Out of the Dust (9780545517126) Read online

  and the hawks.

  My father will stay, no matter what,

  he’s stubborn as sod.

  He and the land have a hold on each other.

  But what about me?

  August 1934

  The Empty Spaces

  I don’t know my father anymore.

  He sits across from me,

  he looks like my father,

  he chews his food like my father,

  he brushes his dusty hair back

  like my father,

  but he is a stranger.

  I am awkward with him,

  and irritated,

  and I want to be alone

  but I am terrified of being alone.

  We are both changing,

  we are shifting to fill in the empty spaces left by Ma.

  I keep my raw and stinging hands

  behind my back when he comes near

  because he

  stares

  when he sees them.

  September 1934

  The Hole

  The heat from the cookstove hurts my burns,

  and the salt,

  the water, and the dust hurt too.

  I spend all my time in pain,

  and

  my father spends his time out the side of the house,

  digging a hole,

  forty feet by sixty feet,

  six feet deep.

  I think he is digging the pond,

  to feed off the windmill,

  the one Ma wanted,

  but he doesn’t say. He just digs.

  He sends me to the train yard to gather boards,

  boards that once were box cars

  but now are junk.

  I bring them back, careful of the scabs and the

  raw sores on my bare hands.

  I don’t know what he needs boards for.

  He doesn’t tell me.

  When he’s not in the hole, digging,

  he works on the windmill,

  replacing the parts

  that kept it from turning.

  People stop by and watch. They think my father is

  crazy

  digging such a big hole.

  I think he’s crazy too.

  The water will seep back into the earth.

  It’ll never stay put in any old pond.

  But my father has thought through all that

  and he’s digging anyway.

  I think to talk to Ma about it,

  and then I remember.

  I can almost forgive him the taking of Ma’s money,

  I can almost forgive him his night in Guymon,

  getting drunk.

  But as long as I live,

  no matter how big a hole he digs,

  I can’t forgive him that pail of kerosene

  left by the side of the stove.

  September 1934

  Kilauea

  A volcano erupted in Hawaii.

  Kilauea.

  It threw huge

  chunks

  into the air,

  the ground shook,

  and smoke

  choked everything in its path.

  … sounds a little

  like a dust storm.

  September 1934

  Boxes

  In my closet are two boxes,

  the gatherings of my life,

  papers,

  school drawings,

  a broken hairpin,

  a dress from my baby days,

  my first lock of hair,

  a tiny basket woven from prairie grass,

  a doll with a china head,

  a pink ball,

  three dozen marbles,

  a fan from Baxter’s Funeral Home,

  my baby teeth in a glass jar,

  a torn map of the world,

  two candy wrappers,

  a thousand things I haven’t looked at

  in years.

  I kept promising to go through the boxes

  with Ma

  and get rid of what I didn’t need,

  but I never got to it

  and now my hands hurt.

  And I haven’t got the heart.

  September 1934

  Night Bloomer

  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

  The Path of Our Sorrow

  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

  Hired Work

  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 tel
ling 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

  Almost Rain

  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

  Those Hands

  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

  Real Snow

  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

  Dance Revue

  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’s Tale

  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

  Art Exhibit

  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

  State Tests Again

  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

  Christmas Dinner Without the Cranberry Sauce

  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

  Driving the Cows

  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

  First Rain

  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.