When I woke up on the first day of 1935, I expected I would feel different somehow. Instead, I felt the same old tug of hunger in my gut and tear of sadness in my chest.
The hunger was easy to get rid of. All I needed was a couple spoonfuls of oatmeal. The sadness didn’t go away so easy.
Meemaw’s room was empty. Dust still buried Red River. Eddie kept coming around to smirk at me. And Beanie was folding up into herself more and more each day.
That New Year’s morning seemed more like stale leftovers than the fresh start I’d hoped for.
Millard’s voice carried all the way from downstairs up to my bedroom. The laughter that had always come along with him was gone, and I missed it something terrible. In the days after Meemaw died, his voice had gotten lower and sounded weaker.
I couldn’t hardly look at him with his watery eyes and red nose. It broke my heart. He missed her as much as the rest of us did.
Daddy tried to get him talking about how things were before the dust had come. I liked listening to his stories. They kept me from thinking on the sadness so much.
I got out of bed on that New Year’s Day and pulled on one of my sack dresses. I hardly got a comb through my hair before running down the steps.
“Well,” Millard said from his seat at the table. “Look who we have here.”
He tried at a smile, but I could tell it took a lot of effort.
“Good morning,” I said, giving him a grin, hoping it looked easier than his.
“I still don’t have any of those candies you like,” he said, patting the pocket of his flannel shirt. “I’m real sorry about that.”
“It’s okay.”
“Smalley said he can’t put in an order for them no more. Maybe after a little bit.” Millard shrugged and put his pipe between his lips. “I sure am sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.”
Millard lit the pipe, puffing clouds of blue smoke. I breathed in the rich aroma. His hands shook. All of him shook, as a matter of fact. I knew he was old, but he’d never seemed so fragile to me before.
Daddy put a steaming cup of coffee in front of Millard and sat across the table with one of his own.
“Morning, darlin’,” Daddy said, sipping from his cup. “You sleep well?”
“I did.” It was a lie, but I didn’t want him to worry about me.
“Beanie still asleep?”
I told him she was.
“That’s fine.”
“Go ahead and set the bowls on the table,” Mama called to me from the kitchen. “Oatmeal’s just about done.”
I put the bowls out like Mama asked and the spoons, too. She smiled at me and whispered her thanks.
“You know, I’m an old man,” Millard said, spreading his napkin on one knee. “Real old.”
“Nonsense.” Mama pushed a serving spoon into the pot of oats. “Abraham was old.”
I wanted to ask Millard how old he was but knew that Mama would have scolded me. So instead, I asked how old Abraham was. Mama couldn’t remember exactly. Meemaw would have known. It sent a pang through my whole body, missing her. I tried to swallow it back down so nobody else would know I was hurting.
“Old as I am, I still remember the first time I seen Red River.” Millard took a few last puffs of his pipe before setting it down so he could eat. “Back then, there was still water that flowed through the middle of town. We’d swim in it all summer long. Just splashing around in that cool water.”
“Did you fish, too?” I asked.
“That we did.” Millard looked at me while he sipped of his coffee. “I never caught much of anything other than a boot and tin can. I’ve never been all that patient for waiting around until a fish bit.”
“Did you ever see buffalo?”
“Some. My pa’d hunt them.” He took another drink of coffee and sighed. “Beautiful creatures, them buffalo. A sight to behold. Spitting shame we went and shot them all.”
I imagined green fields of tall grasses held down by the weight of a hundred brown beasts.
“Your dad over there ever tell you how the town got its name?” Millard asked, breaking my vision of buffalo. “Why they called it Red River?”
“No, sir,” I answered, hoping he was fixing to tell me the story.
“When the old settlers moved out this way to get their piece of the land, they didn’t expect that the Injuns were still here. Them red men weren’t so welcoming as you might think.”
“I don’t suppose I would have been, either,” Mama said.
“They put up a good fight,” Millard went on. “A couple good fights, matter-of-fact. But they weren’t no match for the white man’s rifles. The bodies of the Injuns piled up, and the river run red with the blood. Some dandy come from back East seen it. He got sick as a dog. Said he had never seen a red river before. Name just stuck, I suppose.”
“That’s terrible,” Mama said, sitting in her chair. She looked at Daddy. “Would you say grace?”
Daddy said a short prayer, and Mama spooned the pasty oatmeal into our bowls.
“My pa always said the Indians that survived the fighting put a curse on this land.” Millard rested his spoon on the side of his bowl. “They say they put a curse on all the folks that lived here and those who would later on. Seemed they had them a powerful hex.”
“Oh, I don’t know if that’s true.” Mama touched the napkin to her lips. “I don’t put much faith in curses.”
“Well, I remember when the paint still dripped off’n the buildings.” He winked at me. “When I seen the wet paint, I couldn’t hardly help but run my finger through it.”
I smiled, imagining Millard as a naughty little boy.
“I was born over to West Virginny. My pa had fought for the Confederacy.” He puckered his lips. “He was a hard man, my pa. I reckon the war done that to him. After the war, he didn’t have nothing left, so he brought my ma and me out here. Seems he got a handbill that advertised cabbage the size of a man and carrots longer than a house. Folks said this place was the next best thing since the Promised Land.”
Millard shook with an airy laugh.
“Even had pictures on them handbills of five men riding a watermelon like it was a horse.” He scratched the side of his nose. “Such foolishness.”
“Was it true?” I asked.
“Nah. It never was. I don’t know how they done it, but they made them pictures up,” Millard said. “When they got here, all my folks seen was a wild piece of land. Not a tree for a hundred miles, either.”
“Was that before the Indians got killed?” I asked, leaning forward on my elbows.
“After. A good many years after, I guess.” He steadied his coffee cup as Mama poured him more. “My ma, when she seen the dugout we was to live in, she sat down right there in the dirt and cried her eyes out. She boohooed like the world was coming to an end.”
Daddy and Mama smiled and laughed softly along with Millard. I didn’t know why it was funny. I imagined a young lady sitting on the ground, spoiling her pretty dress with her tears and the red Oklahoma dirt.
“’Course, we didn’t have money to turn around and go back. My pa wouldn’t have wanted to, neither. To him, going back East would’ve meant defeat. So we stayed on here.”
“Was your father a farmer?” I asked, scraping the bottom of my bowl.
“Sure was. He got on the wheat wagon straight away.” He sighed, and his eyes caught a stream of light from the window. “It was hard going for a spell. Real hard. But the land was good. The soil was rich. Government told all us farmers we oughta go ahead and plow up all the land. Every last bit of it. Said it would bring the rains.”
“Did it work?” I asked, even though I knew that it did not.
Millard shook his head. “Never did.”
The four of us stayed quiet at the table, finishing our oatmeal.
Millard lit his pipe again.
“The land got its revenge all right. Don’t know if it was the Injun curse that did it or what. But the land’s sure punishing us now.” Millard breathed in a puff of smoke and held it before pushing it back out again. “Dirt ain’t good no more. It’s dead. Some days I feel ashamed to look at this bare naked land. We raped it and left it bare naked.”
“Mill,” Daddy whispered.
Millard’s eyes focused on us again, like he’d been awakened from sleep. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That ain’t a way to talk in front of ladies.”
Sad as Millard looked, he didn’t cry a single tear.