Page 109 (2/2)

Iin someone else’s fields I’m sure it will maketo our grapes and our fruit and our vegetables

We miss you and think of you often and hope you are well

Love,

Elsa, Ant, and Loreda

IN JUNE, ELSA FOUND that if she woke at four AM and joined Jeb and the boys in line, there was usually work in the cotton fields, weeding and thinning the crop Not every day, but most days she worked twelve hours for fifty cents The pay wasn’t good but she spent carefully and they survived When Loreda’s shoes wore out, instead of buying a new pair, Elsa cut out pieces of cardboard and fit them carefully inside the shoes

Today, after a long, tiring day, she walked home with the others from the ditch-bank camp who’d found work at Welty Farms, which had nearly twenty thousand acres of cotton in California; the nearest field was about three miles north of the ditch-bank camp, past the town of Welty

Jeb was beside her, walking back froes,” he said

“How can they possibly pay us less?” Elsa said

Another man said, “So many desperate folks floodin’ into the state More’n a thousand a day, I heard”

“Most of ’em’ll take any pay at all if it means they can put food on the table,” Jeb said

“The durn farm owners can pay less and less,” said another ered hand in greeting “I live at the Welty camp”

She shook his hand “Elsa”

Fifty cents That hat she’d earned today, and it wouldn’t go far, and there was never any way of knowing how long this ain or what she’d be paid What if they offered her forty cents toree?

“Once we’re pickin’ cotton, we’ll be better,” Jeb said