On Shifting Sand (6 page)

“We did.”

“This one had a bark worse’n its bite, I’d say.”

I mutter something.

“The wind, I mean. Maybe more of a howl than a bark. Though sometimes, it’ll pick up a gust, and make a sound—” She breaks into a series of breathy, midpitched sounds like nothing I’d ever heard in nature or beyond, but there’s nothing to do but acknowledge.

She asks if Russ plans to preach, and I tell her yes, and I feel her birdlike grip on my wrist.

“Good. We all need words of hope. Now more’n ever.”

“Yes. More than ever.”

I try not to wrest myself away too impatiently as I make an excuse about needing to catch up with my family. Even with quickened steps, my escape buys me a few moments alone to ease my curiosity. Once alongside Russ, I loop my arm through his and ask if he’s seen any sign of our Mr. Brace.

“Hide nor hair,” Russ says. “But I told him we’d be gathered here. And invited him for a meal after.”

I feel a fillip of fear and convince myself it’s nothing more than the annoyance of having not one but two possible dinner guests, with no assurances of either.

“I hope we’ll have enough.”

“We’ll be fine.”

“But if Pa—”

He stops right in front of the church house steps and kisses me softly, like I’m some sort of new bride. “We always have enough, Nola. By God’s grace and mercy.”

I sense the approving smiles as people divide themselves to stream around us. A far cry from the reception we received the first time we stood on these front steps together when I
was
a new bride. I’d felt fearful fillips then, too, but realized soon enough they were the first movements of the young man who now pounded his father on the shoulder, saying, “Break it up, Dad. People are watching.”

Russ smiles and takes my hand, holding it all the way through the coatroom and into the sanctuary. After that, all business. One after another, men—farmers, ranchers, bankers—greet him with a handshake and a grimness that make me wonder if a little bit of their very souls didn’t blow away with the storm. Haggard women collapse in his embrace, forcing me to share the comfort of his strength.

“He’s a good man.”

I don’t even need to turn around; his voice is already that familiar to me, and it feels like I am exhaling for the first time since opening my eyes. And then, feeling so depleted, I dare not face him, so I keep my eyes fixed upon my husband. All of my intentions for hospitality disappear in his reappearance. It is the first I’ve been able to see him in full light, and I realize the lopsidedness of his grin was not merely a trick of shadows, but a truth about his face, giving him a perpetual expression of mischief.

“He is. We’re lucky to have him.”

Without another word, I sit. Second row, left-hand side. Reserved since forever for the preacher’s wife.

Russ takes his place behind the pulpit. Only recently, since the onset of the drought and dust, does he finally find it to be a place of comfort. He was such a young man when he took on this church, and always more comfortable speaking to people over a cup of coffee than from a platform above them. His early sermons were clipped straight from his seminary notes, with things like “add funny story” scribbled in the margins. He was stiff and nervous, terrified of failure.

The first time Russ and I saw each other was from this vantage—me sitting in the back beside my father, and Russ clutching sweaty palms to the pulpit’s edge, trying to gather his thoughts. This is our legend—the meeting of our minds and the melding of our hearts before we even had a chance to say a single word to one another. In the telling of it, our love sounds immediate and mutual. He claims to have seen me, and in that moment, all his jitters held still, like Jesus calming the sea so he could walk right back to me at the greeting time. I watched it happen, the smoothing of his brow, the stillness of his hands. It became clear soon enough that he had a heart for saving people, and while I already understood the saving grace of Jesus Christ, I knew Russ Merrill would be the one to save my very life. Neither of us remember a word of that first sermon, and between his early ineffectiveness as a preacher and his love affair with Lee Mitchum’s daughter, we have always counted it a miracle that he was offered the job here upon his graduation from the university.

“Brothers and sisters,” he opens, naming us both his family and his flock, “I understand your discouragement and your frustration. I know some of you feel abandoned by God during these times, when the storms blow through, leaving nothing but dirt to show for all their bluster.”

At that point, he runs his finger across the top of the pulpit, showing a grimy residue that brings a weary chuckle, mostly from the women in the crowd.

“But you must remember that God spoke to Job from the midst of a whirlwind. And his voice cannot be silenced. Do not let your hearts or your hope get lost in the darkness of these times. Scripture tells us that our troubles may stay for the night, but our joy will come in the morning. How blessed are we to have multiple nights, that we might experience unscheduled joy?”

After the short sermon, we sing a hymn, but only one, as our throats are too dry to bring any melody to life. The drawn-out notes, punctuated by coughs, don’t leave us the breath for even a second verse. All stand for the final prayer, and I close my eyes, thankful for the darkness—more so for the assurance that I’m hidden from all around me. I know that
if I were to spy around, I would see nothing but one bowed head after another, all silently nodding to punctuate the prayer.

“Protect us, O God. Deliver us from this drought. Bring rain, dear Father. Yes, Lord. Bring new life.”

A voice rings out in agreement somewhere behind me, and I’m tugged away from my imposed night. I open my eyes and hazard a glance over my shoulder and learn that I am not the only sinner in the room.

His head is bowed, but his eyes are raised to look at me, and I know somehow that they have been since the beginning of the prayer. He is waiting—has been waiting. And I have rewarded his patience with a glance.

My husband’s voice fills the space between us, asking God to protect our families, and I turn my face to the floor between my feet.

I know what it is like to be caught in a storm, those first pellets of dust striking your skin like bird shot. Under cover of prayer, my skin comes alive with fire, burning through the cold sweat at the back of my neck.

“And as we go forth . . .”

I know the rhythm of my husband’s prayer. There’ll be little time now. Seconds, maybe, to regain my composure, to be ready to greet his eyes with my own, open and welcoming and—above all—faithful.

“. . . under the watchful eye of your loving care . . .”

I breathe in deep, as much as my burdened lungs will allow, and lift my head. This is why I sit where I do, at the front, in the most obvious home for his gaze. At the amen, Russ opens his eyes to find me waiting.

  CHAPTER 4
  

I
HAVE FEW MEMORIES
of my mother that don’t involve some bucket of water, or rag, or mop. She’d grown up the daughter of a domestic in a wealthy Oklahoma City home, and her determination to keep her humble farmhouse equally pristine nearly drove us all to madness. She’d mop the floors within minutes of Pa’s leaving the room, whether to head out to the barns or into the parlor to read the evening paper. Without saying so outright, she taught me that a woman could have no greater accomplishment than the cleanliness of her home. Her love lived in the vinegar and flowed through the water.

It all fell to me when she died, and while I may not have inherited her zeal, I had the motivation of Pa’s approval to drive my efforts. Not to mention the constant reminders of her standards.

“Yer ma never did leave a dish in the sink.”

“Cain’t let that warshin’ pile up.”

“Gettin’ to look like an Injun teepee, so much dirt tracked on this floor.”

I never did complain, though it seemed unfair that he should have a dozen men working our ranch but wouldn’t bring in a single woman to help with the house. It was his way, I suppose, of keeping me from having any hope of leaving, telling me every day that my duties were at home, with him. First’n last. Before I hightailed it into town, I’d better low-tail it on the floor, makin’ sure he had a man’s dinner waiting in the oven and a clean set of dishes to eat it off’n.

Which I did. Every day. Some nights sleeping at the kitchen table while I watched a stew overnight. Baking biscuits at four in the morning. Madly putting everything right in that precious hour between his leaving the house for his work and my leaving the house to go to school.

Every book I read, every paper I wrote, every test and pencil worn down to the nub—all of it, to get away. My older brother, Greg, had the Great War to bring him escape. His letters fueled my envy, even those that spoke of death and danger. I would have risked it all, my very life, to get away from this place. Until I met Russ, and I knew for certain if he couldn’t get me out of Oklahoma, he could at least take me away from my pa, and that was enough at the time.

When we get home from the church service, I have a single, precious hour to put my house to rights. To run a damp mop over the walls, wipe the countertops and floor with vinegar and water. My dishcloths are caked with as much mud as they can hold, and I use my tea towels to wipe up the remnant. I send Ronnie into the bathroom with a bottle of Lysol to clean in there, not allowing myself to think of Pa’s disapproval of a young man performing such a degrading chore, and put a broom in Ariel’s hand to sweep the outside steps. A useless gesture, but the least harmful, as she alone will have any hope of breathing fresh air.

Tomorrow, the curtains will be taken down and the rugs beaten, but right now I implore Russ to run our electric sweeper over the floors and furniture, just this once, as I know what harm the Oklahoma soil will
pose to the machine’s inner workings. He complies, and in the aftermath of silence, I hear Pa’s labored footfall on the steps outside. There is a mumbled bit of almost-jovial conversation—his approval of Ariel’s industriousness, no doubt—and then a knock at the door.

All the years this has been our home, and still he knocks. Even with my daughter on the porch and the shadows of ourselves inside, I knew he would stand and wait for the door to be opened for him. And if not, he’d leave. I used to cajole, “Pa! You’re family. Come on in.” But he’d set his jaw and say this weren’t no more his home than was the drugstore down the street. I know he wishes Russ and I had moved in with him when we married, despite his ugliness at the matter. Truth be told, when we have those days of tripping over ourselves in this little space, I think about that farmhouse with only one old man to rattle around within its bones, and wish the same. I picture little Ronnie growing up running at his Paw-Paw’s heels to help with the livestock in the morning before school; Russ in the cozy parlor nook, preparing his sermon; and myself standing apart from it all, ready for those quiet moments for my own pursuit. Reading, maybe. Or taking up some kind of creative hobby, maybe writing out one of the stories that used to stir in my head.