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They’d suffered through these dry years in the Texas Panhandle, but with the whole country devastated by the Crash of ’29 and twelve -city newspapers didn’t bother covering the drought The government offered no assistance, not that the farmers wanted it anyway They were too proud to live on the dole All they wanted was for rain to soften the soil and sprout the seeds so the wheat and corn would once again lift their golden arms toward the sky

The rains had begun to slow in ’31, and in the last three years there had been almost none at all This year, so far, they had had less than five inches Not enough to fill a pitcher for tea, let alone water thousands of acres of wheat

Now, on another record-breaking hot day in late August, Elsa sat in the driver’s seat of the old wagon, her hands sweating and itching inside her suede gloves as she handled the reins There was no as anymore, so the truck had become a relic stored in the barn, like the tractor and the plow

A straw hat, once white and noith dust, was pulled low on her sunburned forehead, and she’d tied a blue bandanna around her throat Grit in her eyessound with her teeth and tongue and on off the far, even clip-clop steps rang out on the hard-packed dirt Birds sat on telephone wires strung between the poles

It was not quite three o’clock in the afternoon when she pulled into Lonesome Tree The toas quiet, hunkered down in the heat There were no townspeople out shopping, no woone as green lawns

The hat shop was boarded up, as was the apothecary, the soda fountain, and the diner The Rialto Movie Theater was hanging on by a thread; it showed one edly dressed people stood in line for food at the Presbyterian church, metal spoons and cups in hand The children, freckled and sunburned and as whittled down as their parents, were quiet

The lone tree on Main Street, a plains cottonwood that was the town’s na Each time Elsa came to town it looked a little worse

The wagon rolled forward, wheels clacking, passing the boarded-up county welfare building (there was lots of need, but no funds), and the blank-eyed jail that was busier than ever with drifters and hobos and no-account train tramps The doctor’s office was still open, but the bakery was out of business Most of the buildings were single story and made of wood In the wet years, they’d been repainted yearly Now they were untended and turning gray

Elsa said, “Whoa, Milo,” and pulled up on the reins The horse and wagon clanked to a stop The gelding shook his head, snorted tiredly He hated being out in this heat, too

Elsa stared at the Silo Saloon The squat, square building, half as wide and twice as long as any other Main Street building, had ts that faced the street One had been broken last year in a fight between two drunks and had never been fixed Rows of dirty tape closed the square The saloon had been built in the 1880s for the cowboys of the three- the Texas–New Mexico border The ranch was long gone and most of the cowboys had moved on, but the Silo remained

In the months since Prohibition had been repealed, places like the Silo had reopened for business, but the Depression had left fewer and fewer men with spare pennies for beer

Elsa tied the gelding to a hitching post and smoothed the front of her damp cotton dress She’d made the dress herself, frorain and flour sacks these days Thepretty designs on the , those floral patterns, but anything that made a woold Elsa ure and now bagging at her narrowing hips and bust, was buttoned up to her throat It was a sad fact that she was thirty-eight years old, a grooman with two children, and she still hated to enter a place like this Although she hadn’t seen her parents for years, it turned out that a parent’s disapproval was a powerful, lingering voice that shaped and defined one’s self-ie

Elsa steeled herself and opened the door Inside, the long, narrow saloon was as drab and untended as the town itself The sany bar had been worn to a satin finish by fifty years ofat it Faded, shredded barstools were positioned along it; most were empty now in the middle of a hot summer day

Rafe sat slulass in front of hi forward Black hair curtained his face froarees and a shirt e flour-sack fabric A brown, hand-rolled cigarette burned between two dirty fingers

In the back of the saloon, an old man chuckled “Watch out, Rafe The sheriff’s in town” His voice was slurred, his ray beard