On Thursday, after ten hours of picking cotton, Loreda’s entire body hurt, and tomorrow morning, she would have to get up and do it all again.
For ten percent less in wages.
Ninety cents for a hundred pounds of picked cotton. Eighty cents if you counted the cut taken by the crooks at the company store.
She thought about it endlessly, obsessively; the injustice of it gnawed at her.
Just as she thought about the meeting. And her mother’s fear.
Loreda understood the fear more than her mother suspected. How could Loreda not understand it? She’d lived through the winter in California, been flooded out, lost everything, survived on barely any food, worn shoes that didn’t fit. She knew how it felt to go to bed hungry and wake up hungry, how you could try to trick your stomach with water but it never lasted. She saw her mother measuring beans out for dinner and splitting a single hot dog into three portions. She knew Mom regretted every penny she added to their debt at the store.
The difference between Loreda and her mother wasn’t fear—they shared that. It was fire. Her mother’s passion had gone out. Or maybe she’d never had any. The only time Loreda had seen genuine anger from her mother was the night they’d buried the Deweys’ baby.
Loreda wanted to be angry. What had Jack said to her the first day they met? You have fire in you, kid. Don’t let the bastards snuff it out. Something
like that.
Loreda didn’t want to be the kind of woman who suffered in silence. Refused to be.
Tonight was her chance to prove it.
At eleven o’clock, she lay in bed wide awake. Waiting. Counting every minute that passed.
Ant lay beside her, hogging the covers. Usually she wrenched them back and maybe even gave him a kick for good measure. Tonight she didn’t bother.
She eased out of bed and stepped onto the warm concrete floor. For as long as she lived, she would be grateful for flooring. Always.
A quick sideways glance confirmed that her mother was asleep.
Loreda grabbed a blouse and her overalls from the coatrack and dressed quickly, buttoning the bib after she’d stepped into her shoes.
Outside, the world was still. The air smelled of ripe fruit and fecund earth. A hint of woodsmoke from extinguished fires. Nothing ever really left here; things lingered. Scents. Sounds. People.
She closed the door quietly behind her, listening for footsteps. Her heart was pounding; she felt afraid … and keenly alive.
She waited, counted to ten, but she didn’t see any foremen out and about. Moving quietly, she headed into the night.
In town, she walked past the theater and City Hall, and turned onto a back street, where the grass was overgrown and most of the houses and businesses were boarded up. Dodging the streetlights, she stuck to the shadows until she came to the hotel they’d stayed in during the flood.
It was so quiet out here, she hoped they hadn’t canceled the meeting. All day, as she’d sweated and strained in the field, dragging her heavy sack behind her, pocketing the coupon that devalued her labor, she thought about tonight’s meeting.
There were no lights on in the El Centro Hotel, but a few cars were parked out front, and she saw that the heavy chain that locked the doors together hung slack from one of the doorknobs.
Loreda cautiously opened the front door.
A man with a beak of a nose and small round spectacles stood behind the reception desk, staring at her.
“You need a room?” he said in a heavily accented voice.
Loreda paused. Could she be arrested for just showing up? Or was this man an employee of the big farmers, here to identify rabble-rousers? Or was he a friend of Jack’s, here to make sure only the right people made it to the meeting?
“I’m here for the meeting,” she said. “Downstairs.”
Loreda moved toward the stairs. Nervous, suddenly. Excited. Scared.
She touched the smooth wooden banister as she made her way down the narrow stairs, past a broom closet and laundry room.
She heard voices, followed the sound to a room in the back, its door open to reveal a crowd inside.
People stood shoulder to shoulder. Men, women, and a few kids. Bobby Rand waved at her.
Jack stood in the front of the room, commanded attention. Although he was dressed like many of the migrants around him, in faded, stained overalls and a frayed denim shirt beneath a dusty brown suit coat, there was vibrancy to him, an aliveness that was like no one she’d ever met before. Jack believed in things and fought to make the world a better place. He was the kind of man a girl could count on.
“… one hundred and fifty strikers were herded into cages,” he was saying in a passionate voice. “Cages. In America. The big farmers and their corrupt coppers and citizens-turned-vigilantes put your fellow Americans in cages to break a strike of workers who just wanted an even shake. Two years ago, a bunch of Tulare farmers shot into a crowd of people just for listening to strike organizers. Two people were killed.”
“Why are you tellin’ us this?” someone yelled. Loreda recognized him from the squatters’ camp they’d lived in. A man with six kids and a wife who had died of typhoid. “You trying to scare us off?”
“I’m not going to lie to you good people. Striking against the big farmers is dangerous. They’ll oppose us with everything they’ve got. And, folks, as you know, they’ve got it all: money, power, the state government.” He picked up a newspaper, held it out for everyone to see. The headline read: “Workers Alliance Un-American.” “I’ll tell you what’s un-American, and that’s big farmers getting richer while you get poorer,” Jack said.
“Yeah!” Jeb said.
“What’s un-American is cutting pickers’ wages just because the growers are greedy.”
“Yeah!” the crowd yelled back.
“They don’t want you to organize, but if you don’t, you’ll starve, just like the pea pickers did in Nipomo last winter. I was there. Children died in the fields. Starved. In America. The big growers are planting less because cotton prices are down, so they pay less. God forbid their profit diminishes. They aren’t even pretending to give you a living wage.”
Ike yelled out: “They think we ain’t human!”
Jack looked out at the crowd, made eye contact one by one with his audience. Loreda felt an electricity of hope move from him to the crowd. “They need you. That’s your power. Cotton has to be picked while it’s dry and before the first frost. What if no one picks it?”
“A strike!” someone called out. “That’ll show ’em.”
“It isn’t easy,” Jack said. “Cotton is spread out over thousands and thousands of acres and the growers stand together. They pick a price to pay and stick with it. So we need to stand together. Our only chance is to join forces, all of the workers. Everyone, everywhere. We need you all to spread the word. We have to shut down the means of production completely.”
“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.
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.”
