Out of the Dust (7 page)

I suppose everyone in Joyce City and beyond,

all the way to Felt

and Keyes

and even Guymon,

came to watch the talent show at the Palace,

Thursday night.

Backstage,

we were seventeen amateur acts,

our wild hearts pounding,

our lips sticking to our teeth,

our urge to empty ourselves

top and bottom,

made a sorry sight

in front of the

famous Hazel Hurd Players.

But they were kind to us,

helped us with our makeup and our hair,

showed us where to stand,

how to bow,

and the quickest route to the

toilet.

The audience hummed on the other side of the

closed curtain,

Ivy Huxford

kept peeking out and giving reports

of who was there,

and how she never saw so many seats

filled in the Palace,

and that she didn’t think they could

squeeze a

rattlesnake

into the back

even if he paid full price,

the place was so packed.

My father told me he’d come

once chores were done.

I guess he did.

The Grover boys led us off.

They worked a charm,

Baby on the sax,

Jake on the banjo,

and Ben on the clarinet.

The Baker family followed, playing

just like they do at home

every night after dinner.

They didn’t look nervous at all.

The tap dancers,

they rattled the teeth in their jaws

and the eyballs in their skulls,

their feet flying,

their arms swinging,

their mouths gapping.

Then Sunny Lee Hallem

tumbled and leaped onto the stage,

the sweat flying off her,

spotting the Palace floor.

Marsh Worton struggled out,

his accordion leading the way.

George and Agnes Harkins ran their fingers over the

strings of their harps,

made you want to look up into the heavens for

angels,

but only scenery

and lights

and ropes and sandbags hung overhead,

and then there was me on piano.

I went on somewhere near the backside of middle,

getting more and more jittery with each act,

till my time came.

I played “Bye, Bye, Blackbird”

my own way,

messing with the tempo,

and the first part sounded like

I used just my elbows,

but the middle sounded good

and the end,

I forgot I was even playing

in front of the packed Palace Theatre.

I dropped right inside the music and

didn’t feel anything

till after

when the clapping started

and that’s when I noticed my hands hurting

straight up to my shoulders.

But the applause

made me forget the pain,

the audience roared when I finished,

they came to their feet,

and I got third prize,

one dollar,

while Mad Dog Craddock, singing,

won second,

and Ben Grover

and his crazy clarinet

took first.

The tap dancers pouted into their mirrors,

peeling off their makeup and their smiles.

Birdie Jasper claimed

it was all my fault she didn’t win,

that the judges were just being nice to a cripple,

but the harpin’ Harkins were kind

and the Hazel Hurd Players

wrapped their long arms around me

and said I was swell

and in the sweaty dim chaos backstage

I ignored the pain running up and down my arms,

I felt like I was part of something grand.

But they had to give my ribbon and my dollar to my

father,

’cause I couldn’t hold
anything in my hands.

February 1935

Arley says,

“We’re

doing a show at the school in a week, Billie Jo.

Come play with us.”

If I asked my father

he’d say yes.

It’s okay with him if I want to play.

He didn’t even know I was at the piano again till the

other night.

He’s making some kind of effort to get on

better with me now,

Since I “did him proud” at the Palace.

But I say, “No.”

It’s too soon after the contest.

It still hurts too much.

Arley doesn’t understand.

“Just practice more,” he says.

“You’ll get it back,

you can travel with us again this summer

if you’d like.”

I don’t say

it hurts like the parched earth with each note.

I don’t say,

one chord and

my hands scream with pain for days.

I don’t show him

the swelling

or my tears.

I tell him, “I’ll try.”

At home, I sit at

Ma’s piano,

I don’t touch the keys.

I don’t know why.

I play “Stormy Weather” in my mind,

following the phrases in my imagination,

saving strength,

so that when I sit down at a piano that is not Ma’s,

when everyone crowds into the school

for Arley’s show,

no one can say

that Billie Jo Kelby plays like a cripple.

March 1935

I did play like a cripple at Arley’s show,

not that Arley would ever say it.

But my hands are no good anymore,

my playing’s no good.

Arley understands, I think.
He won’t ask again.

March 1935

Had to check

yesterday morning

to make sure that was

snow

on the ground,

not dust.

But you can’t make a dustball

pack together

and slam against the side of the barn, and

echo across the fields.

So I know it was snow.

March 1935

My father thought maybe

he ought to go to night school,

so if the farm failed

there’d be prospects to fall back on.

He’s starting to sound like Ma.

“The farm won’t fail,” I tell him.

“Long as we get some good rain.”

I’m starting to sound like him.

“It’s mostly ladies in those classes,” he says,

“they take bookkeeping and civics,

and something called business English.”

I can’t imagine him

taking any of those things.

But maybe he doesn’t care so much about the classes.

Maybe he’s thinking more about the company of

ladies.

I’ll bet none of the ladies mind

spending time with my father,

he’s still good looking

with his strong back,

and his blondy-red hair

and his high cheeks rugged with wind.

I shouldn’t mind either.

It’s dinner I don’t have to

come up with,

’cause the ladies bring chicken and biscuits for him.

I’m glad to get out of cooking.

Sometimes with my hands,

it’s hard to keep the fire,

wash the pans,

hold the knife, and spread a little butter.

But I do mind his spending time with all those

biddies.

I turn my back on him as he goes,

and settle myself in the parlor

and touch Ma’s piano.

My fingers leave sighs
in the dust.

March 1935

Two Fridays ago,

Pete Guymon drove in with a

truck full of produce.

He joked with Calb Hardly,

Mr. Hardly’s son,

while they unloaded eggs and cream

down at the store.

Pete Guymon teased Calb Hardly about the Wildcats

losing to Hooker.

Calb Hardly teased Pete Guymon about his wheezy

truck sucking in dust.

Last Friday,

Pete Guymon took ill with dust pneumonia.

Nobody knew how to keep that produce truck on the

road.

It sat,

filled with turkeys and heavy hens

waiting for delivery,

it sat out in front of Pete’s drafty shack,

and sits there still,

the cream curdling

the apples going soft.

Because a couple of hours ago,

Pete Guymon died.

Mr. Hardly

was already on the phone to a new produce supplier,

before evening.

He had people in his store

and no food to sell them.

His boy, Calb,

slammed the basketball against the side of the house

until Calb’s ma yelled for him to quit,

and late that night a truck rattled up to the store,

with colored springs,

dozens of hens,

filthy eggs,

and a driver with no interest whatsoever in young

Calb Hardly

or his precious Wildcats.

March 1935

I never would have gone to see the show

if I had known a storm like this would come.

I didn’t know when going in,

but coming out

a darker night I’d never seen.

I bumped into a box beside the Palace door

and scraped my shins,

then tripped on something in my path,

I don’t know what,

and walked into a phone pole,

bruised my cheek.

The first car that I met was sideways in the road.

Bowed down, my eyes near shut,

trying to keep the dust out,

I saw his headlights just before I reached them.

The driver called me over and I felt my way,

following his voice.

He asked me how I kept the road.

“I feel it with my feet,” I shouted over the

roaring wind,

I walk along the edge.

One foot on the road, one on the shoulder.”

And desperate to get home,

he straightened out his car,

and straddled tires on the road and off,

and slowly pulled away.

I kept along. I know that there were others

on the road,

from time to time I’d hear someone cry out,

their voices rose like ghosts on the howling wind;

no one could see. I stopped at neighbors’

just to catch my breath

and made my way from town

out to our farm.

Everyone said to stay

but I guessed

my father would

come out to find me

if I didn’t show,

and get himself lost in the

raging dust and maybe die

and I

didn’t want that burden on my soul.

Brown earth rained down

from sky.

I could not catch my breath

the way the dust pressed on my chest

and wouldn’t stop.

The dirt blew down so thick

it scratched my eyes

and stung my tender skin,

it plugged my nose and filled inside my mouth.

No matter how I pressed my lips together,

the dust made muddy tracks

across my tongue.

But I kept on,

spitting out mud,

covering my mouth,

clamping my nose,

the dust stinging the raw and open

stripes of scarring on my hands,

and after some three hours I made it home.

Inside I found my father’s note

that said he’d gone to find me

and if I should get home, to just stay put.

I hollered out the front door

and the back;

he didn’t hear,

I didn’t think he would.

The wind took my voice and busted it

into a thousand pieces,

so small

the sound

blew out over Ma and Franklin’s grave,

thinner than a sigh.

I waited for my father through the night, coughing up

dust,

cleaning dust out of my ears,

rinsing my mouth, blowing mud out of my nose.

Joe De La Flor stopped by around four to tell me

they found one boy tangled in a barbed-wire fence,

another smothered in a drift of dust.

After Joe left I thought of the famous Lindberghs,

and how their baby was killed and never came back

to them.

I wondered if my father would come back.

He blew in around six
A.M.

It hurt,

the sight of him

brown with dirt,

his eyes as red as raw meat,

his feet bruised from walking in worn shoes

stepping where he couldn’t see

on things that bit and cut into his flesh.

I tried to scare up something we could eat,

but couldn’t keep the table clear of dust.

Everything I set

down for our breakfast

was covered before we took a bite,

and so we chewed the grit and swallowed

and I thought of the cattle

dead from mud in their lungs,

and I thought of the tractor

buried up to the steering wheel,

and Pete Guymon,

and I couldn’t even recognize the man

sitting across from me,

sagging in his chair,

his red hair gray and stiff with dust,

his face deep lines of dust,

his teeth streaked brown with dust.

I turned the plates and glasses upside down,

crawled into bed, and slept.

March 1935

It rained

a little

everywhere
but here.

March 1935

If Ma could put her arm across my shoulder

sometime,

or stroke back my hair,

or sing me to sleep, making the soft sounds,

the reassuring noises,

that no matter how brittle and sharp life seemed,

no matter how brittle and sharp she seemed,

she was still my ma who loved me,

then I think I wouldn’t be so eager to go.

March 1935