by Karen Hesse
when the clouds lift,
the farmers, surveying their fields,
nod their heads as
the frail stalks revive,
everyone, everything, grateful for this moment,
free of the
weight of dust.
January 1935
Haydon P. Nye
Haydon P. Nye died this week.
I knew him to wave,
he liked the way I played piano.
The newspaper said when Haydon first came
he could see only grass,
grass and wild horses and wolves roaming.
Then folks moved in and sod got busted
and bushels of wheat turned the plains to gold,
and Haydon P. Nye
grabbed the Oklahoma Panhandle in his fist
and held on.
By the time the railroad came in
on land Haydon sold them,
the buffalo and the wild horses had gone.
Some years
Haydon Nye saw the sun dry up his crop,
saw the grasshoppers chew it down,
but then came years of rain
and the wheat thrived,
and his pockets filled,
and his big laugh came easy.
They buried Haydon Nye on his land,
busted more sod to lay down his bones.
Will they sow wheat on his grave,
where the buffalo
once grazed?
January 1935
Scrubbing Up Dust
Walking past the Crystal Hotel
I saw Jim Martin down on his knees.
He was scraping up mud that had
dried to crust
after the rain mixed with dust Sunday last.
When I got home
I took a good look at the steps
and the porch and the windows.
I saw them with Ma’s eyes and thought about
how she’d been haunting me.
I thought about Ma,
who would’ve washed clothes,
beaten furniture,
aired rugs,
scrubbed floors,
down on her knees,
brush in hand,
breaking that mud
like the farmers break sod,
always watching over her shoulder
for the next duster to roll in.
My stubborn ma,
she’d be doing it all
with my brother Franklin to tend to.
She never could stand a mess.
My father doesn’t notice the dried mud.
Least he never tells me,
not that he tells me much of anything these days.
With Ma gone,
if the mud’s to be busted,
the job falls to me.
It isn’t the work I hate,
the knuckle-breaking work of beating mud out of
every blessed thing,
but every day
my fingers and hands
ache so bad. I think
I should just let them rest,
let the dust rest,
let the world rest.
But I can’t leave it rest,
on account of Ma,
haunting.
January 1935
Outlined by Dust
My father stares at me
while I sit across from him at the table,
while I wash dishes in the basin,
my back to him,
the picked and festered bits of my hands in agony.
He stares at me
as I empty the wash water at the roots
of Ma’s apple trees.
He spends long days
digging for the electric-train folks
when they can use him,
or working here,
nursing along the wheat,
what there is of it,
or digging the pond.
He sings sometimes under his breath,
even now,
even after so much sorrow.
He sings a man’s song,
deep with what has happened to us.
It doesn’t swing lightly
the way Ma’s voice did,
the way Miss Freeland’s voice does,
the way Mad Dog sings.
My father’s voice starts and stops,
like a car short of gas,
like an engine choked with dust,
but then he clears his throat
and the song starts up again.
He rubs his eyes
the way I do,
with his palms out.
Ma never did that.
And he wipes the milk from his
upper lip same as me,
with his thumb and forefinger.
Ma never did that, either.
We don’t talk much.
My father never was a talker.
Ma’s dying hasn’t changed that.
I guess he gets the sound out of him with the
songs he sings.
I can’t help thinking
how it is for him,
without Ma.
Waking up alone, only
his shape
left in the bed,
outlined by dust.
He always smelled a little like her
first thing in the morning,
when he left her in bed
and went out to do the milking.
She’d scuff into the kitchen a few minutes later,
bleary eyed,
to start breakfast.
I don’t think she was ever
really meant for farm life,
I think once she had bigger dreams,
but she made herself over
to fit my father.
Now he smells of dust
and coffee,
tobacco and cows.
None of the musky woman smell left that was Ma.
He stares at me,
maybe he is looking for Ma.
He won’t find her.
I look like him,
I stand like him,
I walk across the kitchen floor
with that long-legged walk
of his.
I can’t make myself over the way Ma did.
And yet, if I could look in the mirror and see her in
my face.
If I could somehow know that Ma
and baby Franklin
lived on in me …
But it can’t be.
I’m my father’s daughter.
January 1935
The President’s Ball
All across the land,
couples dancing,
arm in arm, hand in hand,
at the Birthday Ball.
My father puts on his best overalls,
I wear my Sunday dress,
the one with the white collar,
and we walk to town
to the Legion Hall
and join the dance. Our feet flying,
me and my father,
on the wooden floor whirling
to Arley Wanderdale and the Black Mesa Boys.
Till ten,
when Arley stands up from the piano,
to announce we raised thirty-three dollars
for infantile paralysis,
a little better than last year.
And I remember last year,
when Ma was alive and we were
crazy excited about the baby coming.
And I played at this same party for Franklin D.
Roosevelt
and Joyce City
and Arley.
Tonight, for a little while
in the bright hall folks were almost free,
almost free of dust,
almost free of debt,
almost free of fields of withered wheat.
Most of the night I think I smiled.
And twice my father laughed.
Imagine.
January 193
5
Lunch
No one’s going hungry at school today.
The government
sent canned meat,
rice,
potatoes.
The bakery
sent loaves of bread,
and
Scotty Moore, George Nall, 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,
they ate
and ate,
until pushing back from their desks,
their stomachs round,
they swore they’d never eat again.
The older girls,
Elizabeth and LoRaine, helped Miss Freeland
cook,
and Hillary and I,
we served and washed,
our ears ringing with the sound of satisfied children.
February 1935
Guests
In our classroom this morning,
we came in to find a family no one knew.
They were shy,
a little frightened,
embarrassed.
A man and his wife, pretty far along with a baby
coming,
a baby
coming
two little kids
and a grandma.
They’d moved into our classroom during the night.
An iron bed
and some pasteboard boxes. That’s all they had.
They’d cleaned the room first, and arranged it,
making a private place for themselves.
“I’m on the look for a job,” the man said.
“The dust blew so mean last night
I thought to shelter my family here awhile.”
The two little kids turned their big eyes
from Miss Freeland
back to their father.
“I can’t have my wife sleeping in the cold truck,
not now. Not with the baby coming so soon.”
Miss Freeland said they could stay
as long as they wanted.
February 1935
Family School
Every day we bring fixings for soup
and put a big pot on to simmer.
We share it at lunch with our guests,
the family of migrants who have moved out from dust
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.
February 1935
Birth
One morning when I arrive at school
Miss Freeland says to keep the kids out,
that the baby is coming
and no one can enter the building
until the birthing is done.
I think about Ma
and how that birth went.
I keep the kids out and listen behind me,
praying for the sound of a baby
crying into this world,
and not the silence
my brother brought with him.
And then the cry comes
and I have to go away for a little while
and just walk off the feelings.
Miss Freeland rings the bell to call us in
but I’m not ready to come back yet.
When I do come,
I study how fine that baby girl is. How perfect,
and that she is wearing a feed-sack nightgown that
was my brother’s.
February 1935
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.
February 1935
Something Sweet from Moonshine
Ashby Durwin
and his pal Rush
had themselves a
fine operation on the Cimarron River,
where the water still runs a little,
though the fish are mostly dead
from the dust floating on the surface.
Ashby and Rush were cooking up moonshine
in their giant metal still on the bank
when Sheriff Robertson caught them.
He found jugs of finished whiskey,
and barrels and barrels of mash,
he found two sacks of rye,
and he found sugar,
one thousand pounds of sugar.
The government men took Ashby and Rush off to
Enid
for breaking the law,
but Sheriff Robertson stayed behind,
took apart the still,
washed away the whiskey and the mash,
and thought about that sugar,
all that sugar, one-half ton of sugar.
Sheriff decided
some should find its way
into the mouths of us kids.
Bake for them, Miss Freeland, he said,
bake them cakes and cookies and pies,
cook them custard and cobbler and crisp,
make them candy and taffy and apple pandowdy.
Apple pandowdy!
These kids,
Sheriff Robertson said,
ought to have something sweet to
wash down their dusty milk.
And so we did.
February 1935
Dreams
Each day after class lets out,
each morning before it begins,
I sit at the school piano
and make my hands work.
In spite of the pain,
in spite of the stiffness
and scars.
I make my hands play piano.
I have practiced my best piece over and over
till my arms throb,
because Thursday night
the Palace Theatre is having a contest.
Any man, woman, or child
who sings,
dances,
reads,
or plays worth a lick
can climb onto that stage.
Just register by four P.M.
and give them a taste of what you can do
and you’re in,
performing for the crowd,
warming up the audience for the
Hazel Hurd Players.
I figure if
I practice enough
I won’t shame myself.
And we sure could use the extra cash
if I won.
Three-dollar first prize,
two-dollar second,
one-dollar third.
But I don’t know if I could win anything,
not anymore.
It’s the playing I want most,
the proving I can still do it.
without Arley making excuses.
I have a hunger,
for more than food.
I have a hunger
bigger than Joyce City.
I want tongues to tie, and
eyes to shine at me
like they do at Mad Dog Craddock.
Course they never will,
not with my hands all scarred up,
looking like the earth itself,
all parched and rough and cracking,
but if I played right enough,
maybe they would see past my hands.
Maybe they could feel at ease with me again,
and maybe then,
I could feel at ease with myself.
February 1935
The Competition
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
