by Karen Hesse
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 telling the truth.
He might as well earn a couple dollars.
&nb
sp; 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.
&nb
sp; 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.
And later,