Out of the Dust (8 page)

Haydon Parley Nye’s wife,

Fonda,

died today,

two months after she lost her man.

The cause of death was

dust pneumonia,

but I think

she couldn’t go on without Haydon.

When Ma died,

I didn’t want to go on, either.

I don’t know. I don’t feel the same now,

not exactly.

Now that I see that one day

comes after another

and you get through them

one measure at a time.

But I’d like to go,

not like Fonda Nye,

I don’t want to die,

I just want to go,

away,
out of the dust.

March 1935

The hard part is in spite of everything

if I had any boy court me,

it’d be Mad Dog Craddock.

But Mad Dog can have any girl.

Why would he want me?

I’m so restless.

My father asks what’s going on with me.

I storm up to my room,

leaving him alone

standing in the kitchen.

If Ma was here

she would come up and listen.

And then later,

she would curl beside my father,

and assure him that everything was all right,

and soothe him into his farmer’s sleep.

My father and I,

we can’t soothe each other.

I’m too young,

he’s too old,

and we don’t know how to talk anymore
if we ever did.

April 1935

My father has a raised spot

on the side of his nose

that never was there before

and won’t go away.

And there’s another on his cheek

and two more on his neck,

and I wonder

why the heck is he fooling around.

He knows what it is.
His father had those spots too.

April 1935

I never go by Arley’s anymore.

Still,

every week

he comes to school to teach and

sometimes

I bump into Vera, or

Miller Rice,

or Mad Dog.

They are always kind.

They ask after my father.

They ask how my hands are feeling.

I cross my arms in front of me

tight

so my scars won’t show.

These days Mad Dog looks at me

halfway between picking a fight and kindness.

He walks with me a ways some afternoons,

never says a word.

He’s quiet once the other girls go off.

I’ve had enough of quiet men.

I ought to keep clear of Mad Dog.
But I don’t.

April 1935

I hate fire.

Hate it.

But the entire Oklahoma Panhandle is so dry,

everything is going up in flames.

Everything too ready to ignite.

Last week

the school caught fire.

Damage was light,

on account of it being caught early.

Most kids joked about it next day,

but it terrified me.

I could hardly go back in the building.

And this week

three boxcars

in the train yard

burned to ash.

Jim Goin and Harry Kesler

spotted the fire,

and that was a miracle

considering the fierceness of the dust storm

at the time.

The fire boys

tore over,

but they couldn’t put the blaze out without water,

and water is exactly what they didn’t have.

So they separated the burning cars

and moved them down a siding,

away from any little thing that might catch

if the flames hopped.

It was all they talked about at school.

The dust blew,

they say,

so you’d think it would have smothered the fire out,

but the flames,

crazy in the wind,

licked away at the wooden frames of the three box

cars,

until nothing remained but warped metal,

and twisted rails,

scorched dirt, and

charred ties.

No one talks about fire

right to my face.

They can’t forget how fire changed my life.
But I hear them talking anyway.

April 1935

They promised

through rain,

heat,

snow,

and gloom

but they never said anything about dust.

And so the mail got stuck

for hours,

for days,

on the Santa Fe

because mountains of dust

had blown over the tracks,

because blizzards of dust

blocked the way.

And all that time,

as the dust beat down on the cars,

a letter was waiting inside a mail bag.

A letter from Aunt Ellis, my father’s sister,

written just to me,

inviting me to live with her in Lubbock.

I want to get out of here,

but not to Aunt Ellis,

and not to Lubbock, Texas.

My father didn’t say much when I asked

what I should do.

“Let’s wait and see,”

he said.
What’s that supposed to mean?

April 1935

We’ll be back when the rain comes,

they say,

pulling away with all they own,

straining the springs of their motor cars.

Don’t forget us.

And so they go,

fleeing the blowing dust,

fleeing the fields of brown-tipped wheat

barely ankle high,

and sparse as the hair on a dog’s belly.

We’ll be back, they say,

pulling away toward Texas,

Arkansas,

where they can rent a farm,

pull in enough cash,

maybe start again.

We’ll be back when it rains,

they say,

setting out with their bedsprings and mattresses,

their cookstoves and dishes,

their kitchen tables,

and their milk goats

tied to their running boards

in rickety cages,

setting out for

California,

where even though they say they’ll come back,

they just might stay

if what they hear about that place is true.

Don’t forget us, they say.

But there are so many leaving,
how can I remember them all?

April 1935

On the first clear day

we staggered out of our caves of dust

into the sunlight,

turning our faces to the big blue sky.

On the second clear day

we believed

the worst was over at last.

We flocked outside,

traded in town,

going to stores and coming out

only to find the air still clear

and gentle,

grateful for each easy breath.

On the third clear day

summer came in April

and the churches opened their arms to all comers

and all comers came.

After church,

folks headed for

picnics,

car trips. No one could stay inside.

My father and I argued about the funeral

of Grandma Lucas,

who truly was no relation.

But we ended up going anyway,

driving down the road in a procession to Texhoma.

Six miles out of town the air turned cold,

birds beat their wings

everywhere you looked,

whole flocks

dropping out of the sky,

crowding on fence posts.

I was sulking in the truck beside my father

when

heaven’s shadow crept across the plains,

a black cloud,

big and silent as Montana,

boiling on the horizon and

barreling toward us.

More birds tumbled from the sky

frantically keeping ahead of the dust.

We watched as the storm swallowed the light.

The sky turned from blue

to black,

night descended in an instant

and the dust was on us.

The wind screamed.

The blowing dirt ran

so thick

I couldn’t see the brim of my hat

as we plunged from the truck,

fleeing.

The dust swarmed

like it had never swarmed before.

My father groped for my hand,

pulled me away from the truck.

We ran,

a blind pitching toward the shelter of a small house,

almost invisible,

our hands tight together,

running toward the ghostly door,

pounding on it with desperation.

A woman opened her home to us,

all of us,

not just me and my father,

but the entire funeral procession,

and one after another,

we tumbled inside, gasping,

our lungs burning for want of air.

All the lamps were lit against the dark,

the house dazed by dust,

gazed weakly out.

The walls shook in the howling wind.

We helped tack up sheets on the windows and doors

to keep the dust down.

Cars and trucks

unable to go on,

their ignitions shorted out by the static electricity,

opened up and let out more passengers,

who stumbled for shelter.

One family came in

clutched together,

their pa, divining the path

with a long wooden rod.

If it hadn’t been for the company,

this storm would have broken us

completely,

broken us more thoroughly than

the plow had broken the Oklahoma sod,

more thoroughly than my burns

had broken the ease of my hands.

But for the sake of the crowd,

and the hospitality of the home that sheltered us,

we held on

and waited,

sitting or standing, breathing through wet cloths

as the fog of dust filled the room

and settled slowly over us.

When it let up a bit,

some went on to bury Grandma Lucas,

but my father and I,

we cleaned the thick layer of grime

off the truck,

pulled out of the procession and headed on home,

creeping slowly along the dust-mounded road.

When we got back,

we found the barn half covered in dunes,

I couldn’t tell which rise of dust was Ma and

Franklin’s grave.

The front door hung open,

blown in by the wind.

Dust lay two feet deep in ripply waves

across the parlor floor,

dust blanketed the cookstove,

the icebox,

the kitchen chairs,

everything deep in dust.

And the piano …

buried in dust.

While I started to shovel,

my father went out to the barn.

He came back, and when I asked, he said

the animals

weren’t good,

and the tractor was dusted out,

and I said, “It’s a wonder

the truck got us home.”

I should have held my tongue.

When he tried starting the truck again,
it wouldn’t turn over.

April 1935

Mad Dog came by

to see how we made out

after the duster.

He didn’t come to court me.

I didn’t think he had.

We visited more than an hour.

The sky cleared enough to see Black Mesa.

I showed him my father’s pond.

Mad Dog said he was going to Amarillo,

to sing, on the radio,

and if he sang good enough,

they might give him a job there.

“You’d leave the farm?” I asked.

He nodded.

“You’d leave school?”

He shrugged.

Mad Dog scooped a handful of dust,

like a boy in a sandpit.

He said, “I love this land,

no matter what.”

I looked at his hands.

They were scarless.

Mad Dog stayed longer than he planned.

He ran down the road

back to his father’s farm when he realized the time.

Dust rose each place his foot fell,

leaving a trace of him
long after he’d gone.

April 1935

The fellow from Canada,

James Kingsbury,

photographer from the
Toronto Star
,

way up there in Ontario,

the man who took the first pictures of

the Dionne Quintuplets,

left his homeland and

came to Joyce City

looking for some other piece of

oddness,

hoping to photograph the drought

and the dust storms

and

he did

with the help of Bill Rotterdaw

and Handy Poole,

who took him to the sandiest farms and

showed off the boniest cattle in the county.

Mr. Kingsbury’s pictures of those Dionne babies

got them famous,

but it also got them taken from their

mother and father

and put on display

like a freak show,

like a tent full of two-headed calves.

Now I’m wondering

what will happen to us

after he finishes taking pictures of our dust.

April 1935