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Excerpts from Out of the Dust
by Karen Hesse
January 1934 Rabbit Battles Mr. Noble and Mr. Romney have a bet going as to who can kill the most rabbits. It all started at the rabbit drive last Monday over to Sturgis when Mr. Noble got himself worked up about the damage done to his crop by jacks. Mr. Romney swore he'd had more rabbit trouble than anyone in Cimarron County. They pledged revenge on the rabbit population; wagering who could kill more. They ought to just shut up. Betting on how many rabbits they can kill. Honestly! Grown men clubbing bunnies to death. Makes me sick to my stomach. I know rabbits eat what they shouldn't, especially this time of year when they could hop halfway to Liberal and still not find food, but Miss Freeland says if we keep plowing under the stuff they ought to be eating, what are they supposed to do? Mr. Noble and Mr. Romney came home from Sturgis Monday with twenty rabbits apiece. A tie. It should've stopped there. But Mr. Romney wasn't satisfied. He said, "Noble cheated. He brought in rabbits somebody else killed." And so the contest goes on. Those men, they used to be best friends. Now they can't be civil with each other. They scowl as they pass on the street. I'm scowling too, but scowling won't bring the rabbits back. They're all skinned and cooked and eaten by now. At least they didn't end up in Romney and Noble's cook pots. They went to families that needed the meat.
January 1934 Losing Livie Livie Killian moved away. I didn't want her to go. We'd been friends since first grade. The farewell party was Thursday night at the Old Rock Schoolhouse. Livie had something to tease each of us about, like Ray sleeping through reading class, and Hillary, who on her speed-writing test put an "even ton" of children instead of an "even ten." Livie said good-bye to each of us, separately. She gave me a picture she'd made of me sitting in front of a piano, wearing my straw hat, an apple halfway to my mouth. I handed Livie the memory book we'd all filled with our different slants. I couldn't get the muscles in my throat relaxed enough to tell her how much I'd miss her. Livie helped clean up her own party, wiping spilled lemonade, gathering sandwich crusts, sweeping cookie crumbs from the floor, while the rest of us went home to study for semester reviews. Now Livie's gone west, out of the dust, on her way to California, where the wind takes a rest sometimes. And I'm wondering what kind of friend I am, wanting my feet on that road to another place, instead of Livie's. Not Too Much To Ask We haven't had a good crop in three years, Not since the bounty of '31, and we're all whittled down to the bone these days, even Ma, with her new round belly, but still
Daddy takes off his hat, roughs up his hair, puts the hat back on. "Course it’ll rain," he says. Ma says, "Bay, it hasn't rained enough to grow wheat in three years." Daddy looks like a light brewing. He takes that red face of his out to the barn, to keep from feuding with my pregnant ma. I ask Ma how, after all this time, Daddy still believes in rain. "Well, it rains enough," Ma says, "now and again, to keep a person hoping. But even if it didn't your daddy would have to believe. It’s coming on spring, and he's a farmer." March 1934 Fields of Flashing Light I heard the wind rise, and stumbled from my bed, down the stairs, out the front door, into the yard. The night sky kept flashing, lightning danced down on its spindly legs. I sensed it before I: knew it was coming. I heard it, smelled it, tasted it. Dust. While Ma and Daddy slept, the dust came, tearing up fields where the winter wheat, set for harvest in June, stood helpless. I watched the plants, surviving after so much drought and so much wind, I watched them fry, or flatten, or blow away,
like bits of cast-off rags. It wasn't until the dust turned toward the house, like a fired locomotive, and I fled, barefoot and breathless, back inside, it wasn't until the dust hissed against the windows, until it ratcheted the roof, that Daddy woke. He ran into the storm, his overalls half-hooked over his union suit. "Daddy!" I called. "You can't stop dust. Ma told me to cover the beds, push the scatter rugs against the doors, dampen the rags around the windows. Wiping dust out of everything, she made coffee and biscuits, waiting for Daddy to come in. Sometime after four, rubbing low on her back, Ma sank down into a chair at the kitchen table and covered her face. Daddy didn't come back for hours, not until the temperature dropped so low, it brought snow. Ma and I sighed, grateful, staring out at the dirty flakes, but our relief didn't last. The wind snatched that snow right off the fields, leaving behind a sea of dust, waves and waves and waves of dust, rippling across our yard. Daddy came in, he sat across from Ma and blew his nose. Mud streamed out. He coughed and spit out mud. If he had cried, his tears would have been mud too, but he didn't cry. And neither did Ma.
while their sons walk to California, where rain comes, and the color green doesn't seem like such a miracle, and hope rises daily, like sap in a stem. And I think, some day I'm going to walk there too, through New Mexico and Arizona and Nevada. Some day I'll leave behind the wind, and the dust and walk my way West and make myself to home in that distant place of green vines and promise. Devoured Doc sent me outside to get water. The day was so hot, the house was so hot. As I came out the door, I saw the cloud descending. It whirred like a thousand engines. It shifted shape as it came settling first over Daddy's wheat. Grasshoppers, eating tassles, leaves, stalks. Then coming closer to the house, eating Ma's garden, the fence posts, the laundry on the line, and then, the grasshoppers came right over me, descending on Ma's apple trees. I climbed into the trees, opening scabs on my tender hands, grasshoppers clinging to me. I tried beating them away. But the grasshoppers ate every leaf, they ate every piece of fruit. Nothing left but a couple apple cores, hanging from Ma's trees. I couldn't tell her, couldn't bring myself to say her apples were gone. I never had a chance. Ma died that day giving birth to my brother. January 1935 Driving the Cows Dust piles up like snow across the prairie,
dunes leaning against fences, mountains of dust pushing over barns. Joe De La Flor can't afford to feed his cows, can't afford to sell them. County Agent Dewey comes, takes the cows behind the barn, and shoots them. Too hard to watch their lungs clog with dust, like our chickens, suffocated. Better to let the government take them, than suffer the sight of their bony hides sinking down into the earth. Joe De La Flor rides the range. Come spring he'll gather Russian thistle, pulling the plant while it's still green and young, before the prickles form, before it breaks free to tumble across the plains. He gathers thistle to feed what's left of his cattle, his bone-thin cattle, cattle he drives away from the dried-up Beaver River, to where the Cimarron still runs, pushing the herd across the breaks, where they might last another week, maybe two, until it rains. Lunch No one's going hungry at school today. The government sent canned meat, rice, potatoes. The bakery sent leaves of bread, and Scotty Moore, George Nail, and Willie Harkins brought in milk, fresh creamy milk straight from their farms. Real lunch and then stomachs full and feeling fine for classes in the afternoon. The little ones drank themselves into white mustaches,
and Depression and moved into our classroom. We are careful to take only so much to eat, making sure there's enough soup left in the pot for their supper. Some of us bring in toys and clothes for the children. I found a few things of my brother's and brought them to school, little feed-sack nighties, so small, so full of hope. Franklin never wore a one of the nighties Ma made him, except the one we buried him in. The man, Buddy Williams, helps out around the school, fixing windows and doors, and the bad spot on the steps, cleaning up the school yard so it never looked so good. The grandma takes care of the children, bringing them out when the dust isn't blowing, letting them chase tumbleweeds across the field behind the school, but when the dust blows, the family sits in their little apartment inside our classroom, studying Miss Freeland's lessons right alongside us. Time to Go They left a couple weeks after the baby came, all of them crammed inside that rusty old truck. I ran half a mile in their dust to catch them. I didn't want to let that baby go. "Wait for me," I cried, choking on the cloud that rose behind them. But they didn't hear me. They were heading west. And no one was looking back. March 1935 Dust Storm 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 1 pressed my lips together, the dust made muddy tracks
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. April 1935 Migrants We'll be back when the rain comes, they say, pulling away with all they own, straining the springs of their motor cars. Don't forget us. And so they go, fleeing the blowing dust, fleeing the fields of brown-tipped wheat barely ankle high, and sparse as the hair on a dog's belly. We'll be back, they say, pulling away toward Texas, Arkansas, where they can rent a farm, pull in enough cash, maybe start again. We'll be back when it rains, they say, setting out with their bedsprings and mattresses, their cookstoves and dishes, their kitchen tables, and their milk goats tied to their running boards in rickety cages, setting out for California, where even though they say they'll come back, they just might stay if what they hear about that place is true. Don't forget us, they say. But there are so many leaving, how can I remember them all?
July 1935 Out of the Dust This is not a dream. There's no comfort in dreams. I try to contain the ache as I leave my bed, I try to still my heart as I slip from my room with my kerchief of dimes. Moving slowly down the stairs, I cross through the kitchen, taking only some biscuits, and leave my father's house. It's the middle of the night and I hear every sound inside me, outside me. I go, knowing that I'll die if I stay, that I'm slowly, surely smothering. I walk through the calm night, under the stars. I walk to where the train stops long enough for a long-legged girl to latch on and as my heart races I feel the earth tremble beneath me and then the sound of sharp knives, metal against metal, as the train pulls up to the station. Once I might've headed east, to Mr. Roosevelt. Now I slip under cover of darkness inside a boxcar and let the train carry me west. Out of the dust.
