Pastor liked to preach about the wrath of God flattening the old Bible cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. His eyes would take on a certain kind of wild glow when he talked about the sulfur raining down on the sinners. He’d say how Lot and his family escaped the blazing anger of God by the skin of their teeth. I wondered if Pastor wasn’t disappointed that they got away.
“But Lot’s wife, in her unfaithfulness, turned to look back,” he’d roar. “And for her godless doubt, she got turned into a pillar of salt. Praise God!”
Red River was no Sodom, and Cimarron County no Gomorrah. Still Pastor’d told us the dust storms were the weight of God’s punishing hand for our sin.
Like Lot’s wife, I couldn’t keep from turning to see the rolling punishment headed our way. I didn’t turn to salt, but the weight of fear fell heavy on me anyhow, making me like to crumble to nothing.
Taller than any building, wider than the whole Panhandle of Oklahoma, darker than any night I’d ever seen, the full fury of dust rushed toward Ray and me. Thick, evil-black earth moved across the land, picking up what was left loose and working it into its crushing, rolling, sideways cyclone.
Above it, the sky stayed bright as God’s promise to never destroy the earth with floodwater again.
He never did promise not to destroy it with dirt, though.
Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.
“We gotta get down in the cellar,” Ray hollered at me, grabbing hold of my wrist.
“No,” I yelled, wishing he knew how I’d rather die than go underground. “I want to go home.”
“Storm’s gonna hit there first.” He tugged me, making me turn around toward him. “We’ll be safe if we get in that cellar. Come on.”
I yanked my hand from him.
“We’d get buried,” I screamed.
Turning to see the storm once more, I saw an outline of somebody running ahead of the roller. Wild hair stood up all over her head; her dress was blown this way and that, showing her legs all the way up to her under-things. I tried to get to her, to fight my way against the force of wind. I stumbled and fell. Stumbled and fell. I screamed in frustration that I was not so strong as the storm.
“Beanie,” I hollered, hoping she’d hear me over the roaring wind.
She stopped and I struggled to see her face, unable to keep my eyes open too long for the stinging dust. Lifting her arms, Beanie turned away from me, reaching for the swirling dirt like she hoped to hold it back, to keep it from getting to me. The sun seemed to work with her, breaking through the pelting dust with small beams that glowed every color I could imagine.
“Come on,” Ray yelled, his voice cracking.
Thick and hazy the air moved around Beanie, moved around me. Again I tried to get to her, and again I got knocked down. She somehow stood firm in the charging wind.
“Beanie,” I screamed over and over again. I crawled, my hands and knees sinking into the shifting sands beneath me. No matter how I tried I couldn’t get close enough.
Then the dust overtook her.
She was gone. Swallowed up. I couldn’t see so much as her outline or her shadow. It had come on so quick, the roller. Squinting, I tried to find her, but all I could see was black and tan and gray. Even though I knew it couldn’t help, I kept calling out for her.
It didn’t take long for the storm to take me, too. It gobbled me up, chewing on my flesh with the stones and scraps of sharp things that flew around in its cycle.
All I could think to do was fall to the ground and curl into a ball, holding my face in my hands. I screamed with my mouth closed. I screamed for terror and for anger and for the feeling that I’d never be found.
I prayed and prayed.
Save Beanie. Save Beanie. Save Beanie.
Every inch of dust that fell over me pushed me down, down, down. I feared soon I’d end up underground.
“I wanna go home,” I whimpered. “I want my mama. I want my mama now.”
Lost in the wind, lost in the storm. Hidden from help by the inky-thick sky.
Nobody’s gonna find you here.
Eddie’s ghost howled along on the wind.
Ain’t nobody comin’ lookin’ for you.
But Beanie, she’d come. She must’ve known the storm was brewing. Probably smelled it on the air. She’d always felt them before anybody else.
Beanie had come.
She’s a idiot, ain’t she?
But she had known to come, that I’d needed her. She’d figured that much out.
Nobody’s gonna find you here.
Daddy would. And Mama’d sit, wringing her hands with worry.
They ain’t your real family. They don’t love you.
They did love me, I knew that much.
Nah, they just feel sorry for you. Pity ain’t love.
Rage blended with my fear, pulling a savage shriek from me. I tried with all my mental strength to remind myself that Eddie was dead. He had a bullet in his head and he was dead, never to bother me again. Dead and gone. Still, his memory haunted, pulsing against me like the shredding storm.
You’re never gonna make it back, his voice whispered on the wind.
The black cloud of dirt rolled over me, pulling at me, trying to make me join its turning, churning path.
Pushing my hands against my head even harder, I held myself tight.
I was as good as lost.
I walked into Meemaw’s bedroom. It was a waking dream and I knew it. Still it seemed as real as anything else. And better by miles than hearing Eddie’s haunting.
Mama stood by the bed. A sheet covered the lump that I knew to be Meemaw’s lifeless body. Touching the crisp white cotton, Mama asked if I wanted to feel the cold skin.
I made a sound from the back of my throat, wanting to say no, but afraid if I opened my mouth I’d let in too much dirt.
Snaps of static popped blue in the air when Mama pulled the sheet up, sparking bright and cracking loud. Meemaw’s eyes jolted open.
“Good morning, Mother,” Mama said.
Loose and shaky, Meemaw’s head rolled to one side so she could face me. Her mouth opened once, twice, again before any noise came out. The jaws creaked like a thirsty hinge. A small moaning escaped, sticking in her throat like a warped door getting forced open.
“The Lord is near,” she rasped, her eyes piercing through the haze in the room. “He sees you. He knows where you’re at. All you gotta do is be still.”
Her eyelids snapped shut and her head creaked back to the way it was before. The sheet dropped gentle over her face.
“She’s at rest,” Mama said.
Outside Meemaw’s window, the black swirl of dust raged.
My name. I heard my name hollered through the still-roaring wind. The voice wasn’t a dream, or a haunting either. My name. It was real. The voice belonged to Ray. It drew nearer and nearer until I felt hands groping, landing on my back.
“Ray?” I said, dust rushing into my open mouth.
“Where’s Beanie?” he asked.
I tried to tell him I didn’t know, but all I managed was a choking cough.
“We’ll find her,” he said. “We will.”
My name again. A deeper voice called it out. And another voice, deeper still. Daddy and Millard. I let Ray yell to them. He kept his arms around me and I was glad to be held down so I wouldn’t get lost again.
They called back and forth to each other. Back and forth. Eventually Daddy and Millard got closer until we huddled together, the four of us. I grabbed onto Daddy, my arms holding him tight as I could, and I had no intention of letting go.
“I got bandanas,” Daddy said, feeling in the dark to tie one around my face, covering my mouth and nose. His knot pulled at my hair, tangling it with the fabric, but I didn’t care. “Ray, I got one for you, too.”
“Beanie came,” I said. “She’s gone.”
“She ain’t too far off,” Ray added. “Over to your right, I think.”
“She was coming for us.” I started crying and I didn’t think my words made a lick of sense. “She knew.”
“All right,” Daddy said. “It’s gonna be all right, darlin’. She’ll find her way back to us.”
“What if she doesn’t?” I asked.
Nobody answered.
“We’d best get ’em home,” Millard said.
“Would you take them?” Daddy asked.
“Course I will.”
“Can’t you come?” Panic rose from deep in my guts. “Daddy, please?”
“I gotta find your sister.”
“I’ll stay,” I said. “I can help.”
“Darlin’, you’ll be helping me by getting home to your mama. She’s real worried.” His voice was stern. Not mad, but serious. I knew I’d best mind, much as I didn’t want to leave him there. “Go on home with Millard, hear?”
I didn’t answer him because my crying clamped my throat shut.
Ray put both his hands on my shoulders, and I took Millard by a couple of his fingers. We walked the direction I imagined was the way home. Three blind mice walking one after the other, leaving Daddy and Beanie behind.
If I shook all the way down to my fingers Millard didn’t say anything about it. He did, though, rub his rough-padded thumb against the back of my hand now and then and say, “Gettin’ closer. We’re findin’ our way just fine.”
Daddy’s voice, calling for Beanie, got fainter and fainter the more we made strides away from them.
“Now, no matter what, don’t you touch that barbed wire,” Millard said, turning his head toward us. “See it?”
The dark was thinning, even if the dust still thickened the air. I turned and looked at the wire Millard pointed at. It was a small comfort that I could see, even if it wasn’t very much.
“Don’t want ya to get shocked. Don’t know if it still would, but it ain’t worth the chance,” he went on.
Over the years of dust, I’d gotten my share of pokes from the charge the storms caused. Daddy’d tried explaining it to me one time, but it seemed like nothing more than an awful sort of magic to me. The kind of magic used by evil queens to change crops into dust, blue days into inky nights, and barbed wire into blazing threads of fire.
As we walked on, the haze cleared inch by inch. We moved slowly, step after step after step, for what seemed like the remainder of eternity. The more we walked, the clearer the air got.
Out of the corner of my eye I spied a lump on top of a pile of dirt. It jerked and flicked its feathers and beak. Brown wings tried to move, tried to get the body set to fly off. The most it could manage, though, was a frantic, scared flapping.
Letting go of Millard’s hand, I leaned over to look at the bird. Feathers the color of earth were rumpled, full of dust. I could see, even through my sore and scratched eyes, it was nothing but a sparrow.
“Come on,” Ray said, tapping my shoulder. “Let’s keep on.”
“It’s hurt.” I reached out one finger to touch the bird. It made a scratchy, squeaking sound and struggled away from my hand.
“Looks like it’s got a broke wing,” Millard said, squatting on his haunches beside me. “Probably got downed in the storm. I imagine there’s lots of critters took a beatin’.”
“We gotta help it,” I said, hearing the begging in my own voice. “Don’t know what we can do.” Millard made his voice quiet and gentle. “It’s more scared of us than anything just now. Might do it more hurt if we tried pickin’ it up.”
“I don’t wanna leave it here alone.” I tried touching it again. Millard wrapped his fingers around my wrist, staying my hand. “Please, Millard. I don’t wanna let it die. Not here.”
“Ain’t nothin’ else we can do, much as I wish there was.” He spoke right to me. The tenderness in his eyes made me want to cry. “We gotta keep movin’. I gotta get you outta this dust. All right, darlin’?”
I didn’t have any fight left in me to tell him no. The three of us moved along, staying clear of the fence that might give us a jolt and shuffling our way in the direction of home.
I sure hated to leave that bird to die alone in that pile of dust.
It was hard to know how long we walked. With each step I knew for sure I couldn’t take another. Millard felt me falling behind. He told me to hold him around the neck, and he hefted me up into his arms, carrying me like I weighed nothing at all.
For an old man, he was sure strong.
I didn’t tell him so much, of course.
By the time we reached the main street of Red River, we could see well enough to know where we were. It was an awful sight, how that one storm dumped a whole world-full of dust right down on top of us.
I rested my head against Millard’s chest, closing my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see more than I needed to. All I could think about was the dust covering over Beanie and fearing she was so buried nobody’d ever find her.
After a little while more, Millard let out a sigh, and I did hope it was a relieved one.
“We made it,” he whispered. “You’re home.”
I opened my lids, but I couldn’t see for the flood that blurred my eyes.
He put me down on the front porch before he opened the door.
“Thank God!” Mama cried. “Thank God.”
She rushed to me, putting her hands all over me, checking me from head to toe. She examined every sore and bump and gash. She pushed the hair from my face and kissed both my cheeks and used her thumbs to wipe away my tears.
“Are you all right?” she asked, her voice shaking.
I wasn’t sure I had a good answer for her question so I didn’t say anything.
“And you, Ray?” she said, putting her hand out for him. “Okay?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he answered.
“And Beanie? Tom?” She looked at the door. “Where’s your sister and daddy?”
“Tom’s out lookin’ for her,” Millard answered.
“She wasn’t with you?” Mama asked, looking right at me and touching her fingertips to her mouth.
I shook my head. “She came looking for us,” I told her.
Ray told Mama as best he could what’d happened.
“Lord God.” Mama pulled me to her.
Millard had gone back out to help Daddy. Mama’d given him a lantern and a flashlight and a thermos of water.
It was all she could do to keep Ray in the house. He worried so about his mother.
“She’s probably just fine,” Mama said. “I’ll bet she’s just worrying about you something awful.”
“I gotta see she’s all right,” he said.
“In the morning,” Mama said. “Wait until morning.”
“But—”
“Ray. Please don’t go.” Mama put her hand on his cheek. “Stay.”
He did as she said but I knew he wasn’t happy about it.
Mama walked me up to my room, where she had me undress all the way. She rubbed ointment on the sores and blisters that covered me all over. I was embarrassed, her seeing me naked like that. But the medicine soothed and I didn’t argue. She had me sip a little water. The whole time she kept the place in between her eyebrows tensed and wrinkled.
She lowered a nightie over my head and lifted my blanket. Inches of dust slid off to the floor. I climbed onto my bed and she tucked me in under the sheet and the blanket, fretting that I’d be cold. I told her I’d be all right. I flipped over my pillow and then put my head down.
Quick as could be I was sinking into sleep, deep and warm.
Beanie stood ahead of me in the swirl of dust and sunshine. Greens and blues and yellows streaked the blacks and tans of sand. It looked like a pinwheel with my sister as the unmoving center.
No matter how hard I ran, I couldn’t reach her. Even if I screamed with all my might I couldn’t get her to hear me.
The dust cloud danced around her, spinning, hypnotizing. It gathered her into itself, wrapping all around her. An arm of dirt and rock reached out and knocked me to the ground, forcing all the wind out of me.
It wanted Beanie for itself.
By the time I managed to get up and find her, she was on a mound of earth, jerking and flapping her arms. When I reached for her, she screeched, fighting to get away from me.
I woke in the dark. Feeling for Beanie, I touched nothing but flat sheet, empty space. Grit against the bedclothes.
I sat up and put my feet on the floor. Bare toes wiggled in the soft-as-flour dirt. It seemed strange to me, how the storms rolled in both the grit and the fine dust.
Standing, I made my way to the window and pushed aside the curtain. It might as well have been glass painted black for all I could see. The lack of light felt like a vice tightening around me.
But a flickering caught my eye and I turned toward it, to my bedroom door. I heard the scraping of a chair on the dining-room floor.
Slow as I could, I made my way down the steps, a sandpaper burning stinging in my chest with every deep breath.
Daddy sat at the table, a cigarette between his fingers. It wasn’t lit, and I didn’t think he realized that, the way he stared at the tabletop. His eyes were red and I thought they must’ve been sore.
“Daddy?” I said.
“It’s still nighttime, darlin’,” he answered, putting the cold cigarette to his lips. Getting no smoke he tossed it on the table. “Go on back to bed.”
“Where’s Beanie?” I asked.
Lifting his head, he moved his mouth like he had a whole world of words to say to me, but not the sound to make them come out. He covered over his mouth with one of his hands like he wanted to catch whatever he might say before it could make any noise.
For the first time in my life, I saw fear in his eyes. I couldn’t look at him anymore.
Turning, I went to the living room where Ray lay sleeping on the daven-port. His eyes twitched under closed lids. Other than that, he didn’t move.
From Mama and Daddy’s room I heard crying. It was Mama, I knew it. I went to the door. It wasn’t closed all the way so I pushed it open. The hinges whined and Mama looked up at me, her eyes squinted and her hands held together like she was begging for something.
She didn’t tell me to go away, and she didn’t stand up from the edge of the bed. I stood in front of her but didn’t take another step into the room.
A black cloth covered the mirror Mama had hanging on the bedroom wall.
It’s something we do, she’d told me months before after Meemaw’d died.
I wanted to tear that cloth down, to throw it outside. Let it get buried deep under the dust. But I didn’t because Mama whimpered and drew my attention.
She’d put her folded hands against her forehead and rocked back and forth, her mouth pulled out of shape and wailing mourning spilling out from it.
There on the bed was my sister. Her hair spread out on the pillow, wild curls knotted and full of dirt. Her hair, I could stare at her hair and not know. I didn’t want to know.
I took a step into the room, not breathing. And then I tried to have faith that it would be all right. I made myself look.
Beanie’s face was tinged blue, her body rigid.
“No, no, no,” I whispered, shaking my head. “No.”
Mama reached for me, but I stepped away, pulling my hands to my chest, still shaking my head and telling Mama no.
Beanie Jean, born blue as a violet. God had seen fit to breathe life into her then. Why wouldn’t He do it again?
I wondered if it was a magic that could only be done once.
I backed out of the room, ramming into the doorjamb. I kept going backward, into the living room, stumbling on my own two feet and falling to the floor.
I pushed myself on my behind all the way until I ran into the wall clear to the other side of the living room. Right next to me was the bookcase. There, sticking out just an inch, was my fairy-tale book.
I wanna hear a story, Beanie’d said not too many hours before. She’d had plenty breath then. She was breathing in and out without any problem, her skin the right color. Her eyes alive.
Pulling that book off the shelf, I put it on my lap, opening the cover. I turned through the pages, not seeing a single thing on any of them, just flipping, flipping, flipping.
I took hold of the pages and tore them, one after another. Rip and rip and rip. The paper hissed as I pulled. The paper cut into my hands, slicing the skin in thin marks that would sting later, just not then.
All I felt was hollowed out, and it surprised me how that feeling hurt.
Surrounded by the shreds of my book, I curled up on the floor, letting grief lull me to sleep, my hands bleeding and my heart pounding.