Out of the Dust Read online

  when the clouds lift,

  the farmers, surveying their fields,

  nod their heads as

  the frail stalks revive,

  everyone, everything, grateful for this moment,

  free of the

  weight of dust.

  January 1935

  Haydon P. Nye

  Haydon P. Nye died this week.

  I knew him to wave,

  he liked the way I played piano.

  The newspaper said when Haydon first came

  he could see only grass,

  grass and wild horses and wolves roaming.

  Then folks moved in and sod got busted

  and bushels of wheat turned the plains to gold,

  and Haydon P. Nye

  grabbed the Oklahoma Panhandle in his fist

  and held on.

  By the time the railroad came in

  on land Haydon sold them,

  the buffalo and the wild horses had gone.

  Some years

  Haydon Nye saw the sun dry up his crop,

  saw the grasshoppers chew it down,

  but then came years of rain

  and the wheat thrived,

  and his pockets filled,

  and his big laugh came easy.

  They buried Haydon Nye on his land,

  busted more sod to lay down his bones.

  Will they sow wheat on his grave,

  where the buffalo

  once grazed?

  January 1935

  Scrubbing Up Dust

  Walking past the Crystal Hotel

  I saw Jim Martin down on his knees.

  He was scraping up mud that had

  dried to crust

  after the rain mixed with dust Sunday last.

  When I got home

  I took a good look at the steps

  and the porch and the windows.

  I saw them with Ma’s eyes and thought about

  how she’d been haunting me.

  I thought about Ma,

  who would’ve washed clothes,

  beaten furniture,

  aired rugs,

  scrubbed floors,

  down on her knees,

  brush in hand,

  breaking that mud

  like the farmers break sod,

  always watching over her shoulder

  for the next duster to roll in.

  My stubborn ma,

  she’d be doing it all

  with my brother Franklin to tend to.

  She never could stand a mess.

  My father doesn’t notice the dried mud.

  Least he never tells me,

  not that he tells me much of anything these days.

  With Ma gone,

  if the mud’s to be busted,

  the job falls to me.

  It isn’t the work I hate,

  the knuckle-breaking work of beating mud out of

  every blessed thing,

  but every day

  my fingers and hands

  ache so bad. I think

  I should just let them rest,

  let the dust rest,

  let the world rest.

  But I can’t leave it rest,

  on account of Ma,

  haunting.

  January 1935

  Outlined by Dust

  My father stares at me

  while I sit across from him at the table,

  while I wash dishes in the basin,

  my back to him,

  the picked and festered bits of my hands in agony.

  He stares at me

  as I empty the wash water at the roots

  of Ma’s apple trees.

  He spends long days

  digging for the electric-train folks

  when they can use him,

  or working here,

  nursing along the wheat,

  what there is of it,

  or digging the pond.

  He sings sometimes under his breath,

  even now,

  even after so much sorrow.

  He sings a man’s song,

  deep with what has happened to us.

  It doesn’t swing lightly

  the way Ma’s voice did,

  the way Miss Freeland’s voice does,

  the way Mad Dog sings.

  My father’s voice starts and stops,

  like a car short of gas,

  like an engine choked with dust,

  but then he clears his throat

  and the song starts up again.

  He rubs his eyes

  the way I do,

  with his palms out.

  Ma never did that.

  And he wipes the milk from his

  upper lip same as me,

  with his thumb and forefinger.

  Ma never did that, either.

  We don’t talk much.

  My father never was a talker.

  Ma’s dying hasn’t changed that.

  I guess he gets the sound out of him with the

  songs he sings.

  I can’t help thinking

  how it is for him,

  without Ma.

  Waking up alone, only

  his shape

  left in the bed,

  outlined by dust.

  He always smelled a little like her

  first thing in the morning,

  when he left her in bed

  and went out to do the milking.

  She’d scuff into the kitchen a few minutes later,

  bleary eyed,

  to start breakfast.

  I don’t think she was ever

  really meant for farm life,

  I think once she had bigger dreams,

  but she made herself over

  to fit my father.

  Now he smells of dust

  and coffee,

  tobacco and cows.

  None of the musky woman smell left that was Ma.

  He stares at me,

  maybe he is looking for Ma.

  He won’t find her.

  I look like him,

  I stand like him,

  I walk across the kitchen floor

  with that long-legged walk

  of his.

  I can’t make myself over the way Ma did.

  And yet, if I could look in the mirror and see her in

  my face.

  If I could somehow know that Ma

  and baby Franklin

  lived on in me …

  But it can’t be.

  I’m my father’s daughter.

  January 1935

  The President’s Ball

  All across the land,

  couples dancing,

  arm in arm, hand in hand,

  at the Birthday Ball.

  My father puts on his best overalls,

  I wear my Sunday dress,

  the one with the white collar,

  and we walk to town

  to the Legion Hall

  and join the dance. Our feet flying,

  me and my father,

  on the wooden floor whirling

  to Arley Wanderdale and the Black Mesa Boys.

  Till ten,

  when Arley stands up from the piano,

  to announce we raised thirty-three dollars

  for infantile paralysis,

  a little better than last year.

  And I remember last year,

  when Ma was alive and we were

  crazy excited about the baby coming.

  And I played at this same party for Franklin D.

  Roosevelt

  and Joyce City

  and Arley.

  Tonight, for a little while

  in the bright hall folks were almost free,

  almost free of dust,

  almost free of debt,

  almost free of fields of withered wheat.

  Most of the night I think I smiled.

  And twice my father laughed.

  Imagine.

  January 193
5

  Lunch

  No one’s going hungry at school today.

  The government

  sent canned meat,

  rice,

  potatoes.

  The bakery

  sent loaves of bread,

  and

  Scotty Moore, George Nall, and Willie Harkins

  brought in milk,

  fresh creamy milk

  straight from their farms.

  Real lunch and then

  stomachs

  full and feeling fine

  for classes

  in the afternoon.

  The little ones drank themselves into white

  mustaches,

  they ate

  and ate,

  until pushing back from their desks,

  their stomachs round,

  they swore they’d never eat again.

  The older girls,

  Elizabeth and LoRaine, helped Miss Freeland

  cook,

  and Hillary and I,

  we served and washed,

  our ears ringing with the sound of satisfied children.

  February 1935

  Guests

  In our classroom this morning,

  we came in to find a family no one knew.

  They were shy,

  a little frightened,

  embarrassed.

  A man and his wife, pretty far along with a baby

  coming,

  a baby

  coming

  two little kids

  and a grandma.

  They’d moved into our classroom during the night.

  An iron bed

  and some pasteboard boxes. That’s all they had.

  They’d cleaned the room first, and arranged it,

  making a private place for themselves.

  “I’m on the look for a job,” the man said.

  “The dust blew so mean last night

  I thought to shelter my family here awhile.”

  The two little kids turned their big eyes

  from Miss Freeland

  back to their father.

  “I can’t have my wife sleeping in the cold truck,

  not now. Not with the baby coming so soon.”

  Miss Freeland said they could stay

  as long as they wanted.

  February 1935

  Family School

  Every day we bring fixings for soup

  and put a big pot on to simmer.

  We share it at lunch with our guests,

  the family of migrants who have moved out from dust

  and Depression

  and moved into our classroom.

  We are careful to take only so much to eat,

  making sure there’s enough soup left in the pot for

  their supper.

  Some of us bring in toys

  and clothes for the children.

  I found a few things of my brother’s

  and brought them to school,

  little feed-sack nighties,

  so small,

  so full of hope.

  Franklin

  never wore a one of the nighties Ma made him,

  except the one we buried him in.

  The man, Buddy Williams,

  helps out around the school,

  fixing windows and doors,

  and the bad spot on the steps,

  cleaning up the school yard

  so it never looked so good.

  The grandma takes care of the children,

  bringing them out when the dust isn’t blowing,

  letting them chase tumbleweeds across the field

  behind the school,

  but when the dust blows,

  the family sits in their little apartment inside our

  classroom,

  studying Miss Freeland’s lessons

  right alongside us.

  February 1935

  Birth

  One morning when I arrive at school

  Miss Freeland says to keep the kids out,

  that the baby is coming

  and no one can enter the building

  until the birthing is done.

  I think about Ma

  and how that birth went.

  I keep the kids out and listen behind me,

  praying for the sound of a baby

  crying into this world,

  and not the silence

  my brother brought with him.

  And then the cry comes

  and I have to go away for a little while

  and just walk off the feelings.

  Miss Freeland rings the bell to call us in

  but I’m not ready to come back yet.

  When I do come,

  I study how fine that baby girl is. How perfect,

  and that she is wearing a feed-sack nightgown that

  was my brother’s.

  February 1935

  Time to Go

  They left a couple weeks after the baby came,

  all of them crammed inside that rusty old truck.

  I ran half a mile in their dust to catch them.

  I didn’t want to let that baby go.

  “Wait for me,” I cried,

  choking on the cloud that rose behind them.

  But they didn’t hear me.

  They were heading west.

  And no one was looking back.

  February 1935

  Something Sweet from Moonshine

  Ashby Durwin

  and his pal Rush

  had themselves a

  fine operation on the Cimarron River,

  where the water still runs a little,

  though the fish are mostly dead

  from the dust floating on the surface.

  Ashby and Rush were cooking up moonshine

  in their giant metal still on the bank

  when Sheriff Robertson caught them.

  He found jugs of finished whiskey,

  and barrels and barrels of mash,

  he found two sacks of rye,

  and he found sugar,

  one thousand pounds of sugar.

  The government men took Ashby and Rush off to

  Enid

  for breaking the law,

  but Sheriff Robertson stayed behind,

  took apart the still,

  washed away the whiskey and the mash,

  and thought about that sugar,

  all that sugar, one-half ton of sugar.

  Sheriff decided

  some should find its way

  into the mouths of us kids.

  Bake for them, Miss Freeland, he said,

  bake them cakes and cookies and pies,

  cook them custard and cobbler and crisp,

  make them candy and taffy and apple pandowdy.

  Apple pandowdy!

  These kids,

  Sheriff Robertson said,

  ought to have something sweet to

  wash down their dusty milk.

  And so we did.

  February 1935

  Dreams

  Each day after class lets out,

  each morning before it begins,

  I sit at the school piano

  and make my hands work.

  In spite of the pain,

  in spite of the stiffness

  and scars.

  I make my hands play piano.

  I have practiced my best piece over and over

  till my arms throb,

  because Thursday night

  the Palace Theatre is having a contest.

  Any man, woman, or child

  who sings,

  dances,

  reads,

  or plays worth a lick

  can climb onto that stage.

  Just register by four P.M.

  and give them a taste of what you can do

  and you’re in,

  performing for the crowd,

  warming up the audience for the

  Hazel Hurd Players.

  I figure if
I practice enough

  I won’t shame myself.

  And we sure could use the extra cash

  if I won.

  Three-dollar first prize,

  two-dollar second,

  one-dollar third.

  But I don’t know if I could win anything,

  not anymore.

  It’s the playing I want most,

  the proving I can still do it.

  without Arley making excuses.

  I have a hunger,

  for more than food.

  I have a hunger

  bigger than Joyce City.

  I want tongues to tie, and

  eyes to shine at me

  like they do at Mad Dog Craddock.

  Course they never will,

  not with my hands all scarred up,

  looking like the earth itself,

  all parched and rough and cracking,

  but if I played right enough,

  maybe they would see past my hands.

  Maybe they could feel at ease with me again,

  and maybe then,

  I could feel at ease with myself.

  February 1935

  The Competition

  I suppose everyone in Joyce City and beyond,

  all the way to Felt

  and Keyes

  and even Guymon,

  came to watch the talent show at the Palace,

  Thursday night.

  Backstage,

  we were seventeen amateur acts,

  our wild hearts pounding,

  our lips sticking to our teeth,

  our urge to empty ourselves

  top and bottom,

  made a sorry sight

  in front of the

  famous Hazel Hurd Players.

  But they were kind to us,

  helped us with our makeup and our hair,

  showed us where to stand,

  how to bow,

  and the quickest route to the

  toilet.

  The audience hummed on the other side of the

  closed curtain,

  Ivy Huxford

  kept peeking out and giving reports

  of who was there,

  and how she never saw so many seats

  filled in the Palace,

  and that she didn’t think they could

  squeeze a

  rattlesnake

  into the back

  even if he paid full price,

  the place was so packed.

  My father told me he’d come

  once chores were done.

  I guess he did.

  The Grover boys led us off.

  They worked a charm,

  Baby on the sax,

  Jake on the banjo,

  and Ben on the clarinet.

  The Baker family followed, playing

  just like they do at home

  every night after dinner.

  They didn’t look nervous at all.

  The tap dancers,

  they rattled the teeth in their jaws