowly walked back to the cabin, shutting the door firmly behind her. Locking it.

“What’s the matter?” Mom said, looking up.

“Welty questioned me.”

“Don’t draw that man’s attention, Loreda. What did he ask?”

“Nothing,” Loreda said, grabbing a pancake from the hot plate. “The trucks just drove up.”

Five minutes later, they were all out the door, walking toward the line of trucks parked along the chain-link fence.

Quietly, they joined their fellow workers and climbed up into the back of a truck.

When the sun rose on the cotton fields, Loreda saw the changes that had been made by the growers overnight: coils of spiked barbed wire topped the fencing. A half-finished structure stood in the center of the field, a tower of some kind. The clatter and bang of building it rang out. Men she’d never seen before paced the path between the chain-link fence and the road, carrying shotguns. The place looked like a prison yard. They were readying for a fight.