“Is the glass clean?”
“Yes, Pa. Washed it a bit ago, along with all the other dishes.”
He grunts an approval and accepts the glass. Dark rings of soil frame his fingernails; more is caked in the folds of his knuckles. Such has always been the case with his hands: evidence of hard labor—and the sole measure of a man’s value. He always worried my brother’s hands would sentence him to a life of weakness.
“You get hit hard at your place?” Russ asks, sitting in the chair next to him with his own drink.
“No more’n anyone.” If his house had blown down he’d say the same. His place is long past suffering any new losses from the storms. It has been two years since a single head of cattle grazed his land. He had a head start on the loss that now consumes us all.
I remain silent, knowing anything I say will only result in an accusation of abandonment. I haven’t been out to visit my father’s house in months, citing the convenient excuse of not wanting to be on the road should another storm kick up. Not that the same fears have stopped me from driving to Boise City when the need arises.
“Need any help out there?” Russ asks the same question with every visit, only to be rebuffed. Pa would rather work himself to raw bones than take help from a stranger. And to him, Russ is still very much a stranger.
“Dinner will be up in a bit,” I say, knowing my place. “Haven’t had much time at the stove, so it’s just a corned beef hash and potatoes. I meant to bake a pie, but . . .”
“No need,” Pa says, close to reassuring.
Thankful for the escape, I return to the kitchen. I scrape my wooden spatula along the bottom and sides of the skillet, moving the hash to a pile in the center. The potatoes were parboiled earlier, so I slice them thin and layer them in a surrounding moat of melted butter. Salt, pepper, and let them sizzle to a golden hue while I look down and divide the food into portions. Pa, Russ, Ronnie—Ariel and I can share. Just enough, but in the spirit of hospitality, I call out, “Russ? Is your friend coming for dinner?” and steel myself for the answer.
“What friend is that?” Pa asks, always wary of inviting strangers into our lives.
“A guy I knew in college—” to which Pa gives the snort he always does at the mention of the institution—“and, no.”
“Are you sure?” I reportion, imagining enough. My own stomach feels too rebellious to want more than a bite. “There’s plenty.”
“Not if I’m invited.” Ronnie peeks over my shoulder. He smells clean and I twist my head to kiss his cheek, an act confined to our home.
“Don’t make me have to choose,” I chide before ordering him to summon his little sister inside to wash up.
When we gather around the table, hands joined for the blessing, I escape into the darkness and imagine the light of that single lamp, illuminating the faces of all gathered here. Try as I might to hear my husband’s prayer, though, my mind wanders until he mentions his name. Jim. Asking God to keep him safe and lead him to a meal this day.
After we all say, “Amen,” I ladle the food onto each plate and ask Russ if he knows where Jim is eating this day.
Russ shrugs. “I’m not sure.”
“But you did invite him here?”
“I told him he was welcome to join us.”
“But what exactly did you say?”
“I said something along the lines of, ‘You’re welcome to join us for dinner.’”
“But that’s not the same as ‘Please join us for dinner.’ You made it his decision.”
Russ chuckles at this. “My darling Nola, heaven forbid a man make his own decision once you’ve set your mind to something. Shall I leave right now? Track him down in the streets and bring him here?”
“Woman’s just tryin’ to do a kindness,” Pa says. He rarely uses my name, either. He keeps his eyes trained on his plate, shoving food onto his fork with a torn piece of bread, but when he chews, he looks at me with familiar suspicion, stripping my facade away.
“I have two tins of peaches in the pantry,” I say, perhaps a little too quickly. “Might make for a nice dessert. I can send one home with you, Pa, if you like.”
He says nothing, not given to comment one way or another on domestic decisions. Of my own accord, after dinner, I spoon peaches into shallow dishes and sprinkle them with sugar and cinnamon. With all served, I fetch Greg’s letter.
Reading my brother’s letter after Sunday dinner has been a ritual since he left home, even when it was just Pa and me out on the farm. It was a voice from the outside looking in, with knowledge and familiarity bridging the distance. More than that, his letters offered hope—a glimpse into a world far from here, and footprints to follow to get there. From college, he wrote about the antics of academia, the rigor of the classes, and the energy of a generation poised to take on a new century.
You need to be here, Nola, he’d written. Girls—women, everywhere, taking on subjects they wouldn’t have dreamed of a generation ago. You’re smart, smarter than me in a lot of ways. Doesn’t seem right that I’m the only one to get an education just because I’m a boy, not that Pa even holds it the right thing for me. I suppose it is strange, going off to study agriculture as a way to get away from a life on a ranch. But it’s all I know. You, though, Sis. You know more about things that matter on a deeper level. I can’t name a single soul in that place who thinks the way you do. Be careful you don’t get stuck.
Later, when Russ joined us as an element of courtship, Greg wrote from France about the horrors of war, though he left some details out for reasons of both security and sensitivity. Always he writes his letters to me. Dearest Nola, or My Darling Little Sister. We’ve always been each other’s shield from Pa’s wrath, and I know if I’d asked him to, he would have stayed home, a sometimes-physical barrier. But I all but shoved him out the door, asking him to scout a path for both of us. He met Russ through my letters and gave approval with a telegram, but never offered more than Give my regards to Russ, in case there would come a time when he might have to defend me on that front, too. And always, at the end, Please share this news as you will with Pa. Give him my love.
Which I do, faithfully, though Pa considers Greg’s position working for the Department of Agriculture in Washington to be a greater betrayal than leaving the farm to attend college in the first place.
“Shall we see what he has to say?”
I slip the folded papers from the envelope, enacting a poor ruse that I haven’t pored over the contents like a spy, deciding what and how to read it to keep a moment’s peace at my table.
“Nothin’ we ain’t heard before,” Pa says.
As if to confirm, Ariel tugs at my sleeve, asking to go to her room and play. I excuse her and look to Ronnie, but he has no intentions of leaving. Sitting in on the postdinner conversation—especially in the light of Greg’s letters—has proven to be a rite of passage, along with a cup of coffee and a man-size portion of the meal.
“I think it’s a good thing to have someone from home up in Washington,” Russ says.
“Ain’t been his home goin’ on twenty years.”
“As long as we’re here, it’ll always be home,” I say before launching into the contents of the letter.
It begins, as they all do, with a greeting addressed to me, but in the moment I amend it to Dear family. And then the usual lines, hoping that all is well, before launching into startling details.
It amazes me how, from hundreds of miles away, Greg seems to be better informed about our crisis than we ourselves are. We are the ones who are living in the midst of a drought, passing the days under one cloudless sky after another, praying for rain without any hope of an answer. I hear his voice like he is shouting from a mountaintop above us. Acres of eroded farmland, the plight of the livestock, and the number of people fleeing in hopes of a better life.
“He’s worried about us.” I paraphrase the next paragraph or so, in which my older brother, living in a single room in our nation’s capital, seems to strip away h
ope like it’s Oklahoma soil. “Thinks we should sell, cut our losses, and go.”
At this, Ronnie’s eyes light up with familiar possibility, which Pa snuffs right out.
“Ain’t nobody buyin’.”
“This is our home,” Russ says with a more comforting air. “Times of drought are always followed by seasons of rain.”
As always, Russ speaks with such confidence it seems a sin to doubt. I don’t want the taint of Pa’s bitterness, nor do I share my husband’s assurance. It seems all I know is that it hasn’t rained this day, nor the day before, nor likely the next. Moment by moment, dry as stone, and weighed down. Any hope I ever had of leaving disappeared the minute I laid eyes on Russ, though I didn’t know that until I was too gone with his child, and each year we sink down deeper to each other, and deeper in this place.
“Finish up,” Pa says.
I read Greg’s final line: “We’re doing what we can here, to help.”
“How’re they gon’ help? Think them fools can make it rain?”
“We’ll have to see,” I say, folding the letter and putting it carefully back into its envelope. He’d written hints of programs to purchase land and cattle, just to put cash into the hands of the people, something Pa would surely call a handout and refuse.
With the ritual of the letter complete, I take a few minutes to trim Pa’s hair while Ronnie entertains us with the play-by-play of his school’s most recent baseball game. After, I fill a paper sack with the other can of peaches, a few biscuits wrapped in wax paper, a small ball of butter, and the remains of today’s dinner—one portion, too small to be of any good to our family. He makes a show of refusing it at first—as he does every week—and I turn my back to allow him to take it in privacy. The dish holding today’s leftovers is a pale blue, with apple blossoms painted around the rim. Not one of mine. Part of the illusion that we don’t send food home with Pa comes from the fact that he never returns my dishes from week to week. To compensate, I’ve taken to buying plates and bowls for pennies apiece at rummage sales hosted by neighbors who, with no one to tell them any better, sell their worldly goods to seek a better life out west. Or north. Or east.
Anywhere but here.
When I lie down,
I say,
When shall I arise, and the night be gone?
and I am full of tossings to and fro
unto the dawning of the day.
My flesh is clothed with worms and clods of dust;
my skin is broken, and become loathsome.
My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle,
and are spent without hope.
JOB 7:4-6
CHAPTER 5
THERE IS A DECEPTIVENESS about life in a time of drought. Clear blue skies stretch like satin but hold no beauty. Clouds, rolling and gray in the distance, mock us, turning into rainless scraps of vapor before our very eyes. We feel thirst everywhere—our parched throats, of course, and the corners of our mouths. It seems, sometimes, that we are drying up from within. Our lungs rasp with every breath, our bones threaten to snap themselves to powder. There is not enough water to drink, to wash, to bathe. We are never quenched. We are never clean.
Russ, in all his sermons, reminds us that Jesus is the Living Water. And that all who come to him shall never thirst again. We might weep at the thought of such a thing, the coolness of his compassion, the refreshment of his mercy. But our eyes cannot make tears, so we nod and utter a dry amen, keeping our parched lips open for the smallest drop of grace.
This last storm took its toll on our town. In the weeks that follow, two more families pack what they can carry and drive away. I don’t see them, of course, but Merrilou Brown does, and she wastes no time bustling into the shop with the news.
“The Campbells?” She stretches on her toes, trying to bring herself closer to my ear, as if what she has to impart is some great secret. A meaningless gesture, as there isn’t a single customer. Only Ariel, playing log cabin by stacking sacks of chicken feed. “Poof. Let the bank take their house. Didn’t even lock the front door when they left.”
“How do you know?” I run an oiled rag over the gleaming counter. Every bit of our merchandise—what there is of it—might be covered with the film left by the storms, but I keep the counter polished to a mirrored shine.
“I was out walking Luther when they drove off. Before dawn, it was.”
“No, how do you know they didn’t lock their front door? Did they tell you that?”
She sinks back to her flat feet and gives me a look that is both innocent and mischievous. “I told them I’d keep an eye on their place.”
“Did you wait until sunrise?”
“They have some very nice things, you know. She came here from Chicago, so there’s lots of fanciness there. A couple of those—what do you call them? That you can put on the buffet to keep the food hot?”
“Chafing dish?”
“That’s it!” She snapped her twig-like fingers. “Silver plated. At least three of them. Thought they might do well for the next church supper. Only to borrow. Take ’em right back after.”
“Of course.”
“And the bank’s going to take everything anyway. Scrap it, most likely, what they can’t sell. And who are they going to sell it to? Mrs. Campbell would have sold it herself if she thought she could get a dime from any of us for it.”
“She didn’t even try.” The casual listener might think—by the tone of my voice—that I am a full conspirator, when in fact I find the glint in the eye of this diminutive pirate amusing. “Any jewels? Furs? Gold bricks buried in the back of the closet?”
“Oh, you.” She swats at my arm. “I just wanted you to know, in case there’s anything you need. Their little one’s about her age.” She cocks her head toward Ariel. “There’s a few nice toys. Might put them away for Christmas.”
“Thank you.” As if I would consider such a thing. I try to strike a note of finality strong enough to urge her out the door, but she seems to be dug in, ready to wait for me to link arms and accompany her on a scavenging expedition. I am about to come out from behind the counter to bring a friendly nudge toward the door, when the bell above it rings, and Jim Brace walks into the shop.
He hasn’t been here since the night of the storm, when he sat at my kitchen table with the rest of my family. Somebody once granted such a familiar privilege should not inspire the nervous fluttering I feel at his arrival. I grab the abandoned rag and begin rubbing the already too-clean counter. Merrilou catches my eye, looks at him, then back at me, questioningly. It’s not good business form to ignore a customer, not in days when one is so rare, but I count nearly thirty seconds gone, and none of us have said a word.
Finally Jim clears his throat. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Merrill.”
“Good afternoon.”
He looks much the same as he did that night, though somewhat roughened by the days spent away. His hair, if not longer, is less kempt. His skin, darker. And his clothes—the very same he’d worn to our dinner—crusted over with dirt.
“Is Russ around?”
He works just as hard to avoid my eyes as I do to avoid his, though neither of us can escape the crosshairs of Merrilou Brown.
She chirps, “Who is this?” looking at him, but talking to me.
His name sticks in my throat. I don’t trust myself to say it. In the wake of my silence, however, Merrilou’s brows rise up above the rims of her spectacles.
“This is—” I tap my finger to my temple, as if in the throes of recollection—“Mr. Brace. James Brace.”
“Jim,” he says, and I repeat it, proving it to have no hold on me.
She holds her hand out in welcome. “Merrilou Brown.” She points to the empty sleeve. “Lost that in the war, did you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
When he smiles at her, warm and flirtatious, Merrilou giggles like a girl and compliments the strength of his grip.
“He’s Papa’s friend from college,” Ariel says from behind h
er feed-sack wall.
“Is that right? Well, any friend of Pastor Russ is a friend to all.” Merrilou, yet to take her hand away, gives me a quick glance for confirmation.
“Russ is visiting some folks,” I say, my tongue looser as it draws his attention. “I expect he’ll be back within the hour. You’re welcome to wait here.”
Ariel comes out from her structure complaining, “But, Mama, it’s lunchtime. You said . . .”
And I had, moments before Merrilou came in, that we would run upstairs for a bite and a story and a nap—though she would only acknowledge the first two. Now she is behind the counter and wrapped around my leg. I pat her head, telling her not to be rude, and fight my instinct to shake her off.
“Go ahead,” Jim says. “I can watch things down here, if you like.” He’s taken the opportunity of distraction to disengage from Merrilou’s grip.
“Is he working for you?” she asks, and somehow I know she’s planned out the rest of our conversation no matter what my reply.
“Not exactly.” I look at him. “Nothing official, anyway.”
“Just helping out when I can.” He speaks with the confidence of a truth long understood by all parties involved.
“Well, then,” Merrilou says, “I’ll leave you to it. Nice to meet you, Jim. And you, Nola—we’ll talk later? I saw a lovely glass punch bowl.”
Without waiting for a reply, she scuttles out of the shop. Jim looks at me, and Ariel tugs on my skirt.
“Go ahead.”
He releases me, and Ariel tugs harder.
“Thank you, Jim. If you need anything . . .” I gesture around the store. “If somebody comes in—”
“Mama, lunch.”
“It’ll be fine, ma’am.”
I hate how I bristle. Ma’am. The same as he called Merrilou, but for me the word has an intimate touch of irony. With final reassurances I take Ariel’s hand and lead her upstairs to our apartment. Once the door closes behind me, I lean against it, my head pounding.
On Shifting Sand Page 5