Out of the Dust Read online

  To Brenda Bowen,

  who is so much more

  than an editor

  I extend heartfelt thanks to Eileen Christelow,

  Kate, Rachel, and Randy Hesse,

  Liza Ketchum, Jeffrey and Bernice Millman,

  Maryann Sparks,

  and the Oklahoma Historical Society.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Winter 1934

  Beginning: August 1920

  Rabbit Battles

  Losing Livie

  Me and Mad Dog

  Permission to Play

  On Stage

  Birthday for F.D.R.

  Not Too Much To Ask

  Mr. Hardly’s Money Handling

  Fifty Miles South of Home

  Rules of Dining

  Breaking Drought

  Dazzled

  Debts

  Foul as Maggoty Stew

  State Tests

  Fields of Flashing Light

  Spring 1934

  Tested by Dust

  Banks

  Beat Wheat

  Give Up on Wheat

  What I Don’t Know

  Apple Blossoms

  World War

  Apples

  Dust and Rain

  Harvest

  On the Road with Arley

  Summer 1934

  Hope in a Drizzle

  Dionne Quintuplets

  Wild Boy of the Road

  The Accident

  Burns

  Nightmare

  A Tent of Pain

  Drinking

  Devoured

  Blame

  Birthday

  Roots

  The Empty Spaces

  The Hole

  Kilauea

  Boxes

  Night Bloomer

  The Path of Our Sorrow

  Autumn 1934

  Hired Work

  Almost Rain

  Those Hands

  Real Snow

  Dance Revue

  Mad Dog’s Tale

  Art Exhibit

  Winter 1935

  State Tests Again

  Christmas Dinner Without the Cranberry Sauce

  Driving the Cows

  First Rain

  Haydon P. Nye

  Scrubbing Up Dust

  Outlined by Dust

  The President’s Ball

  Lunch

  Guests

  Family School

  Birth

  Time to Go

  Something Sweet from Moonshine

  Dreams

  The Competition

  The Piano Player

  No Good

  Snow

  Night School

  Dust Pneumonia

  Dust Storm

  Broken Promise

  Motherless

  Following in His Steps

  Spring 1935

  Heartsick

  Skin

  Regrets

  Fire on the Rails

  The Mail Train

  Migrants

  Blankets of Black

  The Visit

  Freak Show

  Help from Uncle Sam

  Let Down

  Hope

  The Rain’s Gift

  Hope Smothered

  Sunday Afternoon at the Amarillo Hotel

  Baby

  Old Bones

  Summer 1935

  The Dream

  Midnight Truth

  Out of the Dust

  Gone West

  Something Lost, Something Gained

  Homeward Bound

  Met

  Autumn 1935

  Cut It Deep

  The Other Woman

  Not Everywhere

  My Life, or What I Told Louise After the Tenth Time She Came to Dinner

  November Dust

  Thanksgiving List

  Music

  Teamwork

  Finding a Way

  About the Author

  Also Available

  Copyright

  Beginning: August 1920

  As summer wheat came ripe,

  so did I,

  born at home, on the kitchen floor.

  Ma crouched,

  barefoot, bare bottomed

  over the swept boards,

  because that’s where Daddy said it’d be best.

  I came too fast for the doctor,

  bawling as soon as Daddy wiped his hand around

  inside my mouth.

  To hear Ma tell it,

  I hollered myself red the day I was born.

  Red’s the color I’ve stayed ever since.

  Daddy named me Billie Jo.

  He wanted a boy.

  Instead,

  he got a long-legged girl

  with a wide mouth

  and cheekbones like bicycle handles.

  He got a redheaded, freckle-faced, narrow-hipped girl

  with a fondness for apples

  and a hunger for playing fierce piano.

  From the earliest I can remember

  I’ve been restless in this

  little Panhandle shack we call home,

  always getting in Ma’s way with my

  pointy elbows, my fidgety legs.

  By the summer I turned nine Daddy had

  given up about having a boy.

  He tried making me do.

  I look just like him,

  I can handle myself most everywhere he puts me,

  even on the tractor,

  though I don’t like that much.

  Ma tried having other babies.

  It never seemed to go right, except with me.

  But this morning

  Ma let on as how she’s expecting again.

  Other than the three of us

  there’s not much family to speak of.

  Daddy, the only boy Kelby left

  since Grandpa died

  from a cancer

  that ate up the most of his skin,

  and Aunt Ellis,

  almost fourteen years older than Daddy

  and living in Lubbock,

  a ways south of here,

  and a whole world apart

  to hear Daddy tell it.

  And Ma, with only Great-uncle Floyd,

  old as ancient Indian bones,

  and mean as a rattler,

  rotting away in that room down in Dallas.

  I’ll be nearly fourteen

  just like Aunt Ellis was when Daddy was born

  by the time this baby comes.

  Wonder if Daddy’ll get his boy this time?

  January 1934

  Rabbit Battles

  Mr. Noble and

  Mr. Romney have a bet going

  as to who can kill the most rabbits.

  It all started at the rabbit drive last Monday

  over to Sturgis

  when Mr. Noble got himself worked up

  about the damage done to his crop by jacks.

  Mr. Romney swore he’d had more rabbit trouble

  than anyone in Cimarron County.

  They pledged revenge on the rabbit population;

  wagering who could kill more.

  They ought to just shut up.

  Betting on how many rabbits they can kill.

  Honestly!

  Grown men clubbing bunnies to death.

  Makes me sick to my stomach.

  I know rabbits eat what they shouldn’t,

  especially this time of year when they could hop

  halfway to Liberal

  and still not find food,

  but Miss Freeland says

  if we keep

  plowing under the stuff they ought to be eating,

  what are t
hey supposed to do?

  Mr. Noble and

  Mr. Romney came home from Sturgis Monday

  with twenty rabbits apiece. A tie.

  It should’ve stopped there. But

  Mr. Romney wasn’t satisfied.

  He said,

  “Noble cheated.

  He brought in rabbits somebody else killed.”

  And so the contest goes on.

  Those men,

  they used to be best friends.

  Now they can’t be civil with each other.

  They scowl as they pass on the street.

  I’m scowling too,

  but scowling won’t bring the rabbits back.

  They’re all skinned and cooked and eaten by now.

  At least they didn’t end up in

  Romney and Noble’s cook pots.

  They went to families

  that needed the meat.

  January 1934

  Losing Livie

  Livie Killian moved away.

  I didn’t want her to go.

  We’d been friends since first grade.

  The farewell party was

  Thursday night

  at the Old Rock Schoolhouse.

  Livie

  had something to tease each of us about,

  like Ray

  sleeping through reading class,

  and Hillary,

  who on her speed-writing test put

  an “even ton” of children

  instead of an “even ten.”

  Livie said good-bye to each of us,

  separately.

  She gave me a picture she’d made of me sitting

  in front of a piano,

  wearing my straw hat,

  an apple halfway to my mouth.

  I handed Livie the memory book we’d all

  filled with our different slants.

  I couldn’t get the muscles in my throat relaxed enough

  to tell her how much I’d miss her.

  Livie

  helped clean up her own party,

  wiping spilled lemonade,

  gathering sandwich crusts,

  sweeping cookie crumbs from the floor,

  while the rest of us went home

  to study for semester reviews.

  Now Livie’s gone west,

  out of the dust,

  on her way to California,

  where the wind takes a rest sometimes.

  And I’m wondering what kind of friend I am,

  wanting my feet on that road to another place,

  instead of Livie’s.

  January 1934

  Me and Mad Dog

  Arley Wanderdale,

  who teaches music once a week at our school,

  though Ma says he’s no teacher at all,

  just a local song plugger,

  Arley Wanderdale asked

  if I’d like to play a piano solo

  at the Palace Theatre on Wednesday night.

  I grinned,

  pleased to be asked, and said,

  “That’d be all right.”

  I didn’t know if Ma would let me.

  She’s an old mule on the subject of my schooling.

  She says,

  “You stay home on weeknights, Billie Jo.”

  And mostly that’s what I do.

  But Arley Wanderdale said,

  “The management asked me to

  bring them talent, Billie Jo,

  and I thought of you.”

  Even before Mad Dog Craddock? I wondered.

  “You and Mad Dog,” Arley Wanderdale said.

  Darn that blue-eyed boy

  with his fine face and his

  smooth voice,

  twice as good

  as a plowboy has any right to be.

  I suspected Mad Dog had come first

  to Arley Wanderdale’s mind,

  but I didn’t get too riled.

  Not so riled I couldn’t say yes.

  January 1934

  Permission to Play

  Sometimes,

  when Ma is busy in the kitchen,

  or scrubbing,

  or doing wash,

  I can ask her something in such a way

  I annoy her just enough to get an answer,

  but not so much I get a no.

  That’s a way I’ve found of gaining what I want,

  by catching Ma off guard,

  especially when I’m after permission to play piano.

  Right out asking her is no good.

  She always gets testy about me playing,

  even though she’s the one who truly taught me.

  Anyway, this time I caught her in the

  slow stirring of biscuits,

  her mind on other things,

  maybe the baby growing inside her, I don’t know,

  but anyhow,

  she was distracted enough,

  I was determined enough,

  this time I got just what I wanted.

  Permission to play at the Palace.

  January 1934

  On Stage

  When I point my fingers at the keys,

  the music

  springs straight out of me.

  Right hand

  playing notes sharp as

  tongues,

  telling stories while the

  smooth

  buttery rhythms back me up

  on the left.

  Folks sway in the

  Palace aisles

  grinning and stomping and

  out of breath,

  and the rest, eyes shining,

  fingers snapping,

  feet tapping. It’s the best

  I’ve ever felt,

  playing hot piano,

  sizzling with

  Mad Dog,

  swinging with the Black Mesa Boys,

  or on my own,

  crazy,

  pestering the keys.

  That is

  heaven.

  How supremely

  heaven

  playing piano

  can be.

  January 1934

  Birthday for F.D.R.

  I played so well

  on Wednesday night,

  Arley put his arm across my shoulder

  and asked me to come and

  perform at the President’s birthday ball.

  Ma can’t say no to this one.

  It’s for President Roosevelt.

  Not that Mr. Roosevelt will actually be there,

  but the money collected at the ball,

  along with balls all over the country,

  will go,

  in the President’s name,

  to the Warm Springs Foundation,

  where Mr. Roosevelt stayed once when he was sick.

  Someday,

  I plan to play for President Franklin Delano

  Roosevelt himself.

  Maybe I’ll go all the way to the White House in

  Washington, D.C.

  In the meantime,

  it’s pretty nice

  Arley asking me to play twice,

  for Joyce City.

  January 1934

  Not Too Much To Ask

  We haven’t had a good crop in three years,

  not since the bounty of ’31,

  and we’re all whittled down to the bone these days,

  even Ma, with her new round belly,

  but still

  when the committee came asking,

  Ma donated:

  three jars of apple sauce

  and

  some cured pork,

  and a

  feed-sack nightie she’d sewn for our coming baby.

  February 1934

  Mr. Hardly’s Money Handling

  It was Daddy’s birthday

  and Ma decided to bake him a cake.

  There wasn’t

  money enough for anything like a real present.

  Ma sent me to fetch the extras

  with fifty cent
s she’d been hiding away.

  “Don’t go to Joyce City, Billie,” she said.

  “You can get what we need down Hardly’s store.”

  I slipped the coins into my sweater pocket, the

  pocket without the hole,

  thinking about how many sheets of new music

  fifty cents would buy.

  Mr. Hardly glared

  when the Wonder Bread door

  banged shut behind me.

  He squinted as I creaked across the wooden floor.

  Mr. Hardly was in the habit

  of charging too much for his stale food,

  and he made bad change when he thought

  he could get away with it.

  I squinted back at him as I gave him Ma’s order.

  Mr. Hardly’s

  been worse than normal

  since his attic filled with dust

  and collapsed under the weight.

  He hired folks for the repairs,

  and argued over every nail and every

  little minute.

  The whole place took

  shoveling for days before he could

  open again and

  some stock was so bad it

  had to be thrown away.

  The stove clanked in the corner

  as Mr. Hardly filled Ma’s order.

  I could smell apples,

  ground coffee, and peppermint.

  I sorted through the patterns on the feed bags,

  sneezed dust,

  blew my nose.

  When Mr. Hardly finished sacking my things,

  I paid the bill,

  and tucking the list in my pocket along with the

  change,

  hurried home,

  so Ma could bake the cake before Daddy came in.

  But after Ma emptied the sack,

  setting each packet out on the

  oilcloth, she counted her change

  and I remembered with a sinking feeling

  that I hadn’t kept an eye on

  Mr. Hardly’s money handling,

  and Mr. Hardly had cheated again.

  Only this time he’d cheated himself, giving us

  four cents extra.

  So while Ma mixed a cake,

  I walked back to Mr. Hardly’s store,

  back through the dust,

  back through the Wonder Bread door,

  and thinking about the secondhand music

  in a moldy box at the shop in Joyce City,

  music I could have for two cents a sheet,

  I placed Mr. Hardly’s overpayment on the counter

  and turned to head back home.

  Mr. Hardly cleared his throat and

  I wondered for a moment

  if he’d call me back to offer a piece of peppermint

  or pick me out an apple from the crate,

  but he didn’t,

  and that’s okay.

  Ma would have thrown a fit

  if I’d taken a gift from him.

  February 1934

  Fifty Miles South of Home

  In Amarillo,