Elsa kept her foot on the accelerator and her hands curled tightly around the steering wheel. They drove past a family of six walking on the side of the road, pushing a cart full of their belongings. People like them who had lost everything and were going west.
What was she thinking?
She didn’t have the courage to set out on a cross-country journey into the unknown. She wasn’t strong enough to survive on her own, let alone strong enough to care for her children. How would she make money? She had never lived on her own, never paid rent, never had a job. She hadn’t graduated from high school, for gosh sakes.
Who was going to rescue them when she failed?
She pulled off to the side of the road and stopped, staring through the dirty windshield at the road ahead, at the devastation left by the black storm; buildings broken, cars in ditches, fences torn away.
The rosary that hung from the rearview mirror swung from side to side.
More than a thousand miles to California, and what would they find there? No friends, no family. I could work in a laundry … or a library. But who would hire a woman when millions of men were out of work? And if she did get a job, who would watch the children? Oh, God.
“Mommy?”
Ant tugged at her sleeve. “Are you okay?”
Elsa shoved the truck door open. She stumbled away and stopped, breathing hard, fighting the tidal wave of panic.
Loreda came up beside her. “You thought Grandpa and Grandma would come?”
Elsa turned. “Didn’t you?”
“They’re like a plant that can only grow in one place.”
Great. A thirteen-year-old saw what Elsa hadn’t.
“I checked the glove box. They gave us most of the government money.
And we have a full tank of gas.”
Elsa stared down the long, empty road. Not far away, a crow sat on a shed that was buried almost to the peak in black dirt.
She almost said, I’m scared, but what kind of mother said those words to a child who counted on her?
“I’ve never been on my own,” Elsa said. “You’re not on your own, Mom.”
Ant popped his head out of the window of the cab of the truck. “I’m here, too!” he chirped. “Don’t forget me!”
Elsa felt a rush of love for these children of hers, a soul-deep sense that was akin to longing; she drew in a deep breath, exhaled, and smelled the dry Panhandle Texas air that was as much a part of her life as God and her children. She’d been born in this county and always thought she’d die here. “This is home,” she said. “I thought you’d grow up here and be the first Martinelli to go to college here. Austin, I thought. Or Dallas, a place big enough to hold your dreams.”
“This will always be home, Mom. Just because we’re leaving doesn’t change that. Look at Dorothy. After all her adventures, she clicked her heels together and went home. And really, what choice do we have?”
“You’re right.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, remembered another time when she’d been scared and felt alone, back when she’d been sick. That was the first time her grandfather had leaned down and whispered, Be brave, into her ear. And then, Or pretend to be. It’s all the same.
The memory calmed her. She could pretend to be brave. For her children. She wiped her eyes, surprised by her tears, and said, “Let’s go.”
She returned to the truck, took her seat, and banged the door shut beside her.
Loreda settled in beside her brother and opened up a map. “It’s ninety- four miles from Dalhart to Tucumcari, New Mexico. That should be our
first stop. I don’t think we should drive at night. At least, that’s what Grandpa told me when we were studying the map.”
“You and Grandpa picked out a route?”
“Yeah. He’s been teaching me stuff. I guess he knew all along he and Grandma weren’t coming. He taught me all kinds of stuff—how to hunt for rabbits and birds, how to drive, and how to put water in the radiator. In Tucumcari, we pick up Route 66 west.” She reached into her pocket, pulled out a battered bronze compass. “He gave me this. He and Grandma brought it with them from Italy.”
Elsa stared down at the compass. She had no idea how to read it. “Okay.”
“We can be a club,” Ant said. “Like the Boy Scouts, only we’re explorers. The Martinelli Explorers Club.”
“The Martinelli Explorers Club,” Elsa said. “I like it. Off we go, explorers.”
 |
AS THEY NEARED DALHART, Elsa found herself slowing down without thinking about it.
She hadn’t been back here in years, not since the day her mother had taken one look at Loreda and commented on her skin color. Elsa might have taken her parents’ criticism of herself to heart, but she would never let her children face it.
Dalhart had been as broken by the Depression and the drought as Lonesome Tree had; that much was obvious. Most of the storefronts were boarded up. A line of people stood at the church, metal bowls in hand, waiting for free food.
The truck bumped over the railroad tracks. Elsa turned onto Main Street. “We’re not supposed to turn here,” Loreda said. “We go past Dalhart, not
through it.”
Elsa saw Wolcott Tractor Supply: closed, the windows covered by wooden boards.
She pulled up in front of the house she’d grown up in. The front door was off its hinges, and most of the windows were boarded up. A foreclosure notice had been pounded into the front door.
The front yard was ruined. Black sand, dirt, dunes everywhere. She saw her mother’s garden, dead roses that had received more of Minerva Wolcott’s love than Elsa ever had. For the thousandth time, Elsa wondered why her parents hadn’t loved her, or why their version of love had been so cold and conditional. How did such a thing happen? Elsa had learned to love deeply on the day of Loreda’s birth.
“Mom?” Loreda said. “Did you know the people who lived here? The house looks abandoned.”
Elsa felt a shifting of time, an unpleasant sense of worlds colliding. She saw her children peering at her through worried eyes.
She’d thought it would hurt to see this place, but the opposite was true. This wasn’t her home and the people who’d lived here weren’t her family. “No,” she said at last. “I didn’t know the people who lived here … and they didn’t know me.”
|
THE ROAD OUT OF Texas was miles of sand-duned nothingness broken up by a series of small towns. In New Mexico, they saw more people traveling west, in old jalopies weighed down with possessions and children, in cars pulling trailers, in mule- and horse-drawn wagons. There were people walking single file, pushing baby strollers and wheelbarrows.
When night began to fall, they passed a man dressed in rags, walking on bare feet, hat drawn low on his head, a fringe of long black hair against his ragged collar.
Loreda pressed her nose against the window, watching the man. “Slow down,” she said.
“It’s not him,” Elsa said. “It could be.”
Elsa slowed down. “It’s not him.” “Who cares?” Ant said. “He left.”
“Shush,” Elsa said. It was too late in the day for this. They were all exhausted after hours of driving. The gas gauge showed that they were nearly out of fuel.
Elsa saw a gas station and pulled into it, sidled up to the pump. Nineteen cents per gallon. One dollar and ninety cents to fill the tank.
Elsa did the math in her head, recalculated the amount of money they would have when they drove away.
An attendant came out to pump their gas.
Across the street was a small auto court, with jalopies and trucks parked out front. There were people seated on chairs in front of their rooms, with their loaded-down vehicles parked in attached carports. A pink neon sign— turned off—read: VACANCY and $3.00/NIGHT.
Three dollars.
“Stay here,” Elsa said to the kids.
She walked across the gravel parking lot to pay for the gas. There were a few people milling about in the falling night: a raggedy man standing over by the water pump, with a scrawny dog sitting on its haunches nearby. A kid kicking a ball.
A bell rang overhead as she opened the door. Her stomach growled loudly, reminding her that she’d given her lunch to the kids. She walked up to the cash register, which was operated by a woman with orange hair.
Elsa pulled her wallet out of her handbag and counted out one dollar and ninety cents and put it on the counter. “Ten gallons of gas.”
“First day on the road?” the lady asked, taking the money as she rang up the sale.
“Yes. Just left home. How can you tell?” “You don’t got a man with you?” “How—”
“Men don’t let their women pay for gas.” The woman leaned closer. “Keep your money somewhere besides your handbag, doll. There’s a bad element out here. ’Specially in the last few days. Keep an eye out.”
Elsa nodded and put her money back in her wallet. As she did so, she stared down at her left hand, at the thin wedding band she still wore.
“It ain’t worth nuthin’,” the clerk said, looking sad. “You’d best keep wearing it, too. A single woman can be prey out on the road. And don’t stay at the auto court across the street. It’s full of the shiftless kind. About four miles farther on, just past the water tower, there’s a dirt road going south. Take it. If you go about a mile in, you’ll find a nice copse of trees. If you don’t feel like camping, keep going another six miles west on the main road. There’s a clean motel called Land of Enchantment. Can’t miss it.”
“Thank you.”
“Good luck.”
Elsa hurried back to the truck. She had left the kids alone, with all their belongings and a full tank of gas and the keys in the ignition with shiftless men nearby.
Lesson one.
Elsa climbed into the truck. The children looked as hot and tired as she felt. “So, explorers. First order of business. We need a plan. There’s a nice motel down the road that has beds and maybe hot water. It’s at least three dollars a night. If we decide to stay in places like that, we’ll use up about fifteen dollars. Or we can save that money and camp out.”
“Camping!” Ant said. “Then it’s a real adventure.” Elsa met Loreda’s gaze over Ant’s head. “Camping,” Loreda said. “Big fun.”
Elsa drove on. Now and again, the headlights shone on more people walking alongside the road, headed west, carrying what they could, dragging wagons. A boy on a bicycle had a shaggy gray dog in the basket between the handlebars.
Four miles later, she turned onto a dirt road, past several jalopies that were parked for the night, campfires already going. She found a copse of trees growing well back from the road. She turned into it and parked.
“I’ll see if I can find us a rabbit,” Loreda said, taking the shotgun out of the rack.
“Not tonight,” Elsa said. “Let’s stay close together.”
Elsa got out of the truck and reached into the bed for the supplies they’d brought with them. In a nice, flat spot not far away from the truck, she knelt down and started a campfire, using a little of the wood and kindling they’d packed.
“Do we get to sleep in the tent tonight?” Ant asked. “We ain’t had a vacation before.”
“Haven’t,” Elsa corrected automatically as she went back to the truck for food. She brought out two of their most precious supplies—a log-like roll of bologna and a half a loaf of store-bought light bread.
“Bologna sandwiches!” Ant said.
Elsa settled a cast-iron frying pan on the fire and put a scoop of lard in to sizzle, then peeled the yellow plastic casing away and cut thin slices of
bologna from the roll. After snipping the edges so the meat wouldn’t curl up, she dropped two slices into the bubbling fat.
Ant squatted on his haunches beside her, his hair as dirty as his face. In the black pan, the bologna popped bits of hot lard.
Ant poked at the fire with a stick. “Take that, fire!”
Elsa opened the packaged bread and took out two white slices, rimmed in pale brown crust. This bread was practically weightless. Mr. Pavlov had begged them to accept this store-bought bread for their trip. His treat, he’d said. She smeared on some precious olive oil and sliced an onion. Placing the rings carefully onto a golden layer of oil, she then laid a crispy, browned slice of bologna on top.
“Loreda!” she called out. “Come on back. Food’s ready.”
Elsa pushed slowly to her feet and went back to the truck for more plates and their jug of water. As she came around the back of the bed, she heard something. A banging.
A man stood beside their truck, holding her gas cap in one hand and a hose in the other. Even in the fading light, she saw that he was ragged, pencil-thin. His shirt was tattered.
Fear immobilized her for a split second, but it was enough time for him to pounce. He grabbed her by the throat, his fingers tightening hard, and banged her up against the truck.
“Where’s your money?”
“Please…” Elsa couldn’t draw a good breath. “I … have … children.” “We all do,” he said, showing off a mouth of decaying teeth. He banged
her head against the truck. “Where is it?” “N-no.”
He tightened his grip on her throat. She clawed at his hands, tried to push him away.
There was a click.
A gun being cocked.
Loreda stepped out from behind the truck, holding their shotgun aimed at the man’s head.
He gave a scratchy laugh. “You ent gonna shoot me.”
“I can drop a dove in midflight. And I don’t even want to hurt them.
You, I kinda want to shoot.”
He studied Loreda, appraised her intent. Elsa saw when he believed the threat.
He let go of Elsa’s throat, stepped back, lifted his splayed hands in the air. Slowly, he backed away, step by step. When he reached the end of the trees and was out in the open, he turned and walked away.
Elsa let out a ragged breath. She wasn’t sure which made her feel more unsteady, the attack or the grimness of her daughter’s expression.
They would be changed by this, all three of them. How was it she hadn’t thought of that before now? In Lonesome Tree they’d fought against nature for survival. They’d known the dangers of the physical world.
Out here, there were new dangers. Her children would learn that man could be dangerous, too. There was a darkness in the world of which they’d been innocent; already Loreda was losing that innocence. It would never return. “We’d best sleep in the back of the truck. I hadn’t figured on anyone trying to steal our gas,” Elsa said.
“I reckon there’s a lot we ain’t figured on,” Loreda said.
Elsa was too tired to correct her daughter’s grammar, and really, language seemed pretty small out here, in this vast expanse of nothing. She touched Loreda’s shoulder, let her hand lie there. “Thank you,” Elsa said softly. It felt, strangely, as if the world had just tilted somehow, slid sideways, taking them and everything they knew with it.
|
DAY AFTER DAY, THEY drove west. Nine hundred miles over thin, potholed roads, making slow progress, stopping only when they had to eat or get gas, and to sleep at night. Elsa had grown used to the thump and rattle of the truck and the clanging of the stove and boxes in the back. Even when she got out of the car, her body remembered the jarring up-and-down and left her feeling dizzy.
The long, hot days driving had ground them all down. There had been conversation in the first, exciting hours of travel, talk of exploring and adventures, but heat and hunger and a bumpy road had finally silenced them all, even Ant.
Now, they were camped on a wild stretch of land, close to the road, where coyotes howled and bindle stiffs walked alone, many of them
desperate enough to steal the pillow from beneath your head or the gas from your tank. That scared Elsa most of all: the gas in their tank. Gas was life now.
She lay on the camp mattress with her sleeping children tucked in close. Although she had needed sleep desperately last night, it hadn’t come. She’d been plagued by nightmares of what lay ahead.
She heard a sound. A branch breaking. She sat up fast and looked around.
Nothing moved.
Careful not to waken the children, she crawled out of bed and put her shoes on, then stepped onto the hard-packed dirt. Tiny pebbles and twigs poked at the thinning soles of her last pair of shoes. She was careful not to step on anything sharp.
Well away from the truck, she lifted her dress and squatted down to relieve herself.
As she returned to the truck, the sky turned a bright peony pink, broken here or there by the strange silhouette of a cactus. Some of them looked from a distance like thorny old men, raising their fists to an uncaring god. Elsa was stunned by the unexpected beauty of the morning. It reminded her of daybreak on the farm. She tilted her face skyward, felt the honest warmth of sunshine on her skin. “Watch over us, Lord.”
Back at camp, she made a fire and started breakfast. The smell of coffee and honey-drizzled polenta cakes baking in the Dutch oven over an open flame roused the children.
Ant put on his cowboy hat and stumbled close to the fire and started to unbutton his pants.
“Not so close to camp,” Elsa said, swatting his backside.
Ant giggled and walked out a ways to pee. Elsa saw him making patterns in the dry dirt with his urine stream.
“I know it takes nothing to entertain him,” Loreda said. “But his own pee is a new low.”
Elsa had too much on her mind to smile. “Mom?” Loreda said. “What’s wrong?”
Elsa looked up. There was no point lying. “The worst section of desert is ahead. If we cross it at night, hopefully our engine won’t burn up. But if something goes wrong…”
Elsa shuddered at the thought of their truck rolling to a steaming, smoking halt in the middle of a desert that boasted triple-digit heat and no water. They’d heard horror stories about the Mojave Desert. Cars abandoned, people dying, birds picking at sun-bleached bones.
“We’ll go as far as we can today and then sleep until dark,” Elsa said. “We’ll make it, Mom.”
Elsa stared out at the dry, unforgiving desert that stretched west, studded here and there with cactus. Along this thin ribbon of road that stretched east to west, there was civilization, but only now and then. In between towns there were great stretches of nothing. “We have to,” she said. God help her, it was as encouraging as she could be.
