I swallowed whatever arguments I had ready. I couldn’t defend myself. What other argument could I make for the promise of the Electric to be real except that I needed it to be?
“And to put Beezie through it,” he went on. “That’s the worst part. To give her false hope.”
“It wasn’t for her initially,” I shot back.
He bit his bottom lip thoughtfully, his eyes sad, and shook his head.
We walked the rest of the way in silence, Beezie still sound asleep, and then slowed in front of Ellis’s door, lingering in the dark and looking at each other.
Ellis let go of Beezie’s foot and suddenly slid his hand into mine. Like we’d done it a hundred times. “Cathy . . . ,” he whispered. But I quickly pulled my fingers away. I reached for Beezie, to gently pull her off his back, and held her snug in my arms. She lay her head limply on my shoulder.
“What if it actually helps?” I asked. “What if it turns out to be true? Then I have to try. Ellis, I don’t know what else to do.”
It was my way of making peace. I wasn’t going to apologize for anything I’d said. The anger had gone out of Ellis. He was only looking at the ground, miserable.
“Now you know my secret,” I said softly. I wanted to move on, erase the anger between us. “It’s only fair if you tell me yours. Remember?”
Ellis shook his head, laughed ruefully under his breath, looking embarrassed.
“What is it?” I asked, suddenly not sure I wanted to know.
He looked away as he explained. “Lyla was the one who wanted me to save that money. Isn’t that something? She wanted me to buy her a ring.”
The words felt like ice, pouring down my throat.
“Well maybe she’ll marry you without it,” I said flatly. “Why don’t you ask her?”
He reached for my hand again. “Are you crazy, Cathy? She knows how I feel about you. You walked in on us, remember? She guessed that day. It’s over with her.”
I picked a peeling piece of wood from the bunkhouse wall, breathless.
“But you like her.”
“She’s fine. She’s great. Lyla’s really great.” He blew out a frustrated breath, looking around in annoyance. “But I love you, Cathy. There’s not room for two.”
I couldn’t look at him. There were too many feelings all at once.
“Will you please look at me?” he said.
I didn’t want to, but I met his eyes.
“Would you leave here with me?” I asked. “If you’re right about the Electric . . . if Beezie doesn’t get better . . .”
Despite what he’s been saying as long as I’ve known him, about loving where he’s landed, I expected at that moment for him to say yes. I could see how much he wanted to close the distance between us, knock it out of the way, touch me again. But his hesitation made me nervous. He looked scared, and worried.
“The dust is terrible,” he said after a long spell. “I know that. But . . . the rest of the world can be terrible too. There aren’t any jobs. People hate us for being poor and being from here and for taking what little jobs there are for almost no money. And on top of that we wouldn’t have a house, maybe not a bed, maybe not even a roof. Beezie wouldn’t be better off in San Francisco or New York. Not one bit. Here, people look out for each other.”
I opened my mouth to contradict him, to say we could figure it out, but he went on.
“And then, I’m thinking about myself too. I don’t want to spend my life surrounded by strangers. I don’t think I can go back to being homeless again, or anonymous, I can’t stand the thought of giving up this place. I only really started living when I came here. I don’t think I could handle that uncertainty again.”
“You sound like Mama.”
“Well, I agree with her.” He seemed to be considering his next words, like he was unsure whether he should say them or not. “And, Cathy, for all your talk, I don’t think, deep down, you could go either. I think leaving here would hurt you more than you know.”
All of my impassioned protests died in my throat. “I only want what’s right for Beezie,” I finally said. I listened to him breathing, sinking inside.
“I do too,” he said.
It’s keeping me from sleep tonight, wondering if he’s right about me and I’ve never had the courage I thought I did. I always thought that if I didn’t have so much holding me back, I could roam the world.
With any luck, the miraculous power of the Electric is flooding Beezie as I write this, and I won’t have to choose.
JULY 11, 1934
Happiness and restlessness and fear . . . that’s all these days are, one always right behind the next. I’m desperate, always desperate, to be in Ellis’s room, to have some part of me touching some part of him, even if it’s a finger against his wrist, even if it’s my heel on the top of his ankle. It’s a thread of life running through this dead place. Last night I couldn’t sleep for knowing he was so close by, for worrying about Beezie, for the heat.
We received a letter from the Chiltons when we went into town today, before a duster blew up that kept us indoors all this evening. They are in San Francisco, homeless and living in a camp.
In San Francisco, they wrote, we disappear.
And then they shared with us the terrible news. Even weeks after leaving and breathing the clean air, their youngest child, Lizzie, has died from dust pneumonia.
JULY 17, 1934
Things are strange, it’s like the feeling we get before a storm rolls up. There’s so much silence in the house. Ellis brings in our groceries, he helps me carry the washtub back and forth to the well, he reaches for my hand and I reach for his and that’s all for now.
Tuesday was a bad day for Beezie, who had a terrible attack. One minute everything was fine and the house was silent and the next she was calling in panic for Mama from her room saying that she couldn’t breathe. The doctor came and again urged us to consider leaving.
Mama paces and looks out the windows and barely does any work. What is there to do anymore? No crops to harvest, our clothes are getting too thin and worn out to wash. There’s always dust to sweep, but it will always be there.
JULY 24, 1934
It’s been a week since I last wrote. Beezie knows we are in on a secret, and she keeps giving me meaningful, wide-eyed glances, and whispering, “When do I get better?” Mama sees her mincing around and assumes it’s just her being her usual, dramatic self.
Her coughing gets worse every day instead of better. And I’m beginning to think that while it’s true we are in on a secret, it’s not the one that Beezie thinks. The secret is that I don’t think the Electric has worked at all, and I don’t know if I ever truly thought it would.
JULY 29, 1934