By mid-October, Elsa and Loreda had learned how to pick nearly two hundred pounds of cotton each per day. That meant four dollars a day in combined earnings. It felt like a fortune, even with the ten percent Welty charged to cash their wage chits. They’d been slow to get to the two-hundred-pound mark, but everyone knew there was a learning curve for picking.
* * *
IN NOVEMBER, WHEN THE weather turned blessedly cool, and the last of the cotton had been picked, Elsa’s metal cash box was stuffed with dollar bills. She had stocked up on food, bought bags of flour and rice and beans and sugar, as well as cans of milk and some smoked bacon. There was no refrigeration at the camp, no ice, so she learned to cook in a new way—everything came from bags or cans. No fresh pasta or sun-dried tomatoes, no homemade baked bread or nutty-flavored olive oil. The kids learned to love pork and beans doctored with corn syrup, and chipped beef on toast, and hot dogs cooked over an open fire, and saltine crackers fried in oil and dusted with sugar. American food, Loreda called it.
Elsa tried to hold back as much as she could for the winter, but after so many months of deprivation, she found her children’s joy at suppertime and their full bellies to be her undoing.
Many of the camp’s inhabitants, including Jeb and the boys, had moved on, looking for an extra few days’ work in fields farther away, but Elsa had decided to stay put, as had Jean and her daughters.
It was time for Loreda to be back in school.
On this Saturday morning, Elsa got out of bed and swept the tent’s dirt floor. She didn’t know how it was possible, but dirt grew overnight, in the dark, like mushrooms. She swept the debris outside and opened the tent flaps to let in fresh air.
Outside, a layer of cool gray fog lay over the camp, blurring the sea of tents. She pulled an old newspaper from the salvaged fruit box where they stored every scrap of paper they could find, and read the local news as the coffee brewed.
The aroma brought Loreda stumbling out of the tent, her dark hair a snarl of tangles, her bangs a fringe well past her jawline. “You let me sleep,” she growled.
“No work today,” Elsa said. “You start school on Monday.”
Loreda poured herself a cup of coffee. She pulled the bucket closer to the stove and sat down. “I’d rather pick cotton.”
Elsa wished she had Rafe’s gift for words, his eloquent way of shaping a dream. Loreda needed that now, she needed some spark to relight the fire she’d had before her father’s abandonment and hardship had snuffed it out.
Unfortunately, Elsa didn’t know much about dreaming, but she knew about school and the hardships that came from not fitting in. “I have an idea,” she said.
Loreda gave her a skeptical look
“We are going to have breakfast and go somewhere.”
“My joy is uncontainable.”
Elsa couldn’t help smiling, even as her daughter’s hopelessness wounded her.
Elsa made a quick breakfast of oatmeal cooked in canned milk and topped with sugar for the kids, and then hurried them to get dressed. By nine o’clock, they were headed out from the camp, walking through a brown field draped in diaphanous gray fog.
“Where we goin’, Mommy?” Ant asked, holding her hand.
She loved that he still held her hand in public.
“To town.”
“Oooh,” Loreda said. “What fun we’ll have standing in line for the few dollars we earned this week.”
Elsa elbowed her daughter. “No member of the Explorers Club is allowed to be unhappy on a Saturday adventure. New rule.”
“Who made you President?” Loreda said.
“I did.” Ant giggled. “Mo-mmy for President, Mo-mmy for President,” he chanted, marching on the soft, wet grass.
Elsa pressed a hand to her heart. “It is such an honor. Why … I never expected such a thing. A woman President.”
Loreda finally laughed and the mood lifted.
They turned onto the main road and walked all the way to Welty. By the time they reached the quaint little town, with its cotton-boll welcome sign, the fog had been burned away by a surprisingly warm sun. The mountains in the distance showed a new layer of snow. The trees along Main Street displayed their autumn finery.
“Wait here,” Elsa said outside the Welty Farms office. Inside, she got into line and waited her turn to cash her chit.