Out of the Dust (11 page)

The wheat is growing

even though dust

blows in sometimes.

I walk with Daddy around the farm

and see that

the pond is holding its own,

it will keep Ma’s apple trees alive,

nourish her garden,

help the grass around it grow,

enough to lie in and dream

if I feel like it,

and stand in,

and wait for Mad Dog

when he comes past once a week

on his way from Amarillo,

where he works for the radio.

And as long as the

dust doesn’t crush

the winter wheat,

we’ll have something to show in the spring

for all Daddy’s hard work.
Not a lot, but more than last year.

November 1935

Prairie birds, the whistle of gophers, the wind

blowing,

the smell of grass

and spicy earth,

friends like Mad Dog, the cattle down in the river,

water washing over their hooves,

the sky so

big, so full of

shifting clouds,

the cloud shadows creeping

over the fields,

Daddy’s smile,

and his laugh,

and his songs,

Louise,

food without dust,

Daddy seeing to Ma’s piano,

newly cleaned and tuned,

the days when my hands don’t hurt at all,

the thank-you note from Lucille in Moline, Kansas,

the sound of rain,

Daddy’s hole staying full of water

as the windmill turns,

the smell of green,

of damp earth,

of hope returning to our farm.

The poppies set to

bloom on Ma and Franklin’s grave,

the morning with the whole day waiting,

full of promise,

the night

of quiet, of no expectations, of rest.

And the certainty of home, the one I live in,

and the one
that lives in me.

November 1935

I’m getting to know the music again.

And it is getting to know me.

We sniff each other’s armpits,

and inside each other’s ears,

and behind each other’s necks.

We are both confident, and a little sassy.

And I know now that all the time I was trying to get

out of the dust,

the fact is,

what I am,

I am because of the dust.

And what I am is good enough.
Even for me.

November 1935

Louise and I take walks after dinner

every time she comes.

By the time we get back

the kitchen looks pretty good,

Daddy only leaves a few things he doesn’t

understand,

like big pans,

and wooden spoons,

and leftovers,

and that makes me a little irritated

but mostly it makes me love him.

And Louise, knowing exactly what’s left to be done,

helps me finish up.

She was my father’s teacher at the night school class.

She never married.

She went to college for two years

and studied and worked,

and didn’t notice how lonely she was

until she met Daddy and fell into the

big hurt of his eyes.

She knows how to keep a home,

she knows how to cook,

she knows how to make things

last through winters

and drought.

She knows how to smooth things between two

redheaded people.

And she knows how to come into a home

and not step on the toes of a ghost.

I still feel grateful she didn’t make cranberry sauce

last month, at the first Thanksgiving we

spent together.

Louise made sweet potatoes and green beans,

and turkey, and two pies, pumpkin

and chocolate.

I was so full

my lids

sighed shut and Daddy walked with Louise instead of

me

out to Ma and Franklin’s grave,

where he let Ma know his intentions.

And Ma’s bones didn’t object.

Neither did mine.

And when they came back to the house,
Daddy still cleaned the kitchen.

December 1935

Daddy

started talking

about planting

the rest of the acres in wheat,

but then said, No,

let’s just go with what we’ve got right now.

And I’ve

been playing

a half hour

every day,

making the skin stretch,

making the scars stretch.

The way I see it, hard times aren’t only

about money,

or drought,

or dust.

Hard times are about losing spirit,

and hope,

and what happens when dreams dry up.

The tractor’s busted,

we don’t have the cash to fix it,

but there’s nothing saying Daddy can’t do the work

by hand.

It can’t be any harder than digging a hole

forty by sixty by six feet deep.

Daddy bought a second mule with Louise’s help.

Her betrothal gift to him.

He walks behind the team,

step by step, listing the fields to fight the wind.

Maybe the tractor lifted him above the land,

maybe the fields didn’t know him anymore,

didn’t remember the touch of his feet,

or the stroke of his hand,

or the bones of his knees,

and why should wheat grow for a stranger?

Daddy said he’d try some sorghum,

maybe some cotton,

admitting as how there might be something

to this notion of diversification folks were

talking about,

and yes, he’d bring the grass back

like Ma wanted,

where he wasn’t planting anything else.

He’d make new sod.

And I’m learning, watching Daddy, that you can stay

in one place

and still grow.

I wipe dust out of the roasting pan,

I wipe dust off Ma’s dishes,

and wait for Daddy to drive in with Louise,

hoping she’ll stay a little later,

a little longer,

waiting for the day when she stays for good.

She wears a comical hat, with flowers,

in December,

and when she smiles,

her face is

full enough of springtime, it makes

her hat seem just right.

She brings apples in a sack,

perfect apples she arranges

in a bowl on the shelf,

opposite the book of poetry.

Sometimes, while I’m at the piano,

I catch her reflection in the mirror,

standing in the kitchen, soft-eyed, while Daddy

finishes chores,

and I stretch my fingers over the keys,

and I play.

December 1935

KAREN HESSE is the Newbery Medalwinning author of ten books for children, among them
The Music of Dolphins
(also Scholastic Press), which was named a Best Book of 1996 by both
Publishers Weekly
and
School Library Journal
.

Ms. Hesse lives with her husband and two daughters in Williamsville, Vermont.

Also by Karen Hesse

The Music of Dolphins
A Time of Angels
Phoenix Rising
Letters from Rifka
Wish on a Unicorn

for younger readers

Lavender
Sable
Poppy’s Chair
Lester’s Dog

Copyright © 1997 by Karen Hesse
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, a division of Scholastic Inc.
Publishers since 1920
.
SCHOLASTIC
and
SCHOLASTIC PRESS
and associated logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hesse, Karen.

Out of the Dust / by Karen Hesse.

p. cm.

Summary: In a series of poems, fifteen-year-old Billie Jo relates the hardships of living on her family’s wheat farm in Oklahoma during the dust bowl years of the Depression.

[1. Dust storms—Fiction. 2. Farm Life—Oklahoma—Fiction. 3. Depressions—1929—Fiction. 4. Oklahoma—Fiction. 5. Poetry—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.H4364Ou 1997

[Fic]—dc21

96-40344

CIP

AC

First Edition, October 1997

Cover design by Elizabeth B. Parisi

e-ISBN 978-0-545-51712-6

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.