Ariel climbs into my lap and nuzzles my neck. It takes all my strength not to push her grimy face away. She tells me she’s hungry, and thirsty, and asks when she’ll be old enough to drink coffee, and if we have any Ovaltine, and can she take a bath before church, and can she bring her paper dolls if she keeps them hidden in the pages of her Children’s Book of Virtue and Verse?
And is Paw-Paw coming over for dinner?
I answer what I can, giving assurances about the paper dolls and promises for Ovaltine, but maybe not right now. She’d have a shower, not a bath, because there wasn’t time to clean the tub. And as for Paw-Paw, well, that would depend on whether or not he came to church.
Russ seems not at all disturbed by our conversation, but I can tell he listens. He has a smile that lifts nothing more than the corner of his top lip. I call it his secret smile, both for when he’s trying to keep one, and when he thinks no one is watching. He’s ignored me long enough.
“What are you smiling at, Russ Merrill?”
“Just listening to my girls.” His eyes never leave the Scriptures. Upon closer inspection I notice he has already cleaned up, dirt free but not shaven.
“Might should stay home,” I say, “in case Pa does come over. Clean up a bit, try to cook up something, since you got the gas turned back on.”
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
It’s not a command. Russ knows I’ll obey as much as my conscience ever allows without his needing to be forceful, but his statement doesn’t leave much room for argument. Still it leaves a little.
“I know. But if Pa—”
“Your pa’s lived through the same storm we have. He won’t mind a bit of dust in the corners. I like you to be there with me, Nola. It helps.”
He reaches across the table and lays a hand against Ariel’s hair, then my cheek. His touch is cool and clean, and I turn my face to kiss the center of his palm. The request is a memorial to our earliest days when, he says, the sight of me in the back pew with my father gave him the courage to get through his first-ever sermon. How I’d calmed his nerves, inspired him to impress the congregation so they’d want to bring him back and he could see me every week. I’ve watched him grow in confidence and authority behind the pulpit over the years, but still, he insists, my presence brings him peace.
“Do what you can here, then,” I say, “while I get your girls pretty.”
He promises, and I make his first task that of slicing a few potatoes and putting them on to boil after finding a snack for our daughter.
In the bathroom, I strip to my skin while the water turns warm. A glimpse in the mirror reveals a perfect line where my collar kept the dirt at bay. Standing in the tub, I pull the curtain around the basin and lift the lever to bring warm water showering from the spigot above. More dust washes from me, and I imagine my hair harboring traces of Oklahoma farmland mixed with long-overdue rain. After all the precautions—all the rags stuffed around windows and doors, in every nook and crack imaginable—still, brown rivulets pour off my body, wash down the drain, and swirl away.
Quickly, knowing well the preciousness of water, I rinse myself clean and step into a pair of slippers to protect my feet from the unswept floor. Dressed in something suitable for Sunday, I take my daughter through the same cleansing, plaiting her wet hair into a single red rope. I leave Ronnie to the last possible second, having learned that, at this age, it is more pleasant to have him well rested than well scrubbed. He sates his hunger with a few slices of buttered bread and a cup of cooled coffee with milk—an indulgence we allow as of late—and with all the trappings of any other family heading off for Sunday worship, we walk out of our apartment door and down the steps to where our fellow townspeople emerge, none the worse for wear.
It wasn’t the worst storm we’ve ever had. The sidewalk’s still discernible from the street, and the hedges Merrilou Brown planted along her front fence still stand. That alone gives me the hope of seeing all our people accounted for—those who attend the Featherling Christian Church, that is.
I have my daughter by the hand, my husband at my side, and our son trailing half a step behind. Just like earlier in the morning, in our small home, all gathered and accounted for. All that matters, and still . . .
I lift a hand in greeting to my friend Rosalie, who carries her baby girl in her arms, and the remaining fat around her belly. Her husband, Ben, leads on, their son in between. Rosalie and I call out a friendly greeting to each other, along with a promise to get together in the coming days.
My eyes scan the streets as I tell myself I’m only looking out of a sense of charitable goodwill. A concern borne from the ancient laws of hospitality. I nod my head in greeting to one neighbor after another, craning my neck to look behind and beyond their weary faces.
Ariel sees a friend and, with my permission, runs off in squealing delight.
“I see you all made it through safe and sound?” Merrilou Brown’s small presence sidles up beside me, forcing me to slow my pace to match hers. In no time, Russ and Ronnie have left me behind.
“We did.”
“This one had a bark worse’n its bite, I’d say.”
I mutter something.
“The wind, I mean. Maybe more of a howl than a bark. Though sometimes, it’ll pick up a gust, and make a sound—” She breaks into a series of breathy, midpitched sounds like nothing I’d ever heard in nature or beyond, but there’s nothing to do but acknowledge.
She asks if Russ plans to preach, and I tell her yes, and I feel her birdlike grip on my wrist.
“Good. We all need words of hope. Now more’n ever.”
“Yes. More than ever.”
I try not to wrest myself away too impatiently as I make an excuse about needing to catch up with my family. Even with quickened steps, my escape buys me a few moments alone to ease my curiosity. Once alongside Russ, I loop my arm through his and ask if he’s seen any sign of our Mr. Brace.
“Hide nor hair,” Russ says. “But I told him we’d be gathered here. And invited him for a meal after.”
I feel a fillip of fear and convince myself it’s nothing more than the annoyance of having not one but two possible dinner guests, with no assurances of either.
“I hope we’ll have enough.”
“We’ll be fine.”
“But if Pa—”
He stops right in front of the church house steps and kisses me softly, like I’m some sort of new bride. “We always have enough, Nola. By God’s grace and mercy.”
I sense the approving smiles as people divide themselves to stream around us. A far cry from the reception we received the first time we stood on these front steps together when I was a new bride. I’d felt fearful fillips then, too, but realized soon enough they were the first movements of the young man who now pounded his father on the shoulder, saying, “Break it up, Dad. People are watching.”
Russ smiles and takes my hand, holding it all the way through the coatroom and into the sanctuary. After that, all business. One after another, men—farmers, ranchers, bankers—greet him with a handshake and a grimness that make me wonder if a little bit of their very souls didn’t blow away with the storm. Haggard women collapse in his embrace, forcing me to share the comfort of his strength.
“He’s a good man.”
I don’t even need to turn around; his voice is already that familiar to me, and it feels like I am exhaling for the first time since opening my eyes. And then, feeling so depleted, I dare not face him, so I keep my eyes fixed upon my husband. All of my intentions for hospitality disappear in his reappearance. It is the first I’ve been able to see him in full light, and I realize the lopsidedness of his grin was not merely a trick of shadows, but a truth about his face, giving him a perpetual expression of mischief.
“He is. We’re lucky to have him.”
Without another word, I sit. Second row, left-hand side. Reserved since forever for the preacher’s wife.
Russ takes his place behind the pulpit. Only recently, since
the onset of the drought and dust, does he finally find it to be a place of comfort. He was such a young man when he took on this church, and always more comfortable speaking to people over a cup of coffee than from a platform above them. His early sermons were clipped straight from his seminary notes, with things like “add funny story” scribbled in the margins. He was stiff and nervous, terrified of failure.
The first time Russ and I saw each other was from this vantage—me sitting in the back beside my father, and Russ clutching sweaty palms to the pulpit’s edge, trying to gather his thoughts. This is our legend—the meeting of our minds and the melding of our hearts before we even had a chance to say a single word to one another. In the telling of it, our love sounds immediate and mutual. He claims to have seen me, and in that moment, all his jitters held still, like Jesus calming the sea so he could walk right back to me at the greeting time. I watched it happen, the smoothing of his brow, the stillness of his hands. It became clear soon enough that he had a heart for saving people, and while I already understood the saving grace of Jesus Christ, I knew Russ Merrill would be the one to save my very life. Neither of us remember a word of that first sermon, and between his early ineffectiveness as a preacher and his love affair with Lee Mitchum’s daughter, we have always counted it a miracle that he was offered the job here upon his graduation from the university.
“Brothers and sisters,” he opens, naming us both his family and his flock, “I understand your discouragement and your frustration. I know some of you feel abandoned by God during these times, when the storms blow through, leaving nothing but dirt to show for all their bluster.”
At that point, he runs his finger across the top of the pulpit, showing a grimy residue that brings a weary chuckle, mostly from the women in the crowd.
“But you must remember that God spoke to Job from the midst of a whirlwind. And his voice cannot be silenced. Do not let your hearts or your hope get lost in the darkness of these times. Scripture tells us that our troubles may stay for the night, but our joy will come in the morning. How blessed are we to have multiple nights, that we might experience unscheduled joy?”
After the short sermon, we sing a hymn, but only one, as our throats are too dry to bring any melody to life. The drawn-out notes, punctuated by coughs, don’t leave us the breath for even a second verse. All stand for the final prayer, and I close my eyes, thankful for the darkness—more so for the assurance that I’m hidden from all around me. I know that if I were to spy around, I would see nothing but one bowed head after another, all silently nodding to punctuate the prayer.
“Protect us, O God. Deliver us from this drought. Bring rain, dear Father. Yes, Lord. Bring new life.”
A voice rings out in agreement somewhere behind me, and I’m tugged away from my imposed night. I open my eyes and hazard a glance over my shoulder and learn that I am not the only sinner in the room.
His head is bowed, but his eyes are raised to look at me, and I know somehow that they have been since the beginning of the prayer. He is waiting—has been waiting. And I have rewarded his patience with a glance.
My husband’s voice fills the space between us, asking God to protect our families, and I turn my face to the floor between my feet.
I know what it is like to be caught in a storm, those first pellets of dust striking your skin like bird shot. Under cover of prayer, my skin comes alive with fire, burning through the cold sweat at the back of my neck.
“And as we go forth . . .”
I know the rhythm of my husband’s prayer. There’ll be little time now. Seconds, maybe, to regain my composure, to be ready to greet his eyes with my own, open and welcoming and—above all—faithful.
“. . . under the watchful eye of your loving care . . .”
I breathe in deep, as much as my burdened lungs will allow, and lift my head. This is why I sit where I do, at the front, in the most obvious home for his gaze. At the amen, Russ opens his eyes to find me waiting.
CHAPTER 4
I HAVE FEW MEMORIES of my mother that don’t involve some bucket of water, or rag, or mop. She’d grown up the daughter of a domestic in a wealthy Oklahoma City home, and her determination to keep her humble farmhouse equally pristine nearly drove us all to madness. She’d mop the floors within minutes of Pa’s leaving the room, whether to head out to the barns or into the parlor to read the evening paper. Without saying so outright, she taught me that a woman could have no greater accomplishment than the cleanliness of her home. Her love lived in the vinegar and flowed through the water.
It all fell to me when she died, and while I may not have inherited her zeal, I had the motivation of Pa’s approval to drive my efforts. Not to mention the constant reminders of her standards.
“Yer ma never did leave a dish in the sink.”
“Cain’t let that warshin’ pile up.”
“Gettin’ to look like an Injun teepee, so much dirt tracked on this floor.”
I never did complain, though it seemed unfair that he should have a dozen men working our ranch but wouldn’t bring in a single woman to help with the house. It was his way, I suppose, of keeping me from having any hope of leaving, telling me every day that my duties were at home, with him. First’n last. Before I hightailed it into town, I’d better low-tail it on the floor, makin’ sure he had a man’s dinner waiting in the oven and a clean set of dishes to eat it off’n.
Which I did. Every day. Some nights sleeping at the kitchen table while I watched a stew overnight. Baking biscuits at four in the morning. Madly putting everything right in that precious hour between his leaving the house for his work and my leaving the house to go to school.
Every book I read, every paper I wrote, every test and pencil worn down to the nub—all of it, to get away. My older brother, Greg, had the Great War to bring him escape. His letters fueled my envy, even those that spoke of death and danger. I would have risked it all, my very life, to get away from this place. Until I met Russ, and I knew for certain if he couldn’t get me out of Oklahoma, he could at least take me away from my pa, and that was enough at the time.
When we get home from the church service, I have a single, precious hour to put my house to rights. To run a damp mop over the walls, wipe the countertops and floor with vinegar and water. My dishcloths are caked with as much mud as they can hold, and I use my tea towels to wipe up the remnant. I send Ronnie into the bathroom with a bottle of Lysol to clean in there, not allowing myself to think of Pa’s disapproval of a young man performing such a degrading chore, and put a broom in Ariel’s hand to sweep the outside steps. A useless gesture, but the least harmful, as she alone will have any hope of breathing fresh air.
Tomorrow, the curtains will be taken down and the rugs beaten, but right now I implore Russ to run our electric sweeper over the floors and furniture, just this once, as I know what harm the Oklahoma soil will pose to the machine’s inner workings. He complies, and in the aftermath of silence, I hear Pa’s labored footfall on the steps outside. There is a mumbled bit of almost-jovial conversation—his approval of Ariel’s industriousness, no doubt—and then a knock at the door.
All the years this has been our home, and still he knocks. Even with my daughter on the porch and the shadows of ourselves inside, I knew he would stand and wait for the door to be opened for him. And if not, he’d leave. I used to cajole, “Pa! You’re family. Come on in.” But he’d set his jaw and say this weren’t no more his home than was the drugstore down the street. I know he wishes Russ and I had moved in with him when we married, despite his ugliness at the matter. Truth be told, when we have those days of tripping over ourselves in this little space, I think about that farmhouse with only one old man to rattle around within its bones, and wish the same. I picture little Ronnie growing up running at his Paw-Paw’s heels to help with the livestock in the morning before school; Russ in the cozy parlor nook, preparing his sermon; and myself standing apart from it all, ready for those quiet moments for my own pursuit. Reading, maybe. Or taking up som
e kind of creative hobby, maybe writing out one of the stories that used to stir in my head.
One meal a week, however, is all it takes to cure me of that delusion.
I open the door to find the man has aged another year in the days since I’ve last seen him. His gauntness makes me worry that he doesn’t eat enough. Truth is, I know he doesn’t eat enough because he has nobody at the house to cook for him. His cheeks are sunken, with an odd crisscross of wrinkles—the scars of a lifetime of smoking hand-rolled cigarettes. His eyes are pale gray, and on the odd occasion of his smile, his teeth—all present and strong—bear much the same color as his hair, a faded yellow with streaks of brown. Thick, and still bearing the tracks of a wet comb, it is badly in need of a trim. After dinner, if I have a clean towel to spare, I’ll wrap it around his neck and do the job myself.
The moment he walks across the threshold, my eyes go straight to the fine layer of dust on his shirt lined up along the seams. It most likely came from the drive—all that fresh, loose dirt kicked up on the road, if the road was there at all. I don’t ask, though, lest it stir up a kind of shame.
“See you got the girl workin’.” He rarely calls Ariel by her name.
“Always lots to do.” I glance over my shoulder to see Russ putting the sweeper in the closet and hope it will be shut away before Pa notices.
Too late. Those gray eyes narrow in disapproval, as do his thin, dry lips, but I refuse to rise to the unspoken challenge. Instead, I open my arms wide in welcome and invite him to sit on our clean furniture before offering a cool drink of water.
On Shifting Sand Page 4