Our old, loaded-down car blew a tire on the highway outside Muddy Springs, which was how I ended up there. That’s when Ma turned it around and took the littler ones back to Louisiana with her, Pa kept going on foot, and I stayed.

“That’s Mrs. Morris,” the selection agent said, glancing at the wagon. “She should have sold out a couple of years ago, instead of hanging on, piling up debts. But folks around here can be stubborn.” He looked rueful. “Had to be from the start, to homestead dryland farms like her place, though, goodness knows, they got encouragement enough.”

“Dryland farming?” I asked.

“No irrigation. It’s possible when there’s regular rain, but Montana saw the last of that back in ’17. And by then the government and railroads had used promises of rich, free land to entice swarms of folk to move out here, half of them greenhorns who’d never spent a day of their lives in the country. Dryland! What they got was left high and dry when the drought hit.”

His eyes briefly hardened with a look bitter as any I’d ever seen. “Took everybody else down with ’em, too, when they went broke,” he said.

Then, just as quick, Mr. Schieling was all smiles again. “But a person’s got to change with the times. When one thing doesn’t work out, you find another, right Moss?”

“I guess. Yes, sir.”

“Now, I’m supposed to ask what makes you want in the CCC.”

“Mainly I just need a job,” I said. “But while I was waiting for you I got to reading how the CCC wants to fix things. Restore the land and all. I don’t rightly know how conservation’s done, but I’ll be proud to be in an outfit that’s for it.”

“Works for me,” Mr. Schieling said.

“Sounds good to me, too.”

I turned to see who’d spoken. An army officer was removing his hat. “I hope you’re enrolling?” he asked me.

“We’re just completing his application,” Mr. Schieling said. “Moss, I’ll need your mother’s name and address, since most of your pay will be sent directly to her. It’s a requirement of the program.”

“I was going to send it anyways. She’s Bertha Trawnley. She gets her mail at General Delivery, Spanish Creek, Louisiana.”

I watched him write it down.

“Your initial period of service will be for six months, extendable for another six months.” He turned the paper around and pointed to a line at the bottom. “Sign there. In doing so, you are swearing that the information you have given me is true, and you are authorizing the CCC to send twenty-five dollars of your monthly pay allotment of thirty dollars to your mother.” He held out his pen.

I wrote my name while the two men watched.