Out of the Dust (5 page)

Mrs. Brown’s

cereus plant bloomed on Saturday night.

She sent word

after promising I could come see it.

I rubbed my gritty eyes with swollen hands.

My stomach grizzled as I

made my way through the dark

to her house.

Ma wouldn’t have let me go at all.

My father just stood in the doorway and

watched me leave.

It was almost three in the morning when I got there.

A small crowd stood around.

Mrs. Brown said,

“The blossom opened at midnight,

big as a dinner plate.

It took only moments to unfold.”

How can such a flower

find a way to bloom in this drought,

in this wind.

It blossomed at night,

when the sun couldn’t scorch it,

when the wind was quiet,

when there might have been a sip of dew

to freshen it.

I couldn’t watch at dawn,

when the flower,

touched by the first finger of morning light,

wilted and died.

I couldn’t watch

as the tender petals burned up in the sun.

September 1934

Miss Freeland said,

“During the Great War we fed the world.

We couldn’t grow enough wheat

to fill all the bellies.

The price the world paid for our wheat

was so high

it swelled our wallets

and our heads,

and we bought bigger tractors,

more acres,

until we had mortgages

and rent

and bills

beyond reason,

but we all felt so useful, we didn’t notice.

Then the war ended and before long,

Europe didn’t need our wheat anymore,

they could grow their own.

But we needed Europe’s money

to pay our mortgage,

our rent,

our bills.

We squeezed more cattle,

more sheep,

onto less land,

and they grazed down the stubble

till they reached root.

And the price of wheat kept dropping

so we had to grow more bushels

to make the same amount of money we made before,

to pay for all that equipment, all that land,

and the more sod we plowed up,

the drier things got,

because the water that used to collect there

under the grass,

biding its time,

keeping things alive through the dry spells

wasn’t there anymore.

Without the sod the water vanished,

the soil turned to dust.

Until the wind took it,

lifting it up and carrying it away.

Such a sorrow doesn’t come suddenly,

there are a thousand steps to take

before you get there.”

But now,

sorrow climbs up our front steps,

big as Texas, and we didn’t even see it coming,

even though it’d been making its way straight for us
all along.

September 1934

My father hired on

at Wireless Power on Tuesday,

excavating for towers.

He said,

“I’m good at digging,”

and everyone who knows about our hole

knows he’s telling the truth.

He might as well earn a couple dollars.

It doesn’t look good for the winter crop.

Earning some cash will make him feel better.

I don’t think he’ll drink it up.

He hasn’t done that since Ma

It’s hard to believe I once brought money in too,

even if it was just a dime now and then,

for playing piano.

Now I can’t hardly stay in the same room with one.
Especially Ma’s.

October 1934

It almost rained Saturday.

The clouds hung low over the farm.

The air felt thick.

It smelled like rain.

In town,

the sidewalks

got damp.

That was all.

November 1934

The Wildcats started practice this week.

Coach Albright used to say I could play for the team.

“You’ve got what it takes, Billie Jo.

Look at the size of those hands,” he’d say. “Look at

how tall.”

I’d tell him, “Just because I’m tall doesn’t mean I can

play basketball,

or even that I want to.”

But he’d say I should play anyway.

Coach Albright didn’t say anything to me about

basketball this year.

I haven’t gotten any shorter.

It’s because of my hands.

My father used to say, why not put those hands to

good use?

He doesn’t say anything about “those hands”

anymore.

Only Arley Wanderdale talks about them,

and how they could play piano again,
if I would only try.

November 1934

The dust stopped,

and it

snowed.

Real snow.

Dreamy Christmas snow,

gentle,

nothing blowing,

such calm,

like after a fever,

wet,

clinging to the earth,

melting into the dirt,

snow.

Oh, the grass, and the wheat

and the cattle,

and the rabbits,
and my father will be happy.

November 1934

Vera Wanderdale

is putting on a dance revue at the Palace

and Arley asked

if I’d play a number with the Black Mesa Boys.

It’s hard, coming on to Christmas,

just me and my father,

with no Ma and no little brother.

I don’t really feel like doing anything.

Still, I told Arley I would try,

just because it looked like it meant a lot to him.

He said he’d be dancing then,

so he needed a piano player,

and Mad Dog would be singing,

and he knew how I’d just love to be

connected with anything Mad Dog’s doing.

The costumes Vera ordered

come all the way from the city, she said.

Special,

the latest cuts.

I wish I could go with her

to pick them up.

During rehearsals,

Mad Dog comes off the stage after his numbers

and stands by the piano.

He doesn’t look at me like

I’m a poor motherless thing.

He doesn’t stare at my deformed hands.

He looks at me like I am

someone he knows,

someone named Billie Jo Kelby.

I’m grateful for that,

especially considering how bad I’m playing.

December 1934

Mad Dog is surrounded by girls.

They ask him how he got his name.

He says, “It’s not because I’m wild,

or a crazy, untamed boy,

but because fourteen years ago when I was two

I would bite anything I could catch hold of: my ma,

my brother, Doc Rice, even Reverend Bingham.

So my father named me Mad Dog.

And it stuck.”

When I go home

I ask my father if he knows Mad Dog’s

real name.
He looks at me like I’m talking in another language.

Ma could have told me.

December 1934

We had an art exhibit last week

in the basement of the courthouse,

to benefit the library.

Price of admission was one book

or ten cents.

I paid ten cents the first time,

but they let me in the second and third times for free.

That was awful kind,

since I didn’t have another dime

and I couldn’t bring myself to

hand over Ma’s book of poetry

from the shelf over the piano.

It was really something to see the oil paintings,

the watercolors,

the pastels and charcoals.

There were pictures of the Panhandle in the old days

with the grass blowing and wolves,

there was a painting of a woman getting dressed

in a room of curtains,

and a drawing of a railroad station

with a garden out the front,

and a sketch of a little girl holding an enormous cat

in her lap.

But now the exhibit is gone,

the paintings

stored away in spare rooms

or locked up

where no one can see them.

I feel such a hunger

to see such things.

And such an anger
because I can’t.

December 1934

Miss Freeland said

our grade

topped the entire state of Oklahoma

on the state tests again, twenty-four

points higher

than the state average.

Wish I could run home and tell Ma

and see her nod
and hear her say,

“I knew you could.”

It would be enough.

January 1935

Miss Freeland

was my ma

at the school

Christmas dinner.

I thought I’d be

the only one

without a

real ma,

but two other motherless girls came.

We served turkey,

chestnut dressing,

sweet potatoes, and brown gravy.

Made it all ourselves

and it came out

pretty good,

better than the Christmas dinner I made for my

father

at home,

where we sat at the table,

silent, just the two of us.

Being there without Ma,

without the baby,

wouldn’t have been so bad,

if I’d just remembered the cranberry sauce.

My father loved Ma’s special cranberry sauce.

But she never showed me how to make it.

January 1935

Dust

piles up like snow

across the prairie,

dunes leaning against fences,

mountains of dust pushing over barns.

Joe De La Flor can’t afford to feed his cows,

can’t afford to sell them.

County Agent Dewey comes,

takes the cows behind the barn,

and shoots them.

Too hard to

watch their lungs clog with dust,

like our chickens, suffocated.

Better to let the government take them,

than suffer the sight of their bony hides

sinking down

into the earth.

Joe De La Flor

rides the range.

Come spring he’ll gather Russian thistle,

pulling the plant while it’s still green and young,

before the prickles form, before it breaks free

to tumble across the plains.

He gathers thistle to feed what’s left of his cattle,

his bone-thin cattle,

cattle he drives away from the dried-up Beaver River,

to where the Cimarron still runs,

pushing the herd across the breaks,

where they might last another week, maybe two,

until it
rains.

January 1935

Sunday night,

I stretch my legs in my iron bed

under the roof.

I place a wet cloth over my nose to keep

from breathing dust

and wipe the grime tracings from around my mouth,

and shiver, thinking of Ma.

I am kept company by the sound of my heart

drumming.

Restless,

I tangle in the dusty sheets,

sending the sand flying,

cursing the grit against my skin,

between my teeth,

under my lids,

swearing I’ll leave this forsaken place.

I hear the first drops.

Like the tapping of a stranger

at the door of a dream,

the rain changes everything.

It strokes the roof,

streaking the dusty tin,

ponging,

a concert of rain notes,

spilling from gutters,

gushing through gullies,

soaking into the thirsty earth outside.

Monday morning dawns,

cloaked in mist.

I button into my dress, slip on my sweater,

and push my way off the porch,

sticking my face into the fog,

into the moist skin of the fog.

The sound of dripping surrounds me as I

walk to town.

Soaked to my underwear,

I can’t bear to go

through the schoolhouse door,

I want only to stand in the rain.

Monday afternoon,

Joe De La Flor brushes mud from his horse,

Mr. Kincannon hires my father

to pull his Olds out of the muck on Route 64.

And later,

when the clouds lift,

the farmers, surveying their fields,

nod their heads as

the frail stalks revive,

everyone, everything, grateful for this moment,

free of the

weight of dust.

January 1935