but it was really loss and poverty and man’s mistakes.
She heard footsteps behind her; they came with that new shuffling-sand sound, a kind of whisper, as if man were afraid now of disturbing the earth that had turned on him.
Tony came to a stop beside her. Rose stepped into place on her other side.
“He’s dying here,” Elsa said.
Dying.
It wasn’t just Ant. It was the land, the animals, the plants. Everything. The sun had burned everything to dust and the wind had blown it all away. Millions of tons of topsoil gone.
“We need to leave Texas,” Elsa said.
“Yes,” Rose said.
“We can sell the cows to the government. That’ll help some.” Tony said. “They’ll give us thirty-two bucks for the two cows.”
Elsa drew in a deep, painful breath and stared out at the dead, brown land. She didn’t want to go into the unknown with no job and almost no money. None of them wanted to leave. This was home.
Above their heads, the windmill creaked and the blades turned slowly.
Together, they walked back to the farmhouse, dust rising from their feet.
SIXTEEN
“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—”