“She wants us to go home,” Loreda said. The unexpected word—home— gave her a bit of steadiness; something to hold on to. Grandma and Grandpa. She needed them now.
“That’s what she said.”
Jack held Ant, who had cried himself to sleep.
“Good. I won’t bury her here,” Loreda said. “And Ant and I can’t stay. Even if they are still having dust storms in Texas. We can’t stay here. I won’t stay here.”
“I’ll drive you back, of course, but…”
“Money,” Loreda said dully. Everything came down to that. “I’ll talk to the Workers Alliance. Maybe—”
“No,” Loreda said sharply, surprised by the suddenness of her anger, the burning heat of it.
Enough was enough. Goddamned enough.
Desperate times called for desperate measures. She knew what Mom had done for Jean at a moment like this.
“I know where we can get what we need,” she said. “Can I take your truck?”
“It doesn’t sound like a good idea…” “It isn’t. Can I have your keys?”
“They’re in the truck. Don’t make me regret this.” “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Loreda rushed out of the hospital and drove Jack’s truck north. Look, Mom, a driving emergency, she thought, starting to cry again.
In town, she passed vigilantes driving up and down the streets with loudspeakers, telling people to get back to work or be arrested for vagrancy, promising hard labor.
She could do this. She could.
And if she died or went to hell or went to jail, well, okay. She was, by God, going to get her mother home so she could be buried on the land she loved, and not here, in this place that had broken and betrayed them.
She pulled up in front of the El Centro Hotel and ran up to Mom’s room. There, she grabbed the shotgun, stuffed some clothes in a laundry bag, and went back down to Jack’s truck and drove north.
Not far from the Welty camp, she parked behind an Old Gold cigarettes billboard. She grabbed the shotgun and laundry bag and darted into the camp and past the empty guardhouse.
The camp was quiet; eviction notices fluttered on every cabin door. She snagged some boys’ clothes from a laundry line—a pair of wool pants, a black sweater—and found a floppy black hat in a mud puddle. She pulled the boys’ oversized clothes on over her faded dress and tucked her hair up under the hat, then smeared mud on her cheeks.
Hopefully she looked like a boy going rabbit hunting.
A heavy pall of defeat lay over the place. The vigilantes were gone, but the point had been made. Power reestablished. Loreda had no doubt that even though Mom had given her life for this strike, it would be broken. If not today, then tomorrow or the next day. Starving, desperate people could only fight for so long.
She passed a few women and children standing in lines—for the showers, for the bathrooms, for the laundry—and made eye contact with none. She didn’t recognize many of them anyway; the camp was already filling with new folks, ready to pick for any wage to put food on the table.
The camp store sat off by itself, lights on inside, ready to trap more unwary newcomers into debt.
Loreda opened the door cautiously, peered in. No customers.
She breathed a sigh of relief.
She let the door bang shut behind her and did her best to swagger forward in her boy’s disguise. She kept her eyes cast downward.
There was a new man at the register, one she had never seen before. A lucky break.
Loreda raised the shotgun and aimed it at him.
The man’s eyes widened. “What’re you doin’, son?” “I’m robbing you. Give me the money in the register.” “We’re a credit business.”
“Don’t insult me. I know you give cash for credit.” She cocked the gun. “You ready to die for Welty’s money?”
The man wrenched open the cash register and pulled out all the bills, shoved them toward Loreda on the counter.
“Coins, too.”
He jangled up the coins and stuffed all the money in a burlap sack. “There. That’s everything we got. But Welty will find you and—”
She grabbed the bag. “Get down in the corner. If I see you run out after me, I’ll shoot you dead. Believe me, I am mad enough to do it.”
She backed out of the store, kept the gun aimed at his hunched back.
Once outside, she threw the gun in the bushes and ran for the trees at the back of the camp, pulling off the boy’s sweater as she went. She used the sweater to scrub the dirt off her face; she took off the hat and stepped out of the pants, then tossed it all in a trash can and shoved the burlap bag full of money into her laundry sack.
Now she was just a skinny girl in a faded dress.
She was halfway to the guardhouse when she heard a whistle blow. Men with guns ran into camp, stopped at the store.
Loreda went to the laundry and got in line. Someone hollered, “Got his gun!”
“Fan out, look everywhere! Welty wants this boy found.”
Sure. They didn’t mind cheating people, these big growers, but they hated being robbed. They would love to put someone away for armed robbery.
Loreda inched forward in line, her heart pounding, her mouth dry, but none of the vigilantes even glanced at the women standing in line to do laundry.
Sometimes it was good to be a woman.
The men ran through the camp, looking for boys, questioning them, snatching anything from their hands, barking out questions.
Then it was over.
When they were finally gone, Loreda stepped out of line and walked along the fence line out of the camp, carrying her laundry bag full of money. No one looked at her twice.
On the main road, she saw red lights flashing. Police going from camp to camp questioning, yanking bystanders aside.
Loreda drove back to the hospital.
There, she parked and counted the money.
One hundred and twenty-two dollars. And ninety-one cents. A fortune.
 |
THAT NIGHT THEY MADE an arrowed beeline over the mountains and across the worst part of the Mojave Desert in a darkness devoid of stars, with a pine coffin in the bed of the truck.
There were few other cars on the road. Loreda couldn’t see much beyond what lay in the glow of the headlights. Ant lay sleeping up against her. He hadn’t said a single word since Mom died.
At midnight, just past Barstow, Jack pulled off the road and parked.
Without a tent, they laid blankets and quilts on a flat patch of ground and stretched out, with Ant positioned between Jack and Loreda.
“You want to tell me now?” Jack said quietly, over the sound of Ant’s snoring.
“Tell you what?”
“How you got the money?”
“I did a bad thing for a good reason.” “How bad?”
“Baseball-bat-in-a-hospital-to-get-aspirin bad.” “Did you hurt anyone?”
“No.”
“And you won’t do it again and you know it was wrong?” “Yeah. The world’s topsy-turvy, though.”
“It is.”
Loreda sighed. “I miss her so much I can’t breathe. How will I make it like this for the rest of my life?”
She was grateful he didn’t answer. There was truth in his silence. She already knew this was a grief she would never get over.
“I never said I was proud of her,” Loreda said. “How could I—”
“Close your eyes,” Jack said. “Tell her now. I’ve been talking to my mom that way for years.”
“Do you think she hears?” “Moms know everything, kid.”
Loreda closed her eyes and thought of all the things she wished she’d said to her mother. I love you. I’m proud of you. I’ve never seen anyone so brave. Why was I so mean for so long? You gave me wings, Mom. Did you know that? I feel you here. Will I always?
When she opened her eyes, there were stars overhead.
