by Sarah Zettel
Jack and I stared at each other, but only for a heartbeat. Jack folded the Model A’s hood back and plunged both arms into the engine. A second later, the engine coughed and the smell of gasoline filled the passenger compartment. The whole truck shuddered, and the motor caught. That unsteady rumble was the sweetest sound I’d ever heard.
I threw myself and my frying pan sideways as Jack leapt feetfirst into the driver’s seat. He worked the choke, yanked the throttle open, slammed the gears, and stomped hard on the accelerator, and we lurched off into the dark.
“Which way?” shouted Jack.
The world beyond the little space cleared by the headlights was a wall of solid black. I squinted, and found out my ability to see through the dust didn’t mean I could see in the dark.
“Just drive!”
Jack’s cheek bulged as he clenched his jaw. A line of barbed wire and fence posts appeared in front of us. Jack swore and tried to swing right, but he was too late. Wire twanged and snapped around us as the truck lumbered straight ahead.
I stared and stared. Slowly, I made out the line of the hogback ridge, and then the vague shape of a windmill. With the fence, that meant we were headed east, away from town, out toward the railroad tracks. I opened my mouth to tell Jack to bear left, but the wind gusted hard, blowing dust in through the truck’s open windows. Dust, and voices.
Look shhhhaaaarrrrp! Look shhhhaaaarrrrp!
“No! Oh, no, no, no, no!”
“What?” Jack demanded.
“Can’t you hear it?”
“No!”
THUMP! The truck rocked under the impact of something heavy falling square on the roof.
“Heard that,” Jack muttered.
A second thump shook our flimsy getaway truck.
“That too,” said Jack.
A huge Hopper head, mandibles scissoring, ducked into the window. I screamed and shoved the frying pan straight into its mouth. There was a hiss and a stench like burning hay, and the bug tumbled off into the dust.
“Got it!” I shouted.
Jack hooted and pounded the steering wheel.
A black hook curled around the window frame.
“Take that!” I banged the frying pan down on the hook. The Hopper howled and the hook vanished.
Jack gripped the wheel so tight his knuckles went white. “Hang on!”
He hit the brakes and wrenched the wheel around. The engine groaned, and the rickety Ford spun in a tight circle, rocking like a ship in a storm. The Hopper flew sideways, tumbling away into the dark.
Miraculously the truck didn’t stall out. I was ready to marry both Jack and Mr. Henry Ford as we went rolling over the dunes.
Then the engine coughed and the truck lurched.
“Come on, come on,” Jack pleaded, working the throttle and the choke. “Not yet!”
“What’s wrong?”
“Engine’s taking in dust,” he said grimly. “It’s gonna smother.”
Caaaalliiiieeee…
I stuck my head out the window. There was just enough light to see the big black bug leaping from dust ridge to dust ridge, right behind us.
“One of ’em’s back there?”
“Yes!”
The truck coughed and staggered again.
“Okay.” Jack clashed the gears and cussed a blue streak, throwing the truck into reverse. The wheels spun and I was afraid he’d dig us into the dunes. But he just swung that truck around until the Hopper glittered in the headlights.
“What’re you doing?” I shrieked.
“Playing chicken!” Jack grinned like he was a Hopper himself and put all his weight onto the accelerator, almost standing up from the seat. The truck flew forward. So did the bug. I swear I heard it laughing.
“They can fly, you idiot!”
Jack said nothing. The bug jumped up and landed right on the hood with a hollow thump. It scrabbled at the glass, its mandibles and hooks digging into the spiderweb of cracks, ready to winkle us out of our tin shell.
It didn’t see the windmill looming up in the headlights behind it.
“Jump!” Jack shouted.
I kicked open the door and jumped, thudding into hot dust and rolling tail over teacup down the new dune. There was a crash and a scream and a big, juicy, buzzing squelch.
Coughing hard and spitting dust, I picked myself up.
The Model A had plowed into the windmill, and the Hopper, whichever one it was, was squashed between the twisted struts and the steaming guts of the wrecked truck. Yellow oozed out of its broken body and dripped onto the dust.
I looked at Jack. Jack looked at me. Above us, the windmill’s bent frame creaked and swayed in the wind.
I grabbed Jack’s free hand and dragged him behind me.
We ran until we couldn’t run anymore. After that, we walked. The wind was kicking up all the new dust. It stuck to my glaze-smeared skin and itched like a whole family of fleas. Jack coughed with every step, and I was ready to be sick wondering what I’d do if he started to suffocate. So when we saw the deserted tenant farmer’s shack sticking out of the sand, we didn’t even think twice, just stumbled inside and collapsed in the middle of the floor. Jack threw his coat over us both and we huddled close under the worn-out cloth.
After a while, we fell asleep.
9
Dust Bowl Refugees
An arm smacked me on the ear. I shouted and sat up. Jack’s coat slid off my head.
“Hannah! Hannah, stop!” Jack rolled back and forth, his eyes squeezed tight and his arms flailing in every direction.
“Wake up!” I hollered. “Jack, wake up!”
His eyes snapped open, and for a minute, it was plain he didn’t know where he was, or why his arms were stretched out like that. Slowly, blinking hard, he sat up. Sweat streamed down his brow, and he wiped it away with the back of his shaking hand.
“Nightmares?” I said, and he nodded. His face was so pale under the dirt, I figured it was better to change the subject. “Thanks for getting us out of there. Where’d you learn to drive like that?”
Jack fiddled with his shoelaces for a second. “Before they repealed Prohibition, my folks were bootleggers-bathtub gin, moonshine, stuff like that. Sometimes I had to drive the car on the deliveries.” He didn’t look too proud of that, which should have been a clue about how he felt about the rest of his time at home, and probably should have stopped me from asking my next question. “Who’s Hannah?”
“My sister. She’s dead.” Jack got to his feet without looking at me.
“I’m sorry.”
Jack shrugged and kept on not looking at me. Instead, he wiped his hands on his pants and walked over to the door to turn the handle. When the door didn’t open, he leaned on it. It didn’t budge.
“We’re drifted in solid,” he said.
The shack had two windows, one beside the door and one at the back. I tried squinting out the one beside the door, but it was too grimy to let me see much. From the sound of things, the wind had died down, but dust still pattered and pecked as it settled onto the shack’s tin roof, a sound enough like rain to make you cry.
Jack came to stand beside me, looking through the dust-covered glass. He grunted, wrapped his coat around his fist, and punched each of those glass panes in a no-nonsense way. He swept his arm around, clearing out the glass and splintering the mullions, which were already half gone from dry rot. As soon as the window hole was clear, we both climbed out onto the drift that had piled up level with the sill. Standing on that shifting dust pile, we looked at what the storm had made of Kansas.
I was used to being alone, but never like this. Hills and ripples of red sand spread under the glare of a pink-and-white sky. Nothing broke the smoky horizon, not so much as a fence post, let alone any sign of road or railroad track.
“Let’s get back in,” said Jack.
I nodded. The shack was rickety and the dust was piled in every corner, but its rusted roof shut out that empty country.
“So.” Jack
rested his arms against his bent knees. “You gonna tell me what all that was with the Hoppers back there?”
“I don’t know.”
“Right, and I’m the king of England.”
“I don’t know! It just…” I flapped my hands, like I could shoo the question away. “It just happened.”
I told him about the voices I’d heard, and how Mama made me play Papa’s piano and then vanished in the dust storm. I told him how I went looking for her but found Baya instead; how I got three wishes, then got the Hoppers. Finally, I told him what Letitia Hopper had said about the prophecy: See her now, daughter of three worlds. See her now, with three roads to choose. Where she goes, where she stays, where she stands, there shall the gates be closed.
Jack took off his cap, knocked the dust off, rubbed his brushy hair, and put his hat back on. Then he leaned his head against the wall and stared up at the tin roof for a long time.
“That Apache you pulled out of the dust…,” he said to the roof. “I think you met Coyote.”
“Baya was a coyote?” I shouldn’t have been surprised, but part of me just would not give up the idea that something still had to be impossible.
“Not a coyote.” Jack sat up straight and folded his long legs. “Coyote. He’s a big Indian spirit, and there’s a ton of stories about him. There’s one about how he hung the stars, and another about how he named all the animals, all kinds of stuff like that.”
I was quiet for a little while, because I was remembering the shape I’d thought was a dog in the dust storm, and how I’d seen the stars in Baya’s black eyes.
“You got any idea what the Hoppers were?” I asked. “Besides really big bugs?”
Jack’s face scrunched up as he considered that one. “I think they’re fairies.”
Now I knew he was crazy, and I guess that showed on my face. “What else are they gonna be?” Jack demanded. “Besides big bugs?” He started ticking points off on his fingers. “They’re magic. They don’t like iron…”
“How do you know they don’t like iron?”
“You said you clobbered Letitia with the silver tray and she got right back up, but when you hit her with a cast-iron frying pan, she stayed down.”
“Couldn’t that just be because the pan’s stone-dead heavy?” I gave him my best fish eye, but at the same time, I was thinking how the Duesenberg changed into a rickety Model A as soon as the pan banged against the door.
“Could be, but I don’t think so. See, iron’s poison to fairies, so I think they’re fairies.” Jack took off his hat and rubbed his head again. “And I think you are too.”
My train of thought screeched to a stop so hard it nearly jumped the track.
“Me?” I said, hoping I’d heard him wrong. “I’m a fairy?”
“Well, what did Baya tell you? About your pa?”
I didn’t have to think about it. Every word had carved itself right into me. “ ‘There’s a spirit man, tall and fine. He’s full of love and mischief. He’s promised to a spirit woman of his enemies, but he doesn’t want her.’ ”
“See? ‘Spirit man.’ That could mean fairies.” Jack leaned forward, his hands talking as much as his mouth. “The Irish say there’re two kinds of fairies. There’s the Seelie. They’re bright and beautiful. Then there’s the Unseelie, and they’re all dark and ugly, like trolls and goblins and stuff. Each side has their own kings and their own territory, and they’re always at war with each other and…”
Jack kept on talking, but I was hearing a very different voice.
“The Seelie King will reward us all,” I whispered.
“What?” Jack frowned.
“Letitia said that, when we were in the kitchen. She said, now that they… the Hoppers had found me, the Seelie King would reward them.”
“See! I’m right!” Jack shouted.
I felt sick anger crawl up out of my stomach to glower at him. I did not like Jack knowing more about what was going on than I did. The whole world had turned upside down and shaken us out into this lonesome place. I wanted him to be just as confused and lost as I was, though for the life of me I couldn’t have said why.
“How can you know all this stuff?”
Jack shrugged. “That wasn’t the first time I got took up for vagrancy. I got caught coming through Texas once, and they put me on a road crew. I spent thirty days chained to this mick kid from Brooklyn, and he told me a bunch of stories his grandma told him.”
“You said iron’s poison to fairies. If I’m a fairy, how come I could hold on to the frying pan?”
I figured I had him there, but not for long. “Maybe it’s because you’re only part fairy,” said Jack. “Daughter of three worlds, right? Your mama’s a regular human being, right? So you can handle iron and salt and stuff because of your human blood.”
“I can’t be a fairy. They’re little girls in puffy skirts and they’ve got wings…” They’re all white. “I don’t feel like a fairy.”
“How do you know? If you’ve always felt like you, you wouldn’t know if that was how a fairy felt or not.”
“It doesn’t matter.” I was not going to talk about this anymore. I was not even going to think about this. There were all kinds of more important things to think about. Like how we were going to stay alive without food or water or any idea which way town was. “I still gotta get to California. That’s where Baya said Mama is.”
I got to my feet and went over to the broken window again. I stared and stared until I felt the veins standing out in my forehead, and I still couldn’t see anything.
“I can get you to California,” said Jack.
“How’re you going to do that?”
He shrugged. “We can ride the rails out. I’m going that way anyhow, and two’s better than one when you’re bummin’.” He cocked his head at me, and those big blue eyes turned all sly. “I won’t do it for free, though.”
“But I don’t have any…” I stopped. “Wait! I still got…” I shoved my hand in my apron pocket, but when I brought it out, all I had was a single dead leaf. I opened my fist, and the tired-out wind brushed leaf crumbs across the floor. The fifty hadn’t been any more real than Mrs. Hopper’s pretty face. “I got nothing.”
“You got your story. You tell it to me, and I can write it up and sell it to the magazines.” The way Jack said it, I was sure that was what he had been thinking of all along.
“Who’d believe any of this?”
“Not like news, dopey. I’d do it up like a story. You ever read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz?”
As if there was a girl alive in Kansas who hadn’t read that book.
“Oz made L. Frank Baum rich.” Jack’s face lit up like it had when he talked about getting a newspaper job in Los Angeles. “You can make a fortune with just one book, especially if Hollywood decides they want to make a movie out of it. What do you say?”
I hated the idea. But what could I say? Without Jack Holland I’d have been a Hopper supper already. “Okay, but you gotta get me to California first.”
“Deal!” He stuck out his hand, and there in the middle of the biggest nowhere ever created, we shook on it. “This is gonna work out swell. I can just see it: my journey with a fairy girl to the Golden State…”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, just to shut him up. I wasn’t a fairy, but there was no way I was going to get him to believe that. I’d have to prove it somehow, but how do you prove a thing’s not so? “What do we do now?”
Jack shoved his hands into his breeches pockets and looked me over. “You sing.”
“What?”
“We have to find out what you can do. From what you said, it all started when you played your father’s piano…”
“Played, not sang,” I pointed out.
He shrugged. “So we have to find out if you need an instrument, or if you can make magic with any music.”
I gawked at him. If there had been any flies around, I would have caught them. How could he be so calm?
“It’s not sa
fe,” I reminded him. “Last time my mama vanished and the Hoppers found me.” I was starting to like Jack less and less, but I didn’t want him vanishing, and I sure as sure didn’t want any more Hoppers, not when I didn’t even have so much as a frying pan.
“Just try,” Jack said. “You brought Hoppers last time; maybe this time you can… I don’t know, bring us breakfast.”
You know how in a cartoon when somebody’s got to make a choice, they’ll get a little angel on one shoulder and a little devil on the other? That was how I felt right then. Half of me was saying: Don’t do it, don’t do it, something bad will happen. The other half was saying: Do it, do it, you gotta find out what will happen.
But the word breakfast had its own magic, and the little devil won. “What do I sing?”
Jack made a face like he knew I was stalling. “How about ‘I Been Workin’ on the Railroad’?” he said. “Everybody knows that one. Come on.” He started clapping to set the time and sang. “I been workin’ on the railroad…”
“All the live-long day…” It was a kids’ song. I didn’t like it, but he was right, I did know it. Its tune flowed into my brain and I started clapping along. Jack and I set up a strong, steady rhythm, like a chorus of hammers, like men keeping time as they swung those hammers down on the iron spikes, pinning the great black rails to the wooden ties, binding the country together and opening it wide up at the same time.
“Can’t you hear the whistle blowin’? Rise up so early in the morn…”
I forgot about being thirsty, about being lost, and about everything else except this stupid little kids’ song with its driving rhythm and its memories of work gangs so long gone nobody knew what it was about anymore.
“Can’t you hear the captain shouting, ‘Dinah, blow your horn…’ ”
I felt it happen. Everything shifted, though my eyes couldn’t see what or how. The whole world just twisted as if we were inside a lock while somebody was turning the key. The feeling lasted less than a second, but when it finished, the air all around us had changed, as if a fresh breeze was blowing in.