CHAPTER 7
THREE MORE STORMS over the next two weeks. Four, if you count the one that blew for just an hour or so over the span of an afternoon. Most wouldn’t, because we hadn’t the time to clean up after the previous one before it rose up, so we let the dust mingle as one adulterous mess.
Greg told us in his last letter that experts —men who hadn’t spent a day in this region before earth rose up —can trace the origin of the dust by its color. Red dust is from Oklahoma. Black, Kansas. Yellow, Texas —to the point the very sky loomed green. State by state, the whole world is shifting, one grain at a time. I remain, watching that which blows away, and cleaning up what stays behind.
Another family leaves at the next dust-free dawn —the Gillicks —but I don’t bother to go pick through what they left behind. They were poorer than poor to begin with, and the best I can hope for is to recover items I’d given them in better days. They drive away, abandoning a dried-up farm and five chickens that some kind soul rustles up and fries for an impromptu congregational dinner. Seems we all look as thin and bedraggled as those chickens, and it is a meager offering of dishes that line the table in accompaniment. Our plates are sparse, with tiny spoonfuls of this and that, the women filling up on biscuits, leaving most of the meat for the men. Russ partakes of nothing, busying himself with pastoral duties, shaking hands and hugging children. I assume the responsibility of ladling punch, my stomach too twisted in knots to enjoy so much as one slice of Merrilou Brown’s white cherry pie.
Jim is here, too, on the outskirts of everything, drinking a Coca-Cola, and anybody who happens to catch the two of us in a single glance would never think we are anything more than strangers. They wouldn’t know that, while their pastor prays at the bedsides of their sick, this man and I pass a novel back and forth between us, reading fewer and fewer pages each day in favor of conversations about what life would be like with unlimited access to riches and beautiful things.
The air is warm with the promise of summer and, for once, completely still. We’re gathered on what used to be a green lawn on the side of the church, the grass now sickly and scant. Pa is due to arrive for our regular Sunday gathering, and I’ve positioned Ronnie and some of his friends at the head of the street to watch for him and bring him here when he arrives, not that there will be much left to feed him. When it’s almost two o’clock and there’s still no sign, I pull Russ away from the latest chapter in the story of Miss Lana’s ever-growing thyroid and tell him I’m worried.
“He didn’t go to the house?” Russ asks.
“No, I sent Ronnie to check.”
“What do you think we should do?”
He’s shuffling in place, hands in his pockets, because he knows exactly what we should do. It falls on me to voice it.
“We need to go out there —to his place —and check on him.”
“He won’t like that.”
It’s true, he won’t. My pa took a dislike to Russ the first time I brought him to dinner and hasn’t let up much since. Not through the wedding, nor the birth of Ronnie just a few months later, nor all the years since. The day Russ and I took up living above the store, Pa said there wasn’t a need to gather again at his table, and our visits there have been rare at best, and only when one of the hands he used to employ came into town to tell us of a need. Like the time Pa split his head clean open after falling off a ladder, or when Boo, his favorite hound, was found dead under the porch, and Pa sat up for two days straight. He mourned more for that dog than he ever did for my mother, something only he and I know.
“It doesn’t matter if he’ll like it or not.” Here I am, in the midst of the sheep, raising my voice to the shepherd. His cautionary glance gentles my spirit, not to mention the fear that is growing with every word I speak. “The roads are fine, aren’t they? There’s no reason for him not to be here unless —unless something is bad wrong. Take me out there.”
“I will.” He tries to calm me with a touch, and I stand still for it. “We can go, as soon as everything is cleared up here.”
“Now, Russ.”
“Go home. Make up some dinner for him. Or better yet, put together a plate here. Let me say my good-byes, and we’ll leave.”
I scan the faces of our people, his church. They are what we both have for family these days, our brothers and sisters in Christ playing the roles of cousins and uncles and parents. Russ is the final branch of his family, my brother is a contented bachelor in a faraway land, and my father won’t step a foot across the threshold as long as Russ is behind the pulpit. Despite our familiarity, the congregation has never seen us in such a display of near disagreement, and I offer my cheek for an affectionate kiss to demonstrate to all that Russ and I are of one accord.
I send Ronnie back to the house to get our car ready for the drive, and while he’s gone I fill a plate with the remnants of our feast.
“Is that for your father?” Jim asks. He’s come up beside me and holds the plate while I wrap three biscuits in a scrap of napkin.
“Yes,” I say, not daring to look directly at him in front of all our people. “Russ and I are going to drive out there in a bit. I’m worried he didn’t come into town.”
“Why would you do that?” I find the shallow cake pan I brought with one small square remaining and nestle the overflowing plate beside it, with the bundle of biscuits on top. Jim doesn’t leave my side.
“In case there’s a problem. In case there’s somethin’ wrong and you need help.”
“Russ will be there.”
But even as I say it, one scenario after another rushes through my mind. Pa’s car, slid off the road, wheels dug into drifts of dirt. Or Pa himself, caught in the last storm —lost, disoriented, entombed. These are not figments of fear, but stories we’ve heard from people who have witnessed such tragedy. Children not more than a mother’s reach away from the house, buried to their necks, suffocated with soil. Ranchers found with stiff arms wrapped around wayward calves. Entire families burned from the inside out when the electrical forces hit their automobiles. The wind brings nothing but death upon death, and there’s a dry, hard stone in the pit of me that knows my father is on his way to ashes and dust.
“Come to think of it, that might be a good idea,” I say, looking straight into his eyes. They’re rich and brown with the health of promise, and blur in the face of my own tears. “Pa needs to see a friendly face.”
“He’s never met me.”
“That’s why you can be friendly.”
His smile is purely for my benefit, I’m sure. He’s not been invited up to share our Sunday dinners since that first week, and I’ve told him little about my father. I feel a bittersweet tug on my own lips, a response to his comfort. I want somebody to touch me for reassurance, to ground me before an impending shock, and with Russ encouraging everyone else around, I go limp and still, preparing myself for Jim’s embrace.
He does not disappoint. His hand comes to rest in the soft curve of my neck, his palm warm and encompassing. I can feel my pulse throb against its heel, his fingers curl down the crest of my back, his thumb at the tip of my jaw. This he strokes, in punctuation with his words —“It’s all gonna be fine, Nola. I’m sure your pa’s fine.”
There is a horrible, irrational, and paralyzing desire within me, and I know if I nod or speak or breathe I will be lost to a newer touch. As it is, I cannot stop the new flood of tears streaming down my cheeks, and to my near destruction, he wipes these away.
“I have to find Russ,” I say the moment I know my mouth will not move against him. “Hope to be leaving in the next few minutes.”
To my relief, he puts his cap on and turns away, because I don’t know that I have the strength to break from whatever was binding us up in that moment. My legs have turned to water, enough to bring rain to a million acres, and my body is chilled except for those points of fire where he touched me.
“You all right, dear?”
As always, Merrilou Brown’s appearance is a surprise, and what has been liquid within me turns to ice-cold fear. When I look down, I see her eyes following what mine had been —Jim’s broad shoulders receding into the crowd.
“I’m worried about my father.” It’s enough of a truth to suffice. “He usually comes in for Sunday dinner.”
She turns her gaze to me. “I can see you’re upset. And right to be, in these times. Everything so uncertain. Can we do anything to help?”
“Pray.” It’s what Russ would have said. “And look in on the children if we’re not back by dark?”
“Of course!” She claps her little hands. “Tell them to come over for supper. I’ll make butter cookies.”
I’m promising to relay the invitation to Ronnie when Russ arrives next to me, his arm around my waist, too late to help me stand. He kisses my temple. “Are you ready?”
“Look at you two,” Merrilou says. She steps back and cocks her head as if studying a work of art. “Like you should be in a magazine. Cover of Life. Can’t imagine a couple more attractive. Might as well be your wedding day —especially you, Nola. You look just as pink and pretty.”
I should thank her, but we both know it’s not a compliment. Or even the truth. I’m flushed and gaunt, tearstained and haggard. There’s a fine layer of dust robbing my hair of its natural sheen, turning it two shades lighter and giving it the texture of sand. I’d be hard-pressed to find the kind of flowers that formed my bridal coronet. More than that, I don’t remember any such appreciation on our wedding day. Politeness, yes, as an afterthought over the rumbling of rumors, but nothing close to an open-armed welcome. I’m sure I’m not imagining things. Even though she hasn’t mentioned it, she watched the moment that passed between Jim and me. I prepare myself for suspicious accusations —the likes of which my father would send had he witnessed the scene. Instead, she offers a glance cloaked in a caution only she and I could understand.
Russ tugs me closer. “More beautiful every day, isn’t she?”
“Indeed,” Merrilou says. “And isn’t it amazing how time can leave someone so unchanged.” She winks. “You let those little ones of yours know they can come over for supper. Though I don’t suppose that boy of yours is exactly little anymore, is he?”
“That’s kind of you,” Russ says, and the following thank-you bears his trademark tone of gracious dismissal.
Our 1928 Chevrolet sedan was given to our family when its owner, a man who died still rich from Oklahoma wheat, willed it to Russ. He’d been a broker, not a farmer, or we might have inherited enough land to choke the life out of us.
I’m sitting in the backseat, half-listening to Russ and Jim narrate the land as it unfolds.
“More than a million acres,” Russ says, quoting Greg’s last letter. “Gone.” He goes on about falling prices, eroded soil, plowed-under grasslands. I look out the window, and everything I see bears witness to man’s greed and God’s judgment. I can’t separate the two.
I’m thankful that Jim is here to absorb the brunt of the conversation because I don’t know that I’d be able to contribute much more than mewling agreement. I have my own greed to contend with, and with every passing drift, I fear God’s punishment will be revealed.
Under the best of circumstances, the drive out to Pa’s farm takes a little over an hour. Pa has it down to the second, knowing exactly how long he can linger at the dinner table before leaving in time to be home for the five o’clock gospel hour on the radio. We’ve been in the car nearly two hours already, as Russ has to stop intermittently when the road disappears beneath the shifting soil. The car comes to a soft stop, and he and Jim get out —each with a shovel —to dig what they hope will be a clear path in the right direction. Despite his amputation, Jim handles the shovel with equal power, matching Russ in every way, and if either man views the chore as a competition, he makes no comment.
Once or twice, when we don’t meet up with a clean patch of road, Jim uses his compass to determine that we’re off track, maybe a good quarter of a mile, leading Russ to turn the car around, find our digging spot, and start over again.
It is a slow, frustrating, and frightening process, given that we’ve only seen three or four other vehicles all afternoon. Russ, somehow, takes it as something encouraging.
“You see, darling?” He turns his head to speak over his shoulder. “I’m sure your pa got word how bad the road is and stayed home. Most sensible thing to do.”
I can’t help but think that last bit was a dig at me, and I lean my head against the warm window in silent response.
“Doesn’t hurt to check,” Jim says and asks, without turning his head, “What’s he drive?”
“Old rust-bucket truck,” I say. “I think it was blue once, wasn’t it, Russ? Do you remember?”
“Sounds right.” He joins us in scanning the barren prairie for such a landmark.
“He wouldn’t leave it, would he?” Jim asks. “Get it stuck and take off walkin’ on his own?”
I say, “No,” but Russ simultaneously says, “Maybe, given what a stubborn cuss of a man he can be.”
Now Jim looks to me for confirmation. I’m sitting directly behind him, and he turns his head to the right so his eyes don’t have to cross my husband’s path. He can’t look right at me, not without turning his entire body in the seat, so I settle with a little more than a profile. He repeats the question: “Would he walk?”
“I don’t know.” It’s the most honest answer I can give. These days, who among us can claim to act with anything close to reason? Three years ago I would never have taken valuables from a neighbor’s abandoned home. Ten years ago I might not have cared if my father lived or died. And last winter —or even early spring —I would have laughed in the face of anyone who said that I would ever burn from another man’s touch. Not with a man like Russ Merrill, bound to me in love and matrimony, in the eyes of God and all of his creation. “If so, it would be just this afternoon. He doesn’t leave his place ever except for Sunday dinner.”
“Any reason he might choose not to come?”
“Not that I know.” In fact, I’ve begun to think that his visits are something more than grudging obligation. Ariel, I know, has captured his heart, bringing out a softness in him that Mother and I could never reach. On his last visit he played a game of Old Maid with her while I mashed the potatoes for our supper, teasing her that she was destined to become an old maid herself, with all that red hair. “Who wants to marry a carrottop princess?” he said, and we all —even Ariel —knew he was teasing, and decided the most likely husband would be the redheaded son of a pirate.
“We’re close,” Russ says, easing me out of my reverie and pulling Jim’s attention to the road ahead.
I crane my neck, looking for any kind of a familiar landmark, but there are none. No furrowed fields, rippling grass, no head of cattle wandered far from the gate. All the time growing up here, what I liked best was that our family house sat in the deepest part of a shallow valley. Coming in on the road, you might think there was nothing to be found, but then one, two more turns of the tire, and there it was —spread out like the preface art in a storybook. Our little stone house, surrounded by a picket fence, with Mother’s well-tended garden along one side. A red barn with a gray shingled roof, a chicken coop, Pa’s hay wagon and blue truck —yes, it was most definitely blue —parked side by side, waiting to be proclaimed the favorite.
That’s the picture I’ve held in my mind, anyway. It’s the image I picture every Sunday afternoon, when Pa says good-bye and claps his hat on his head before ducking out of our apartment above the dying feed and tool store. It’s what I’ve held in my prayers every time we made another mile without seeing evidence of a dead man on the side of a hidden road. But as we crest the final hill, I look out through the grimy windshield, and I can see that my memories have been overtaken by the dust.
There is some relief, I suppose, in seeing Pa’s rusty truck stationed between the barn and the house, but as we get closer, hope seems a frivolous pursuit. Dirt has drifted more than halfway up the tires. The barn door hangs open, a clear testimony to the fact that there’s no livestock left to escape. The picket fence is blown over, as are half the fence posts surrounding the property itself. The stairs leading up to the front porch are obscured, the door ajar, and three windows on the second floor broken clean out.
I clap my hand over my mouth to keep from crying out. When Russ stops the car, worried we’ll get stuck in a drift, I ignore his admonishment, throw the door open, and run to my father’s house. My feet slip in the sand, making my gait clumsy and slower than I can bear. I call out, “Pa! Pa!” intermingled with quieter prayers to God to have kept him safe. When I get to the spot I remember the stairs to be, I bend over, climbing. To my relief, I see where the dust has been moved by the opening of the door, so someone has been here. Here and gone, perhaps.
When I cross the threshold inside, my heart stops. Everything is brown. Shapes of furniture —sofa, rocking chair, wood box, side table, lamp, mantelpiece, footstool, radio —all of it covered in not merely a fine layer but a solid coat of dirt. As if somebody turned the room inside out, rolled it in mud, and set it back again. Particles dance in the air, stinging my eyes. I choke out, “Pa!” but the single syllable sends me into a spasm of coughing.
I go back to the door and see Russ and Jim making their way in from the car, and to my relief they’re each carrying a jug of water. I take the kerchief from around my neck and hold it over my mouth and nose, and turn toward the parlor, moving slowly so as to disturb the dust as little as possible.
“Pa?” My call is muffled now, as are the sounds of my footsteps. It’s what I imagine walking on a beach would be like, only with blue skies above and bare feet below. I make my way into the kitchen, and there, at the table, just another shape painted the same gritty shade, my father sits, still as a sepia photograph.