Out of the Dust (9 page)

The government

is lending us money

to keep the farm going,

money to buy seed,

feed loans for our cow,

for our mule,

for the chickens still alive and the hog,

as well as a little bit of feed

for us.

My father was worried about

paying back,

because of what Ma had said,

but Mrs. Love,

the lady from FERA,

assured him he didn’t need to pay a single cent

until the crops came in,

and if the crops never came, then he wouldn’t pay a

thing.

So my father said

okay.

Anything to keep going.

He put the paperwork on the shelf,

beside Ma’s book of poetry

and the invitation from Aunt Ellis.

He just keeps that invitation from her,
glowering down at me from the shelf above the piano.

April 1935

I was invited to graduation,

to play the piano.

I couldn’t play.

It had been too long.

My hands wouldn’t work.

I just sat on the piano bench,

staring down at the keys.

Everyone waited.

When the silence went on so long

folks started to whisper,

Arley Wanderdale lowered his head and

Miss Freeland started to cry.

I don’t know,

I let them down.

I didn’t cry.

Too stubborn.

I got up and walked off the stage.

I thought maybe if my father ever went to Doc Rice

to do something about the spots on his skin,

Doc could check my hands too,

tell me what to do about them.

But my father isn’t going to Doc Rice,

and now
I think we’re both turning to dust.

May 1935

It started out as snow,

oh,

big flakes

floating

softly,

catching on my sweater,

lacy on the edges of my sleeves.

Snow covered the dust,

softened the

fences,

soothed the parched lips

of the land.

And then it changed,

halfway between snow and rain,

sleet,

glazing the earth.

Until at last

it slipped into rain,

light as mist.

It was the kindest

kind of rain

that fell.

Soft and then a little heavier,

helping along

what had already fallen

into the

hard-pan

earth

until it

rained,

steady as a good friend

who walks beside you,

not getting in your way,

staying with you through a hard time.

And because the rain came

so patient and slow at first,

and built up strength as the earth

remembered how to yield,

instead of washing off,

the water slid in,

into the dying ground

and softened its stubborn pride,

and eased it back toward life.

And then,

just when we thought it would end,

after three such gentle days,

the rain

came

slamming down,

tons of it,

soaking into the ready earth

to the primed and greedy earth,

and soaking deep.

It kept coming,

thunder booming,

lightning

kicking,

dancing from the heavens

down to the prairie,

and my father

dancing with it,

dancing outside in the drenching night

with the gutters racing,

with the earth puddled and pleased,

with my father’s near-finished pond filling.

When the rain stopped,

my father splashed out to the barn,

and spent

two days and two nights

cleaning dust out of his tractor,

until he got it running again.

In the dark, headlights shining,

he idled toward the freshened fields,

certain the grass would grow again,

certain the weeds would grow again,

certain the wheat would grow again too.

May 1935

The rain

has brought back some grass

and the ranchers

have put away the

feed cake

and sent their cattle

out to graze.

Joe De La Flor

is singing in his saddle again.

May 1935

While I washed up dinner dishes in the pan,

the wind came from the west

bringing—

dust.

I’d just stripped all the gummed tape from the

windows.

Now I’ve got dust all over the clean dishes.

I can hardly make myself

get started cleaning again.

Mrs. Love is taking applications

for boys to do CCC work.

Any boy between eighteen and twenty-eight can join.

I’m too young

and the wrong sex

but what I wouldn’t give to be

working for the CCC

somewhere far from here,
out of the dust.

May 1935

Everybody gathered at

the Joyce City Hardware and Furniture Company

on Sunday

to hear Mad Dog Craddock

sing on WDAG

from the Amarillo Hotel.

They hooked up speakers

and the sweet sound

of Mad Dog’s voice

filled the creaky aisles.

Arley Wanderdale was in Amarillo with Mad Dog,

singing and playing the piano,

and the Black Mesa Boys were there

too.

I ached for not being there with them.

But there was nothing more most folks in Joyce City

wanted to do

than spend a half hour

leaning on counters,

sitting on stairs,

resting in chairs,

staring at the hardware

and the tableware,

listening to hometown boys

making big-time music

on the radio.

They kept time in the aisles,

hooting after each number,

and when Mad Dog finished his last song, they sent

the dust swirling,

cheering and whooping,

patting each other on the back,

as if they’d been featured

on WDAG themselves.

I tried cheering for Mad Dog with everyone else,

but my throat

felt like a trap had

snapped down on it.

That Mad Dog, he didn’t have

a thing to worry about.

He sang good, all right.

He’ll go far as he wants.

May 1935

Funny thing about babies.

Ma died having one,

the Lindberghs said good night to one and lost it,

and somebody

last Saturday

decided to

give one away.

Reverend Bingham says

that Harley Madden

was sweeping the dust out of church,

shining things up for Sunday service,

when he swept himself up to a package

on the north front steps.

He knelt,

studying the parcel,

and called to Reverend Bingham,

who came right by and opened the package up.

It held a living baby.

Reverend Bingham took it to Doc Rice.

Doc checked it, said it was fine,

only small,

less than a five-pound sack of sugar,

and a little cold from

spending time on the north front steps,

but Mrs. Bingham

and the reverend

warmed that baby with

blankets and sugar water,

and tender talk,

and the whole of Joyce City came forward with gifts.

I asked my father if we could adopt it,

but he said

we stood about as much chance

of getting that baby

as the wheat stood of growing,

since we couldn’t give the baby anything

not even a ma.

Then he looked at me

sorry as dust.

And to make up for it,

he pulled out a box with the rest of the clothes

Ma had made for our new baby

and told me to drop them by the church if I wanted.

I found the dimes Ma’d been saving,

my earnings from the piano,

inside an envelope,

in the box of baby Franklin’s nighties.

She had kept those dimes to send me

to Panhandle A and M.

To study music.

No point now.

I sat at her piano a long time after I

got back from the church,

imagining

a song for my little brother,

buried in Ma’s arms on a knoll overlooking the

banks of the Beaver,

imagining a song for the Lindbergh baby

stiff in the woods,

imagining a song for this new baby

who

would not be my father’s son.

May 1935

Once

dinosaurs roamed

in Cimarron County.

Bones

showing

in the green shale,

ribs the size of plow blades,

hip bones like crank phones,

and legs running

like fence rails

down to a giant

foot.

A chill shoots up my spine

imagining a dinosaur

slogging out of an Oklahoma sea,

with turtles swimming around its legs.

I can see it sunning itself on the swampy banks,

beyond it a forest of ferns.

It’s almost easy to imagine,

gazing out from our house

at the dust-crushed fields,

easy to imagine filling in all the emptiness with green,

easy to imagine such a beast

brushing an itchy rump against our barn.

But all that remains of it

is bone,

broken and turned to stone,

trapped in the hillside,

this once-upon-a-time real-live dinosaur

who lived,

and fed,

and roamed

like a ridiculous

long-necked cow,

and then fell down and died.

I think for a moment of Joe De La Flor

herding brontosaurus instead of cattle

and I

smile.

I tell my father,

Let’s go to the site

and watch the men chip away with ice picks,

let’s see how they plaster the bones.

Please, before they ship the whole thing to Norman.

I am thinking

that a dinosaur is getting out of Joyce City

a hundred million years too late to

appreciate the trip,

and that I ought to get out before my own

bones turn to stone.

But I keep my thoughts to myself.

My father thinks awhile,

rubbing that spot on his neck.

He looks out the window,

out across the field,

toward the knoll where Ma and the baby lie.

“It’s best to let the dead rest,” he says.
And we stay home.

June 1935

Piano, my silent

mother,

I can touch you,

you are cool

and smooth

and willing

to stay with me

stay with me

talk to me.

Uncomplaining

you accept

the cover to your keys

and still

you

make room

for all that I

place

there.

We close our eyes

together

and together find that stillness

like a pond

a pond

when the wind is quiet

and the surface

glazes

gazing unblinking

at the blue sky.

I play songs

that have only the pattern

of my self in them

and you hum along

supporting me.

You are the

companion

to myself.

The mirror

with my mother’s eyes.

July 1935

I am so filled with bitterness,

it comes from the dust, it comes

from the silence of my father, it comes

from the absence of Ma.

I could’ve loved her better.

She could’ve loved me, too.

But she’s rock and dust and wind now,

she’s carved stone,

she’s holding my stone brother.

I have given my father so many chances

to understand, to

reach out, to

love me. He once did.

I remember his smile,

his easy talk.

Now there’s nothing easy between us.

Sometimes he takes notice of me,

like coming after me in the dust.

But mostly I’m invisible.

Mostly I’m alone.

My father’s digging his own grave,

he calls it a pond,

but I know what he’s up to.

He is rotting away,

like his father,

ready to leave me behind in the dust.
Well, I’m leaving first.

July 1935