CHAPTER 3

IN THE MORNING, he is gone. Morning meaning, of course, when the storm has passed. It’s hard to tell, sometimes, when darkness tacks itself onto darkness. We forget to wind our watches and can’t even see the clock faces for the film of dust that covers them. So, in those early moments of peace, when the air is still and the sun shines high, we push our doors against the drifts and take to the streets, confirming with our neighbors.

Do you have the time?

Ten fifteen.

And is it Sunday?

Yes.

In this we are like old Ebenezer Scrooge, startled and pleased to find ourselves alive to see another day, with little time lost to the void.

I do not know what has happened to our guest, only that, after an indeterminate amount of sleep, I was awakened by the smell of coffee and the sound of silence. I crept about the house, feeling the familiar grit beneath my bare feet, and found Ariel playing quietly with her paper dolls, Ronnie sound asleep on the sofa, and Russ at the kitchen table, staring past his open Bible.

All of us.

“Did he leave?” My mouth feels like I slept with a towel wrapped around my tongue.

Russ looks at me, blinking, as if he doesn’t quite understand.

“Your friend. Jim. Is he gone?”

“Yes.” He returns to his reading with no further explanation.

I go to the cupboard, take out a cup, and rinse it under the tap. After three big gulps of water, I fill it with the fresh, hot coffee. He’s taken the sheet off the table, so when I prop my elbows on it, I know the dirt I feel comes from my own skin.

“Where did he go?”

Russ mumbles something and makes a mark in his Bible.

“Does he have a place to stay? Or is he —?”

“Nola.” He sounds frustrated. Indulgent, but frustrated.

“I’m sorry.” I sip my coffee. It is strong and good, and I tell him so. Quietly, though, so as not to distract him again. I am about to ask if he plans to hold a church service, but his intent study answers my question. The regular service time has well passed, but when the storms became a commonality in our lives, Russ —leader at once of both the church and the community —made a singular declaration. Three hours past the storm, no matter the day of the week, no matter if it’s the dead of night, we gather. To count our people, to lift our praises, and to pray for God’s continued mercy in the days to come.

Ariel climbs into my lap and nuzzles my neck. It takes all my strength not to push her grimy face away. She tells me she’s hungry, and thirsty, and asks when she’ll be old enough to drink coffee, and if we have any Ovaltine, and can she take a bath before church, and can she bring her paper dolls if she keeps them hidden in the pages of her Children’s Book of Virtue and Verse?

And is Paw-Paw coming over for dinner?

I answer what I can, giving assurances about the paper dolls and promises for Ovaltine, but maybe not right now. She’d have a shower, not a bath, because there wasn’t time to clean the tub. And as for Paw-Paw, well, that would depend on whether or not he came to church.

Russ seems not at all disturbed by our conversation, but I can tell he listens. He has a smile that lifts nothing more than the corner of his top lip. I call it his secret smile, both for when he’s trying to keep one, and when he thinks no one is watching. He’s ignored me long enough.

“What are you smiling at, Russ Merrill?”

“Just listening to my girls.” His eyes never leave the Scriptures. Upon closer inspection I notice he has already cleaned up, dirt free but not shaven.

“Might should stay home,” I say, “in case Pa does come over. Clean up a bit, try to cook up something, since you got the gas turned back on.”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

It’s not a command. Russ knows I’ll obey as much as my conscience ever allows without his needing to be forceful, but his statement doesn’t leave much room for argument. Still it leaves a little.

“I know. But if Pa —”

“Your pa’s lived through the same storm we have. He won’t mind a bit of dust in the corners. I like you to be there with me, Nola. It helps.”

He reaches across the table and lays a hand against Ariel’s hair, then my cheek. His touch is cool and clean, and I turn my face to kiss the center of his palm. The request is a memorial to our earliest days when, he says, the sight of me in the back pew with my father gave him the courage to get through his first-ever sermon. How I’d calmed his nerves, inspired him to impress the congregation so they’d want to bring him back and he could see me every week. I’ve watched him grow in confidence and authority behind the pulpit over the years, but still, he insists, my presence brings him peace.

“Do what you can here, then,” I say, “while I get your girls pretty.”

He promises, and I make his first task that of slicing a few potatoes and putting them on to boil after finding a snack for our daughter.

In the bathroom, I strip to my skin while the water turns warm. A glimpse in the mirror reveals a perfect line where my collar kept the dirt at bay. Standing in the tub, I pull the curtain around the basin and lift the lever to bring warm water showering from the spigot above. More dust washes from me, and I imagine my hair harboring traces of Oklahoma farmland mixed with long-overdue rain. After all the precautions —all the rags stuffed around windows and doors, in every nook and crack imaginable —still, brown rivulets pour off my body, wash down the drain, and swirl away.

Quickly, knowing well the preciousness of water, I rinse myself clean and step into a pair of slippers to protect my feet from the unswept floor. Dressed in something suitable for Sunday, I take my daughter through the same cleansing, plaiting her wet hair into a single red rope. I leave Ronnie to the last possible second, having learned that, at this age, it is more pleasant to have him well rested than well scrubbed. He sates his hunger with a few slices of buttered bread and a cup of cooled coffee with milk —an indulgence we allow as of late —and with all the trappings of any other family heading off for Sunday worship, we walk out of our apartment door and down the steps to where our fellow townspeople emerge, none the worse for wear.

It wasn’t the worst storm we’ve ever had. The sidewalk’s still discernible from the street, and the hedges Merrilou Brown planted along her front fence still stand. That alone gives me the hope of seeing all our people accounted for —those who attend the Featherling Christian Church, that is.

I have my daughter by the hand, my husband at my side, and our son trailing half a step behind. Just like earlier in the morning, in our small home, all gathered and accounted for. All that matters, and still . . .

I lift a hand in greeting to my friend Rosalie, who carries her baby girl in her arms, and the remaining fat around her belly. Her husband, Ben, leads on, their son in between. Rosalie and I call out a friendly greeting to each other, along with a promise to get together in the coming days.

My eyes scan the streets as I tell myself I’m only looking out of a sense of charitable goodwill. A concern borne from the ancient laws of hospitality. I nod my head in greeting to one neighbor after another, craning my neck to look behind and beyond their weary faces.

Ariel sees a friend and, with my permission, runs off in squealing delight.

“I see you all made it through safe and sound?” Merrilou Brown’s small presence sidles up beside me, forcing me to slow my pace to match hers. In no time, Russ and Ronnie have left me behind.

“We did.”

“This one had a bark worse’n its bite, I’d say.”

I mutter something.

“The wind, I mean. Maybe more of a howl than a bark. Though sometimes, it’ll pick up a gust, and make a sound —” She breaks into a series of breathy, midpitched sounds like nothing I’d ever heard in nature or beyond, but there’s nothing to do but acknowledge.

She asks if Russ plans to preach, and I tell her yes, and I feel her birdlike grip on my wrist.

“Good. We all need words of hope. Now more’n ever.”

“Yes. More than ever.”

I try not to wrest myself away too impatiently as I make an excuse about needing to catch up with my family. Even with quickened steps, my escape buys me a few moments alone to ease my curiosity. Once alongside Russ, I loop my arm through his and ask if he’s seen any sign of our Mr. Brace.

“Hide nor hair,” Russ says. “But I told him we’d be gathered here. And invited him for a meal after.”

I feel a fillip of fear and convince myself it’s nothing more than the annoyance of having not one but two possible dinner guests, with no assurances of either.

“I hope we’ll have enough.”

“We’ll be fine.”

“But if Pa —”

He stops right in front of the church house steps and kisses me softly, like I’m some sort of new bride. “We always have enough, Nola. By God’s grace and mercy.”

I sense the approving smiles as people divide themselves to stream around us. A far cry from the reception we received the first time we stood on these front steps together when I was a new bride. I’d felt fearful fillips then, too, but realized soon enough they were the first movements of the young man who now pounded his father on the shoulder, saying, “Break it up, Dad. People are watching.”

Russ smiles and takes my hand, holding it all the way through the coatroom and into the sanctuary. After that, all business. One after another, men —farmers, ranchers, bankers —greet him with a handshake and a grimness that make me wonder if a little bit of their very souls didn’t blow away with the storm. Haggard women collapse in his embrace, forcing me to share the comfort of his strength.

“He’s a good man.”

I don’t even need to turn around; his voice is already that familiar to me, and it feels like I am exhaling for the first time since opening my eyes. And then, feeling so depleted, I dare not face him, so I keep my eyes fixed upon my husband. All of my intentions for hospitality disappear in his reappearance. It is the first I’ve been able to see him in full light, and I realize the lopsidedness of his grin was not merely a trick of shadows, but a truth about his face, giving him a perpetual expression of mischief.

“He is. We’re lucky to have him.”

Without another word, I sit. Second row, left-hand side. Reserved since forever for the preacher’s wife.

Russ takes his place behind the pulpit. Only recently, since the onset of the drought and dust, does he finally find it to be a place of comfort. He was such a young man when he took on this church, and always more comfortable speaking to people over a cup of coffee than from a platform above them. His early sermons were clipped straight from his seminary notes, with things like “add funny story” scribbled in the margins. He was stiff and nervous, terrified of failure.

The first time Russ and I saw each other was from this vantage —me sitting in the back beside my father, and Russ clutching sweaty palms to the pulpit’s edge, trying to gather his thoughts. This is our legend —the meeting of our minds and the melding of our hearts before we even had a chance to say a single word to one another. In the telling of it, our love sounds immediate and mutual. He claims to have seen me, and in that moment, all his jitters held still, like Jesus calming the sea so he could walk right back to me at the greeting time. I watched it happen, the smoothing of his brow, the stillness of his hands. It became clear soon enough that he had a heart for saving people, and while I already understood the saving grace of Jesus Christ, I knew Russ Merrill would be the one to save my very life. Neither of us remember a word of that first sermon, and between his early ineffectiveness as a preacher and his love affair with Lee Mitchum’s daughter, we have always counted it a miracle that he was offered the job here upon his graduation from the university.

“Brothers and sisters,” he opens, naming us both his family and his flock, “I understand your discouragement and your frustration. I know some of you feel abandoned by God during these times, when the storms blow through, leaving nothing but dirt to show for all their bluster.”

At that point, he runs his finger across the top of the pulpit, showing a grimy residue that brings a weary chuckle, mostly from the women in the crowd.

“But you must remember that God spoke to Job from the midst of a whirlwind. And his voice cannot be silenced. Do not let your hearts or your hope get lost in the darkness of these times. Scripture tells us that our troubles may stay for the night, but our joy will come in the morning. How blessed are we to have multiple nights, that we might experience unscheduled joy?”

After the short sermon, we sing a hymn, but only one, as our throats are too dry to bring any melody to life. The drawn-out notes, punctuated by coughs, don’t leave us the breath for even a second verse. All stand for the final prayer, and I close my eyes, thankful for the darkness —more so for the assurance that I’m hidden from all around me. I know that if I were to spy around, I would see nothing but one bowed head after another, all silently nodding to punctuate the prayer.

“Protect us, O God. Deliver us from this drought. Bring rain, dear Father. Yes, Lord. Bring new life.”

A voice rings out in agreement somewhere behind me, and I’m tugged away from my imposed night. I open my eyes and hazard a glance over my shoulder and learn that I am not the only sinner in the room.

His head is bowed, but his eyes are raised to look at me, and I know somehow that they have been since the beginning of the prayer. He is waiting —has been waiting. And I have rewarded his patience with a glance.

My husband’s voice fills the space between us, asking God to protect our families, and I turn my face to the floor between my feet.

I know what it is like to be caught in a storm, those first pellets of dust striking your skin like bird shot. Under cover of prayer, my skin comes alive with fire, burning through the cold sweat at the back of my neck.

“And as we go forth . . .”

I know the rhythm of my husband’s prayer. There’ll be little time now. Seconds, maybe, to regain my composure, to be ready to greet his eyes with my own, open and welcoming and —above all —faithful.

“. . . under the watchful eye of your loving care . . .”

I breathe in deep, as much as my burdened lungs will allow, and lift my head. This is why I sit where I do, at the front, in the most obvious home for his gaze. At the amen, Russ opens his eyes to find me waiting.