On Shifting Sand

by Allison Pittman

  He lifts his head, his eyes red-rimmed but dry. “You have to understand,” he says, as if we are already midconversation, “I’ve already run away from one war.”

  That’s when I see the folded telegram, now open, lying on the table in front of him.

  “Oh, Russ. You didn’t run away, and this isn’t a war.”

  “I hid.”

  “You weren’t hiding. You were serving God. You still are.”

  “I could have served God in combat. I should have been one of them. I should have sacrificed—”

  “Listen to me.” I clutch at his shirt, the fabric the only thing keeping me from digging my nails into either his flesh or mine. “You were—you are—a good and noble man. You would be the same man whether or not you went to war, or here, or—” I take a deep breath—“in Baltimore.” I relinquish my grip. “But I wouldn’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I feel everything within me go soft, like I’ve been holding a thick, solid breath that melts and comes pouring out in unchecked tears.

  “I’m s—” but the word clogs my throat, and I swallow it in a heave that rivals anything my daughter produced in the thick of the steam.

  “Nola, darling? What’s wrong?” In a single, smooth motion, Russ backs the chair away from the table and sweeps me into his lap, where I bury my face in his neck, the safest place I know.

  I try again. “I’m sorry.”

  He rocks me and makes soft noises.

  “I’m sorry I want this so much. I’m sorry to be so unhappy. I don’t have a right to be unhappy.”

  He sounds mildly amused. “Everybody has the right to be unhappy every now and then.”

  “I don’t. Not when you love me so much.”

  Now he does laugh, low and rumbling, and I realize his heart is so pure, he can’t fathom mine is anything less. He comforts me the way one would a child, christening me with an assumption of innocence. I know I can be brand-new again, that I can be fully restored to the woman and wife I was before my fall. But I can’t do it here, not with my temptation pacing, always, to and fro, just beyond our sight.

  A cry from Ariel’s room brings me to my feet, Russ following suit, and we nearly trip over each other—our conversation forgotten—in a rush to her side. There she sits up in bed, crying, claiming she is melting.

  “What’s that, sweetheart?” I say, dropping myself to the edge of her bed.

  “All that hot. It melted me.”

  The last word is a long, hoarse wail, and I take her into my arms, immediately understanding. She is drenched in sweat, soaked clear through her nightgown, and I press my cheek to hers. “Thank you, Lord.” I reach one hand out to Russ. “Thank you, Jesus.”

  The fever has broken. God has delivered my child, and in that moment I allow myself the fleeting hope that God will deliver me.

  If thou return to the Almighty, thou shalt be built up,

  thou shalt put away iniquity far from thy tabernacles.

  Then shalt thou lay up gold as dust,

  and the gold of Ophir as the stones of the brooks.

  Yea, the Almighty shall be thy defence,

  and thou shalt have plenty of silver.

  JOB 22:23-25

  CHAPTER 30

  WE MAY NOT BE THE ONLY OKIES on the train, but we are certainly the only ones in first class, and the experience is instantly humbling. Among my fellow Featherlings, my vanity was given free rein. My husband is tall and handsome, as is my son, and little Ariel unmatched in her exquisiteness. Amid the other passengers, though, we are decidedly rumpled and dirt-worn. Looking through their eyes, we are scrawny, filthy, ready to fill the car with the odor of crude ham sandwiches and government-supplied sardines. Our people are the fleas jumping off the carcass of Oklahoma, and for the first leg of our journey, nobody seems inclined to do anything other than flick us away.

  To my great joy, though, it doesn’t last. By the end of the first leg, Russ encounters another minister, and the two are thick as thieves comparing passages of Scripture and sermon styles. Ariel finds another little girl with a cardboard box full of paper dolls, and they are immediately fast friends. Ronnie embarks on an elaborate baseball card trade with a few uniformed soldiers on leave.

  As for myself, I sit by the window, content, alone, my head against the glass, and watch creation unfold. Thirty-six hours on the train, and every one of them dominated by a single thought: I am free. I suffer every stop—even those that last a mere ten minutes—with impatience. Russ takes the kids out to the station to buy a snack or a magazine, or simply to have a gulp of clean, cold air. I never dare follow, though. Instead, I stay on the train, my foot tapping to re-create the clackety-clack that separates me from the ruination left behind.

  Greg is there to meet us at Pennsylvania Station—a fact that is initially confusing to the children, that a train station in Maryland could have the name of a different state. I don’t think I ever truly believed that our two lives would join together again until the moment I see him. We run to each other as if one of us were returning from war. Russ lingers, shakes his hand, as does Ronnie, and Ariel shyly offers her cheek for a kiss.

  The mass of humanity milling around that train station is the largest gathering of people I’ve ever seen in one place, making me feel even smaller than I did in the middle of an Oklahoma dust storm. Greg leads the way, but I realize that, from the back at least, he looks like almost every other man in the station: dark coat, hat pulled low, and impossibly clean black leather shoes. I instruct Ariel to take his hand, as she has the greatest potential of becoming lost, and I simply follow her.

  Though we’ve packed conservatively, our trunks are too numerous for Greg’s vehicle, so he arranges with the porter for delivery. The first thing I notice when we step out of the station and into the semidarkness of the early evening is the icy chill in the air, like a cold slap in the face, but not necessarily unpleasant or unwelcome. I inhale, imagining a million tiny, sweet crystals coating my throat, my lungs, grabbing on to the last remnants of dust, and melting them away.

  “Hey, Sis?” Greg tugs at my sleeve. “Do you want to stand here and breathe all night? Or do you want to go home?”

  “That’s a tough choice,” I say, and look to Russ. “What do you think?”

  He, too, has been looking beyond the cloisters of brick buildings and into the sparkling night sky. At my question, though, it is clear that he sees nothing but me.

  “Let’s go home.”

  Home turns out to be a neighborhood christened Arcadia, one after another of the most beautiful houses I have ever seen. Each one alone looks like the product of a dream—porches and shrubs, painted shutters and balconies, stretches of lawn that Greg assures me will be vibrant green come summer, but that now lie faded and dormant, waiting to spring to life. Windows glow with amber light; women lean in doorways calling their children home, as it is by now nearly dark.

  “I’ve never seen so many houses this close together,” Russ says with a hint of trepidation.

  “Might take some getting used to,” Greg says, confidently navigating the street. “But I think you’ll find that we’re as capable of being neighborly as the folks back home.”

  Ariel, Ronnie, and I sit in the backseat, with Ariel in my lap so as not to miss anything.

  “Any of the kids play baseball here?” Ronnie asks.

  “Usually a pickup game in the park, a couple of blocks away,” Greg says. “After school and Saturdays. And of course, the high school has a team. You’ll be in high school next year, won’t you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I notice Ronnie clenching his jaw, looking more like his ornery grandfather than ever, and I wish I could pull him to me and assure him that everything will be fine. Despite his adolescent bluster about wanting to leave Oklahoma, he is the only one of us to leave behind true friends. Russ and I had our church family, but nobody whose affections will be greatly missed, and Ariel seems to make best friends wherever she goes. Only Ronni
e has been ripped away midlife, and in this he suffers the most.

  “And if you’re interested, I have four tickets to a Senators and Red Sox game this summer. Maybe we can look into season tickets?”

  I take a mental accounting of all our resources, and even without knowing the price, know we don’t have the money for such a luxury. As I hold my breath for Russ’s refusal, he surprises me by turning around in his seat with a broad grin.

  “Four tickets, eh? Looks like you might have to stay home on your own that day, Nola, while Greg and me and the kids eat some peanuts and Cracker Jack.”

  “I shall try to survive,” I say.

  And then, Greg stops the car.

  The house, same as the photograph I’ve been studying for a month, but now with warmth beckoning through the windows.

  “Be it ever so humble . . . ,” he jokes, but I cannot bring myself to laugh.

  “Oh, Mama,” Ariel breathes, for the first time without the rattle in her chest that was so worrisome.

  Russ gets out of the car and opens my door, first taking Ariel from my lap, then reaching in for my hand.

  “Are you all right?” I say, whispering, in hopes that my brother will be left unaware of Russ’s misgivings.

  “I just want to see you happy.”

  “I am.” Taking his hand, I scoot to the edge of the car seat and am about to step onto the sidewalk when I know I don’t want to begin this life with a lie. With my feet planted firmly on the ground, I hold on to my husband and amend my words. “I will be.”

  CHAPTER 31

  FOR THE FIRST WEEK, Russ seems not to know what to do with his time, or his hands, or his mind. We go together to enroll the children in their separate schools, and then return to the house for the remainder of the day. After Greg leaves to catch his train into Washington, the two of us are left to rattle around the unfamiliar space. My husband, who has always filled whatever room he entered, appears small and uneasy. He sits on the edges of the chairs, treads lightly on the floor, and sleeps in motionless silence beside me each night.

  I sense how hard this is for him, the toll it takes on his idea of what it means to provide for our family. We’ve walked into a home he did not purchase, in a city he does not know, and with no perceivable means to support ourselves. All the money we have in the world came from the sale of the one thing he could claim as his own—the car—and it is dwindling fast.

  A hundred times each day, I stop myself from asking, “Are you all right? Do you think you’ll be happy here?” because I dread what his answer might be. So I become a woman consumed with feeding my children and lavishing all the affection I can on my husband.

  “We can make it like a honeymoon,” I say one morning, returning from walking Ariel to school. I have a white paper sack full of pastries from a bakery I passed by on the route. “Nice, long, empty days. However shall we fill our time?”

  My attempt at flirtation is rewarded, and as we lie in bed like a couple of jazz-fed hooligans in the middle of the morning, I have the chance to study him in sleep. He is as beautiful a man as he has ever been, and with his lips formed into a slight smile and his face relaxed around it, he looks much as he did on one of our first dates, dozing next to an uneaten picnic in the middle of a field ripe with wheat.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whisper, bringing my hand close to his face, but pulling back before our skin touches.

  Almost overnight it seems, Ariel’s cheeks become round, her eyes bright, and her dresses begin to strain across a healthy little-girl belly. Ronnie, given almost unlimited access to food, takes on the heft of a young man, besides growing at least half an inch taller.

  It only takes one visit to my brother’s church for Russ to stand and show signs of the same rebirth that has already taken root within our children. At Greg’s insistence, we arrive early and spend half an hour shaking hands and verifying that, yes, we are the family from Oklahoma, and yes, things there really are as dire as the newspaper reports, and yes, we are looking forward to making a new home here. Not until I hear our voices intertwined with theirs do I realize the extremity of our accents. After years of working so hard to pronounce my g’s at the end of verbs and to keep my words sharp and clipped the way actresses do in the movies, I still hear traces of dust between my syllables. So I fall silent, content to let Russ’s garrulous conversation speak for both of us. As always happens, he holds people enthralled with the images of what we’ve left behind, so much so that the crowd that eventually gathers around him has to be reminded, with nudges and tugs, when the service is about to begin.

  We all get new clothes for Easter Sunday, an expense justified by my careful shopping at a secondhand shop filled with clothing of better quality than I’ve ever seen in anything from the Sears and Roebuck, or in any of the stores back home. Besides wanting our finest for the special Sunday service, both Ariel and Ronnie are badly in need of new things, as both barely fit into anything we brought from Oklahoma.

  The most pressing need for new clothes this Easter Sunday is the fact that Russ will stand behind the pulpit of the church we’ve only attended twice before. It is April 1, and Reverend Sheldon, a man of wry wit, attempts to fool his congregation into thinking he was bullied out of his position by the sheer force of the Oklahoma wind, leaving a smattering of laughter still in play as Russ ascends the steps. I watch from a seat less assuming than the front and center. The children and I are near the back with Greg, and we stand briefly to be acknowledged at Russ’s insistence.

  Then he begins to speak, telling of the new life in Jesus Christ, celebrated with the resurrection. He tells our story, the story of our home state—the vibrant life destroyed by greed, the desolation of the empty fields, the constant battle against the endless wind and dirt. He tells of all we’ve left behind, including the babies in their graves, and a church once filled with people just like them.

  “And we are here,” he says, “seeing the new life that pushes through the snow.”

  Greg leans over in the pew and whispers, “He’s a good preacher, isn’t he?”

  “The first time we saw each other was like this. He fell in love with me from behind the pulpit.”

  “So it’s like you’re starting all over?”

  A woman in front of us with an impressive sprig of silk flowers on her hat turns to give us a disapproving hush, and I respond with a respectfully sober expression, glowing inwardly with a feeling I can best describe as victory.

  I listen to him, and I listen to them. The scattered laughter when he tells about the massive jolts of electricity that could send a man flying across the room; the women’s sounds of empathy when he describes my plight in trying to keep the house clean. They shudder at his description of darkness and clutch at their throats as if they are choking on the dust of his words. They lift their feet when he describes the sensation of walking on carpets of locusts and tut-tut at the thought of thousands of rabbits rounded up for slaughter. As far as they know, our little family is the reincarnation of the children of Israel, delivered from a new plague to this Promised Land, where times are hard but the air is clean. We’ve been brought from death to life, as are all sinners in Christ.

  Already, I can tell, they are in love. After the service, they will take him over, build a wall between us with questions and compliments and offers to bake lemon cakes. If they accept me, it will be because they accept him. If they love me, it will be because they love him. Our afternoons are soon to be invaded by invitations to tea, or to speak at the ladies’ Bible study, or to pray over a loved one. Other churches will want to hear, other Bible studies, other charity circles, other Christians. Russ hasn’t been reborn upon our move to Baltimore, not like the children have. He has simply resumed, like he’s been blown in and dropped down on a higher, cleaner plane.

  In the midst of all my predictions coming true, Greg comes home with an invitation that far exceeds anything we could have imagined.

  “A series of hearings,” Greg says at supper, “as Congress d
ebates a soil conservation bill.”

  “I’m not a politician,” Russ says. “Nor a farmer. What could I possibly have to say?”

  “Everything you said in church on Easter. People from my department will be talking about the science and the economics, neither of which are going to be embraced by the farmers. They’re not going to be happy when we tell them not to plant, or that we need to sow grass where they used to grow wheat. And if the farmers aren’t happy, the politicians won’t be either, but we need this to pass.”

  “So he’d go to the Capitol?” Ronnie’s voice beams with pride. “Can we go too?”

  “Sorry,” Greg says in consolation. “However, I do think it would be a fine idea for you to go with him, Sis. Make it a day. See the sights, go out to lunch.”

  “Oh, yes, Russ.” My enthusiasm serves as a complement to Greg’s exhortation. “We haven’t had a chance to be tourists yet. Ronnie can see to Ariel in the afternoon, and we’ll make plans for all of us to go back once school is out.”

  “Now wait a minute.” Russ holds up his hand to halt the explosion of conversation, which includes a dissenting opinion from Ariel, who wants desperately to go too, though she doesn’t know exactly where. “I’m still not clear about my purpose here.”

  “Quite simply,” Greg says, “I’d like you to represent the spiritual toll the drought and the storms have taken on the people. You’ve worked with the sick, and you’ve buried the dead, and you’ve watched your whole community disappear. Tell them that. You make people believe in God, don’t you? I need you to make some men believe in the power of God’s destruction, not just in dollars, but in lives.”

  “When is it?” Russ takes a small leather-bound calendar from his breast pocket and opens it, displaying his new commitments in little square boxes.