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“Get to work,” Welty yelled “This strike is over”

The vigilantes circled Jack, began beating and kicking him

The workers backed away; soed toward the cotton field The strikebreaker trucks honked to be let through

“Elsa!” Jack yelled, and was kicked hard for it

She knehat he wanted They’ll listen to you

Elsa cliaphone and faced the strikers Her hands were shaking “Stop!” she cried out

The workers stopped backing away, looked up at her

She was breathing hard Nohat?

Think

She knew these people, knew them They were her people Her kind, the Californians said derisively, but it was a compliment

They were like her Today, they were part of a new group: people who stood up, used their voices to say No ry, to stand up for their rights, and noas Elsa’s tiht her long ago She wrapped her fingers around the soft velvet pouch at her throat Saint Jude, patron saint of desperate cases and lost causes, help me

“What?” someone yelled

“Hope,” Elsa said The aphone turned her whispered word into a roar that quieted the crowd “Hope is a coin I carry An Aiven to me by a man I came to love There were times … in my journey, when it felt as if that penny and the hope it represented were the only things that keptI came west … in search of a better life … but my American dream has been turned inside out by hardship and poverty” She looked at Welty “And greed These years have been a tis lost: Jobs Homes Food The land we loved turned on us, broke us all, even the stubborn old ratulate each other on the season’s buht out here to ,’ they’d say to each other”

Elsa looked out at the crowd, saw all the wo up at her She saw her life in their eyes, her pain in the slant of their shoulders

“A man It was always about theto cook and clean and bear children and tend gardens But omen of the Great Plains worked from sunup to sundown, too, toiled on wheat farms until ere as dry and baked as the land we loved Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I swear I can still taste the dust”