What Blooms from Dust

by James Markert

  But Jeremiah had watched right back. I know who you are. You’ve had a hand on me my whole life. Taking the form of dust don’t change things. Except now I know how to get rid of you, he remembered telling the shape that might or might not have even been there. I sat in that electric chair and died long enough to cast you out. That jolt only made me stronger. And you can’t get back in.

  The dust man’s voice was a whisper in Jeremiah’s head, from his nightmare, because he now knew that’s all it had been. From dust we come, and to dust we shall return, Jeremiah. I took her. And I nearly took you too.

  What do you mean you took her?

  He remembered the dust man collapsing at that point, scattering into millions of motes that floated in every different direction.

  Take whatever form you want, Jeremiah remembered saying. I won’t let you back in.

  And now the sun had replaced the night, and he doubted last night had even happened. He stood from the kitchen table and approached the window, feeling an urgent need to see if that rose was still out there in the middle of the road.

  It was. His yellow mailbox flag was up too, as were the others all over town. But that wasn’t what had dozens of people outside right now standing and staring in shock.

  Jeremiah opened the front door and stepped outside for a better look. Then he was staring too. For while yesterday had brought that one lone spot of red in the middle of the road, today brought a dozen at least.

  Red roses had sprouted all over town.

  One bloomed in the middle of the courthouse lot. Sheriff McKinney stood next to it scratching his head. Another grew from the dust that had gathered on one of the Bentley Hotel’s porch rails. Another sprouted in the middle of the road where he’d seen Sheriff McKinney and Ellen shake hands yesterday. Another adorned the dusty sidewalk leading to the opera house. And yet another rose grew from the Goodbyes’ dirt-covered driveway, not too far from where they’d all shoveled dust the day before.

  His first estimate of twelve turned out to be eight roses off. By the time he’d cased the town and discussed the situation with others—Rose was out taking notes—it was agreed by one and all that nineteen more roses had popped through that dust overnight. That made twenty in all.

  They studied them like they’d studied the lone rose the day before. Orion bent down next to one and, after getting a nod of encouragement from Wilmington, touched one of the petals. The roses were real, all right, each one as sturdy as the next, and they smelled like springtime was supposed to smell.

  Like wet blooms and life.

  Wilmington shook his head and stood watching as Rose took notes across the way. Then he went inside while all the others stayed out.

  “There’s something he’s not telling us.”

  Jeremiah turned to find Ellen beside him. “Morning, Ellen.”

  “Your father,” she said. “He’s holding back.” Her eyes were wet, fresh from tears, the good cleansing kind. She held Peter’s latest letter in her hand. She must have just read it. “He knows more than he’s letting on about all this. I think Orion does too. And Dr. Craven.”

  “You might be right.”

  They watched the town folk move about. Some walked from rose to rose. Others read their letters, while even more were sweeping and digging out from last night’s duster.

  “I’m sorry, Jeremiah.”

  He looked at her. “About what?”

  She didn’t answer, not verbally, but her glance toward Josiah, who was kneeling next to one of those roses across the way, gave him a hint as to what she was thinking. Was she talking about him and Josiah? His eyes flicked toward his twin, and she answered his question with the lowering of her head.

  “Don’t blame yourself for us two drifting apart. You hear me?”

  She nodded but kept her gaze on the dust.

  He lifted her chin with an index finger and caught her eyes. “You were right the other day, Ellen. About what happened years ago. I did flip a coin on me and you. I know it sounds nonsensical, but that’s what I did. Just like you surmised.”

  She nodded, squinted into the sunlight. They shared a look. He was trying to guess her thoughts like he used to but things seemed fuzzy now.

  “I loved you, Ellen. I wanted more than anything to be with you.”

  “I know.” She smiled, and the smile was genuine. “But it just couldn’t be, right?”

  “I didn’t flip the coin when you think I did.”

  She looked at him again.

  “That hurt you showed the day before my arrest,” he said, “when I told you I couldn’t be with you and to marry my brother—I relived it every day I was in jail. Took it with me to bed every night I was behind those bars. Took it with me into that electric chair, even. I didn’t flip the coin that week Josiah proposed to you, Ellen.”

  “When, then?”

  “I flipped it the day you drove into town,” he said. “I had to know.”

  “And it told you yes? That you and I would be good together.”

  He didn’t answer, exactly, just looked down at the dust.

  So it was no. She nodded and wiped her eyes.

  “But it was real, Ellen, every secret day of it. So real I was willing to test it.”

  “Test what?”

  “Fate, I guess. I’d learned early on that the coin was never wrong with me. But with you I wanted to give it a go. I carried a torch for you, and I wanted to see how long it could burn.”

  She nodded, clear-eyed. “You think that’s why our baby didn’t survive?”

  He looked to the ground again. “Can’t say I haven’t had the same thoughts, Ellen, but I’m not sure that’s the way of things. I suppose it just wasn’t meant to be.”

  “I suppose so.” She wiped her eyes and smiled up at him. She held out her arm, bent at the elbow. “I was on my way to the schoolhouse. Emory and I were going to clean it out today and get classes going again. Would you mind accompanying me?”

  He linked his arm with hers, and they began walking.

  She laughed.

  “What’s funny, Ellen?”

  “Just that life is sometimes ironic once you allow reality into it.”

  “I reckon so.” His eyes fished for more, because what she said made little sense.

  “I was an only child, Jeremiah,” she explained. “I’d always begged my parents to go out and get me a sister.” She smiled up at him again as they strolled. “But I suppose a brother-in-law will do.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  It took most of the day to get the schoolhouse to Ellen’s liking, but by the time the sun began to drop across the blue sky, the desks smelled of fresh cedar oil and the floors had been mopped clean enough to dine upon. Ellen knew she’d have to clean again as soon as the next duster rolled in, but for now it gleamed, and that was enough.

  Most of Ellen’s pupils had joined in the effort, eager now to get back to learning, and Emory Rochester had been happy just to be around them again. Peter had even shown up after a while. He had mostly observed, but the other kids had seemed to be warming to him. They weren’t giving him those queer looks they’d thrown him when he first came to town. In fact, they treated him with a bit of awe over what he’d done.

  Nicholas Draper, who beamed because he’d finally gotten his mother to eat that morning, inched over to Peter and showed him how to shovel dirt across the floor with the instep of his shoe. After a few tries, Peter took right to it. James was there too. He imitated what Peter was doing, and the two of them acted as a team.

  Jeremiah, despite the wounded shoulder, had been a big help, doing most of the heavy lifting and dirt pushing once they’d piled it too high for the kids to budge.

  Windmill showed up a couple of hours into the cleaning. He didn’t say anything to Ellen as he grabbed a broom and got right to work, but she sensed embarrassment in the way he kept his head lowered. Bravery was more like it, showing up despite what he knew she’d said about him.

  They’d created a system of dirt remo
val that proved efficient—shoveling heaps of it onto blankets and sheets and then either carrying or pulling those right out the door. One blanket got way too heavy for the kids, so she made a point to call both Jeremiah and Windmill over.

  “Let’s let the two men remove this one,” she said to the kids, winking at Windmill, who blushed, smiling as he helped Jeremiah remove the heavy dirt-filled blanket from the schoolhouse.

  Rose Buchanan stepped inside ten minutes later, waving her hand through floating dust and asking how she could help. After a few seconds of sizing the reporter up, Ellen handed her a broom and said she could start in the back corner, which Rose did without hesitation. Did she even notice I gave her the corner with the most dust and grime? If she did, she said nothing about it, just got right to work despite her fancy dress. She also brought the news that Josiah and Wilmington and some others had gathered to help Orion clean out the Bentley Hotel. When they finished there, the plan was to move on to the courthouse.

  “Stone by stone,” Ellen murmured, dusting off one of the desktops.

  “What’s that?” asked Jeremiah.

  “Oh, nothing.” She hadn’t realized she’d said it aloud and hadn’t known Jeremiah was working right behind her. She’d been too busy spying on Rose across the room. “She’s pretty, by the way.”

  “Who?”

  “Miss Fancy Dress over there.” And then, “You flip a coin on her yet?”

  “No.” And after a beat, he said, “Should I?”

  Ellen chewed on it. “I don’t know yet. Maybe we should see if the law ever comes for you first.”

  He grinned. “That the only reason I should wait, Ellen?”

  “Of course.” She looked away and resumed working, dealing with her emotions the best she could. It took time to remove stones too, and these particular ones had acted as boulders for way too long. She had a notion to go on over and help the reporter with that corner of the room, an olive-branch attempt to help bridge the unsaid. She probably would’ve done just that had the rumble of thunder not moved everyone in the room to silence.

  Ellen laid her dustcloth on the desk and hurried outside. With thunder could come rain. The others followed, and as a cluster they faced the western horizon, where the noise seemed to be coming from. A great big cloud approached, wide and moving and buzzing.

  Buzzing?

  Jeremiah said, “That ain’t no thunderboomer.”

  The cloud approached, not as black as the typical duster, but it buzzed like an electric current ran through it. The people began to stir, uneasy, looking around now in every direction.

  “It’s no duster either.” Ellen looked for her son. “James?”

  The cloud got closer and wider, loud and crackling, buzzing loudly enough for some of them to hold their ears. And then, with little warning, it was upon them.

  Peter started shrieking.

  “James?” Where is he? Ellen turned, frantic.

  Jeremiah had James in the crook of one arm. He swooped Peter up with the other as a wave of grasshoppers poured over Nowhere like a tidal wave, millions of hopping insects, swarming and landing and munching everything in sight.

  Now that James was safe with his uncle, Ellen took charge of the schoolchildren. She and Emory rushed the panicked kids back inside. They closed the doors and windows, but large numbers of grasshoppers still made it inside, banking off the walls and bouncing off the chalkboards, covering the handles of the brooms and shovels, gnawing on the wood, on the desks, the wooden door frames.

  Ellen gathered the kids in a cluster and had them kneel next to the back wall and hunker down. More grasshoppers poured in. And outside was an insanity she could simply not fathom, a plague of biblical proportions. First the drought, and then the dust storms and the jackrabbits. And now this.

  The grasshoppers covered her dress. She swiped at them, but they kept coming. Jeremiah protected Peter and James, doing his best to shield the terrified boys from the tumult like he’d done with Nicholas Draper during the big black blizzard. Windmill swung a shovel side to side in front of them, smacking dozens of hoppers with each movement, screaming as he did so, daring them to come at him.

  Rose stood frozen in the middle of the schoolhouse, her face pale as hundreds of grasshoppers danced around her feet and ankles and clung to the skirt of her dress, rising upward as one munching collective.

  “Rose,” screamed Ellen. “Over here.” The swarm of hoppers wasn’t as thick where the kids were.

  But Rose wouldn’t—or couldn’t—move.

  Ellen ran to her, grabbed her arm, and pulled her from whatever trance had left her stuck in the middle of the room, and together the two women hurried toward the kids, who were screaming and crying, yet unheard because of the sheer power of sound coming from the sudden plague of hoppers. The ground outside reverberated. The walls shook.

  Ellen gripped Rose’s hand. They lowered their faces to the floor, but the hoppers were everywhere—over, under, and on every side of them, hopping and munching and buzzing, and Ellen wished it over, but no one was listening. The hoppers clipped her face, danced off her hair, and hurtled across her ears. She squeezed her eyes shut, clenched her teeth, and held on for dear life.

  An hour later the sound dissipated. They lifted their heads from their hands and slowly stood from their hunched-over crouches. They walked across the room, where at least three dozen hoppers still jumped around.

  Ellen ran to James and hugged him so tight he started coughing.

  Jeremiah stood by the window. Ellen and Rose joined him, looking out on a bleak landscape. The starved grasshoppers had eaten everything they could find and were now a dark cloud rolling southeast toward Texas. Thousands remained though, hopping at wild tangents on every outside surface. But at least the dust was visible again.

  The good old dust.

  Ellen had never imagined she’d be happy to see it.

  “They’re gone,” said Jeremiah.

  At first Ellen assumed he was talking about the grasshoppers, but upon closer inspection she realized it was something more.

  The roses were gone.

  Eaten. Every one of them.

  Thorny stems and all.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Just before sundown another duster hit. And after the dirt moved on, everyone in Nowhere stepped outside to assess the damage. Dead grasshoppers, smothered by the dust storm, crunched underfoot. The wind died down, but not before it blew over Orion’s mailbox, weakened from the hoppers snacking on the wooden post.

  Jeremiah felt too many eyes on him—everyone dust-covered and weary—like they blamed him or they just didn’t know what to say or do anymore. He turned in a slow circle as the town gathered. “It’s testing us.”

  Deacon Sipes spat brown juice to the dirt, then wiped his mouth. “What’s testing us?”

  “The land.”

  “Why should we trust you?” asked Deacon. “Ever since you come back to Nowhere, we’ve had nothing but trouble. That Black Sunday duster, pushing us to the brink. And now a plague of grasshoppers?” He stepped closer and spat again. This time it landed on Jeremiah’s boot.

  Wilmington said, “Those dusters had been blowing in daily for months before Jeremiah showed. You know that, Deacon. He’s got nothin’ to do with it.”

  Ellen said, “If anything, he’s kept us from killing each other—him and Peter. You saw those roses just as we all did.”

  Jeremiah walked toward his porch, grabbed a shovel, and returned to the circle. “Way before any of us were even thoughts in our parents’ eyes, Indians and buffalo roamed these lands. And now the dirt is stained with their blood. They were killed at the hands of white men so that we could take what was theirs. Then we plowed up what was sacred to them—turned over what wasn’t meant to be turned. And now the land’s fighting back. It’s not me.” He took in all the eyes on him and said again, pointing to his chest with the wooden shovel handle, “Not me. Give in if you want. But I’m not sleeping on dust tonight.”

  The
n he stalked back to his porch and started digging out from the duster.

  The town watched, listened to the crunch and hurl of four full shovel tosses over his shoulder. Then Josiah headed for the Goodbye house. At first Jeremiah assumed he was retiring inside, but then his brother reappeared with a shovel and started digging their porch out too. Next, Peter grabbed a broom and went to work whisking the porch boards.

  One by one the town folk walked to their homes and followed Jeremiah’s lead. As the sun disappeared, lanterns and candles were lit, and the inside of every home glowed with light. When one house was clean, folks moved to the neighboring house and helped them, until the only one in town remaining idle was Deacon Sipes, who watched from the lean-to outside his automotive shop, where all those rotting rabbits still hung from the ceiling and had begun to smell like a slaughterhouse. Even Toothache was out and about with a shovel in one hand and a broom in the other, cleaning other homes because Deacon wouldn’t let him clean theirs.

  “Deaconwontletmeinthere,” he said. “Heaintrightintheheadnomore.”

  By dusk a group of men, led by Father Steven, had reposted Orion’s mailbox in the ground out in front of the Bentley. Throughout the day, the folks had watched Peter as they swept, dusted, and shoveled, probably wondering if the boy was going to go home and start writing more letters. Around ten o’clock that night, he retreated back into the Worst house and got to work. And once the clacking echoed from that back bedroom, the citizens of Nowhere found their second wind and began to work faster, sweeping deep into the night, anticipating the words they would find inside their mailboxes come sunup.

  By midnight every house had been cleared. The accumulated dust had been swept away, along with thousands of dead grasshoppers. But before the town was able to turn in for the night, Orion’s bell chimed from inside the Bentley. People paused and waited. Occasionally, over the years, Orion had accidently rung it in passing. But once the bell sounded for a second and third time, the weary town folk started filtering into the hotel and taking seats in a lobby that now shone from a fresh coating of cedar oil.