On Shifting Sand

by Allison Pittman

“I wasn’t sure if Ronnie would come up through the store or not.”

  He stops to kiss me on his way downstairs and, as often happens during these times, an electric shock passes between us. It is sharp and leaves a burn on my lips that I don’t try to rub away, since I put on fresh lipstick not even fifteen minutes before.

  Russ laughs. “We still got that spark, don’t we, Nola?”

  I pucker from a safe distance and send him on his way. Everything is almost ready, save for putting the bread box in the cupboard and the honey and jam jars in the icebox. I’m about to light a kerosene lamp when a voice from behind startles me.

  “Russ says to come on up.”

  I spin around to find a man I’ve never seen before standing in the doorway. He doesn’t fill it the way Russ does, but leans against one side, as if purposefully leaving a means of escape should I decide to take fright and run past him. A shock of thick black hair, elevated by the wind, creates something like a dark halo, and even with the dimness of the room, I know he is looking straight at me with unapologetic challenge.

  “Well, of course,” I say, glad to have some excuse for my flustered state, though I keep it to myself. No man could possibly understand the difficulty of having a dinner guest arrive five hours early. “We are expecting you.”

  I strike a match and touch it to the wick of the hurricane lamp and see him in greater detail. He wears a set of well-worn denim overalls and a blue plaid shirt underneath. Before I can stop myself, my eyes are drawn to the limp pinned-up sleeve, empty at the elbow.

  Immediately I’m angry at Russ for not filling me in on this detail about his newly resurfaced friend, given that he never failed to prepare me for the shortcomings of others. He’d lean close and whisper, “Mrs. Mandle’s goiter is almost double in size. She’s very self-conscious. Don’t stare.” Or, “Mr. Wilder lost another tooth, right in front. Try not to make him laugh.” Not that I was in any way known for making people laugh.

  My stare couldn’t have lasted for more than a second or two—barely long enough to be classified as such—but as I am bathed in full light, it is long enough for our guest to take note, and he twitches what remains, making the empty sleeve flutter.

  “Rest of it got blown off in the wind out there. Your husband’s chasin’ it down for me.”

  It takes a beat for me to realize he’s telling a joke, and though his face is still very much in shadow, I hear a lilt in his voice that makes me feel more comfortable than I should with a stranger.

  “Please come in,” I say, ignoring the opportunity to respond to his humor. “I’m Nola.”

  “Jimmy Brace.”

  Jimmy. A boy’s name. Russ has only called him Jim.

  “I’m afraid I wasn’t expecting you so early.”

  “Job I had lined up fell through.” He takes only one step across the threshold, leaving the door open behind him. “Dropped by to tell Russ I’d most likely be movin’ on, but then this blew in, so I guess I’ll be stayin’ put for a while at least.”

  “Well.” I still don’t feel comfortable. Not frightened, exactly, but decidedly ill at ease. “I’m afraid I won’t have much to offer besides maybe a sandwich and cold beans. Russ has to turn off the gas when the storms come through, for fear of fire.”

  “It’s all right.” He steps closer, walking with a sort of caution, as if trying to catch me unaware, though he’s clearly in plain sight. “I’m thankful for the shelter.”

  The match burns nearly down to my fingers, and I shake it out. “I should go downstairs and see if Russ needs—”

  “I helped him seal the door and windows. He’s on his way up.”

  This last bit fills me with inexplicable relief, and I drop the cool, spent match on the table, taking the first real, deep breath since hearing his voice.

  “In that case,” I say, calculating before holding out my left hand in a gesture of true welcome, “come in and have a seat. He’ll never forgive my rudeness if he finds you standing in the doorway.”

  An old bedsheet has been draped over the table and surrounding chairs, but I reach under and pull one out for him. He comes right up behind me, repeating the action with another chair, and we brush against each other, sending an electrical shock I feel in my teeth. He feels it too, and we offer self-conscious apologies before sitting on opposite sides of the table, the lamp blocking any view I might have of his face. All the better. I keep my eyes trained on the door, body crackling, and wait for Russ to fill it with his presence.

  There’s never any knowing how long a storm will last. Sometimes it blows for not more than an hour, hardly enough to even count as a storm. With those, it seems right when a body gets the wash brought in and the windows sealed up, the skies turn blue and the breeze settles and there’s just enough dirt brought in to make the morning’s cleaning count for naught. Other times, the sun might set and rise and set again behind a curtain of soil-driven darkness. That’s when miles’ worth of drought piles up against the door, and a person can’t say his name without the crunch and grit of dust between his teeth.

  So we’ve learned to sit silent in the midst of that howling wind. Not talking—not hardly breathing—so as to keep the taste of dirt at bay. Our eyes sting in the darkness, and a second skin comes to cover any part of the body left bare. If there is a time to sleep, we soak a rag with clean tap water and put it over our nose and mouth and marvel at the solid mud that greets us when we wake.

  It is an enemy, this dust, and we all believe it will kill each one of us in turn.

  “Give me a tornado!” the old-timers say, longing for God’s wrath to be quick, ripping homes from their foundations and sending cattle through the air.

  Our neighbor Merrilou Brown longs for the blizzards of North Dakota. Clean, cold drifts that bring a man to freezing death ten steps away from his house.

  This evening, as the five of us—my family and the stranger—sit around the empty kitchen table, trying to ignore the particles floating in the lamplight, we defy the tradition of silence and entertain ourselves with stories of death more mercifully sweet than the suffocating thirst of the storms.

  “Blown clean to bits,” he says, this Jim. “One minute you’re makin’ plans, thinkin’ about your best girl, and then—boom!”

  I bend my cheek to touch the top of Ariel’s head. We’ve given her a drop or two of paregoric to help her cope with the storm, and her sleep-heavy body reassures me that she needn’t fear the stories, either.

  “It’s a terrible thing,” I say. “War.”

  “It’s a necessary evil,” says our guest.

  “Did it hurt when you lost your arm?” Ronnie takes a spoonful of cold beans from beneath the saucer-covered bowl and brings it quickly to his mouth. I don’t know how he can stand to eat them as such, but it’s the best I could put on the table, and he attacks the food with a zeal equal to that of our guest, who appears not to have eaten in days.

  “We shouldn’t pry, Son,” Russ says, his supper left largely untouched.

  “It’s all right.” He—Jim—has adopted an efficient method of sliding the overturned saucer halfway across the bowl with his thumb, digging his spoon beneath it, and nudging it back in one smooth motion while lifting his spoon to his mouth. “It’s a good thing for a young man to know that there’s life to be lived, no matter how much of yourself is left to live it.” He turns his attention to Ronnie, speaking to him as if my son had grown to be a man by the sheer courage of his question.

  “It hurt. Worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life, or hope to ever again. There’s a burning that happens, and when it don’t come clean off, your muscles pull with the weight of it. And every time you move, even a little—” he shifts in his chair, a twitch so subtle I might have missed it had I blinked—“like it’s startin’ all over again.”

  Russ shifts in his chair too, though more elaborately.

  “When we went over there,” he says, capturing all of France with a cock of his head, “we went knowin’ we might not come bac
k. And you’d hear guys braggin’ that they’d rather come back dead than without their legs. Cowards.”

  He says this last word with the power of an expletive, then immediately shoots an apologetic glance at Russ.

  “But you know what the Good Book says, don’t you, Reverend? Somethin’ about the body being made up of many parts. So the way I see it, the good Lord gave each of us more’n we need.”

  It is an odd and exactly right thing to say, and I reach my hand across the table to where Russ’s sits listlessly next to his untouched food.

  “The Bible also says that God can move the mountains,” Russ says, curling his fingers around mine. “And it seems like he’s doing so right now, a little at a time.”

  Jim laughs, as I imagine it is his first time to hear the joke. Ronnie and I, on the other hand, knew it was coming from as far away as California, so we groan in protest.

  “Well, I tell you what.” Jim’s tone is suddenly more serious than what is called for in the moment. “If I’ve learned nothin’ else, it’s not to question the moments God gives you. Guy next to me? When the bomb hit, we’d just traded places so’s he could get out of the wind to light his cigarette. Never had a chance. I have to believe I’m alive for a reason.”

  “We’re all alive for a reason,” Russ says.

  Something at the base of my neck irritates me, more than the dirt starting to form its drift beneath my collar. He is using his preacher’s voice again, right here in the darkness around the kitchen table, and that snips my fuse.

  “’Course we are,” Jim says, unfazed. “But most of the time we can be like all that dirt out there, blowin’ in one direction, side by side against each other, and it’s not until we settle for a bit that we know where we’re goin’ next.”

  “Where’d you come here from?” Ronnie asks.

  “Oklahoma City, originally.” He nods toward Russ. “It’s where I met your dad. In college.”

  “You a minister too?”

  “No, kid. Never had the cash or the callin’.”

  “He worked in the dining hall,” Russ says. “And if you want to know the truth, I probably would not have passed my literature class without him. Lots of late nights, reading Shakespeare—”

  “You drinkin’ coffee. Me pushin’ a broom.”

  The first uncomfortable silence of the evening follows. Ronnie looks from one man to the other, but I succumb to an opposite effect. I draw my hand away from my husband’s, and as I do, the flame in the lamp flickers. Perhaps because we are sitting in unnatural darkness, the shadows seem to layer upon themselves, and the light narrows to encompass Jim’s face alone, leaving all the rest to disappear. If not for the weight of Ariel in my lap, I might have thought myself to be disembodied, broken into a million tiny flecks discretely floating all around. I feel the thickness of the air and wonder if it wouldn’t be best if none of us talked. Indefinitely. Or at least not until the dust settles on our lips to make our words worthwhile.

  “So, Ronnie,” our guest says after a time. “Short for Ronald?”

  Ronnie rolls his eyes at me. “I wish. That’s a normal name, at least.”

  “His given name is Byron,” I say, encountering the same distaste my son has always had for his name. Russ, too, for that matter. It was our first true disagreement, and the only one in which I permanently prevailed.

  “Ah. Like the poet?”

  I suppose it is rude of me to register my surprise, but he hardly looks like a man to be familiar with such things. He, at least, is gracious enough to overlook my shocked reaction, and continues his conversation with Ronnie.

  “Your mother must be a romantic,” he says, taking in Russ’s discomfort. “Have you studied him?”

  “No,” Ronnie says, his expression begging us to bring the conversation back to war.

  Jim shifts in his seat, reaches into his pocket, and produces a coin that glints silver in the lamplight. A liberty half-dollar, and he sets it in the middle of the table. “This is the prize to whichever of you can solve Byron’s riddle.”

  Immediately Ronnie is intrigued. I don’t know that he’s seen that much money in one place since Christmas.

  “Are you ready?”

  I tuck Ariel closer to me, anticipating, and look to see Russ nodding his assent.

  Jim sits back. “‘The beginning of eternity, the end of time and space. The beginning of every end, and the end of every place.’”

  Ronnie seems startled when the lines come to an end, and makes Jim repeat them three times over. Russ looks to the ceiling, mouthing them to himself, while Ronnie spouts off a litany of desperate answers.

  “Midnight? The chimes on a clock? A map?”

  Jim answers each one with patience and encouragement, but gives no hints. He tilts his head back to look at me. “You know, don’t you?”

  I do, but I won’t say. “It would be wrong of me to take your money, Lord Byron, you being our guest and all.”

  “But isn’t that the most ancient exchange of hospitality? The trade of stories and entertainment for a meal and a roof? With that out there—” he gestures behind him with his thumb—“I’m mighty grateful to have both.”

  “Is it history?” Ronnie sounds hopeful.

  “No,” I answer, and then repeat the riddle myself, giving emphasis to lead him to the answer.

  “You’re making it too easy,” Jim chides.

  I look at the puzzled faces of my son and husband, stirring Ariel with my laughter. “Obviously not.”

  Russ moves his finger, writing abstract patterns as is his way when he wants to figure something out, and after a time, the patterns aren’t so abstract anymore, and he knows.

  “The letter e,” he says, more to himself than to us.

  “You got it, buddy.” Jim attempts to slide the coin across the table, but Russ stops it halfway.

  “I won’t take your money.”

  “You won it fair and square.”

  “Wouldn’t be right.”

  Once again Ronnie looks from one to the other, this time seeing a new incarnation of pride. Risking Ariel’s wakefulness, I lean forward, cover the coin with my hand, and draw it toward me. After all, I knew the answer all along.

  “I’ll buy us something special for supper next time. We all win.”

  It seems an amenable solution for the moment, and before Russ can protest, I ball my fist to hold it tight and stand, my legs creaking and unsure beneath my daughter’s weight.

  “Do you want me to take her?” Russ half stands in offering.

  “No. I need to stash this someplace safe anyway so our son doesn’t squander it on matinees and Cracker Jack.” I look to him. “Why don’t you get out the checkers? See if our visiting Lord Byron is as clever with that game?”

  I walk with Ariel back to her room, immediately feeling the difference in the air. This room has no window and never suffers the full blows of the storms like the rest of the house. Truth be told, if not for our guest, our whole family might be huddled back in here, as we have been in times past, taking turns napping on her narrow bed. I pull down the top cover, knowing it could not have completely escaped the dust. Nothing ever does. But the sheets beneath it are cool and relatively clean, and I turn over the pillow before resting her head upon it.

  From out in the kitchen, I hear the first sounds of boasting. Ronnie, of course, and I worry that he might be crossing some invisible line, being too familiar with this stranger, offering the type of affectionate familiarity that should be reserved for his family. For his father.

  Because Ariel is asleep, I kneel by her bedside to say her prayers.

  “Lord—” And I stop.

  “Lord Byron.”

  My words come back to me, clearer than any radio broadcast. More than hear them, I feel them, how they fluttered in my throat, edged with flirtation. And “next time.” Presuming such a time would come. My hands clasp around the coin from his pocket, taken from his warmth to mine.

  “Mama?” Ariel stirs. “Is the
storm still blowing?”

  I kiss the top of her head, the tendrils of her hair still damp from being held so close against me.

  “It is, sweet girl.”

  And then I pray that it will pass.

  CHAPTER 3

  IN THE MORNING, he is gone. Morning meaning, of course, when the storm has passed. It’s hard to tell, sometimes, when darkness tacks itself onto darkness. We forget to wind our watches and can’t even see the clock faces for the film of dust that covers them. So, in those early moments of peace, when the air is still and the sun shines high, we push our doors against the drifts and take to the streets, confirming with our neighbors.

  Do you have the time?

  Ten fifteen.

  And is it Sunday?

  Yes.

  In this we are like old Ebenezer Scrooge, startled and pleased to find ourselves alive to see another day, with little time lost to the void.

  I do not know what has happened to our guest, only that, after an indeterminate amount of sleep, I was awakened by the smell of coffee and the sound of silence. I crept about the house, feeling the familiar grit beneath my bare feet, and found Ariel playing quietly with her paper dolls, Ronnie sound asleep on the sofa, and Russ at the kitchen table, staring past his open Bible.

  All of us.

  “Did he leave?” My mouth feels like I slept with a towel wrapped around my tongue.

  Russ looks at me, blinking, as if he doesn’t quite understand.

  “Your friend. Jim. Is he gone?”

  “Yes.” He returns to his reading with no further explanation.

  I go to the cupboard, take out a cup, and rinse it under the tap. After three big gulps of water, I fill it with the fresh, hot coffee. He’s taken the sheet off the table, so when I prop my elbows on it, I know the dirt I feel comes from my own skin.

  “Where did he go?”

  Russ mumbles something and makes a mark in his Bible.

  “Does he have a place to stay? Or is he—?”

  “Nola.” He sounds frustrated. Indulgent, but frustrated.

  “I’m sorry.” I sip my coffee. It is strong and good, and I tell him so. Quietly, though, so as not to distract him again. I am about to ask if he plans to hold a church service, but his intent study answers my question. The regular service time has well passed, but when the storms became a commonality in our lives, Russ—leader at once of both the church and the community—made a singular declaration. Three hours past the storm, no matter the day of the week, no matter if it’s the dead of night, we gather. To count our people, to lift our praises, and to pray for God’s continued mercy in the days to come.