“I was thinking I could take Loreda hunting tomorrow,” Grandpa said at dinner that night.
“That’s a good idea,” Grandma said, dipping her bread in a small bit of their precious olive oil. “The compass is in my dresser. Top drawer.”
“We should clean out the barn,” Mom said. “Rafe’s old hunting tent is in there somewhere. And the wood-burning stove from the dugout.”
Loreda couldn’t take it another second. The grown-ups were jawing about nothing. They seemed to forget that Ant was in that dingy hospital without any of them. Or they thought she was too young to hear the truth. This stupid conversation was making her sick. The last thing they needed to do was to clean out the darn barn.
She got to her feet so suddenly the chair legs screeched. She kicked the chair out of her way, watched it crash to the floor. “He’s dying, isn’t he?”
Mom looked up at her. “No, Loreda. He’s not dying.”
“You’re lying to me. And I’m not doing dishes.” She stormed out of the house and slammed the door shut behind her.
Outside, there were no horses in the corral, no hogs in their pen. All they had left were a few bony chickens too hot and tired and hungry to cluck at her passing and two cows who were barely still standing. Soon, the cows would be sold to the government men and be taken away. Then all the pens would be empty.
She climbed up to the windmill platform and sat beneath the endless, star-splattered Great Plains night sky. Up here it felt—or it once had—as if
she were a part of the heavens. She’d been so many things sitting here—a ballerina, an opera singer, a motion-picture star.
Dreams her father had encouraged before he left to follow his own.
Loreda bent her legs and wrapped her arms around her ankles. She could handle the dying farm and adults who lied to her. She could even handle her father abandoning them—her—but this …
Ant. Her baby brother, who curled up like a potato bug and sucked his thumb, who ran like a marionette, all arms and legs akimbo, who looked up at her at night and said, “Tell me a story,” and hung on every word.
“Ant,” she whispered, realizing it was a prayer. The first one she’d even begun in years.
The windmill shook. She looked down and saw her mother ascending, rattling the boards as she climbed up.
Mom sat down beside her, let her legs dangle over the edge. “I’m not a baby, Mom. You can tell me the truth.”
Mom took a deep breath and exhaled it. “We were talking about your dad’s tent because … we’re leaving Texas as soon as Ant is better. Going to California.”
Loreda turned. “What?”
“I talked it over with Grandma and Grandpa. We have a bit of money and the truck runs. So, we will drive west. Tony is still strong. He’ll find work, maybe on the railroad. I could do laundry for people, I hope. I hear Pamela Shreyer got work in a jewelry store. Imagine that. Her husband, Gary, is tending grapes.”
“And Ant is coming with us?”
“Of course he is. As soon as he’s better, we’ll go.”
“It’s a thousand miles to California. Gas is nineteen cents a gallon. Do we have enough for that?”
“How do you know all of that?”
“After Dad left, when I was supposed to be studying Texas history, I studied maps of California. I thought about—”
“Running away to find him?”
“Yeah. Turns out I’m stupid, but not that stupid. California is a big state. And I don’t even know for sure that he went west. Or that he stayed west.”
“No. We don’t know any of that.”
Loreda leaned against her mother, who put an arm around her.
Leaving. Loreda thought about it for the first time, really thought about it. Leaving home.
“I wanted you to grow up on this land,” Mom said. “I wanted to grow old here and be buried here and watch over your children’s children. I wanted to see the wheat grow again.”
“I know,” Loreda said, with a sting of realization: there was a part of her that wanted that, too.
“We don’t have a choice,” Mom said. “Not anymore.”
 |
A WEEK LATER, MOST of the chicken coop was still buried in dirt, as was one whole side of the barn. The cows had been sold and taken away and the farm had been transformed by the eleven-day dust storm into a sea of brown waves. It was too much work to dig out from all that dirt, especially now that they were leaving. The big, wooden-slat-sided truck bed had been loaded with a few of the things they thought they’d need in their new life— the small wood-burning stove, barrels of goods and food, boxes of bedding, pots and pans, a gallon of kerosene, lanterns.
Elsa walked like a Bedouin up and down the dunes, past the windmill. At last she found some yucca, growing wild, its fibrous roots exposed by the wind and erosion.
She hacked up the roots, ripped them out of the ground, and dropped them into a metal bucket.
Back at the house, she saw Loreda seated at the kitchen table with Tony, maps laid out around them.
“What’s that?” Rose said, coming out of the kitchen. She’d canned two chickens for the trip. That, along with the last of the canned vegetables, a sugar-cured ham, and some preserved Russian thistles, should get them to California.
“Yucca. We can boil it and eat it.” Loreda made a face. “A new low, Mom.”
Outside, a car came into view. They looked at each other. When was the last time they’d had visitors?
Elsa wiped her hands on a cement-sack dish towel and followed Tony out of the house.
The automobile rolled up the road, dodging this way and that to avoid cracks in the earth and sand dunes and coils of barbed wire. Yellow-brown dust billowed up from the thin rubber tires.
Tony crossed the porch and headed toward the automobile coming their way.
Elsa tented a hand to shield her eyes from the glare of the sun.
“Who is it?” Rose asked, coming up beside her, wiping her damp hands on her apron.
The automobile rumbled up into the yard and stopped in front of Tony.
The cloud of dust dissipated slowly, revealing a 1933 Ford Model Y.
The door opened slowly. A man stepped out of the car, straightened. He wore a black suit, the buttoned-up coat strained over a well-fed gut, and a brand-new fedora. A thicket of gray sideburns bracketed his florid face.
Mr. Gerald, the only banker left in town.
Rose and Elsa walked down into the brown yard and stood with Tony. “Morton,” Tony said, frowning. “Are you here about the meeting
tomorrow? I hear that government man is coming back to town.”
“Yes, he is. But that’s not why I’m here.” Morton Gerald shut the car door gently, as if the automobile were a lover in need of care, and doffed his hat. “Ladies.” He paused, looked uncomfortably at Tony. “Perhaps the ladies would like to give us some time to speak privately,” he said.
Rose said firmly, “We’ll stay.”
“How can I help you, Morton?” Tony asked.
“Your note for the back hundred and sixty acres came due,” Mr. Gerald said. To his credit, he looked unhappy with the news. “I’d roll it over if I could, but … well, as tough as times are for you farmers, there are men in the big cities speculating on land. You owe us nearly four hundred dollars.”
“Take the thresher,” Tony said. “Hell, take the tractor.”
“No one needs farm equipment these days, Tony. But the rich men back East, the men who own the bank, they figure there’s still money in land. If you can’t pay, they’re going to foreclose.”
There was no answer, just the sighing of the wind, as if it, too, were disgusted.
“Can you pay something, Tony? Anything, so I can hold ’em off?”
Tony looked whipped, ashamed. “I have more land than I need, Morton.
Go ahead, take those acres back,” he said.
Mr. Gerald pulled a pink slip of paper out of his shirt pocket. “This is a formal foreclosure on your back one hundred sixty acres. Unless you repay your debt in full in the time stated, we will auction off that section of land on April sixteenth to the highest bidder.”
|
ELSA’S SHOES SANK INTO the deep sand every now and then, upsetting her balance as she and Tony walked to town. On either side of the road, abandoned farmhouses and automobiles were buried in drifts of dirt; sometimes all she could see of a shed was the roof’s peak, sticking up from a dune. Telephone poles had fallen down. Not a bird called out.
In town, an otherworldly quiet reigned. No automobiles rumbled up the street, no horses clopped in a steady rhythm. The school bell had been ripped away in the eleven-day storm and still hadn’t been found. No doubt it was buried and would be revealed when the wind returned and shifted the landscape yet again.
At the makeshift hospital, Elsa came to a stop. “I’ll meet you in thirty minutes?”
Tony nodded. He pulled the patched gray hat down over his eyes and headed toward the schoolhouse for the town meeting, his shoulders already slumped in defeat. No one expected much from the government man’s return.
When Elsa entered the shadowy hospital, it took her eyes a moment to adjust to the hazy gloom. People hacked and coughed; babies cried. Tired nurses moved from bed to bed.
Elsa smiled at masked patients as she passed them. Most were either very young or very old.
Ant sat up in his narrow cot, pretending swordplay with a fork and a spoon. “Take that, matey,” he said, clanging the fork into the spoon. His voice was still rough and the gas mask sat in readiness on the small table beside him. “You’re no match for the Shadow!”
“Hey there,” Elsa said, sitting down on the edge of his bed. He looked so much better today. For the past ten days, Ant had been lethargic and had remained listless even when someone came to visit. Here though, finally,
was her boy. He’s back. Elsa’s relief was so sudden and staggering she felt tears sting her eyes.
“Mommy!” He launched himself at her, hugged her so fiercely she almost fell off the bed. She had difficulty letting him go.
“I’m playing pirates,” he said, grinning at her. “You lost a tooth.”
“I did! And I really lost it. Nurse Sally thinks I swallowed it.”
Elsa lifted the basket she’d brought with her. Inside was a bottle of orzata, the sweet syrupy drink they made each year from almonds purchased at the general store. This was the last precious bottle they had, made years ago and hoarded for special occasions. Elsa added a splash of it to a bottle she’d filled with canned milk and shook it to make bubbles, then handed it to Ant.
“Jeepers,” he said, savoring his first sip. She knew he would try to drink it slowly and make it last, but he wouldn’t be able to.
“And this,” Elsa said, producing a single sugar cookie glazed with sweet icing.
Ant nibbled the cookie like a mouse, starting around the edges, working his way in to the chewy center.
“It looks like one lucky little boy has a mom who loves him,” said the doctor, stopping by the bed.
Elsa stood. “He looks better today, Doctor.”
“He must be improving; the nurses tell me he’s becoming a handful,” Dr. Rheinhart said, ruffling Ant’s hair. “His fever finally broke last night and his breathing is much improved. He is absolutely on the mend. I want to keep an eye on him for a few days, but that’s just to be safe.”
Elsa offered the doctor a cookie. “It’s not much, I know.”
The doctor took the cookie and smiled, taking a bite. “So, Ant, would you like to go home soon?”
“Boy, would I, Doc. My toy soldiers miss me.” “How about Tuesday?”
“Yippee!” Ant said. A little cough accompanied his enthusiastic cry. Elsa’s heart clutched at the sound. Would she feel a rush of fear at every cough from now on? “Thank you, Doctor,” she said.
He gave her a tired smile. “See you Tuesday.”
Elsa sat back down beside her son. His favorite book lay waiting for them. The Tale of Little Pig Robinson by Beatrix Potter. He could listen over and over to the story of Little Pig’s escape on a rowboat to the land where the Bong-Tree grows, loving it anew each time. Or maybe it was the familiarity he loved, the idea that every time it ended in the same way.
He snuggled into the crook of her arm, eating the cookie while she read to him. Finally, she closed the book.
“Yah gotta go?” he said, looking forlorn.
“The doc wants to keep you here for a few days, just to make sure you’re well, but in no time at all, we will be off on our adventure.”
“To California,” he said.
“To California.” Elsa pulled him into her arms and held him tightly, then kissed his forehead and whispered, “’Bye, baby boy.”
Leaving him was always hard, but finally, there was hope. Ant would be coming home soon.
Outside, she glanced down the street and saw people coming out of the school. A glum, quiet gathering. She saw Tony exchange a few words with Mr. Carrio, then shake his hand.
Elsa waited for Tony on the boardwalk. He moved slowly toward her, looking beaten.
“How’s our boy?” Tony asked.
“Doc says he can leave on Tuesday. Any news from the government man?” Elsa asked
Tony gave her a look so steeped in despair it took her breath away. “No good news,” he said.
Elsa nodded.
They started the long, solemn walk home.
|
IN TWO DAYS, THEY were leaving this godforsaken land. And Elsa didn’t say that lightly.
God forsaken.
How else could one describe it? God had turned His back on the Great Plains.
She’d spent the last few days packing for the trip. On this Palm Sunday, instead of going to church, Elsa had canned the jackrabbits Tony and Loreda shot yesterday; when that laborious chore was done, she’d moved on to the laundry.
Now at the end of the blue-skied day, Elsa knelt in front of her little aster plant, pouring a few precious cupfuls of water into the thirsty ground.
This flower, which she’d covered and protected and watered and talked to for so long, stood alone, defiantly green against all this brown.
She would have to leave it behind to die.
She dug up the small, tender plant. Carrying it in a bowl made from her gloved hands, she crossed the yard.
At the family’s cemetery, the white picket fence lay in pieces; the headstones were half covered in dirt. Four gray, store-bought headstones with Rose’s and Elsa’s babies’ names inscribed on them. Three girls and a boy.
How long would these markers last in the wind? And when the Martinellis were gone, who would tend to their children, buried all alone in the middle of nowhere?
Elsa knelt in the sand. “Maria, Angelina, Juliana, Lorenzo. This is all I can leave with you. I will pray it rains this spring so it flowers.” She planted the flower in the powdery dirt in front of Lorenzo’s half-buried headstone.
The aster sagged immediately, slumped to one side. Elsa would not cry over this one little flower.
She closed her eyes in prayer. Too soon, she wiped her eyes and got slowly to her feet. As she straightened, she saw a black shadow rising in the distance; the blackest thing she’d ever seen, it lifted into the dark-blue early-evening sky, spread enormous black wings outward. Static electricity tingled the back of her neck, lifted her hair.
A black storm?
Whatever it was, it was moving this way. Fast.
She ran for the house, met Rose in the yard.
“Madonna mia,” Rose said. They stared at the blackness billowing toward them; it had to be a mile high. Birds flew overhead, hundreds of them, flying at their greatest speed.
Tony ran out of the barn and stood with them, watching. It was eerily silent. Calm. There was no wind.
A burning smell filled Elsa’s nostrils. The air felt sticky.
Static electricity arced in little bursts of blue fire through the air, dancing on bits of barbed wire and the windmill’s metal blades. Birds fell from the sky.
All at once: complete darkness. Dust clogged their eyes and noses.
Elsa clamped a hand over her mouth and held on to her mother-in-law. The three of them made it to the house, stumbled up the stairs. Tony opened the door and shoved the women inside.
“Mom!” Loreda screamed. “What’s happening?”
Elsa couldn’t see her daughter; that was how dark it was. She couldn’t see her own hands.
Tony slammed the door shut behind them. “Rose, help me with the windows.”
“Loreda,” Elsa yelled. “Put on your gas mask. Get to the kitchen. Sit under the table.”
“But—”
“Go,” Elsa said to the daughter she couldn’t see.
Elsa and Rose felt their way from room to room, closing the windows and covering them and pressing newspapers and oilcloth in every crack and crevice.
They kept their supplies—Vaseline, sponges, bandannas—in a basket in the kitchen. Elsa carried it through the inky dark and found a flashlight, clicked it on.
Nothing. Just a click.
“Is it on?” Rose asked, coughing. “Who knows?” Elsa said.
“We need to get under the table, drape it with wet sheets,” Rose said.
Something hit the house hard, a terrible thwack. Window glass shattered in a series of loud cracks and clattered to the floor.
The front door was ripped open. The swirling, biting black monster of a storm whooshed inside, hitting so hard Rose stumbled sideways. Tony raced over to shut the door again, and threw the bolt shut.
They found the buckets they kept filled with water in the kitchen and soaked some sheets to drape over the table and then dampened sponges and pressed them to their faces, breathing hard through them.
Elsa heard Loreda breathing heavily through the gas mask. She crawled forward, found the kitchen table. Pushing chairs aside, she crawled underneath it.
“I’m here, Loreda,” she said, reaching out.
Elsa felt Loreda take her hand. They were sitting together, side by side, but couldn’t see each other. Thank God Ant wasn’t here.
Rose and Tony squeezed in under the table, past the draping of wet sheets.
Elsa held her daughter close as boards were ripped away and windows broke.
The walls shook so hard it seemed the house would shatter. Suddenly it was freezing.
|
ELSA WOKE TO SILENCE; in it, she heard the wheezing cant of Loreda’s labored breathing through the gas mask. Then, a scuttling sound—a mouse, probably—coming out of hiding, scurrying over the floor.
She pulled down her crusty, dirt-filled bandanna and peeled away the muddy sponge she’d been breathing through. Her first unprotected breath hurt all the way down her throat and into the pit of her gnawing, empty stomach.
She opened her eyes. Grit scraped her eyeballs.
Dirt blurred her vision, but she could see the dirty sheets draped around them, and her family, tucked in close to one another. Whatever it was, it was over.
She coughed and spat out a blob of blackish-gray dirt that was as thick and as long as a pencil nub. “Loreda? Rose? Tony? Is everyone okay?”
Loreda opened her eyes. “Yeah.” The gas mask turned her voice raspy and monstrous.
Tony slowly lowered his bandanna.
Rose crawled out from under the table and staggered to her feet. She took Elsa by the hand, led her into the sitting room. Bright morning sunlight shone through the broken window. Impossibly, they’d slept through the night and outlasted the storm.
There was black dirt everywhere, a deep layer of it on the floor, gathered in dunes at every chair leg, falling down the walls like a mass of centipedes.
The front door wouldn’t open; they’d been buried in.
Tony climbed out the broken window and dropped onto the porch. Elsa heard the scuffing thwack of the metal shovel on the porch boards as he dug sand away.
Finally, the door opened. Elsa stepped outside.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered.
The world had been reshaped and blanketed by the storm. Black dirt and dust, as fine as talcum powder, covered everything. There was nothing to see for miles except swelling dunes of inky sand. The chicken coop was completely buried; only the very peak of it poked up. The water pump rose up like a relic from a lost civilization. They could have walked right up to the top of the barn on one side.
Dead birds lay in heaps on the sand dunes, their wings still outstretched as if they’d died midflight.
“Madonna mia,” Rose said.
“That’s it,” Elsa said. “We are not waiting until tomorrow. We are going to get Ant and leave right now. This instant. Before this goddamned land kills my children.”
She turned and strode back into the house. Every indrawn breath felt like swallowing fire. Her eyes burned. Grit lodged in her eyes, her throat, her nose, in the creases in her skin. It kept falling out of her hair.
Loreda stood by a broken window, her face blackened by dirt, looking dazed.
“We are leaving for California. Now. Go get the suitcases. I’m going to fill a tub with water for bathing in the yard.”
“Outside?” Loreda said.
“No one will see you,” Elsa said grimly.
For the next few hours, no one spoke. Elsa would have watered her aster, but the cemetery was gone, markers and picket fence and all, gone.
Rose and Tony stood on the porch, holding hands.
“I’m ready,” she said, stepping onto the first riser of the porch steps. “Elsinore?” Tony said.
It was the first time he’d ever used her given name and it surprised her.
Elsa turned.
“We aren’t going with you,” Rose said.
Elsa frowned. “I know we planned to leave later, but—”
“No,” Tony said. “That’s not what we mean. We aren’t going to California.”
“I don’t … understand. I said we needed to leave and you agreed.”
“And you do need to go,” Tony said. “The government has offered to pay us not to grow anything. They have forgiven mortgage payments for a
while. So we don’t have to worry about losing any more of the land. For now, at least.”
“You said there was no good news after the meeting,” Elsa said, feeling a rush of panic. “You lied to me?”
“This is not good news,” he said softly. “Not when I know you must go for Ant’s sake.”
“They want us to plow differently,” Rose said. “Who understands it? But they need the farmers to work together. How can we not try to save our land?”
“Ant … can’t stay,” Elsa said.
“We know that. And we can’t go,” Tony said. “Go. Save my grandchildren.” His voice broke on that.
Tony curled his hand around the back of her neck, pulled her gently toward him, touched his forehead to hers; this was a man of the old world, a man who shut up and moved on and never stopped working. He poured all of his passion and love into the land. For his family. This touch was how he said, I love you.
And goodbye.
“Rosalba,” Tony said. “The penny.”
Rose took off the thin, black-ribboned necklace that held a velvet pouch. Solemnly, she handed the pouch to Tony. He opened it, withdrew the
American penny.
“You are our hope now,” he said to Elsa, and then put the penny back in the pouch and pressed the necklace into the palm of her hand, forced her fingers to curl around it. He turned and walked back into the house, scuffling through the ankle-deep sand.
Elsa felt as if she were breaking apart. “You know I can’t do this alone, Rose. Please…”
Rose laid a callused hand on Elsa’s cheek. “You are everything those children need, Elsa Martinelli. You always have been.”
“I’m not brave enough to do this.” “Yes, you are.”
“But you’ll need money. We took all the food—”
“We kept some for ourselves. And our land will provide.”
Elsa couldn’t speak. The last thing in the world she wanted was to drive across the country—over mountains and across vast deserts—with too little
money and hungry children and no one to help her.
No.
The thing she couldn’t bear would be to watch her son struggle to breathe again.
And there it was: the truth Rose had already come to.
“Tony put money in the glove box,” Rose said “The tank is full of gas.
Write to us.”
Elsa slipped the necklace over her head, then reached for Rose’s hand, afraid for a moment that once she touched this woman she loved, she wouldn’t be able to let go, that she’d be too weak to leave.
“I can prove the penny’s luck. It brought you to us,” Rose said. Elsa wet her dry, dry lips.
“You are the daughter I always wanted,” Rose said. “Ti amo.” “And you are my mother,” Elsa said. “You saved me, you know.” “Mothers and daughters. We save each other, sì?”
Elsa stared at Rose for as long as she could, memorizing everything about her, but at last, she had no choice. It was time to leave this place, this woman, this home.
She left Rose standing on the porch and walked across the hillocks of black sand to the loaded-up truck, where Loreda sat in the front.
Elsa got into the driver’s seat and slammed the door shut and started the engine. It shuddered, coughed, started up.
Elsa drove slowly down the driveway and turned toward town.
The landscape was black and piled with sand. To the left, she saw an automobile half buried; a hundred feet farther on, a man lay dead, his hand outstretched, his open mouth full of sand. “Don’t look,” she said to Loreda.
“Too late.”
Lonesome Tree was shrouded in black dirt.
Elsa pulled up in front of the makeshift hospital. It wasn’t until she got out and went inside that she realized that she’d left the truck running and had said nothing to Loreda.
She saw the doctor and flagged him down. “I’m here for Ant.”
Elsa saw that the hospital was full from end to end. People hacked and coughed; babies cried in a hacking way that broke her heart.
“Is he healthy?” Elsa asked. “You said he was ready to leave. That hasn’t changed?”
“He’s healthy, Elsa,” the doctor said, patting her hand. “It may take as long as a year to really heal. But he’s recovered. Might be he suffers with asthma later. You’ll just have to keep an eye on him.”
“I’m taking him to California,” she said, unable to smile about it. “Good.”
“Can we ever come back?”
“I imagine so. Someday. Hardship ends. Kids are resilient.”
“Mom!” Ant shuffled toward her, looking both scared and relieved. “Did you see that storm?”
“Thank you, Doctor.” Elsa shook his hand. All she had to offer this man who’d saved Ant’s life was her gratitude.
“Good luck to you, Elsa.”
Outside, Ant looked at the deserted, sand-covered town, with its broken windows and tumbleweeds. “Jeepers,” he said.
“Anthony,” Elsa said. “Where are your shoes?” “They broke.”
“You have no shoes?” Ant shook his head.
Elsa closed her eyes so he wouldn’t see her emotion. Going west with no shoes.
“What’s wrong, Mommy? Don’t worry. I have tough feet.”
Elsa managed a smile. She opened the truck door and helped him up into the bench seat. He sidled close to Loreda, who hugged him so tightly he had to claw his way free.
Elsa got into the truck and closed the door. This was it.
They were leaving.
It was up to Elsa now, her alone, to keep them alive.
With no shoes.
She drove out of town and turned south. There wasn’t another car on the road. Every house she passed looked deserted.
“Wait,” Ant said, giving a short, sharp cough. “You forgot Grandpa and Grandma. Mom?”
Elsa looked at her son, thinner now, missing front teeth. He would know now, forever, as Elsa had known after her rheumatic fever, that he was fragile, that life was uncertain.
His gaze widened; she saw when he understood. He looked back— toward home—and then back at her, his eyes bright with tears. In that one look, she saw a bit of his childhood slip away.
1935
We draw our strength from the very despair in which we have been forced to live. We shall endure.
—CÉSAR CHÁVEZ
