by Ellen Datlow
She found Pa fixing up the old John Deere D, trying to get work done while the air was clear.
“Government men come.”
Pa nodded and wiped his hands, reluctant to leave a task half-done. “You take over here.”
Sally took Pa’s place as he strode off. She checked the front tires for cuts, wiping off a grease splatter with a gasoline-damped rag. Everything on the farm depended on the tractor. If it broke, they’d be beat.
Sally thought instead about the government men. Maybe they brought work with them. Maybe it’d be a good day after all.
Stepping inside the dugout, Sally realized something was wrong. Ma stood stiffly in a corner. Pa sat beside the older man, his shoulders squared. The younger government man looked at Sally as she entered, then back at Pa.
The older man spoke, an edge to his voice. “Did no one go out to the farm to look for him?”
Pa’s face was closed. He shook his head.
“Why not?”
Pa glanced at Ma, who folded her arms tightly against her chest. Reluctantly, Pa said, “They say the Dubort place’s cursed.” Pa shrugged as if to remind them he didn’t hold with superstitions.
The Dubort place! Sally watched the strangers with new interest. The abandoned farm was the only site for miles with greenery to spare. Tom Hatchett said if you passed too close to the Devil’s Garden—what the kids called it—one of the monsters living there’d gobble you up. Tom Hatchett was a liar, but still.
The man flipped through his notebook. If he was trying to frighten Pa with that flapping paper, he didn’t know nothing. “Stories of strange vegetation? Odd lights and noises? Animals disappearing? That kind of thing?”
Pa’s gaze was stony. He shrugged again.
“And all this happened after the meteor fell?”
“I don’t know nothing about no meteor,” Pa said. “One of Dubort’s fields caught fire. We went to fight it, like good neighbors. Some folk said a falling star started it. Don’t know more than that.”
“Good neighbors,” the government man said. “But nobody went looking when Frank Dubort disappeared?”
Pa blinked. Looked away. “Place got a bad reputation,” he said. “No one wanted to borrow trouble. It was a wrong thing,” he admitted, quietly, to himself.
Rage blossomed in Sally. Couldn’t these men see how tired Pa was? He had enough to deal with, without these men asking him to feel bad for a stranger, a weekend farmer who couldn’t take the hard times.
But Sally remembered that day at Ted Howser’s farm, the man scuttling out of the barn on his back, like an upside-down beetle. Mr. Howser had put his hand over his mouth. Sally’s Pa had stared like he hoped what he saw wasn’t true. Sally thought the scrabbler looked like Howser’s neighbor, Mr. Dubort—or like some hobo wearing one of Mr. Dubort’s famous blue-checked shirts, all stained and tore-up. But Pa stood in front of her, blocking her view.
Pa told her and Ben to go home. He’d stayed behind to talk to Mr. Howser about what needed to be done. What had they done? Pa had refused to speak of it. He’d said it was settled, and to ask no questions.
Dread crept through Sally. She wondered what had happened to bring these government men here.
“We’d like to go out there, Mr. Mackay,” the government man said, “To have a look around. Your name was mentioned as one who could take us there.”
Sally wanted to know who’d given them Pa’s name. She suspected Pa did too. But the less said to these folk, the better.
“There’s money in it.” The younger man pronounced the words carefully, as though he knew the effect they’d have in this dusty, coughing dugout. “Fifteen dollars, for a guided trip, there and back.” He smiled at their astonishment. “We’re ... scientific men, Mr. Mackay,” he said reassuringly, “We need to see this site close up.”
Sally thought the older man might be angry with his companion for offering money straight off, but he seemed to be taking Pa’s measure.
“If we find Frank, that’ll put this thing to rest.” The young man added, slyly, “It’s the right thing to do.”
Pa’s face was tight. His gaze slid over to Ma. But Ma didn’t know what to do either, Sally saw. She was caught between fear and worry and the promise of fifteen dollars.
“Alright then,” Pa said. “But you pay upfront.”
The older man got up from the table. “Five now, the rest later.”
“Ten.” There was a determined glitter in Pa’s eyes. The government man flicked a bill onto the table. Ten whole dollars.
“We appreciate your help.” The younger man smirked, like he’d known how this was going to go all along.
Sally hated him, she decided. She hated them both. She itched to give the nearest one a kick on his shins as he passed. It was the sort of thing she’d have done last year, never mind the manners. But she thought of Ma and the remaining five dollars. She let the men go.
Pa glanced down at Sally as he put his hat on. “Take care of your Ma.” He patted her head, messing up Sally’s hair. Sally smoothed it back as she watched Pa leave.
It was a funny thing to say, she thought. Ma was the one who took care of everyone else. The strangeness of this kept her standing there, while the men got in the car and drove off.
The duster rolled in a few hours later. Sally crouched into the grating wind and kept one hand on the guide rope, the other over her eyes as she traced her path back from the chicken coop. She struggled along blindly, feeling her bare skin scraped raw. She tried not to think of Pa out in this duster, guiding strangers on someone else’s land.
In the dugout, they huddled together with cloths over their faces. There was no point in burning the kerosene lamp. No light would get through. They sat silently, trying not to breathe in too much of the dust, while the wind raged outside.
The duster lasted the rest of the day. When its blackness cleared, the night was there to take over, and the cold. They lit the lamp and looked at each other, her and Ben and Alice and Ma.
Ma said, “Let’s clean up,” and so they did. Sally tried not to wonder about Pa. He’d have to see the government men back to town. He’d probably stayed there.
But in the morning, Pa still wasn’t back. Sally forced the door open and trudged to the chicken coop to count the survivors. There were two dead, dust-choked. She took the bodies out, feeling the lightness of their scrawny bodies. They needed more food.
It was Sunday and Sunday meant church. Pa wouldn’t miss church, Sally was sure. She put on her “nice” dress—still made out of feed sacks, but cleaner than the others—while Ma got Alice ready.
Ben’s eyes opened when Ma put a hand on his forehead. “Keep an eye on the bairn. And if you see Pa, make sure you tell him to stay put till we get back.” Ben closed his eyes. Sally wasn’t sure if he’d heard them.
But Pa wasn’t at church. Sally kept turning around, scanning the pews. Ma pinched her arm to make her stop, but Ma kept glancing backwards too, every time they had to stand up.
The service was one of the usual ones, about the end times and how the dusters were the Nesters’ fault for ignoring the Lord’s will. Inwardly Sally was having none of it. It was a pretty poor God who visited misery on folk for drinking too much and taking his name in vain now and then. Maybe it was true what the ranch hands said, that they’d done wrong by taking the grassland from the Injuns and turning it to the plow. But even so, where was the good in little kids dying? If that was God’s will, then she hated him, Sally thought, and felt a flash of fear.
After the service Ma caught Ted Howser by the arm. “I need to talk to you about Pat.”
Sally wanted to hear the rest of it, but Ma told her to mind Alice didn’t hurt herself. Sure enough, Alice took a spill. The dust cushioned her so she wasn’t even crying when she looked up. Well, that’s one thing it’s good for, Sally thought, offering the toddler her fingers to grab.
She looked back. Ma was at the center of a ring of old ranch hands and farmwives, their faces grav
e.
“Come on,” she said, tugging at Alice’s hand. “Back this way.”
“Paddy’s a good man and I’d walk to hell for him,” Jake Hardy was saying, “but if the wind stirred something up, we’d best not get too close.”
Someone else snorted. “Walk to hell but wouldn’t go in it, would you?”
“Facts are,” Mr. Howser said, “the Dubort place is off-limits. Pat knew that when he headed out there.” He looked round the circle. “You saw what it did to Frank. We can’t go there. Can’t let anyone go there,” he said, looking back at Sally’s Ma. “Who knows where it’d end?”
“He’s probably holed up at another farm,” Dan Giss said. “Roads are tough. Duster’s closed a lot of ’em. He’s probably holed up with Schmitt, minding those damn fool government men.”
Sally’s Ma seemed to sway on her feet. Sally let go of Alice to run towards her.
Margie Fisher, the schoolteacher, reached Ma first. She put an arm around the younger woman.
“There now,” she said, glaring at Ted Howser. “We need to organize a search party. Knock on every door. Chances are, Pat’s not the only one who could use a hand.”
Sally heard a wail behind her. She turned to see the abandoned Alice sitting in the dust, blood running down her forehead. Somehow the toddler had found the only uncovered rock in the yard and fallen smack into it. Of course she had. And it was Sally’s fault for leaving her.
“Shush,” Sally pleaded, stroking the toddler’s sweat-damp hair. “It’ll be okay.” But it wouldn’t be, Sally knew, the dread rising in her. It wouldn’t be.
Ma and Mrs. Fisher would search along the road, Mr. Howser would take a horse up Fincher’s lot. Jake and Dan would go to the Dubort place. Everyone was worried about this plan, but Jake and Dan swore they’d leave right quick if they felt they were stirring things up.
Stirring things up, Sally thought, remembering the giant vegetables Mr. Dubort had brought to town. Turnip skins so bright they hurt your eyes, apples that glistened like they’d been dipped in water, and huge! One turnip was as big as Ben’s head—he’d put it on the table so Sally could measure before Pa had slapped them away.
“Don’t you do that,” Pa had said, angrier than Sally had ever seen him. “Don’t you touch those things, no matter what.”
Sure enough, when Mr. Dubort sliced the turnip open, dark gray powder crumbled out.
“Must be some kind of blight,” Mr. Dubort had said, pushing his hat back on his head. He was a city man, unused to farming. “Have you seen anything like this before?”
The Nesters said nothing. Their silence hung around them like a sky empty of rain, waiting for the dust to roll through.
Now Sally walked behind Alice as the toddler clung to Mrs. Fisher’s furniture. Mrs. Fisher had a proper house, with tablecloths and everything. Sally noted the dirty film on Mrs. Fisher’s table with satisfaction. She reckoned it must take a lot of sweeping to get dust out of a place this size.
The tick-tocks of Mrs. Fisher’s clock reverberated through the house. Each one felt like a burning pin pushed into Sally’s flesh. Why couldn’t someone else watch the babies? If Ben was here, she reckoned they’d let him go.
She imagined herself wandering across the dust-dunes, finding Pa in a place no one had thought to look. Not hurt, of course. Her mind shied away from that. No, Pa would be fine but helping one of the government men, who’d gotten his fool self hurt. The younger one, Sally decided, viciously. She imagined Pa’s grin when she clambered up the dune that hid them from the road. “I knew I could trust you to figure it out,” he’d say. And the government men would pay them thirty whole dollars for the trouble they’d caused. And—
There was a noise outside.
“Stay there,” Sally told Alice. She didn’t want to pull away the sheets the Fishers had nailed over the windows, so she headed to the door instead.
There was a scramble of people in the yard. Jake was trying to hold a flailing man by the shoulders. “Don’t let him go!” Mr. Fisher, the mortician, grabbed the man’s other arm.
It took Sally a moment to recognize the flailing figure, all covered in dust. It was the older government man. He lips were pulled back from his teeth, his eyes rolled to the sky. As Sally watched he arched his back and howled, a long hard sound that raised all the hairs on her scalp. A string of gibberish babbled out of him: grah’n h’mglw’nafh fhthagn-ngah ...
She shut the door, closing out the sight. It was as though God had heard Sally’s foolish dream of finding Pa and had sent the government man back to punish her vanity. Please, please, she thought frantically, hushing Alice, please let them have found Pa, please let him be all right—
When Ma came back her face was strange. “Make sure you thank Mrs. Fisher for letting you stay here.”
Sally obediently repeated the words, even though Mrs. Fisher was standing right there. Ma and Mrs. Fisher stared at each other like they were having a silent conversation above Sally’s head. Normally Sally would hate that. Now it made her more scared than ever, because something was really wrong if nobody was talking about Pa.
Ma’s silence carried them back to the dugout. It filled the air there when Ben tried to gasp out a question.
“Others are seeing to that,” Ma said shortly. And, “Jaisus, get the broom, will you?”
Sally got the broom and swept the dust about the place, while Ben wheezed and the babies coughed and Ma tried not to cry. If only the dust would leave the place, they’d be alright, Sally thought wildly, knowing it wasn’t true.
Next morning, Sally was up before cockcrow. Her head was buzzing as she cast the hard, dried-up corn into her bucket and went out to face the chickens.
“I’m going to school,” she told Ma at the door. Ma hesitated, then nodded. Ma was always on at Sally and Ben to keep up their lessons. In truth, Sally doubted there’d be any kids in the school. The morning had that hard-light look to it that threatened dusters, and there was too much work to do just to get some food through the door.
But today Sally had other things on her mind. If there was a duster coming, she needed to move fast and early.
She packed her water and the scrap of hard-bread that Mam set aside for her. She’d also take the shovel from the back of the tumble-down barn, in case she needed to dig her way out. That’s what Pa would do.
Ben watched her tie the strings up on the rucksack, his eyes angry. He knew what she was doing.
“Just ... don’t say nothing. Unless I’m not back by sundown,” Sally whispered. Then she threw the rucksack on and left, before Ben could muster the air to call her back, before anyone changed her mind about what needed to be done.
The sky above her was blue, blue, blue, dotted with the occasional cloud. No point trying the local road over to Dubort—that would be drifted over. She’d cut across land, avoiding the big drifts except when it came time to climb the fences.
It was hard going. Sally’s feet sank into the sand, her boots filling with grit. Mackay land, she thought, turned against us. The spade was heavy on her shoulder.
About halfway to the Dubort place she started to feel she’d made a mistake. The sun was fully up now. In its glare she could see the green strip of land away in the distance. The Devil’s Garden, some called it. It’d been so long since there’d been green in these parts, Sally couldn’t tell if it was the drought or whether there was actually something wrong with the color.
The animal-sounds dropped away as she approached the Dubort place. You’d think the jackrabbits and birds would flock here, given that no one hunted at the farm. But the air out here was stiller than the desert.
Sally walked along the side of the giant dune that had piled up over Dubort’s old fence. She saw the white bones of some animal poking through. Probably a starved cow, tangled in wire and Russian thistle. Beyond the bones was a place where the dune dipped a little. As good as any spot for a crossing, she thought, and waded up.
It was strange being surrounded by green
again. Sally remembered the color from the old days, but here it was everywhere. Dubort’s fruit trees had grown large and tangled. Between them, vines draped and alien flowers gaped at the sky. A nearby bush dangled huge, glossy fruit. They looked like they would quench the thirst that was beginning to rasp her throat. Sally looked away, remembering the powdery vegetables.
The lurid greenery stretched everywhere on the Dubort-side. There was nothing for it. “Pa!” she shouted. “Pa!”
Silence. Sally took a swig from her bottle and kept walking.
The Dubort house stood on the northern part of the property, close to Mr. Daverson’s fence. Surely, if Pa was in trouble—if a duster was bearing down on them—that’s where he’d head. For shelter. And he hadn’t had the shovel that now ground into her skinny shoulder. They could be stuck in there, underneath the grit.
At a certain point the trees thinned and she saw a hard-pack section where nothing grew, a burned-looking hole at its center. She figured that must be where the rock had hit. There was something blue standing by the crater—a human color.
Sally didn’t want to walk into the clearing—it seemed strange to her somehow—but she figured if she were looking for Pa, she had to check out every clue. So she walked quietly over to the blue thing. A couple cans of gasoline and a man’s hat, filmed with dust.
Sally tested the weight on the gas cans. They were full. The young man had been wearing a hat.
A screeching sound jerked her head up. It was probably some kind of buzzard, she told herself, walking quickly back to the dune line. She had the uncomfortable feeling something was watching her, its gaze focused just between her shoulder blades. It was a relief when she left that clearing behind her.
She knew she should yell for Pa again, but after the screech she couldn’t work up the nerve. Pa had to be at the house. The sooner she got there, the better everything would be.