Out of the Dust (9780545517126) Read online

The tap dancers,

  they rattled the teeth in their jaws

  and the eyballs in their skulls,

  their feet flying,

  their arms swinging,

  their mouths gapping.

  Then Sunny Lee Hallem

  tumbled and leaped onto the stage,

  the sweat flying off her,

  spotting the Palace floor.

  Marsh Worton struggled out,

  his accordion leading the way.

  George and Agnes Harkins ran their fingers over the

  strings of their harps,

  made you want to look up into the heavens for

  angels,

  but only scenery

  and lights

  and ropes and sandbags hung overhead,

  and then there was me on piano.

  I went on somewhere near the backside of middle,

  getting more and more jittery with each act,

  till my time came.

  I played “Bye, Bye, Blackbird”

  my own way,

  messing with the tempo,

  and the first part sounded like

  I used just my elbows,

  but the middle sounded good

  and the end,

  I forgot I was even playing

  in front of the packed Palace Theatre.

  I dropped right inside the music and

  didn’t feel anything

  till after

  when the clapping started

  and that’s when I noticed my hands hurting

  straight up to my shoulders.

  But the applause

  made me forget the pain,

  the audience roared when I finished,

  they came to their feet,

  and I got third prize,

  one dollar,

  while Mad Dog Craddock, singing,

  won second,

  and Ben Grover

  and his crazy clarinet

  took first.

  The tap dancers pouted into their mirrors,

  peeling off their makeup and their smiles.

  Birdie Jasper claimed

  it was all my fault she didn’t win,

  that the judges were just being nice to a cripple,

  but the harpin’ Harkins were kind

  and the Hazel Hurd Players

  wrapped their long arms around me

  and said I was swell

  and in the sweaty dim chaos backstage

  I ignored the pain running up and down my arms,

  I felt like I was part of something grand.

  But they had to give my ribbon and my dollar to my

  father,

  ’cause I couldn’t hold

  anything in my hands.

  February 1935

  The Piano Player

  Arley says,

  “We’re

  doing a show at the school in a week, Billie Jo.

  Come play with us.”

  If I asked my father

  he’d say yes.

  It’s okay with him if I want to play.

  He didn’t even know I was at the piano again till the

  other night.

  He’s making some kind of effort to get on

  better with me now,

  Since I “did him proud” at the Palace.

  But I say, “No.”

  It’s too soon after the contest.

  It still hurts too much.

  Arley doesn’t understand.

  “Just practice more,” he says.

  “You’ll get it back,

  you can travel with us again this summer

  if you’d like.”

  I don’t say

  it hurts like the parched earth with each note.

  I don’t say,

  one chord and

  my hands scream with pain for days.

  I don’t show him

  the swelling

  or my tears.

  I tell him, “I’ll try.”

  At home, I sit at

  Ma’s piano,

  I don’t touch the keys.

  I don’t know why.

  I play “Stormy Weather” in my mind,

  following the phrases in my imagination,

  saving strength,

  so that when I sit down at a piano that is not Ma’s,

  when everyone crowds into the school

  for Arley’s show,

  no one can say

  that Billie Jo Kelby plays like a cripple.

  March 1935

  No Good

  I did play like a cripple at Arley’s show,

  not that Arley would ever say it.

  But my hands are no good anymore,

  my playing’s no good.

  Arley understands, I think.

  He won’t ask again.

  March 1935

  Snow

  Had to check

  yesterday morning

  to make sure that was

  snow

  on the ground,

  not dust.

  But you can’t make a dustball

  pack together

  and slam against the side of the barn, and

  echo across the fields.

  So I know it was snow.

  March 1935

  Night School

  My father thought maybe

  he ought to go to night school,

  so if the farm failed

  there’d be prospects to fall back on.

  He’s starting to sound like Ma.

  “The farm won’t fail,” I tell him.

  “Long as we get some good rain.”

  I’m starting to sound like him.

  “It’s mostly ladies in those classes,” he says,

  “they take bookkeeping and civics,

  and something called business English.”

  I can’t imagine him

  taking any of those things.

  But maybe he doesn’t care so much about the classes.

  Maybe he’s thinking more about the company of

  ladies.

  I’ll bet none of the ladies mind

  spending time with my father,

  he’s still good looking

  with his strong back,

  and his blondy-red hair

  and his high cheeks rugged with wind.

  I shouldn’t mind either.

  It’s dinner I don’t have to

  come up with,

  ’cause the ladies bring chicken and biscuits for him.

  I’m glad to get out of cooking.

  Sometimes with my hands,

  it’s hard to keep the fire,

  wash the pans,

  hold the knife, and spread a little butter.

  But I do mind his spending time with all those

  biddies.

  I turn my back on him as he goes,

  and settle myself in the parlor

  and touch Ma’s piano.

  My fingers leave sighs

  in the dust.

  March 1935

  Dust Pneumonia

  Two Fridays ago,

  Pete Guymon drove in with a

  truck full of produce.

  He joked with Calb Hardly,

  Mr. Hardly’s son,

  while they unloaded eggs and cream

  down at the store.

  Pete Guymon teased Calb Hardly about the Wildcats

  losing to Hooker.

  Calb Hardly teased Pete Guymon about his wheezy

  truck sucking in dust.

  Last Friday,

  Pete Guymon took ill with dust pneumonia.

  Nobody knew how to keep that produce truck on the

  road.

  It sat,

  filled with turkeys and heavy hens

  waiting for delivery,

  it sat out in front of Pete’s drafty shack,

  and sits there still,

  the cream curdling

  the apples going soft.

  Because a couple of hours ago,

 
Pete Guymon died.

  Mr. Hardly

  was already on the phone to a new produce supplier,

  before evening.

  He had people in his store

  and no food to sell them.

  His boy, Calb,

  slammed the basketball against the side of the house

  until Calb’s ma yelled for him to quit,

  and late that night a truck rattled up to the store,

  with colored springs,

  dozens of hens,

  filthy eggs,

  and a driver with no interest whatsoever in young

  Calb Hardly

  or his precious Wildcats.

  March 1935

  Dust Storm

  I never would have gone to see the show

  if I had known a storm like this would come.

  I didn’t know when going in,

  but coming out

  a darker night I’d never seen.

  I bumped into a box beside the Palace door

  and scraped my shins,

  then tripped on something in my path,

  I don’t know what,

  and walked into a phone pole,

  bruised my cheek.

  The first car that I met was sideways in the road.

  Bowed down, my eyes near shut,

  trying to keep the dust out,

  I saw his headlights just before I reached them.

  The driver called me over and I felt my way,

  following his voice.

  He asked me how I kept the road.

  “I feel it with my feet,” I shouted over the

  roaring wind,

  I walk along the edge.

  One foot on the road, one on the shoulder.”

  And desperate to get home,

  he straightened out his car,

  and straddled tires on the road and off,

  and slowly pulled away.

  I kept along. I know that there were others

  on the road,

  from time to time I’d hear someone cry out,

  their voices rose like ghosts on the howling wind;

  no one could see. I stopped at neighbors’

  just to catch my breath

  and made my way from town

  out to our farm.

  Everyone said to stay

  but I guessed

  my father would

  come out to find me

  if I didn’t show,

  and get himself lost in the

  raging dust and maybe die

  and I

  didn’t want that burden on my soul.

  Brown earth rained down

  from sky.

  I could not catch my breath

  the way the dust pressed on my chest

  and wouldn’t stop.

  The dirt blew down so thick

  it scratched my eyes

  and stung my tender skin,

  it plugged my nose and filled inside my mouth.

  No matter how I pressed my lips together,

  the dust made muddy tracks

  across my tongue.

  But I kept on,

  spitting out mud,

  covering my mouth,

  clamping my nose,

  the dust stinging the raw and open

  stripes of scarring on my hands,

  and after some three hours I made it home.

  Inside I found my father’s note

  that said he’d gone to find me

  and if I should get home, to just stay put.

  I hollered out the front door

  and the back;

  he didn’t hear,

  I didn’t think he would.

  The wind took my voice and busted it

  into a thousand pieces,

  so small

  the sound

  blew out over Ma and Franklin’s grave,

  thinner than a sigh.

  I waited for my father through the night, coughing up

  dust,

  cleaning dust out of my ears,

  rinsing my mouth, blowing mud out of my nose.

  Joe De La Flor stopped by around four to tell me

  they found one boy tangled in a barbed-wire fence,

  another smothered in a drift of dust.

  After Joe left I thought of the famous Lindberghs,

  and how their baby was killed and never came back

  to them.

  I wondered if my father would come back.

  He blew in around six A.M.

  It hurt,

  the sight of him

  brown with dirt,

  his eyes as red as raw meat,

  his feet bruised from walking in worn shoes

  stepping where he couldn’t see

  on things that bit and cut into his flesh.

  I tried to scare up something we could eat,

  but couldn’t keep the table clear of dust.

  Everything I set

  down for our breakfast

  was covered before we took a bite,

  and so we chewed the grit and swallowed

  and I thought of the cattle

  dead from mud in their lungs,

  and I thought of the tractor

  buried up to the steering wheel,

  and Pete Guymon,

  and I couldn’t even recognize the man

  sitting across from me,

  sagging in his chair,

  his red hair gray and stiff with dust,

  his face deep lines of dust,

  his teeth streaked brown with dust.

  I turned the plates and glasses upside down,

  crawled into bed, and slept.

  March 1935

  Broken Promise

  It rained

  a little

  everywhere

  but here.

  March 1935

  Motherless

  If Ma could put her arm across my shoulder

  sometime,

  or stroke back my hair,

  or sing me to sleep, making the soft sounds,

  the reassuring noises,

  that no matter how brittle and sharp life seemed,

  no matter how brittle and sharp she seemed,

  she was still my ma who loved me,

  then I think I wouldn’t be so eager to go.

  March 1935

  Following in His Steps

  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

  Heartsick

  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,

&
nbsp; he’s too old,

  and we don’t know how to talk anymore

  if we ever did.

  April 1935

  Skin

  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

  Regrets

  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

  Fire on the Rails

  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