The Four Winds

by Kristin Hannah

Fear is smart until…” He headed for the door, paused as he reached for the knob. “Until what?” He looked back at her. “Until you realize you’re afraid of the wrong thing.”

“We do not talk about unionism here. That’s un-American. We are lucky to have jobs that put food on our tables.” “But we don’t really have jobs, do we? I mean—” “Out! Now. Don’t come back until you’re ready to be grateful. And quiet, as young women should always be.”

Loreda glanced at the newspapers spread out on the table beside her. One from the Los Angeles Herald-Express had the headline: “Stay Away from California: Warning to Transient Hordes.” Nothing new there. “Relief for Migrants to Bankrupt State.” Loreda flipped through the pages, saw article after article that claimed the migrants were bankrupting the state by demanding aid. Called them shiftless and lazy and criminal, reported that they lived like dogs “because they don’t know any better.”

“A warning, though,” Mrs. Quisdorf said quietly. “Words and ideas can be deadly. You be careful what you say and to whom, especially in this town.”

Elsa did the math obsessively in her head. So far, she and Loreda would have to pick three thousand pounds of cotton just to pay their debt. But she still had to pay rent and buy food. It was a violent, vicious cycle that would start all over again when winter came. There was no way to get ahead, no way to get out.

Designed by the owner. That's why the prices are so high.

Elsa turned to the man beside her. “How can they just end the commodities relief? Don’t they care about us?” The man gave her a disbelieving look. “You tryin’ to be funny?”

“But … how do I get out from my debt?” “You pick.” The reality of the situation sank in. Why hadn’t Elsa figured it out before? Welty wanted her in their debt, wanted her to spend her relief money lavishly and be broke again next winter. Of course they’d give you cash for credit—probably at a high interest rate—because poor folks worked for less, asked for less.

They couldn’t follow the crops and keep the cabin, which meant they had to stay here, without work, waiting for cotton, living on relief and credit. “So, we’re slaves.” “Workers. The lucky ones, I’d say.”

Loreda headed to her own classroom. As she reached the tent flap, she heard Mrs. Sharpe say, “Today the girls are going to learn to mix cosmetics, and the boys will do a science project.”

Wtf

“We all know how important beauty is in finding a man,” Mrs. Sharpe said. “No,” Loreda said aloud. “Just … no.”

“They’re Americans,” Jack said. “Do you have no shame at all? You don’t mind breaking their backs when the cotton is ready, but as soon as it’s done, you throw them away like they’re garbage. Just as you’ve always done to the people who pick your crops. Money, money, money. It’s all you care about.”

“A man can’t feed his family on one cent for every pound of cotton he picks. You know it and you’re scared. You should be scared. You kick a dog long enough, he’s going to bite,” Jack said.

“They call you names because they don’t want to think of you as like them. They’re worried about you forming unions, demanding more money. The so-called Bum Blockade—the closing of state borders—is over, so migrants are pouring into the state again.” “They don’t want to pay us enough to live on.” “Exactly.” “How do we make them pay?” “You’ll have to fight for it.”

Welty looked directly at Elsa and Loreda. “Anyone want to quit? Take the cut in pay or walk away. I’ve got ten men wanting to work for each person here. Doesn’t matter to me who picks my cotton.” He paused. “Or who lives in my camp.” Silence. “I thought not,” he said. “Back to work.”

Fucking prick.

Loreda yanked free. “I won’t be like you, Mom. I won’t just take it and pretend it’s okay as long as they don’t actually kill us. Why aren’t you furious?” “Loreda—” “Sure, Mom. Tell me to be a nice girl and be quiet and keep working while we go into debt every month at the company store.”

Mom sighed. “It won’t be forever. We’ll find a way out.” When it rains. When we get to California. We’ll find a way out. New words for an old, never realized hope.

“You’re always talking about my future. Your big dreams for me. College. How do you think I’m going to get there, Mom? By picking cotton in the fall and starving in the winter? By living on the dole?” Loreda moved forward. “Think about the women who fought for the vote. They had to be scared, too, but they marched for change, even if it meant going to jail. And now we can vote. Sometimes the end is worth any sacrifice.”

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.

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.

“Wait a minute. Now, the state is cutting my relief? But I’m a resident, and I am picking cotton.” “We want to make sure you keep picking it,” Welty said.

Fuck Welty, I hope he dies.

Your kind. Enough is goddamned enough. Elsa walked out of the hospital, went back to the truck, and grabbed Ant’s baseball bat from out of the bed. Carrying it, she walked across the parking lot, trying to stay calm. This time she banged through the doors, took one look at the woman sneering up at her, and slammed the baseball bat down on the front desk hard enough to dent the wood. The woman screamed. “Ah, good. I have your attention. I need some aspirin,” Elsa said calmly.

YAAASS ELSA

The woman grasped a pair of bottles and thrust them at Elsa. “You people are animals.” “So are you, ma’am. So are you.”

Damn right

“You dance, Elsa,” she said, almost too quietly to be heard. “For both of us.” Jean squeezed Elsa’s hand. “I loved you, girlfriend.” Not past tense. Please. She heard Jeb start to cry. “I love you, too, Jean,” Elsa whispered. Jean slowly turned her head to look at her husband. “Now … where … are my babies, Jeb?”

Nooo Jean :'(

“Jean died. There was no way for us to save her. The company store was closed to teach us a lesson and the hospital wouldn’t help. I even used a … baseball bat to get their attention. All I got was some aspirin. Oh, and they culled our names from the relief rolls today. If you can pick cotton, you have to. No state relief.” “We heard. The growers bullied the state into it. They’re calling it the No Work, No Eat policy. They’re afraid that relief will allow you to feed your children while you strike for better wages.”

“We’re not on grower land. There’s no law saying we can’t talk,” Loreda said. “Sometimes legal rights don’t matter as much as they should,” Jack said.

“Eight years ago, Mexicans picked almost all of the crops in this great valley,” Jack said. “They came across the border, moved into these fields, and picked the crops and moved on. February for peas in Nipomo. June for apricots in Santa Clara. Grapes in August in Fresno, and September here for cotton. They came, they picked, and they returned home for the winter. Invisible to the locals at every stage. Until the Crash of ’29 broke the system and made Californians afraid for their jobs. They feared who Americans always fear: the outsider. So the state cracked down on illegal immigrants and called the Mexicans criminals and deported them.

“Here you have the right to be paid for your labor, and fairly. You have the right to a living wage, but you have to fight for it. They won’t just give it to you. They care more about their wallets than your survival. We have to join together.

We have to band together and rise up and say NO MORE. We won’t be treated as worthless. We are going to make a stand on the sixth of October. Pass the word. We will be peaceful. That’s critical. This is a protest, not a brawl. You will go into the cotton fields and sit down. Simply that. If we can slow the means of production, even for a day, we will get their attention.”

“You see now,” Jack said. “A fight like this isn’t romantic. I was in San Francisco when the National Guard went after strikers with bayonets.” “People died that day,” Natalia said. “Strikers. They called it Bloody Thursday.”

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.

Love is what remains when everything else is gone. This is what I should have told my children when we left Texas. What I will tell them tonight. Not that they will understand yet. How could they? I am forty years old, and I only just learned this fundamental truth myself. Love. In the best of times, it is a dream. In the worst of times, a salvation.

The four winds have blown us here, people from all across the country, to the very edge of this great land, and now, at last, we make our stand, fight for what we know to be right. We fight for our American dream, that it will be possible again.

A warrior believes in an end she can’t see and fights for it. A warrior never gives up. A warrior fights for those weaker than herself. It sounds like motherhood to me.

The doors opened. Masked men stepped out of the vehicles, holding clubs and bats and guns. Vigilantes. Ten of them. Policemen stepped out of their cruisers, guns drawn. The vigilantes walked slowly forward.

Same shit, different year

“Men wear masks because they’re ashamed of what they’re doing,” Jack said through the megaphone. “They know this is wrong.”

“Do you think she hears?” “Moms know everything, kid.”

On September 6, 1936, in his fireside chat to the nation, President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, I shall never forget the fields of wheat so blasted by heat that they cannot be harvested. I shall never forget field after field of corn stunted, earless and stripped of leaves, for what the sun left the grasshoppers took. I saw brown pastures which would not keep a cow on fifty acres. Yet I would not have you think for a single minute that there is permanent disaster in these drought regions, or that the picture I saw meant depopulating these areas. No cracked earth, no blistering sun, no burning wind, no grasshoppers are a permanent match for the indomitable American farmers and stockmen and their wives and children who have carried on through desperate days, and inspire us with their self-reliance, their tenacity, and their courage. It was their fathers’ task to make homes; it is their task to keep those homes; it is our task to help them with their fight.