by Sarah Zettel
“I hoped we’d be able to stick it out, but … well, it’s been five years since the county’s seen a drop of rain, and there’s the children to think of, and Mrs. Kenny’s got cousins in Chicago. So …”
He was talking to me. I put my fork down quietly, even while egg and bread tried to come back up my sore throat.
“Well. Chicago.” Mama’s voice wavered just the tiniest bit. “I do hope you’ll write to us. I’d love to hear about Chicago, and I’m sure Callie would too. Wouldn’t you, Callie?”
“Yes, please.” But inside I was thinking, The doctor’s going. That’s got to be the last straw. There can’t be anything left if even he’s going.
He looked at me like there was a whole lot he wanted to say, starting with “I’m sorry.” He cleared his throat again. “I wanted to give Callie’s lungs one more listen before we left.”
“That’s very kind, Dr. Kenny. Thank you.”
He put his black bag down on the table and got out his stethoscope. He polished its steel bell carefully with a huge white handkerchief before he laid it against my chest.
“Breathe deep, Callie.”
It hurt, and I coughed, which hurt worse, and I coughed again. Dr. Kenny sat back, pulling the stems out of his ears and shaking his head.
“Maggie …” He looked Mama straight in the eye. “I’m telling you for the last time, you’ve got to get this girl out of here.”
“We’ll manage fine, Doctor. Callie wears her scarf every night and when she goes outside.…”
“This is the dust pneumonia, Maggie. Scarf or no scarf, her lungs are filling up with dirt, and pretty soon she won’t be able to breathe at all.”
“Her father will be back soon and we’ll all go together.” Mama laid the words down like bricks, one on top of the other, blocking off the only door.
The doctor’s sagging face twisted tight. “If it’s money, Maggie, I can loan you the train fare. You pay us back when you get settled someplace, maybe in St. Louis, or Atlanta.…”
“That’s very kind of you, but we’ll be perfectly all right.”
Dr. Kenny bowed his head. “I do hope so, Maggie. I do.” He dug a bottle of soothing syrup out of his bag and handed it to Mama. She nodded her thanks, and he gathered up his things.
“You be a good girl and mind your mother, Callie.” His eyes met mine once more. He was sorry. Maybe even real sorry. But we both knew that wasn’t going to change anything.
The door closed hard behind him.
Mama sat back down at her place. “Don’t you worry, Callie.” She sliced up the last of her toast and dipped it neatly into the drying egg yolk. “We’ll be fine.”
My stomach heaved. Maybe she’d be fine, but I wouldn’t. I had the dust pneumonia. The dust was going to keep right on filling up my lungs until I smothered and died. Then my crazy mama would bury me next to my grandparents in the Methodist churchyard and keep right on waiting for a man who ran out on her. On us.
I jumped up and ran after Dr. Kenny, kicking up clouds of dust.
3
She Blowed Away
Dr. Kenny was just climbing into his car. He saw me running across the dead, dirty yard, though, and stopped with one foot on the running board.
“Please.” I panted. “Please. Take me … us with you.”
The doctor hunched in on himself. I saw how tightly his belt cinched his waist, and how wrinkled and sunburned the skin on his hands was. He’s drying up. “I wish I could, Callie, but …”
But your mother won’t go. He didn’t say that, but I could hear the words anyway.
“Please.”
“We’ve only got the Model T, and there’s five of us as it is.” His gaze drifted to the flat horizon, as if there was a magnet pulling everything over its edge. “You’ve got to talk to her, Callie. She does love you.” He laid one big, hairy hand on my shoulder. “She’ll do whatever it takes to keep you safe.”
So that was that. I turned away and trudged back across the yard. The car’s engine coughed and I coughed back. Its tires ground against the dust and the doctor drove away.
Look shhhhaaaarrrrp. The wind gusted hard around my ears, and the dust scraped like hot fingernails against my cheeks. Wheeeerrrre? Wheeeerrrre issss shhhheeee?
I lifted my head. “Who are you?”
Closssse, the wind and dust answered. Weeee knoooow shhhheeee’s closssse.… And it was gone again.
Maybe I should’ve told Dr. Kenny about the voice. If he’d known I was starting to hear things, maybe he would’ve taken me with him. Maybe I was better off never having to watch him make that choice.
Shaking, I walked back inside.
Mama wasn’t in the kitchen. A clean napkin covered my plate. The Maxwell House coffee can where we kept the ready cash sat on the table, with the bills and coins laid out neatly beside it: a five, two ones, and six pennies. Not enough for train fare for even one person as far as Topeka, never mind Georgia or California.
The bankbook lay there too, but that was useless. Slow Run’s bank had crashed and closed all the way back in ’29. The farmers went out to Constantinople to pay their mortgages, the ones who could still pay, that is. The rest of us didn’t bother with banks anymore.
I took the deepest breath I could and tried to think. There had to be some way to get money, someone we could still sell out to. My bodiless dust voice and Mama’s empty-headed dreams couldn’t be all we had left.
There was only one place Mama went when the news got bad. The Moonlight Room. It was her favorite place in the whole world. Once upon a time it had been mine too. The Moonlight Room had served as the Sunday parlor for everybody within fifty miles of Slow Run. The Moonlight held weddings, dances, and political banquets. We even had a movie projector and a screen we could pull down at the back of the little stage.
It also had my father’s piano.
I’d never actually seen the instrument. Under its starched sheet, it hovered like a ghost at the edge of the Moonlight Room’s half-circle stage. I’d tried to lift the corner of the sheet once to creep under during a game of hide-and-seek, but Mama caught me and slapped my hands so hard I cried.
“Nobody touches the piano!” she shouted. “Nobody but your papa!”
The Moonlight Room was always dark now. Cobwebs streaked its velvet curtains. Netting covered the gilt and crystal chandelier. I walked down the exact center of the red carpet runner, down the broad front hall that ran from the hotel lobby to the Moonlight. If I moved slowly enough, maybe an idea would find me before I got to the door.
There has to be something I can say, I prayed with every part of me. Something I can do. I’ll do anything. Please …
“Please.” Mama’s voice drifted into the hall, a perfect echo to my own frightened prayer. Except she wasn’t praying to Heaven. “Please, Daniel. You promised. You swore to me.…”
I eased the door open. The tables and chairs stood like half-carved headstones under their dustcovers. Mama was on the stage, doubled over like me when the coughing got bad. Both her hands clutched the white sheet that shrouded my father’s piano.
“I’ve tried, Daniel. I waited as long as I could.…”
I swallowed a cough. “Mama?”
“Callie!” Mama straightened up fast, yanking her manners and deportment over her. “Good. Come here, honey.”
I didn’t like the light tone to her voice. It didn’t match her eyes. They held a wildness I’d never seen before.
I inched forward. It was wrong to be afraid of my own mother, but fear choked me like the dust in my lungs.
“Help me with this.” Mama lifted the edge of the sheet and tugged.
I gasped. She never uncovered the piano. No one was allowed to touch it, not ever.
“Close your mouth, Callie, you’ll catch flies.” My jaw snapped shut. “Now help me, there’s a good girl.”
It was like she’d asked me to unwind an Egyptian mummy. I’d come in here thinking to beg her to leave, or maybe yell at her, or get down o
n my knees like in a melodrama. Never in a million years did I expect her to ask me to uncover the piano. But she just stood there, and I didn’t know what else to do. So I climbed the three steps to the stage, grasped the dust-stiffened cloth, and helped her lift it aside.
My first sight of my father’s piano was sort of disappointing. It was the same kind of upright piano you could see in any parlor in town. The only remarkable thing was that its pale wood was absolutely clean. Not a speck of dust marred the curlicue and thistle flower carving across its front. The white keys all but glowed in the dark.
“Now, Callie, I want you to play,” said Mama.
“Play?” I shifted my weight uneasily.
“Yes. Sit down, and play the piano.”
This is it. She’s gone right round the bend this time. “I can’t play piano, Mama,” I reminded her. “You never let me learn.”
“Well, you’ll just have to do your best.”
“But why?”
“So your father will hear you.” Her knuckles turned white as her hands clutched at each other. “I’ve tried and I’ve tried, but he won’t listen to me.”
Disbelief slackened my jaw again. “That’s because he’s gone, Mama! He left us!”
“He just doesn’t know what kind of trouble we’re in.” Her demeanor remained terribly calm. “But he’ll know it’s you playing his piano and he’ll have to answer you.”
“That’s crazy, Mama!” I screamed. “You’re crazy!”
The slap was so sudden, I didn’t even know why my cheek hurt, or why the world spun. But there was Mama, rearing up over me as angry as I’d ever seen her, hand raised high.
“Calliope Margaret LeRoux, you will do as you are told!”
My knees buckled, sitting me down hard on the bench. Dazed, I scooted around to face the piano. The keys were smooth white and pure black, reflecting what little light oozed between the velveteen drapes.
Waiting for me. The thought popped into my spinning mind as I stared at those shiny keys. They’ve been waiting a long time.
I touched a black key with a tentative finger. One thin note lifted into the stuffy room. My heart fluttered in my chest, and my blood went still in my veins.
Mama nodded. “Louder, honey. He’s got to hear you.”
I fit the fingers of my left hand to the white keys, the ones on my right to the black. Something rose inside me. It pushed against my heart and crowded my dust-filled lungs.
“Mama …” The thing was trying to get down to my hands, and there was no telling what it would do once it did.
“Play, Callie!”
I pressed down on the keys. A chord, a full, clear moment of music rang through the room. Its vibration resonated through the keys, through my skin, and into my finger bones. It caught hold of that thing inside and pulled.
My wrists lifted. My fingers rearranged themselves on the keys. My left hand started to rock and jump back and forth on the low, deep keys, making a steady beat. At the same time, my right hand danced up and down across the high, bright keys, setting a lively melody free to soar through the room.
Boogie. I was playing boogie-woogie, joyous, infectious, dangerous music. Music that made Reverend Schauenbergh slam the pulpit and bellow about the end of the world. But Reverend Schauenbergh was long gone, and here at the end of the world this music had blown into my head, and into my suddenly nimble hands.
“That’s it, Callie!” cried Mama. “Play loud!”
Mama. Mama, who’d let her mind trickle away waiting for a man who would never come back. Mama, who’d kept us here while the dust crawled into my lungs. She should have gone, she should be gone.…
“No, Callie. Oh, no. I know you’re angry, but you mustn’t play for me, not like that. Play for your papa, honey. Play him back to us.”
Anger burned at the base of my throat. It swelled in my dust-filled lungs and surged down my hands. Papa was the last person to sit at this piano. My fingers touched the keys like his did. Papa had gone off and left us, left me to choke and die in the dust.… The beat under my left hand grew harder; the dance in my right grew faster. I was going to die. The man who had played this piano, he broke my mama’s heart so hard her mind broke with it, and he didn’t even know I was alive. I breathed in music the way I breathed in the dust. Breathed it in and poured it out again, loud and wild and sick and angry.
“No, Callie!” cried Mama. “Not like that!”
But Mama seemed a long way away. Mama was already gone. And I was here. For just this little while, I was still alive and my papa was going to know about it. Just this once, wherever he was, whoever he’d left us for, he was going to hear me. The whole world was going to hear.
There she issss! cried a voice, low and wild as the wind rattling the shingles. There! THERE!
“Calliope, stop!”
The world spun like when Mama had slapped me, and something hard slammed against my shoulder. I gasped, coughed, and shuddered. I was on the floor of the stage with Mama standing over me, trembling. She must have knocked me off the bench. I was stunned and furious, but only for a minute.
The music had stopped, but the other sound, the roaring sound, hadn’t. Mama went white. She ran to the windows and yanked back the curtains.
“No,” whispered Mama.
On the edge of the flat Kansas prairie, a range of midnight-black mountains loomed over Slow Run. But they weren’t standing still like mountains should. Those mountains surged and boiled, and they lumbered slowly forward.
Heeeerrrre! the mountains roared. Sheeee’ssss heeeerrrre!
“Dust.” I struggled to my feet, coughing the whole way. “Mama, it’s a duster!”
Mama ran out of the Moonlight Room without looking back. Weak as a kitten, I staggered down the stage steps and into the hallway after her.
A door slammed.
Oh, no. No, please, no.
I stumbled into the kitchen, and a gust of wind almost knocked me over. The door swung free on its hinges.
“Mama!” Dust slammed into my eyes and nose and filled my open mouth. Reeling, I snatched the napkin off the remains of my breakfast and pressed it over my face.
“Go away!” Mama screamed from outside. “Go away! She didn’t mean it! She’s just a child! She didn’t mean it!”
Yes, she did, laughed the voice. Yessss, she did! Weeee sssseeeee you noooow! Weeee got you now!
“No!” I hollered into the cloth. “Leave her alone!” My flailing hand hit the threshold, and the mountains tumbled down over me.
A burning, roaring darkness swallowed me, like I was Hansel and Gretel’s witch shoved headfirst into the stove. I shrieked and swallowed dust. The floor hit my knees, my chest, my chin. I lay there, blind, deaf, and burning. Grit scraped every inch of my skin, and the storm wind drove it in like needles. My head went dizzy, and a dozen different pictures flashed in front of my blind eyes—Reverend Schauenbergh shouting that this was the end of the world; Dr. Kenny’s rattletrap Model T rolling down the road; my hands on the gleaming piano keys; people dancing in an arena with a crowd cheering them on; a huge, ugly man striding grimly through the dust with a sawed-off shotgun tucked under his arm; a skinny, mangy dog staggering through the storm; Mama stretching her arms out as the mountains poured down.
Mama. Have to find Mama.
I fumbled with the corners of my napkin and got it knotted around my face. I found the door frame and hauled myself up. Hanging on tight, I made myself open my eyes, just a crack.
Lightning flashed overhead, and for a heartbeat, I could see the wind. Red, beige, and black, it billowed and moaned past the door. The steps had already vanished under drifts of dust. So had the path to the henhouse. So had the henhouse.
“Mama!” What if she’s fallen? What if the dust already buried her?
Lightning flickered again, showing a black shadow against the whirling red dust, a human shape staggering through the storm. I made to rush forward, but I stopped. I could barely see, and all the landmarks were gone. Wh
at if I got out there and couldn’t find the way back? It happened in blizzards. We could both be lost a few feet from our back door.
The thought of blizzards gave me an idea. Mama kept a clothesline on a shelf in the canning room. I ran for it and threw the coil over my shoulder. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking, but I gritted my teeth until they hurt and I managed to get one end of the rope knotted around the doorknob.
With the other end tied around my waist, I stepped off the back porch and sank right up to my knees in hot dust.
Each step forward wrenched another cough out of me. Each step brought the silhouette in the dust a little closer, but behind that thickening screen of dust, it kept changing its shape. First it was a person. Then it was a skinny dog. Then it was a person again.
The silhouette crumpled. I screamed and lunged forward, scrabbling in the dust. A hand grabbed mine. I heaved myself backward so hard I almost fell.
But it wasn’t Mama who staggered upright in front of me.
It was a man.
4
It Dusted Us Over, and It Covered Us Under
Dust sluiced off the stranger’s shoulders and was whipped away by the wind. He was tall and skinny and dark. His eyes flashed beneath a wide-brimmed, high-crowned hat. But all I could really see was that he wasn’t my mother.
“Mama!” I screamed past the man. Dust poured straight down my throat. I gagged and heaved. A big, rough hand clamped across my mouth, shoving my scarf back into place.
The wind gusted hard, driving dust into my eyes, and the hand slithered away as the man fell to his knees again. Dust filled up the whole world, and my lifeline was stretched taut. No matter how bad I wanted to, I couldn’t go any farther. The stranger slumped down lower, his hands digging into the hot dust, looking for solid ground to hold him up. I didn’t know who or what he was, but I couldn’t leave him out here.
Hanging on tight to the rope with one hand, I tugged on the man’s shirtsleeve until he staggered to his feet again. I pressed his hand to my shoulder so he could hold on to me. His grip tightened, signaling he understood.
