On the morning of the sixth, just before dawn, Elsa and the children climbed into one of the waiting Welty trucks.
The workers were quiet, subdued. People were reluctant to make eye contact. Elsa didn’t know if that meant they were with the strike or against it, but they all knew about it. Strike talk was everywhere. Careful words, spoken in dark corners. Everyone who worked in the valley knew a strike was happening today. Which meant the growers knew.
“I want you and Ant always in my sight,” Elsa said as the truck pulled up in front of the cotton field. Jack’s truck was parked in the middle of the road; he, Natalia, and several of their comrades waited for the strikers, held picket signs. The gate to the field was open.
“Fair pay! Fair pay! Fair pay!” Jack chanted as the workers climbed down from the truck.
Several cars and trucks appeared on the road behind Jack and Natalia, drove slowly forward. In minutes, Jack and his comrades would be caught between the strikers in front of them and the growers behind them, hemmed in on either side by fenced cotton fields.
The workers stopped en mass, stood clustered together, facing the Communists.
The first car stopped behind Jack’s truck. Three men got out; each one held a rifle.
A truck stopped beside it. Two more men jumped onto the road.
A third truck rolled into place and Mr. Welty stepped out, holding a shotgun. He walked forward, stopped about three feet behind Jack, and faced the strikers. “Wages are lowering today to seventy-five cents for a hundred pounds of cotton,” Welty said. “If you don’t take the wage and pick, there are plenty who will.”
Five armed men fanned out behind him, guns at the ready.
Jack turned to face Welty, walked boldly toward the owner, went toe to toe with him, became the tip of the arrow of the strikers.
“They won’t pick for that,” Jack said.
“You don’t even work for me, you lyin’ Red,” Welty said.
“I’m trying to help these workers. That’s all. Your greed is un-American. They aren’t going to pick for seventy-five cents. That’s not a living wage.” Jack turned to the workers. “He needs you to pick but he doesn’t want to pay you. What do we say?”
No one answered.
Welty’s men smacked their gun barrels against their palms. “They’re smarter than you are, Red,” Welty said.
Elsa knew what they were supposed to do now; they all did. Jack had told them at the barn. Go into the fields peaceably. Sit down.
If they didn’t move, didn’t act, this strike would be over before it began and they would lose and the bosses would be even stronger.
Elsa placed a hand on each of her children’s shoulders. “Come on, kids.
Into the field.”
They walked forward, moved through the crowd and then emerged from it, three lone figures, out in front, moving toward the entrance to the field.
The spiked barbed wire that topped the chain-link fencing glittered in the sunlight; an armed man stood at the parapet of the gun tower, his rifle aimed at the workers.
“See?” Welty said to Jack. “This little lady knows who pays her.
Seventy-five cents is better than nothing.”
Elsa walked past Jack and Welty without looking at either man. She and her children walked into the cotton field.
Loreda looked back. “No one is following us, Mom.”
Follow us, Elsa thought. Please. Don’t let us be alone. It will all be for nothing then. Jack said they all needed to do it, together, to stop the means of production.
“Fair pay!” Jack shouted behind her. “Fair pay!”
The walk into the cotton field was the longest six minutes of Elsa’s life.
She took her place in a row and turned around.
For a moment the crowd of pickers stood there, motionless, staring at Elsa and her children, alone in the field.
Ike stepped forward first, pushed his way out of the crowd, and began walking toward the open gate.
“Look, Mom,” Loreda said under her breath as one by one the workers followed Ike, walked into the fields, and filled the rows.
As one, the workers turned to face Welty. “Get to work, men,” Welty yelled.
As if there were only men here.
Elsa stared out at the people standing in the rows of cotton, her people. Her kind. Their courage humbled her. “You know what to do!” Elsa yelled.
The workers sat down.
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AS DUSK DREW NEAR, the strikers stood up and walked out of the fields, under the angry gazes of the boss and his men.
The strikers had filled the fields all day, sitting quietly.
Jack waited for them down the road. He had a bloody lip and a blackening eye; still, he gave the group a smile. “Good job, everyone. We got their attention. Tomorrow we need to get an even earlier start. They’ll be ready this time, and they won’t send trucks to pick you up. We’ll meet at four A.M. Outside the El Centro Hotel.”
They began the long walk home, all of them together.
Loreda was jubilant. “Not a single boll of cotton was picked today.
That’ll teach Mr. Fat Cat not to take advantage of us anymore,” she said.
Elsa walked beside Jack. She wished she could feel as happy as her daughter did, but her worry outpaced her enthusiasm. She could tell most of the strikers felt as she did. Looking at Jack’s bruised face, she said, “You certainly got their attention, I see.”
He moved closer. His fingers brushed hers as they walked. “When a man resorts to violence, he’s scared,” Jack said. “That’s a good sign.”
“Did we make it worse for ourselves?”
“They’ll be ready for us tomorrow,” Jack said.
“How long will all this last?” she asked. “Without relief, we are going to be in trouble, Jack. They won’t give us credit at the store if we don’t pick, and none of us has any savings. We can’t hang on for long…”
“I know,” Jack said.
They came to the Welty growers’ camp. The workers who lived there turned in, heading back to their tents and cabins. Loreda and Ant ran off ahead. Others kept walking down the road.
Jack and Elsa stopped, looked at each other. “You were amazing today,” he said quietly.
“All I did was sit down.”
“It was bold and you know it. I told you they’d listen to you.”
She touched the swollen purple skin below his eye. “You need to be careful tomorrow.”
“I’m always careful.” He gave her a smile that should have been comforting but wasn’t.
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LATER THAT NIGHT, ELSA stood at the hot plate stirring a pot of beans.
Someone pounded on the door so hard the walls rattled.
“Kids, get behind me,” she said, and then went to the door, opening it.
A man stood there, holding a hammer. “Well, well,” he said. “If it isn’t the woman at the front of the line. The Red’s whore.”
Elsa shielded the children with her body. “What do you want?” He shoved a piece of paper at her. “Can you read?”
She yanked the notice out of his hand and read it.
To John Doe and Mary Doe, whose true names are unknown:
You will please take notice that you are required to vacate and surrender up to me the premises now occupied by you; said premises being known as California Lands Unit 10.
This is intended to be three days’ notice to vacate said property on the grounds that you are in unlawful possession thereof, and unless you do vacate the same as the above stated, the proper action at law will be brought against you.
Thomas Welty, owner, Welty Farms
“You’re evicting us? How am I here unlawfully?” Elsa said. “I pay six dollars a month for this cabin.”
“These are pickers’ cabins,” the man said. “Did you pick today?” “No, but—”
“Two more nights, lady,” the man said. “Then we come back here and take all your shit and throw it in the dirt. You’ve been notified.”
He left.
Elsa stood in the open doorway, stared out at the pandemonium in camp. A dozen men moved ominously forward, pounding notices on doors, kicking doors open, handing out eviction notices, and nailing them on posts near every tent.
“They can’t do that!” Loreda screamed. “Pigs!”
Elsa yanked her children inside, slammed the door shut.
“They can’t evict us for exercising our rights as Americans,” Loreda said. “Can they?”
Elsa saw when it settled into place for Loreda, when she really understood the risk. As bad as ditch-bank living had been before, they’d had a tent, at least. Now, if they got kicked out of here, they had nothing.
The growers knew all of this, knew tomorrow it would be harder for the workers not to pick, and harder still the day after that.
How long could hungry, homeless, starving people stand up for an idea?
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ELSA WOKE TO A hand clamped over her mouth. “Elsa, it’s me.”
Jack. She sat up.
He took his hand away from her mouth. “What’s wrong?” she whispered.
“There’s talk of trouble. I want you and the kids out of the camp tonight.”
“Yes. They evicted all of us today. I think that’s just the beginning.” She threw back the covers and got out of bed. His hand slid down her side in a quick caress.
Elsa closed the window vent, then lit a kerosene lamp and went to wake the children.
Ant grumbled and kicked at her and rolled over. “What?” Loreda said, yawning.
“Jack says there may be trouble tomorrow. He wants us to move out.” “Of the cabin?” Loreda said.
In the faint light, Elsa saw the fear in her daughter’s eyes. “Yes,” Elsa said.
“All right, then.” Loreda elbowed her brother. “Get up, Ant. We’re on the move.”
They packed their few belongings quickly and stowed the boxes in the back of the truck, along with the crates and buckets they’d salvaged in the last few months.
At last, Elsa and Loreda stood at the door, both staring at the two rusted metal bed frames with mattresses and the small hot plate, thinking what luxuries they were.
“We can move back in when the strike is over,” Loreda said. Elsa didn’t answer, but she knew they wouldn’t live here again. They left the cabin and walked out to their truck.
The children climbed into the back and Elsa got into the driver’s seat.
Jack took his place beside her. “Ready?” he said.
“I guess.”
She started the engine but didn’t turn on the headlights. The truck grumbled down the road.
Elsa parked in front of the boarded-up El Centro Hotel, where they’d stayed during the flood.
Jack unlocked the heavy chain from the front door and led them inside.
The lobby stank of cigarette smoke and sweat. People had been here, and recently. In the dark, Jack led them up the stairs and stopped at the first closed door on the second floor. “There are two beds in here. Loreda and Ant?”
Loreda nodded tiredly, let her half-sleeping brother angle against her. “Don’t turn on the lights,” Jack said. “We’ll come get you in the morning
for the strike. Elsa, your room is … next door.”
“Thank you.” She squeezed his hand and let him go, then got the kids settled in their separate beds.
In no time, Ant was asleep; she could hear his breathing. It struck her with painful clarity that this simple sound was the very essence of her responsibility. Their lives depended on her and she was letting them strike tomorrow.
“You’re wearing your worried face,” Loreda said when Elsa sat down on the bed beside her.
“It’s my love face,” Elsa said, stroking her daughter’s hair. “I’m proud of you, Loreda.
“You’re scared about tomorrow.”
Elsa should have been ashamed that Loreda saw her fear so clearly, but she wasn’t. Maybe she was tired of hiding from people, of thinking she wasn’t good enough; she’d filled that well for years and now it was empty. The weight of it was gone. “Yes,” she said. “I’m scared.”
“But we’ll do it anyway.”
Elsa smiled, thinking again of her grandfather. It had taken decades, but she finally knew exactly what he’d meant by the things he’d told her. It wasn’t the fear that mattered in life. It was the choices made when you were afraid. You were brave because of your fear, not in spite of it. “Yes.”
She leaned down and kissed her daughter’s forehead. “Sleep well, baby girl. Tomorrow will be a big day.”
Elsa left her children and went into the room next door, where Jack sat on the bed, waiting for her. A single candle burned in a brass holder on the nightstand. The few boxes that held their belongings were stacked along one wall.
Jack stood.
She walked boldly up to him. In his eyes, she saw love. For her. It was young, new, not deep and settled and familiar like Rose and Tony’s, but love just the same, or at least the beautiful, promising start of it. All of her life she’d waited for a moment like this, yearned for it, and she would not let it pass by unnoticed, unremarked upon. Time felt incredibly precious in these hours before the strike. “I promised a girlfriend something crazy.”
“Oh, yeah?”
She brought her hands up, linked them behind his head. “I’ve never asked a man to dance. And I know there’s no music.”
“Elsa,” he whispered, leaning in to kiss her, moving to a song that wasn’t being played. “We are the music.”
Elsa closed her eyes and let him lead.
For you, Jean.
