by Karen Hesse
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
The Piano Player
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
No Good
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
Snow
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
Night School
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
Dust Pneumonia
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 a
lready 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
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 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
Broken Promise
It rained
a little
everywhere
but here.
March 1935
Motherless
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
Following in His Steps
Haydon Parley Nye’s wife,
Fonda,
died today,
two months after she lost her man.
The cause of death was
dust pneumonia,
but I think
she couldn’t go on without Haydon.
When Ma died,
I didn’t want to go on, either.
I don’t know. I don’t feel the same now,
not exactly.
Now that I see that one day
comes after another
and you get through them
one measure at a time.
But I’d like to go,
not like Fonda Nye,
I don’t want to die,
I just want to go,
away,
out of the dust.
March 1935
Heartsick
The hard part is in spite of everything
if I had any boy court me,
it’d be Mad Dog Craddock.
But Mad Dog can have any girl.
Why would he want me?
I’m so restless.
My father asks what’s going on with me.
I storm up to my room,
leaving him alone
standing in the kitchen.
If Ma was here
she would come up and listen.
And then later,
she would curl beside my father,
and assure him that everything was all right,
and soothe him into his farmer’s sleep.
My father and I,
we can’t soothe each other.
I’m too young,
he’s too old,
and we don’t know how to talk
anymore
if we ever did.
April 1935
Skin
My father has a raised spot
on the side of his nose
that never was there before
and won’t go away.
And there’s another on his cheek
and two more on his neck,
and I wonder
why the heck is he fooling around.
He knows what it is.
His father had those spots too.
April 1935
Regrets
I never go by Arley’s anymore.
Still,
every week
he comes to school to teach and
sometimes
I bump into Vera, or
Miller Rice,
or Mad Dog.
They are always kind.
They ask after my father.
They ask how my hands are feeling.
I cross my arms in front of me
tight
so my scars won’t show.
These days Mad Dog looks at me
halfway between picking a fight and kindness.
He walks with me a ways some afternoons,
never says a word.
He’s quiet once the other girls go off.
I’ve had enough of quiet men.
I ought to keep clear of Mad Dog.
But I don’t.
April 1935
Fire on the Rails
I hate fire.
Hate it.
But the entire Oklahoma Panhandle is so dry,
everything is going up in flames.
Everything too ready to ignite.
Last week
the school caught fire.
Damage was light,
on account of it being caught early.
Most kids joked about it next day,
but it terrified me.
I could hardly go back in the building.
And this week
three boxcars
in the train yard
burned to ash.
Jim Goin and Harry Kesler
spotted the fire,
and that was a miracle
considering the fierceness of the dust storm
at the time.
The fire boys
tore over,
but they couldn’t put the blaze out without water,
and water is exactly what they didn’t have.
So they separated the burning cars
and moved them down a siding,
away from any little thing that might catch
if the flames hopped.
It was all they talked about at school.
The dust blew,
they say,
so you’d think it would have smothered the fire out,
but the flames,
crazy in the wind,
licked away at the wooden frames of the three box
cars,
until nothing remained but warped metal,
