“He’s fine,” repeated Josiah in a distant voice, hunkered over like a turtle under a shell, protecting something imaginary beneath him. “Trust me. He’s got him.”
Ellen closed her eyes and waited and waited and waited until she could wait no more. Then she handed James to Wilmington and rolled out from beneath the table. The air had already begun to brighten, but dust motes still hovered. The duster had not lasted as long as some but had most assuredly dumped more soil than any before it. She could see the front door across the room, a sliver of light beside the sheet covering the window, glass on the floor. She heard crying across the town, more desperate than what they’d heard from the jackrabbits. She grabbed a mask from beside the door and secured it around her head.
“Ellen, what are you doing?” Josiah had slid out from beneath the table. “It ain’t safe yet.”
She opened the door and stepped outside to the porch, which was covered in dust so black it didn’t look real. Didn’t look possible. How deep had that wind cleaved into the earth to find dirt that black? Clouds of it still swirled and floated, but the black wall had passed over the town and was on its way to Texas, the sheer size of it nearly as horrifying on the back end as it had been from the front. She had no way to warn those poor souls still in the path, who were probably now out enjoying the sun and blue sky much like they’d been doing before Armageddon had come in the form of dust.
On the ground, so much was covered. Cars and mailboxes and fences and tractors were all mounds of black. Small dust tornadoes spun as the wind swept on and the temperature dropped even further. But visibilty increased by the second. Flecks of blue sky showed through the haze.
Josiah joined her on the porch, coughing into his fist.
“Put a mask on, Josiah.”
He didn’t. He surveyed the town same as she did and probably came to the same conclusion—it was a wasteland, a terrible wasteland that couldn’t be real. This was not her country anymore. Not her Oklahoma panhandle. Not her Nowhere.
Mrs. Draper wandered about like a blind woman, covered from head to toe in black. She wiped at her caked eyes.
Ellen slid down the mound of dirt that covered their porch steps and hurried to her. “Don’t wipe at them, Loreda. It’ll only push the dirt deeper.”
“Who is this?”
“It’s Ellen. Ellen Goodbye.”
“Nicholas? Where’s my son? We were holding hands. He slipped from my grip, and I lost him. I lost him, Ellen.” Loreda Draper collapsed in the dust, and Ellen knelt beside her, not sure what to do or where even to take her. Her eyes looked buried under an inch of muddy gunk. She couldn’t even see any lashes or eyebrows.
More dust cleared, blue sky emerged, and sunlight penetrated, scattered in crisscrossing rays. Those that were willing stepped from their homes and churches and barns and businesses, coughing and hacking and crying in equal measure.
The grain silo that had held the source of so much wealth during the boom had been knocked to the ground, burying that awful place where Josiah had seen Jeremiah bury the bodies.
Ellen peered down Main Street, where a thick cloud of dust broke apart in swirls, revealing what looked like the silhouette of a person kneeling.
The rest of the town saw it too, because many of them were pointing, walking closer to see if it was a live person or some kind of horrid, calcified dust sculpture.
“Stay with Loreda,” Ellen said to Josiah. She took off her mask and joined the group walking down Main Street. They stopped their march when they figured out who it was there in the middle of the road, completely covered in black dust.
“Jeremiah?”
He looked up and turned his neck, rooting for her voice. Beneath him lay a dusty heap of clothing and two little shoes that didn’t move.
Nicholas . . . Ellen stepped closer.
The shoes moved, a flinch at first and then an all-out slide. A head emerged from the bundle, groggy. It was a boy, all right. Then he coughed.
“Nicholas,” said Ellen.
The boy wiped his face. “Mrs. Goodbye?”
Ellen’s lip quivered as the boy ran toward her. She took Nicholas in her arms and nearly hugged the life out of him. By that point Josiah had gotten Loreda to her feet, and they were on their way over, a mother reunited with a son she’d thought dead only moments ago. A son she could feel but not see.
Jeremiah looked lost in the eyes, similar to what she’d seen with Josiah under that kitchen table, shielding an imaginary Nicholas Draper just as Jeremiah had been out in the heart of the worst duster ever, protecting the real boy.
Josiah stared at his twin like he didn’t believe he was really there.
Ellen stepped closer. How was he still alive? Out in all that black dust without any protection? “Jeremiah?”
He flinched, staggered, and went back down on one knee. He had a satchel in his arms. His hands trembled when he opened it. “Peter’s last name is Cotton.”
“What’s in the satchel?” she asked.
“His things,” said Jeremiah, blowing upward to clear dust from his face. “And I may know now when he was born.”
Ellen’s heart rate sped faster than what was normal or safe, and her legs suddenly felt like melting butter. Her voice cracked. “When was he born, Jeremiah?”
“Same day.”
Ellen’s jaw trembled, and the lump in her throat made it hard to breathe.
Josiah said, “What’s he talking about, Ellen?”
“Summer of twenty-six,” said Jeremiah. “August twenty-nine.”
Same day.
How was it even possible?
Ellen dropped to the dust on both knees. Then she settled her weight on her heels and cried.
NINE
No one swept out after the duster this time.
They’d been in the ring of a prizefight, and this was the final blow that put them on the canvas. No point getting back up. No point fighting the fight they couldn’t win. The land was just too strong and mean and too determined to break them.
Just as they had broken it.
Ellen helped Loreda Draper back to her home and took thirty minutes to clear the muddy gunk from her eyes, removing the dirt in layers, rinsing and sloshing a rag in a bucket of well water Nicholas and Windmill had to change every five minutes. Even as she worked on Loreda, her mind was on Jeremiah and what he’d said about Peter and when he was born.
Orion and Wilmington, soon after the duster moved on, had gathered all that were able to case the town and make sure everyone was accounted for. Both Jeremiah and Josiah had joined them. They’d gone to opposite sides of the cluster of men who’d gathered, every one of them too numb to give Jeremiah’s return to town much thought. They would deal with that later, and more than likely it would come to a vote. One thing Ellen knew for certain, and she’d be vocal about it when decision time came—Nicholas Draper would have died out in the duster if not for Jeremiah.
Dr. Craven entered the Drapers’ house soon after Ellen found Loreda’s eyes. But what took him so long? His face was still caked with black dust, and he hadn’t even brought his leather satchel of medical supplies. He stopped next to Loreda’s bed and just stood there, staring over the patient and toward the dusty sheet flapping against the window across the room.
Ellen snapped her fingers in front of his face. “Dr. Craven?”
“Yes?” he said, his eyes not moving from the window. “What is it, Ellen Goodbye?”
“I got her eyes cleared. Thought maybe you should give them a look.”
“All I can see is black,” Loreda said from the bed. “Nicholas, where’d you go?”
Nicholas gripped her hand. “I’m right here, Momma. Ain’t going nowhere.”
“Dr. Craven?” Ellen said again. “Please.”
Dr. Craven glanced at Loreda but then returned his gaze toward the window. “She’s blind now, Ellen. Can’t you see that?” His voice was uncharacteristically stoic and monotone. He’d made a habit of comforting his patients with a
bedside manner that made them smile no matter the prognosis. Now he put a liver-spotted hand on Loreda’s shoulder, and just when Ellen sensed the bedside manner coming, the doctor said, “You’ll probably never see again, Mrs. Draper. Darkness until the end of your days is what I think. Get used to bumping into things and feeling around with your hands. Maybe your boy here will help you about, but I don’t know; truth be told, he’s never come across as all that bright.”
Nicholas stared up at the doctor, the man who’d delivered him, the man who’d delivered most everyone in town. The boy’s eyes filled with tears.
Windmill clenched his hands into fists as if he might strike the old man.
Dr. Craven looked at Windmill next. “You need to stop your daydreaming, son.” He gestured toward Ellen. “She’s too old for you. Not enough days to close that gap, either. She thinks it’s cute, those feelings you have for her, but you’re only a boy, Windmill. Her words, not mine.” He winked. “Only a boy.”
Windmill was the tallest in the room, already three inches taller than the doctor, but he now seemed to shrink and shrivel next to Nicholas. Windmill looked at Ellen, and she looked away. She’d said it, sure as that rain that never fell. She’d said it one day over coffee with the doctor, how she thought it was cute that Windmill carried a torch for her. “But he’s only a boy.” Windmill dropped down into an armchair next to the window and said nothing.
Dr. Craven turned on his heel and headed for the hallway, but then stopped suddenly. “I’ll send my bill in the mail.”
Ellen caught up to him before he left the house. “Doctor, what is wrong with you? You had no right to say those things.”
Dr. Craven raised a crooked index finger and swiped it across his cheek. He showed her the layer of dust on it. “Want to try it?”
“No.”
He put his finger in his mouth and licked that dust clean off. “Can you feel it, Ellen Goodbye?”
“Feel what?” she asked, too horrified to think clearly.
“This dust was different. Like it was alive.” He tapped the side of his head hard enough for it to echo, like knuckling a wooden tabletop. “It’s in there now, Ellen. Munching away.” He gripped the front doorknob and flinched from a jolt of static electricity still lingering. “You know what your mother told me right before she breathed her last breath?”
Ellen shook her head. She didn’t want to know. She’d lost both of her parents to the white death a month apart, first her father and then her mother. They’d been quarantined in a room with several other tuberculosis patients in what was now Nowhere’s hospital.
Dr. Craven told her anyway. “In those last minutes she talked to me like I was her preacher. Your father was intending to be one of those suitcase farmers—rape the land and run with buckets of money.”
“Don’t.”
“But I feel like I have to, Ellen. It’s like the dust did something to my filter.”
“What filter?”
“The one that keeps the bad stuff in,” he said. “This dust—it just seems to make all the truths come out. And it’s about time. Just plain old dirty-truth medicine is what all this calls for.” What’s wrong with him? Why is he doing this? He put a gentle hand on her forearm, but it was no longer comforting like it had once been. “Your mother begged your father to stay here in Nowhere, but not because she thought the air was better for her lungs, like she’d told him. It was because she was in love with another man. Another man right here in Nowhere.”
Ellen didn’t believe him, and at the same time she wanted to know who it was. But she couldn’t muster enough air to ask. It felt like she was choking on the doctor’s evil dose of medicine.
“What was said was said and can’t be unsaid, Ellen. Just like Jeremiah can’t unflip a coin even if he wanted to.”
“What are you talking about?”
He winked. “I don’t know.” Dr. Craven placed his dusty bowler hat on his head and nodded. “Good day, Mrs. Goodbye.” And he walked right out the door.
She watched, stunned, and then followed him outside, where she shouted for him to tell her who that other man was. But all Dr. Craven did was wave without turning around.
Ellen’s legs trembled and her stomach churned, and she suddenly felt panicked about James and Peter before remembering that Sister Moffitt was keeping an eye on them both while the dust settled.
The men who’d gone door-to-door to account for the town folk began to return and cluster in the middle of Main Street, probably ten paces from where they’d found Jeremiah curled over Nicholas Draper. Ellen slid down a slope of black dust until her feet found level enough ground to walk on and approached the gathered men. Josiah and Jeremiah stood apart from one another. Wilmington was in the middle of the men, alongside Orion, who couldn’t even fake a smile as blue sky returned.
Ellen caught the gist of their mumbling. Everyone in town was accounted for, which was a miracle in itself, a miracle that on a typical postduster day would have been celebrated with some bingo and beverages inside the Bentley. But all the men did now was stare and mull on unsaid words. Stare at each other. Stare at the blue sky. Stare at all that black dust. Stare at the tail end of the black blizzard that was now a mere sliver of horizontal black in the distance.
Dr. Craven had passed on by and headed for his home. He stumbled twice on the dirt mound covering his front steps, and none of the men made a move to help. Finally Dr. Craven made his way up. He brushed off his trousers and headed inside. The door closed behind him with an echoed click.
Ellen studied the gathered men, studied their faces and their eyes to see if they showed any signs of what had happened to the doctor. Had the living dust entered to munch away on their minds like Dr. Craven said it’d done on him? Had the dust done something to their filters? The men gulped and spat to the ground, each one looking as defeated as the next, and no one spoke.
Ellen’s voice was weak, but her words cracked through. “We were all lucky to have lived through it, I suppose.”
“Were we though, Ellen?” asked Josiah, grinding the dust stuck in his teeth, his eyes spotting something across the road next to Leland Cantain’s mailbox, which was buried except for the tiny yellow flag slanting up as if in surrender. Josiah moved through the crowd, and the men parted for him. He’d honed in on a mound of black dirt that at first looked no different than the rest of the mounds around town—except this one, Ellen noticed as she followed her husband, had three fingers sticking up from the surface.
Josiah squatted as the rest of them circled around the mound. With his right hand he shoveled dirt away from the fingers to expose a hand, then a rigid forearm and an elbow.
Ellen covered her mouth but couldn’t look away. If everyone in town had been accounted for, who was that buried beneath the dust?
Josiah had changed course, moving away from the arm, probably figuring they wouldn’t know until they uncovered the head, which, according to where Josiah moved, was probably buried a foot or so to the right. After another twenty seconds of digging, Josiah found hair, and soon thereafter a nose and two eyes and a mouth, all open to the dust.
Josiah didn’t look surprised at who it was. None of the men did, including Ellen as she stepped closer to get a better look. The only one to look stunned was Jeremiah.
But it was that man all right. That man who had called himself Boo and had come to town hoping for Jeremiah to unflip that coin before death found him.
Too late for that.
One by one they all looked at Jeremiah like they were hoping he’d say something, provide them with some sort of an answer. But all he did was purse his lips and say, “I’ll go get a shovel. Suppose we should bury him proper.”
TEN
The Worst family had been the first to leave Nowhere when the soil started peeling from the earth, and according to Ellen, folks hadn’t been sad to see them go. Mr. Worst and his wife were both as crotchety as a handful of cats in a bag. Their son, William, had been, for lack of a better word, the wors
t of them all.
Worst of the Worsts, thought Jeremiah, unable to conjure the energy to chuckle at what he and Josiah had once thought funny. William Worst and the twins had a history, one Jeremiah wasn’t yet ready to face in light of the latest happenings with that dead man, Boo. Which was probably why Josiah had recommended, if Jeremiah was going to chance staying in town for even one night, that he stay in the abandoned Worst house a few houses down.
“See what kind of memories those walls conjure,” Josiah had said, deadpan.
Jeremiah tested a floor lamp next to a dust-covered sofa. As he’d figured, the house had no electricity. The sun was going down, but what bled through the grimy windows showed floors so caked with dust that the inside didn’t look much different than out. It would take him days to clean up the place, if he stayed that long. Half the town probably considered that man Boo to be another one of his victims and, with the past being the way it was, he couldn’t blame them. But in this case he felt no responsibility or guilt for that man’s death, despite the fact that he did indeed flip that coin.
Jeremiah’s legs suddenly felt wobbly. He sat down on the sofa without even wiping the dust from the cushions. The fact that he no longer had the nightmares didn’t mean he couldn’t remember what had been in them, and the memories could hit like a gut punch. Darkness twisted by swirls of light. Rushes of loud noise and muted silence, his body pulled and tugged by shadows. Excruciating pain followed by no feeling at all. Air so thick it was unbreathable.
The darkness swallowed him up—deep and bottomless with nothing to catch him as he fell, sightless, screaming, the unexplainable fear palpable like a heartbeat as it slowed, and slowed. Then suddenly there was a light. A pinprick grew to the size of a baseball, and then his vision filled with brightness.
The gasp of air, like he’d been holding his breath too long underwater.
The nightmare ended the same way every time.
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