pointing at Elsa. “Three of you?”
No, Elsa wanted to say.
“Yes,” Loreda said.
“The kid’s scrawny,” the boss said, spitting tobacco.
“He’s stronger than he looks,” Loreda said.
The boss leaned over to the truck bed beside him and pulled out three twelve-foot-long canvas picking bags. “Go to the east field. A buck and a half apiece for the bags. We’ll put ’em on your account.”
“A dollar fifty! That’s highway robbery,” Elsa said. “We have our own bags.”
“If you live on Welty land, you use Welty bags.” He looked at her. “You want the job?”
“Yes,” Elsa said. “Cabin Ten.”
He threw them the three long sacks.
Elsa and the kids climbed into the truck with the other pickers and were driven five miles to another Welty field, where each was assigned their own row. Elsa unfurled her long, empty bag and strapped it to her shoulder and let it splay out behind her, then showed Ant how to do it.
He looked so small in the row. She and Loreda had spent time explaining the work to him, but he would have to learn as they had—by getting bloody hands.
“Quit starin’ at me like that, Ma,” he said. “I ain’t a baby.”
“You’re my baby,” she said.
He rolled his eyes.
A bell rang to start them off.
Elsa stooped over and got to work, reaching into the spiny cotton plant, wincing as the needle-sharp pins stuck deep into her flesh. She pulled off the bolls, separated them from leaves and twigs, and stuffed the white handfuls of cotton into her bag. Don’t think about Ant.
Over and over and over she did the same thing: pick, separate, shove into bag.
As the sun rose higher in the sky, Elsa felt her skin burning, felt sweat scrape the sunburn and collect at her collar. Behind her, the bag became heavier and heavier; she dragged it forward with every step.
By lunchtime, it was well over one hundred degrees in the field.
The water truck rolled forward, positioning itself at the end of the rows, which meant they had to walk nearly a mile for a drink of water.
Elsa saw how many workers were lined up outside the field hoping for work, standing for hours in the hot, hot sun. Hundreds of them.
Desperate enough to take any wage to feed their families.
Elsa kept picking, hating with every moment, every breath, that her children were out here picking alongside her.
When her bag was full, she muscled it out of her row and over to the line at the scales.
Loreda came up beside her. They were both red-faced and sweating profusely and breathing hard.
“Would it kill them to put in a bathroom?” Loreda said, sopping her brow.
“Hush,” Elsa said sharply. “Look at all the people waiting to take our jobs.”
Loreda looked out over the line at the entrance. “Poor folks. Even worse off.”
A truck rattled up the dirt road, dust clouding up around it. The sides were painted with a white cotton boll and read WELTY FARMS.
The truck came to a rattling stop. Mr. Welty climbed out. He was a big man, powerful-looking, with a shock of white hair that looked like cotton tufts beneath his felt fedora. Behind him, in the bed of the truck, were coils of barbed wire.
Everyone stopped working, turned.
The owner, was heard being passed in whispers among the workers. It’s him.
He climbed up on to the platform that held the scales. He looked out over his fields and his workers, then glanced pointedly at the hundreds of people waiting for work. “Thanks to the feds, I had to plant less cotton this year. There is less cotton to pick and more people to pick it. So, I’m cutting what we pay by ten percent.”
“Ten percent?” Loreda shouted. “We can’t make a—”
Elsa clamped a hand over her daughter’s mouth.
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.”
A bell rang.
Elsa slowly lowered her hand from Loreda’s mouth. “You want to be one of them?” she said, cocking her head toward the line of people waiting for work.
“We are them!” Loreda cried. “This is wrong. You heard Jack and his friends—”
“Hush,” Elsa hissed. “That’s dangerous talk, and you know it.”
“I don’t care. This is wrong.”
“Loreda—”
Loreda yanked free. “I won’t be like you, Mom. I won’t just take it and pretend it’s okay