Dust girl

by Sarah Zettel

  “Dinah, won’t you blow?” we sang. “Dinah…”

  “Drill, ye tarriers, drill!”

  A new voice cut across mine. Jack’s hands froze between one clap and the next, and his mouth gaped.

  “Drill, ye tarriers, drill!”

  It wasn’t just one voice; it was a full-throated chorus of men. Their rough and ragged singing soared in from the ruined prairie, where a minute ago there had been nothing at all.

  “For it’s WORK all DAY for the SUGAR in your TAY, DOWN on the OLD rail-WAY!”

  Jack scrambled to his feet and ran for the window hole. I followed, slow and afraid.

  “And drill, ye tarriers, drill! And BLAST! And FIRE!”

  Sun-bleached grass rippled beneath a pure blue sky. It smelled sweet, sweeter than my bread pudding. Bees buzzed among the cornflowers and Queen Anne’s lace. A hawk wheeled overhead, and sparrows clung nervously to the nodding grass stems. All at once I remembered being a little girl and running through grass like this, up to the hogback ridge to watch rain clouds pile up on the horizon.

  A great gash had been cut in the grass for the iron rails. Shirtless men stood carefully spaced on either side of those black lines. Each man held a long-handled hammer. The hammers swung up and the hammers swung down, in time with their song.

  “Every morning at seven o’clock

  There’s twenty tarriers workin’ on the rock!

  Boss comes round and yells, ‘Keep still!

  And come down heavy on the cast-iron drill!’ ”

  “Look.” Jack tugged at my sleeve. I turned, and he pointed to the shanty’s back window. Through that other window, there was still the silent, empty desert.

  Out front, the men laying the rails across the lush green grassland kept right on singing. It was like something out of a pulp magazine, Astounding Stories or Weird Tales. Jack had punched open the glass window, but somehow I’d punched open a… a time window.

  Or maybe it wasn’t a window at all. Maybe it was a gate.

  Whatever it was, it was wrong. I felt that down to the soles of my feet. It was completely wrong and I was responsible. Again.

  “We gotta get out of here.” I started for the desert window.

  “Wait! They got a cook wagon.” Jack leaned out the broken window across the living prairie. I couldn’t help but look. A little, old-timey steam engine with a big red cowcatcher jutting out front waited on the track that had already been laid. That engine was hooked up to a full-fledged railcar with a trickle of smoke coming out of its chimney. The breeze blew through the window again. This time, it carried the smell of cooking bacon. My stomach growled and cramped up. Another breath and I could smell baking bread as well. My stomach didn’t so much growl as roar.

  “We can go bum a meal!” Jack had his foot up on the sill, but I hauled him back.

  “No! We can’t go out there!”

  “Why?”

  “Because what if we can’t get back?”

  That stopped him. He saw it now. If it was a gate, and if somehow I’d opened it, somebody else could shut it. Or I might accidentally shut it, because sure as sure, I didn’t know what I was doing or how I was doing it.

  If my gate shut while we were in that other time, we might never be able to get back.

  Jack looked toward the cook car and the smoke coming out its tin chimney. “We have to try.”

  “We can’t!”

  The face he turned toward me was nothing I’d seen on him yet. Anger and desperation were knotted up together with his hunger. “You stay here if you want,” he said soft and slow, so each word dropped separately between us. “I’m going after something to eat.”

  He was out the window and running through the grass while I was still opening my mouth to yell “No!” I grabbed the windowsill and leaned out as far as I could. I felt the strange, shifting parts of the invisible lock all around me. I felt them wobble, and I felt the key begin to turn. I tried to grab it, but it slipped free.

  “Jack!” I screamed. “Jack! It’s closing!”

  He stopped and turned. “You’re just saying that!”

  “No! I’m not! I swear!” It was turning, turning. The barrel and the tumbler were shifting. The hinges were straining, and I was in the middle. I felt the pressure inside my brain and inside my heart. “Hurry!”

  Jack looked at the cook car and the singing men, and at me. He cussed loud and angry and came pelting back. I shook. I didn’t know where these feelings were coming from, and I didn’t know how to stop that twisting I could only think of as the key.

  Jack slapped both hands on the windowsill and vaulted through. I shuddered and screamed. SNAP! The sound rocked the shack, and even Jack reeled.

  Hot, dusty wind blew across the windowsill into our faces as we stood there, panting and shaking and staring out at the unbroken Kansas desert.

  Jack wiped his dusty sleeve across his mouth. “You swear to me you didn’t do that on purpose?”

  I shook my head. “It started to close on its own. I couldn’t hold it. I tried, I promise I did.”

  He took off his hat and rubbed his head. “What do we do, then?”

  “Start walking, I guess.”

  So we climbed out into our own time to trudge hungry and thirsty over the blowing dunes. We kept our eyes straight ahead so we both had something like privacy while we cried for the smell of growing grass and baking bread.

  10

  Going Down the Road Feelin’ Bad

  It took me and Jack three days to get to the town of Constantinople. And I’ll tell you this-Jack was lucky to be alive by that time. Not because the walking was so hard, which it was, but because I was ready to kill him stone dead.

  The whole three days we walked, Jack Holland would not shut up. He kept after me and after me to sing something so he could see what would happen. It was like he’d forgotten all about the Hoppers and how he’d almost gotten stuck in that railroad work camp out of the olden days. He kept trying to tell me all these stupid, baby fairy stories he’d heard from some crazy Irish guy, or some crazy Negro, and even this extra-special crazy Eye-talian. Kept trying to tell me I must be all fairy magic and everything. He thought it was so exciting. He didn’t get it. It was bad enough when I had to hide being half black. Now I might not even be human at all. How was I supposed to hide that?

  Pretty soon I found out the only way to shut him up at all was to ask what happened to his little sister, Hannah. But then we’d go maybe another mile, and he’d start right in again. And every night, before it got too dark to see, he’d pull out this little notebook and stubby pencil he carried and write stuff down. Stuff about me, I just knew it.

  I lay awake nights, listening to the wind until my head hurt. But there were no more voices. That didn’t make me feel any better. That could just mean whatever was out there was keeping quiet, and waiting.

  Jack woke up sweating and staring every night, calling out for Hannah to stop whatever it was she was doing.

  Even with my special dust eyes to see the way, it was hard to keep to the road buried under drifts of blow dirt and tumbleweeds. We passed people working their way out from under the storm. We saw a farmer hauling his wife and kids out of the second-story window to stand on the roof. The dust had buried the rest of the house. We saw another man sitting on the hood of his tractor, his head in his hands. We stopped and helped a woman and her three little kids pull their cow out of a drift. She shared their supper of fatback meat and beans, and let us sleep on their roof with them that night. We stopped again and helped a man and a pregnant woman dig out their Model T. They gave us some water from their canteens and let us ride with them toward Constantinople, until we got stopped by more drifts over the road. They said they’d wait for the plow trucks. We wished them luck and started walking again.

  The third night we stayed in a cellar hole. We lit a fire from the timber pile that used to be the house overhead and took turns sleeping, in case a duster came up.

  By the time we stumbled t
o the edge of Constantinople, I was ready to drink the Mississippi dry and then fall down and sleep for a year.

  I’d been to Constantinople before, but not for a long time. It was bigger than Slow Run. They had a clothing store as well as a general store, along with five saloons, but only four churches. As if to make up for this, the churches were all built of brick, with steeples sticking high and proud into the dusty sky. There was even a real movie theater-the Bijoux-with a big, flashy marquee out front announcing they were showing The Man Who Knew Too Much starring Peter Lorre, along with a SECOND BRAND-NEW FEATURE.

  Constantinople had people too. They came and went from those stores and churches, or stood on the board walkways talking with each other. They glanced at me and Jack as we stumbled up the street, but just as quickly looked back to their own troubles. A group of men clustered around the curving bumpers of a Packard car all leaned in so close to the radio that their hat brims touched.

  “Colorado’s governor has authorized the mobilization of National Guard troops to help Denver in the aftermath of what may have been the biggest dust storm ever to hit…”

  The problem was, there we were, walking into town all filthy and hungry, our feet burning from the hot dust, and we had nothing but the crumbs of a dead leaf in our pockets. I turned to Jack. “Now what?”

  But Jack didn’t answer right away. He just kind of faded into the shadow beside Morrison’s Hardware Store. As he surveyed the main street with its battered cars, rickety wagons, and starving mules, Jack’s face changed. He tightened up. The “gosh wow” dreamer with his big grin who could believe in magic and fairies without blinking was gone. This was the hobo kid who could hot-wire a car and drive it like a bootlegger.

  “Won’t be no trains yet today,” he said. I knew that much. On the way in, we’d skirted the rail yard and saw the men fighting the wind to get the tracks cleared. “So we’re gonna need to find food, and maybe a place to bed down.” His narrow gaze flickered this way and that, taking the measure of the whole town. “Callie, you just go stand in front of the window of that lunch counter and look hungry.”

  I’d tried to get ready for the idea we’d have to bum something, but now that I was actually faced with begging, I balked. “Why me?”

  “ ’Cause you’re a girl,” Jack said, really slowly like I wasn’t too bright. “Folks’ll give a meal faster to a girl than a boy.”

  “Why?”

  “Just will, that’s all. Besides, you’re smaller than me. That always helps.”

  I looked out onto the main street. Men in overalls and women in dungarees or worn dresses went in and out of stores with dusty windows. They stopped to talk with each other. A dented, lopsided truck rattled by. Away on the other side stood the lunch counter. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t beg with all these people around to see.

  Then the wind twisted until it was blowing straight from across the street. The smell of hot grease went right to my stomach and kicked out my pride. I could do anything if it meant I could get one mouthful of whatever was making that smell.

  “So I just stand there?”

  “That’s about it.” Jack kept his eyes on the street. I didn’t know what he was looking for, but he looked for it hard. “If a customer sees you and offers to buy you a meal, you take it. If the waitress or the fry cook comes out, you offer to sweep up or do any kind of work they got. Be sure to tell ’em you been walking all day and your brother’s out looking for work.”

  “My brother?”

  “Me.”

  I eyed him up and down, from his bright blue eyes and brown hair to his knobby knees. “Nobody’s going to believe you’re my brother.”

  “Most people believe what you tell ’em. Oh, and one thing to remember.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t go nowhere with nobody unless you take me with you. Some people ain’t safe.”

  “I knew that one.”

  “Just makin’ sure. Now go on.” Jack gave me a shove on the shoulder. He could smell the cooking too, and he’d been hungry longer than I had.

  I didn’t like it, but what was I gonna do? We weren’t going to get any farther without something to eat. My throat felt like it had been sunburned, and my legs felt like rubber bands. I wasn’t sure I was even going to make it across the street.

  But I did, and I stood in front of the big plate-glass window with CARMODY’S APOTHECARY written across it in fancy gold letters. It was plastered over with signs for aspirin, Pepsodent toothpaste, and food: COFFEE AND PIE, TEN CENTS. HAMBURGER, FIVE CENTS. They had the radio going too, all about the duster.

  “… declaring from the floor of the United States Senate that now is the time for decisive action on the question of soil conservation and agricultural reform…”

  Right behind the dust-dimmed window stood a couple of wooden booths and tables, and past them was the long counter with its red-and-silver stools. In one of the booths sat a windburned man with his shirtsleeves rolled up past his rough elbows. While I watched, he scooped up a big, fat hamburger from a nest of french fries and bit off a hunk of meat, cheese, bread, and onion. Juice dripped down onto the napkin tucked into his shirt. The waitress came by with a coffeepot and a slice of bright yellow pie topped with three inches of fluffy meringue balanced on a tray.

  I thought I was going to faint dead away on the sidewalk boards.

  The waitress poured a stream of black coffee into the man’s cup. She glanced up, and our eyes met. I didn’t have to try to look hungry. I felt sick just trying to stand there. The next good blast of wind would have blown me right over.

  The man, still chewing, turned his head. He saw me too. He wiped his mouth with the corner of his napkin and tossed it on the table, climbed to his feet, collected some things from the seat beside him, and stumped toward the door.

  The bell rang as he came out, and the smell of cooking hung all around him. The world reeled again. I’d have done anything to get some of that food. I’d have gotten down on my knees right there on Main Street.

  Then I saw the gun hanging from his belt. And the nightstick. I looked around frantically for the badge, and finally saw it clipped beside the weapons. It wasn’t a sheriff’s star, though. It was a golden shield.

  “What you want here, girlie?” The man smelled like onions and tobacco.

  I looked the whole way up into his hard gray eyes. “P-p-please, sir. D-do you have a job of work I could do? I been walkin’ all day with my brother, and…”

  He crouched down so his eyes were level with mine, and he smiled all across his broad, tanned face. “Well now, girlie, I’ll tell you what,” he began. Hope filled the hungry parts of my insides. Then he pushed his hat back on his head and went on. “I’m gonna give you exactly thirty seconds to get off this street. If you ain’t gone by then, I’m gonna take this club and crack you a good one across your backside. If you don’t run fast enough after that, you’re gonna find yourself on the chain gang choppin’ cotton for the rest of your natural-born days. How’s that sound?”

  I backed up, one step, two, three. The man kept right on grinning.

  “Bull Morgan don’t allow no bums on his trains, girl, or in his town.” He reached down and pulled that shiny brown club out of its holster beside the wooden-handled revolver.

  Fear found the last of my strength, and I bolted like a scared rabbit. Jack caught hold of me as I ran past, and swung us both around behind the hardware store. All the while, I heard that big man-Bull Morgan-laughing.

  I was shaking and I couldn’t stand anymore. I slid down the clapboard wall until I was huddled on the ground. I could still smell the grease and the onions, and tears were starting.

  “It’s okay.” Jack put his hand on my shoulder. “It happens sometimes. We just wait till he’s gone. Then we try again. Back door this time. That waitress felt sorry for you, I could tell.”

  I shook my head hard. “I can’t do that again.”

  “You’re just not hungry enough yet. Give it another hour. You�
��ll go back.”

  “Well,” said a new voice, “I call that an awful shame.”

  A Negro woman was walking down the backstreet, swinging a little white handbag.

  “A great big girl like you begging in the streets.” She stopped right in front of us and planted a fist on her hip.

  She had a pretty face, with round cheeks and a wide mouth that looked like it was holding back a smile. Her skin was the color of the earth in good times. The blue flowers on her white dress made splashes of bright color against our dust-dimmed surroundings, and a wide-brimmed white hat shaded her face, making it hard to see her eyes.

  Jack was on his feet. “ ’S not her fault, missus,” he said in a high, pathetic voice that sounded a lot younger than his own. “We been knockin’ and knockin’, lookin’ for a job of work, but there’s nothin’, not with the duster, and we were so hungry…”

  I’d been right about Jack Holland. He had the kind of face that could make you believe. He made his eyes go all wide and puppy-dog as he twisted his cap in his hands and hunched over so he didn’t look so tall.

  “Tsk-tsk.” The woman shook her head slowly. But she wasn’t paying attention to Jack. She just kept looking at me.

  “Come here, girl,” she said at last.

  Jack gave me a hint of a nod. So I got up and brushed myself off and walked to the woman. She was pretty, in her flower-print dress, white hat, and white gloves. Now I could see her eyes were the color of strong coffee.

  She looked at me hard with those eyes, and then broke into a big smile. Unlike Bull Morgan’s, this one was full of joy.

  “Well, well.” The woman clapped her hands together. “If I haven’t gone and found myself Callie LeRoux.”

  “ ’Scuse me?” I said, forgetting my manners entirely. “I don’t know you.”

  “No, you don’t, but I know your papa, Daniel.”

  Just like that, I was struck as dumb as a dead stump. Jack slipped closer, but I couldn’t so much as turn my head away from this lady. I couldn’t have moved if the whole Hopper clan had come pouring out of the hardware store.