JUNE 24, 1934
Storms every day this week. We sit in the living room wearing the masks the Red Cross gave us and pray for the winds to stop. Only Sheepie refuses to take shelter—she stays out by the pond trying to herd Galapagos into her little house. Mama keeps saying we ought to move the tortoise inside, but—tucked inside her dust-crusted shell—she weathers the storms better than anyone.
This morning, when all was finally calm, Mama sent me to check on the Chiltons. The dust was up to my knees in places and getting across the pasture that separates our properties was like trudging through snow.
I knew right away that something was off. Maybe it was the quiet, or that the windows were dim on a dark day, or maybe I felt the absence of them.
My feet echoed as I climbed up onto the porch. I knocked, then opened the door and called inside, but no one answered. Going farther in, I found utensils scattered on the floor, jars overturned, hardly any belongings gone. It was like they’d just walked out the front door, knocking a few things over in their hurry, and kept going.
I can’t remember a time I didn’t know them.
A husk of jackrabbits darted out of a low trough in front of me as I made my way home and made me leap with surprise. My heart was pounding. Reluctant to tell Mama and see the sadness on her face, I turned for Ellis’s bunkhouse instead.
By the time I reached his door I was so preoccupied that I walked right in without knocking and then came up short.
He was standing beside Lyla, very close to her. They were talking in low tones and looking at something on his dresser, and both turned to look at me like I’d burst in on a secret.
“Sorry,” I said, mortified, and turned to hurry out. I could feel Ellis’s eyes on my back all the way up to the house.
Mama took the news stoically. She didn’t say a word.
“Mama, don’t you worry about Beezie?” I asked softly, feeling the hard knot of fear in my throat. My hair stood like duck fuzz on my arms. It’s a thing she and I don’t talk about, but we hear it everywhere: children fare the worst. “Shouldn’t we go too?” We can go east or west, south or north, I don’t care which, as long as we go.
Mama sat with the tips of the fingers against her lips, staring distantly out the window. She wouldn’t meet my eyes. She impersonated a stone.
I’ve been sitting here thinking about how the Chiltons have had the courage to save themselves. As for the rest of us, I believe more than ever we will be chewed up until there’s nothing left of us. Starting with the smallest first.
JUNE 27, 1934
I can’t stop sinning. It’s the same every night.
I get in my bed meaning to stay, but I lie here in the heat, wide-eyed. Sometimes I actually think I can hear the Ragbag music drifting out from town, and my feet slide out of the covers and onto the floor like I’m a puppet being dangled along by the moon. I get dressed and walk the starlit distance with a single thought in my head—getting to see the Electric again.
I watch the people—those with more money than we have or more reckless with what they have, or the ones too desperate to care—step up and take their chance, disappearing into the tent.
I don’t know why I need so badly to watch them. I think that after each day making me a little smaller inside, those night hours walking into town and knowing I will see people emerge from the professor’s tent saying they’re healed—makes me feel like I’ve escaped something. I feel like I’ve gone beyond these tiny outlines of myself.
I know I’ll never see England or China and never have Ellis and never be rich. So I want to hold that ball of lightning in my hands. I want my chance at living too, and this is as close as I can get.
This morning, just before dawn, I woke to Ellis throwing pebbles up at my window.
“What?” I whispered out to him once I got the window up. Of course, I thought he may have come to confess his secret love for me.
He held his hands out to the sides as if I should take him in in all his glory.
“I’ve got the money,” he said simply, and then walked off toward his morning chores.
JUNE 28, 1934
Yesterday I was hollow-eyed and hungry washing clothes (we do it rarely and pour the used water onto the garden), when a man came to get our last cow, who’s been too starved to make milk. I don’t like to think what he plans to do with her.
In the afternoon Ellis caught up with me on the porch and pulled a wad of wide green bills out of his pocket with a flourish, crisp and folded once.
“Where’d you get it?” I asked, staring.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said.
I shoved the money back at him. “If you stole it I . . .”
He shook his head. “Of course I didn’t steal it. Have a little faith.”
I waited. He could see I was digging in my heels, waiting for an explanation.
“Where do you go at night?” he asked. “Tell me your secret, and I’ll tell you mine.”
I shoved the money into my apron pocket, turned back to sweeping, and said breezily, “What are you talking about?”
“I saw you, Cathy. Trailing in close to dawn.”
I felt my skin heating up. I leaned back on my heels.
“Are you meeting someone? A boy?” he asked. I tried to detect a glimmer of jealousy on his face, but his look was only stern.
“Of course not.” For a moment, we stood at an impasse.
I knew he wouldn’t approve of the foolishness of it. But I also knew he’d never take the money back, so what did I have to lose? What should it matter what Ellis thinks of me?
“I’ll take you when I go,” I finally said, surprising myself. After all, I owed him. “Tonight. Eleven o’clock.”
Ellis blew a breath through his teeth and put his hands behind his head, grinning. And now I’m in bed watching the moon rise outside the window, waiting for time to pass.
JUNE 29, EARLY MORNING
I should have noticed right away: walking to Ellis’s bunkhouse last night, it was so dark I nearly walked right past it . . . and it’s never that dark anymore.
I was too excited. I felt my way to the door, tiptoed into his room, and knelt by his bed to shake him awake.
“Cathy,” he whispered, his eyes fluttering.
“Do you want to go or not?” I asked, breathless to be so close and alone, leaning back on my heels. His room, the whole world with me included, was an oven.
He shook off sleep, sat up, and turned on the lamp.
“Turn around,” he said, and I faced the wall while he got dressed.