by Karen Hesse
and twisted rails,
scorched dirt, and
charred ties.
No one talks about fire
right to my face.
They can’t forget how fire changed my life.
But I hear them talking anyway.
April 1935
The Mail Train
They promised
through rain,
heat,
snow,
and gloom
but they never said anything about dust.
And so the mail got stuck
for hours,
for days,
on the Santa Fe
because mountains of dust
had blown over the tracks,
because blizzards of dust
blocked the way.
And all that time,
as the dust beat down on the cars,
a letter was waiting inside a mail bag.
A letter from Aunt Ellis, my father’s sister,
written just to me,
inviting me to live with her in Lubbock.
I want to get out of here,
but not to Aunt Ellis,
and not to Lubbock, Texas.
My father didn’t say much when I asked
what I should do.
“Let’s wait and see,”
he said.
What’s that supposed to mean?
April 1935
Migrants
We’ll be back when the rain comes,
they say,
pulling away with all they own,
straining the springs of their motor cars.
Don’t forget us.
And so they go,
fleeing the blowing dust,
fleeing the fields of brown-tipped wheat
barely ankle high,
and sparse as the hair on a dog’s belly.
We’ll be back, they say,
pulling away toward Texas,
Arkansas,
where they can rent a farm,
pull in enough cash,
maybe start again.
We’ll be back when it rains,
they say,
setting out with their bedsprings and mattresses,
their cookstoves and dishes,
their kitchen tables,
and their milk goats
tied to their running boards
in rickety cages,
setting out for
California,
where even though they say they’ll come back,
they just might stay
if what they hear about that place is true.
Don’t forget us, they say.
But there are so many leaving,
how can I remember them all?
April 1935
Blankets of Black
On the first clear day
we staggered out of our caves of dust
into the sunlight,
turning our faces to the big blue sky.
On the second clear day
we believed
the worst was over at last.
We flocked outside,
traded in town,
going to stores and coming out
only to find the air still clear
and gentle,
grateful for each easy breath.
On the third clear day
summer came in April
and the churches opened their arms to all comers
and all comers came.
After church,
folks headed for
picnics,
car trips. No one could stay inside.
My father and I argued about the funeral
of Grandma Lucas,
who truly was no relation.
But we ended up going anyway,
driving down the road in a procession to Texhoma.
Six miles out of town the air turned cold,
birds beat their wings
everywhere you looked,
whole flocks
dropping out of the sky,
crowding on fence posts.
I was sulking in the truck beside my father
when
heaven’s shadow crept across the plains,
a black cloud,
big and silent as Montana,
boiling on the horizon and
barreling toward us.
More birds tumbled from the sky
frantically keeping ahead of the dust.
We watched as the storm swallowed the light.
The sky turned from blue
to black,
night descended in an instant
and the dust was on us.
The wind screamed.
The blowing dirt ran
so thick
I couldn’t see the brim of my hat
as we plunged from the truck,
fleeing.
The dust swarmed
like it had never swarmed before.
My father groped for my hand,
pulled me away from the truck.
We ran,
a blind pitching toward the shelter of a small house,
almost invisible,
our hands tight together,
running toward the ghostly door,
pounding on it with desperation.
A woman opened her home to us,
all of us,
not just me and my father,
but the entire funeral procession,
and one after another,
we tumbled inside, gasping,
our lungs burning for want of air.
All the lamps were lit against the dark,
the house dazed by dust,
gazed weakly out.
The walls shook in the howling wind.
We helped tack up sheets on the windows and doors
to keep the dust down.
Cars and trucks
unable to go on,
their ignitions shorted out by the static electricity,
opened up and let out more passengers,
who stumbled for shelter.
One family came in
clutched together,
their pa, divining the path
with a long wooden rod.
If it hadn’t been for the company,
this storm would have broken us
completely,
broken us more thoroughly than
the plow had broken the Oklahoma sod,
more thoroughly than my burns
had broken the ease of my hands.
But for the sake of the crowd,
and the hospitality of the home that sheltered us,
we held on
and waited,
sitting or standing, breathing through wet cloths
as the fog of dust filled the room
and settled slowly over us.
When it let up a bit,
some went on to bury Grandma Lucas,
but my father and I,
we cleaned the thick layer of grime
off the truck,
pulled out of the procession and headed on home,
creeping slowly along the dust-mounded road.
When we got back,
we found the barn half covered in dunes,
I couldn’t tell which rise of dust was Ma and
Franklin’s grave.
The front door hung open,
blown in by the wind.
Dust lay two feet deep in ripply waves
across the parlor floor,
dust blanketed the cookstove,
the icebox,
the kitchen chairs,
everything deep in dust.
And the piano …
buried in dust.
While I started to shovel,
my father went out to the barn.
He came back, and when I asked, he said
the animals
weren’t good,
and the tractor was dusted out,
and I said, “It’s a
wonder
the truck got us home.”
I should have held my tongue.
When he tried starting the truck again,
it wouldn’t turn over.
April 1935
The Visit
Mad Dog came by
to see how we made out
after the duster.
He didn’t come to court me.
I didn’t think he had.
We visited more than an hour.
The sky cleared enough to see Black Mesa.
I showed him my father’s pond.
Mad Dog said he was going to Amarillo,
to sing, on the radio,
and if he sang good enough,
they might give him a job there.
“You’d leave the farm?” I asked.
He nodded.
“You’d leave school?”
He shrugged.
Mad Dog scooped a handful of dust,
like a boy in a sandpit.
He said, “I love this land,
no matter what.”
I looked at his hands.
They were scarless.
Mad Dog stayed longer than he planned.
He ran down the road
back to his father’s farm when he realized the time.
Dust rose each place his foot fell,
leaving a trace of him
long after he’d gone.
April 1935
Freak Show
The fellow from Canada,
James Kingsbury,
photographer from the Toronto Star,
way up there in Ontario,
the man who took the first pictures of
the Dionne Quintuplets,
left his homeland and
came to Joyce City
looking for some other piece of
oddness,
hoping to photograph the drought
and the dust storms
and
he did
with the help of Bill Rotterdaw
and Handy Poole,
who took him to the sandiest farms and
showed off the boniest cattle in the county.
Mr. Kingsbury’s pictures of those Dionne babies
got them famous,
but it also got them taken from their
mother and father
and put on display
like a freak show,
like a tent full of two-headed calves.
Now I’m wondering
what will happen to us
after he finishes taking pictures of our dust.
April 1935
Help from Uncle Sam
The government
is lending us money
to keep the farm going,
money to buy seed,
feed loans for our cow,
for our mule,
for the chickens still alive and the hog,
as well as a little bit of feed
for us.
My father was worried about
paying back,
because of what Ma had said,
but Mrs. Love,
the lady from FERA,
assured him he didn’t need to pay a single cent
until the crops came in,
and if the crops never came, then he wouldn’t pay a
thing.
So my father said
okay.
Anything to keep going.
He put the paperwork on the shelf,
beside Ma’s book of poetry
and the invitation from Aunt Ellis.
He just keeps that invitation from her,
glowering down at me from the shelf above the piano.
April 1935
Let Down
I was invited to graduation,
to play the piano.
I couldn’t play.
It had been too long.
My hands wouldn’t work.
I just sat on the piano bench,
staring down at the keys.
Everyone waited.
When the silence went on so long
folks started to whisper,
Arley Wanderdale lowered his head and
Miss Freeland started to cry.
I don’t know,
I let them down.
I didn’t cry.
Too stubborn.
I got up and walked off the stage.
I thought maybe if my father ever went to Doc Rice
to do something about the spots on his skin,
Doc could check my hands too,
tell me what to do about them.
But my father isn’t going to Doc Rice,
and now
I think we’re both turning to dust.
May 1935
Hope
It started out as snow,
oh,
big flakes
floating
softly,
catching on my sweater,
lacy on the edges of my sleeves.
Snow covered the dust,
softened the
fences,
soothed the parched lips
of the land.
And then it changed,
halfway between snow and rain,
sleet,
glazing the earth.
Until at last
it slipped into rain,
light as mist.
It was the kindest
kind of rain
that fell.
Soft and then a little heavier,
helping along
what had already fallen
into the
hard-pan
earth
until it
rained,
steady as a good friend
who walks beside you,
not getting in your way,
staying with you through a hard time.
And because the rain came
so patient and slow at first,
and built up strength as the earth
remembered how to yield,
instead of washing off,
the water slid in,
into the dying ground
and softened its stubborn pride,
and eased it back toward life.
And then,
just when we thought it would end,
after three such gentle days,
the rain
came
slamming down,
tons of it,
soaking into the ready earth
to the primed and greedy earth,
and soaking deep.
It kept coming,
thunder booming,
lightning
kicking,
dancing from the heavens
down to the prairie,
and my father
dancing with it,
dancing outside in the drenching night
with the gutters racing,
with the earth puddled and pleased,
with my father’s near-finished pond filling.
When the rain stopped,
my father splashed out to the barn,
and spent
two days and two nights
cleaning dust out of his tractor,
until he got it running again.
In the dark, headlights shining,
he idled toward the freshened fields,
certain the grass would grow again,
certain the weeds would grow again,
certain the wheat would grow again too.
May 1935
The Rain’s Gift
The rain
has brought back some grass
and the ranchers
have put away the
feed cake
and sent their cattle
out to graze.
Joe De La Flor
is singing in his saddle again.
May 1935
Hope Smothered
While I washed up dinner dishes in the pan,
; the wind came from the west
bringing—
dust.
I’d just stripped all the gummed tape from the
windows.
Now I’ve got dust all over the clean dishes.
I can hardly make myself
get started cleaning again.
Mrs. Love is taking applications
for boys to do CCC work.
Any boy between eighteen and twenty-eight can join.
I’m too young
and the wrong sex
but what I wouldn’t give to be
working for the CCC
somewhere far from here,
out of the dust.
May 1935
Sunday Afternoon at the Amarillo Hotel
Everybody gathered at
the Joyce City Hardware and Furniture Company
on Sunday
to hear Mad Dog Craddock
sing on WDAG
from the Amarillo Hotel.
They hooked up speakers
and the sweet sound
of Mad Dog’s voice
filled the creaky aisles.
Arley Wanderdale was in Amarillo with Mad Dog,
singing and playing the piano,
and the Black Mesa Boys were there
too.
I ached for not being there with them.
But there was nothing more most folks in Joyce City
wanted to do
than spend a half hour
leaning on counters,
sitting on stairs,
resting in chairs,
staring at the hardware
and the tableware,
listening to hometown boys
making big-time music
on the radio.
They kept time in the aisles,
hooting after each number,
and when Mad Dog finished his last song, they sent
the dust swirling,
cheering and whooping,
patting each other on the back,
as if they’d been featured
on WDAG themselves.
I tried cheering for Mad Dog with everyone else,
but my throat
felt like a trap had
snapped down on it.
That Mad Dog, he didn’t have
a thing to worry about.
He sang good, all right.
He’ll go far as he wants.
May 1935
Baby
Funny thing about babies.
Ma died having one,
the Lindberghs said good night to one and lost it,
and somebody
last Saturday
decided to
give one away.
Reverend Bingham says
that Harley Madden
was sweeping the dust out of church,
shining things up for Sunday service,
when he swept himself up to a package
on the north front steps.
He knelt,
studying the parcel,
and called to Reverend Bingham,