Кристин Ханна - The Four Winds

But with guns ? It wasn’t as if they could shoot people for striking. This was America.

Still, a ripple of unease moved through the workers. It was what Welty wanted: the workers to be afraid.

The trucks rumbled to a stop. The workers got out.

“They’re afraid of us, Mom,” Loreda said. “They know a strike—”

Mom elbowed Loreda hard enough to shut her up.

“Hurry up,” Ant said. “They’re assigning rows.”

Loreda dragged her sack out behind her, took her place at the start of the row she’d been assigned.

When the bell rang, she bent over and went to work, plucking the soft white bolls from their spiked nests. But all she could think about was tonight.

Strike meeting. Midnight.

At noon the bell rang again.

Loreda straightened, tried to ease the cricks out of her neck and back, listening to the sound of men hammering.

Welty stood on the scales’ raised platform, looking out at the men and women and children who worked themselves bloody to make him rich. “I know that some of you are talking to the union organizers,” he said. His loud voice carried across the fields.

“Maybe you think you can find other jobs in other fields, or maybe you think I need you more than you need me. Let me tell you right now: that is not the case. For every one of you standing on my property, there are ten lined up outside the fence, waiting to take your job. And now, because of a few bad apples, I have had to put up fencing and hire men to guard my property. At considerable cost. So, I am lowering wages another ten percent. Anyone who stays agrees to that price. Anyone who leaves will never pick for me or any other grower in the valley again.”

Loreda looked at her mother over the row of cotton that stood between them.

The structure in the middle of the field was nearly complete. It was easy now to see what they’d been building all morning: a gun tower. Soon one of the foremen would be up there, pacing, carrying a rifle, making sure the workers knew their place.

You see? Loreda mouthed.

ELSA LAY AWAKE, DEEP into the night, worrying about the ten percent cut in wages.

Across the small, dark room, she heard the other rusted metal bedframe squeak.

Elsa saw the shadow of her daughter in the moonlight through the open vent. Loreda quietly got out of bed.

Elsa sat up, watched her daughter move furtively; she dressed and went to the cabin door, reached for the knob.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Elsa said.

Loreda paused, turned. “There’s a strike meeting tonight. In camp.”

“Loreda, no—”

“You’ll have to tie me up and gag me, Mom. Otherwise, I’m going.”

Elsa couldn’t see her daughter’s face clearly, but she heard the steel in her voice. As scared as Elsa was, she couldn’t help feeling a flash of reluctant pride. Her daughter was so much stronger and braver than Elsa was. Grandpa Wolcott would have been proud of Loreda, too. “Then I’m going with you.”

Elsa slipped into a day dress and covered her hair with a kerchief. Too lazy to lace up her shoes, she stepped into her galoshes and followed her daughter out of the cabin.

Outside, moonlight set the distant cotton fields aglow, turned the white cotton bolls silver.

The quiet of man was complete, unbroken, but they heard the scuttling of creatures moving in the dark. The howl of a coyote. She saw an owl, perched in a high branch, watching them.

Elsa imagined spies and foremen everywhere, hidden in every shadow, watching for those who would dare to raise their voices in protest. This was a stupid idea. Stupid and dangerous.

“Mom—”

“Hush,” Elsa said. “Not a word.”

They passed the newer section of tents and turned into the laundry—a long, wooden structure that held metal washbasins, long tables, and a few hand-cranked wringers. Men rarely stepped foot in the place, but now there were about forty of them inside, standing in a tight knot.

Elsa and Loreda slipped to the back of the crowd.

Ike stood at the front. “We all know why we’re here,” he said quietly.

There was no answer, not even a movement of feet.

“They cut wages again today, and they’ll do it again. Because they can. We’ve all seen the desperate folks pouring into the valley. They’ll work for anything. They have kids to feed.”

“So do we, Ike,” someone said.

“I know, Ralph. But we gotta stand up for ourselves or they’ll destroy us.”

“I ain’t no Red,” someone said.

“Call it whatever you want, Gary. We deserve fair wages,” Ike said. “And we aren’t going to get ’em without a fight.”

Elsa heard the distant sound of truck engines.

She saw people turn around, look behind them.

Headlights.

“Run!” Ike yelled.

The crowd dispersed in a panic, people running away from the laundry in all directions.

Elsa grabbed Loreda’s hand and yanked her back toward the stinking toilets. No one else was going this way. They lurched into the shadows behind the building and hid there.

Men jumped out of the trucks, holding baseball bats, sticks of wood; one had a shotgun. They formed a line and began walking through the camp, backlit by their headlights, their footsteps muffled by the chug of their engines. They beat their weapons into the palms of their hands, a steady thump, thump, thump.

Elsa pressed a finger to her mouth and pulled Loreda along the fence line. When they finally made it back to the cabins, they ran for their own, slipped inside, locked the door behind them.

Elsa heard footsteps coming their way.

Light flashed through the cracks in the cabin; men moved past, accompanied by the sound of baseball bats hitting empty palms.

The sound came close— thump, thump, thump —and then faded away. In the distance, someone screamed.

“You see, Loreda?” Elsa whispered. “They’ll hurt the people who threaten their business.”

It was a long time before Loreda spoke, and when she did, her words were no comfort at all. “Sometimes you have to fight back, Mom.”

THIRTY-TWO

“Can we drive to relief this week, Ma?” Ant said at the end of another long, hot, demoralizing day picking cotton.

Elsa had to admit that the idea of walking to town and back after a day in the fields was hardly appealing.

But these were the kinds of decisions that came back to haunt a woman when winter came.

“Just this once. In fact, Ant, if you want to, you can stay in the camp and play with your friends if you’d like.”

“Really? That’d be swell.”

“I’ll stay and watch him,” Loreda said.

Elsa gave her daughter a pointed look. “You, I’m not letting out of my sight.”

They left Ant at the cabin and got into the truck.

“Can I practice driving? Grandpa said I should keep practicing,” Loreda said. “What if there’s an emergency?”

“An emergency that requires you to drive?”

“It’s possible.”

“Fine.”

Loreda got behind the wheel.

Elsa climbed into the passenger seat. Lord, but it was hot. Loreda started the engine.

“You remember how to work the pedals? Do it slowly, carefully. Find the—”

The truck lurched forward and died.

“Sorry,” Loreda said.

“Try again. Take your time.”

Loreda worked the pedals, put the truck in first gear. They moved slowly forward.

The engine revved.

“Second gear, Loreda,” Elsa said.

Loreda tried again and finally got it into second.

They drove in fits and starts down the road to the state relief office, where there was already a crowd of people waiting. The line snaked out the door and through the parking lot and down the block.

Elsa and Loreda got in line.