Their home seemed so far from him now, a sort of paradise that felt alien. Sara herself seemed so far. He’d left her three weeks ago, still in mourning clothes for her mother and unwell after the hard birth.
The day that Honoria came into the world, Gerald had never felt so helpless. Sara had been given the sleeping drugs during the ordeal, but her pain afterward was unmistakable. He didn’t know the details, of course, but it must have been a bloody affair, if the reams of pinkish towels streaming from the bedroom were anything to go by, and the doctor said she had suffered so much trauma that she wouldn’t be able to walk for several weeks. He’d cried at the thought of Sara’s poor broken body, because that body belonged to him now, and he was responsible.
But then he’d come here and started preparing to fight, looking towards war, and all those emotions had become less immediate. It wasn’t that he loved her any less, only that occasionally he couldn’t feel it, as if he’d been sent back to a time before her.
After lunch, Gerald headed back to his tent to collect his soap and towel for his shower. Showers in camp had to be taken in a twice-weekly rota due to the severe drought that had been plaguing Texas for almost eight months. His tent’s turn was up this afternoon—the worst time, because they had work duty directly afterward.
A truck passed him and he watched it come to a halt outside the officers’ barracks, a luxury hotel compared to the flimsy tents the inductees were assigned to. An officer stepped out, but as he turned to slam the door shut, Gerald was shocked to see him thrown back a good four feet, as if some unseen force had pushed him through the air. The officer lay there, stunned, and Gerald ran over.
“Are you all right, sir?” He put out his hand to the man, who seemed to be having trouble focusing.
“What the fuck was that?”
“I don’t know. You just…flew back.”
“I think it came from the truck,” the officer said, standing. He held up his hand as if expecting it to explain itself.
“The engine?” Gerald asked, looking at the truck.
The officer shook his head. “Don’t know. It shorted out earlier, but then it was fine.”
“Well, at least we’re not low on mechanics here, sir.”
The officer looked towards one of the airplane hangars in the distance. Gerald followed his gaze, all at once aware of a deep stillness in the air. Beyond the hangar, there was something on the horizon, a darkening, far away.
“This is some weird weather,” the officer remarked, rubbing his hand.
“A storm must be coming,” Gerald said. “I’ve got to get to the showers. Are you sure you’re all right, sir?”
“I’m fine. You go on. You’ll stink to high heaven if you miss it.” He grinned at Gerald.
Gerald had gone about a quarter of a mile when the wind came. He had to keep his head down to shield his eyes from the grit blowing up off the road. He was already late for the showers, and getting later, and it felt like he was trying to run through water. His thighs began to ache, and small pebbles stung his exposed skin.
Then a mule raced passed him, almost trampling him in its panic. Startled, he raised his head, and that’s when he saw it: what had started as a small darkening in the distance was a mountain a mile high and as wide as the whole horizon. It was eating everything in its path.
Gerald ran faster, his muscles straining, his lungs hot. By the time he reached his tent city, the darkness had covered half the distance between them, a boiling wall of dust rolling and screaming towards camp. He was paralyzed at the sight.
He had never known this kind of visceral fear except in dreams. The one nightmare he sometimes had: standing on the edge of a calm shore when, out of nowhere, a gigantic, terrifying wave came crashing down on him.
At that moment, standing ten feet from his tent, rooted in place with this hallucination thundering at him, he felt certain they would all be consumed by it. He looked over at his tent and sprinted. Then, all at once, it was upon him, and everything went dark.
The flap to his tent had been secured from the inside, and his yells to open it were drowned out in the noise of the wind and the black filth that filled his mouth and nose. Trying not to panic, he got down on his knees in the dirt and felt inside the flap for the tie. He fumbled but managed to get it loose. He yanked the corner back and crawled through the opening, then lay on the floor panting.
“Jesus, Murphy.” By the light of the oil lamp, Gerald could see John Plenner, the Philadelphian whose cot was next to his. He was tying the corner down. “You could have filled this whole place up.”
“It came too fast,” Gerald said.
“You were late,” Plenner yelled above the noise, but his voice wasn’t angry. “What the hell is going on out there?”
“It’s too dark. There was a…a wall, a mountain.” Gerald sat up.
By the light of a few lamps, he could see that the twelve-man tent was almost empty; it was just himself, Plenner, and Carter, a Texan who pronounced San Antonio “San Antone.” Around them, dust flowed in under the canvas like smoke, and the sides of the tent buckled.
“Where is everybody?”
Plenner shrugged.
“It’s like…” He couldn’t even say what it was like.
“The apocalypse,” Carter called above the wind. “Damn dust storms.”
The wall tent was crammed with twelve cots, six on each side, lockers at their feet; a corridor ran down the middle at the highest part of the pitch. The tent was fixed with flies that held the top rod stable and pulled the sides down low, forcing the men to stoop as they approached their cots. With every inch of space planned for, it was claustrophobic at the best of times.
Gerald went over to his locker, pulled out one of the handkerchiefs Sara had sent him, wiped his face, then used it to clean out his mouth. He sat down on his cot.
“I saw a man touch his truck and fly through the air,” he yelled at Carter. “Was that…”
“Static electricity,” he yelled back.
Gerald wondered if any planes had been up when the storm hit.
Plenner was checking the stakes and supports, carrying his lamp from spot to spot. “There’s too much dust coming in,” he said.
“How many of those handkerchiefs you got, Murphy?”
“Ten?”
“Give us some.”
The three of them tied the handkerchiefs around their faces, leaving just their eyes showing.
“If it gets too bad, y’all have to cover your eyes too,” Carter yelled. “Pinkeye.”
“How many of these have you seen?” Plenner’s voice sounded hoarse.
“Two in the last year alone. Both bad.”
Over the next hour the temperature plummeted to below freezing. They put on all their clothes: their extra work shirts, the two service coats, one wool and one cotton, and their overcoats. Then they pillaged their tent mates’ lockers for clothing and blankets, which they rolled up and laid on the floor around the perimeter of the tent to slow the incoming dust. They had no water to drink or even to wet their handkerchiefs with, and the sound of their coughing blended with the sound of the storm.
The second hour brought flying debris. First, unknown objects nicked and skimmed across the canvas outside, startling them and keeping them on edge. What appeared to be a metal locker flew against a front corner support and bent it, making the tent pitch inward. Dust spilled in through the weak spot, and they decided to move to the back.
Just as they did, a metal pole skewered the canvas fabric; its tip hit the exact spot they’d vacated only seconds before. A shaft of sand poured through the hole as if in an hourglass.
They stared at one another over their handkerchiefs, locking eyes and then looking away. They were silent, but Gerald knew they were all thinking the same thing.
Plenner got down on the ground and slid all the way under one of the cots and covered his ears, while Carter proceeded to take a sheet and build a sort of tent around himself, pulling the edges under
him.
Gerald looked at the two of them and then went and lay on his own cot, facedown. After a while, he reached under his pillow and found Honoria’s baby shirt, which he’d brought with him from home. He lifted up his handkerchief and buried his whole face in it, straining to smell its milky sweetness, the odor of his daughter’s soft baby skin, amid the acrid stench of the dust.
By the third hour, they had doused the lamps to conserve oil, and the relentless shrieking of wind was all Gerald could hear. He was thinking about Fred, who had already shipped out to France with his artillery division; he hadn’t considered the noise before, the noise of war, hadn’t conceived that sound itself might drive you crazy.
By the fourth hour, he could hear Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The “Ode to Joy.” Beginning softly, softly. Gaining pace and depth, building itself. Then filling his head, as if it were hollowing out his skull and pouring itself inside of him. He breathed in the odor from his daughter’s shirt, the vigorous presto passage vibrating through him. He listened very, very carefully, and there it was: the choir. He wanted to cry, it was so beautiful. He had reached the second theme, with its high military style, when he felt himself being shaken. He ignored it, concentrating on the thread of the symphony. But when he was shaken again, more forcefully, he reluctantly turned his head and looked up.
Carter was standing over him holding a lamp and pointing to the ground. He moved in and shouted in Gerald’s ear: “Plenner. Man’s covered in dust. He has to come up off the ground, but he won’t.”
It took Gerald a moment to quiet the symphony and focus on what Carter had told him. But then he nodded and forced himself to rise.
They walked over, knelt down, and looked under the cot where Plenner had stashed himself. Gerald could see that he was covered in a fine silt, and his body was racked by coughs.
Carter shook his shoulder. “Plenner. Come on, now, you have to get up, all the dust’s coming in that way.”
He didn’t move.
“John,” Gerald said finally, “you’ll suffocate.”
When Plenner still didn’t move, Gerald and Carter looked at each other. Then Gerald grabbed hold of Plenner’s arm and Carter his leg, and they dragged him out.
Gerald used what little spit he had to dampen another handkerchief while Carter began wrapping a sheet around Plenner. Gerald wiped down Plenner’s face, gently digging the cloth into his nostrils and around his mouth. Plenner let them work on him, quiet, eyes unmoving.
Having something to concentrate on had hushed the music in Gerald’s head, but it hovered on the edges of his mind, and he was half listening for that melody when a dull thumping drew his attention towards the front of the tent. He stood still. Carter stopped too. In the dim half-light they saw movement behind the canvas, as if something were being hurled against it over and over. Whatever it was seemed to be gathering force, and they could see the ties beginning to give.
Carter was there first, Gerald behind him, carrying the lamp. There was a noise pitched higher than the wind.
“Someone’s out there,” Gerald yelled. “We have to open it.”
“No,” Carter yelled. “No way in hell.”
“We have to. They’ll rip the canvas off.”
Carter looked at Gerald and shook his head angrily. “Shit.”
They stood there a few moments longer as whoever it was hurled himself frantically against the tent.
“All right,” Carter yelled. “But just the bottom flap. And quickly.”
Gerald put down the lamp and untied the flap. He reached his hand outside and felt the sting of the dust and something else. Hail? He grabbed in front of him and got hold of what felt like an ankle, and all at once the hurling stopped. There was a scrambling, and a dark face appeared low to the ground, one wild white eye, and Gerald clasped an outstretched hand and moved back.
Gerald stood, picking up the lamp, and as he did, the stranger stood too. His face was reddish black and masked with dust, making his eyes startling and large. His hair, also coated, stood straight on end, as if he had received an electric shock.
Moving so quickly that Gerald had no time to react, the man grabbed Gerald’s shoulder, put his face right up to his own, and screamed: “It drops down. It drops down.”
“Christ,” Carter shouted. “It’s Wilson.”
Gerald tried to wrench out of his grasp, but Wilson held on tightly.
“Get him off me,” he yelled. He was unwilling to drop the oil lamp but that left him with only one free hand to push Wilson away.
“It drops down on us.”
“Get him off.”
“Tom,” Carter yelled.
Wilson had gotten Gerald in a bear hug and was forcing him back towards the line of lockers and cots. He put his mouth up to Gerald’s ear and whispered into it: “It drops down. It drops down.”
Gerald could see Carter over Wilson’s shoulder and, out of the corner of his eye, Plenner still sitting on the ground off to the side, unmoving. Gerald felt the back of his calves hit the metal of a locker, and Wilson drew away slightly and looked into Gerald’s face. There was something in his eyes, not just the panic but also a kind of pleading, as if it were very important that Gerald understand what he was saying.
“Tom,” he yelled.
Wilson nodded. “Yes.”
“Tom, it’s me. It’s Gerald Murphy.”
“Yes.” And for a moment, Gerald felt there was a flicker of recognition there. Then Wilson smiled, revealing dirt-covered teeth. The awful, dumb heartbreak in his eyes. He put an index finger up to Gerald’s forehead and tapped: “It…drops…down…on…us.”
Then, with startling alacrity, he pushed Gerald aside, causing him to stumble as he tried to hold on to the lamp.
When he’d managed to right himself, he saw Carter standing motionless at Tom’s side. Wilson was holding a service revolver, his elbow making a perfect angle, pressing the barrel to his own temple.
There was only the screaming melody of the wind, the sound of hail hitting the canvas, and the three men standing in tableau. Then Tom Wilson said very distinctly, “It’s something wicked,” and blew part of his skull away.
The next day was remarkably fair. Gerald sat on his cot staring at the pen in his hand, the paper beside him. He wanted to write a letter to Sara, but he didn’t know the right words.
The tent cities at Kelly Field had been destroyed by wind, by panicked mules, and by trucks crashing into barracks and the mess halls. The sound of coughing filled the space the wind had occupied, and the line for the infirmary stretched halfway down the road. Plenner, his eyes pink and swollen shut, was among those men.
Gerald had spent the day with the other boys cleaning the dust and Wilson’s brains out of the tent. He and Carter and Plenner had been forced to spend the night with Wilson’s leaking body, waiting until the storm broke and help could be fetched. Carter had covered Tom with a blanket, but when the medics came to take him away, dust had piled around him anyway and filled the hole where his eye had been, like a bottle stopper.
Wilson, they’d learned, had escaped the infirmary, raving, at the height of the storm, and no one had dared follow him out into that hell. The medics also told them that he wasn’t the only suicide; three others had taken their own lives during the storm. Gerald wasn’t sure if that was supposed to make it better for them or not. The medics had given them this information with an air of instructors contextualizing a battle, as if saying, Yes, this sort of thing happens, all perfectly normal under the circumstances.
He didn’t think it was normal, though. And he couldn’t rid himself of the image of that arm, its neat precise angle before the trigger was pulled. Nor of Carter’s face, splattered with tissue and bone fragments afterward, little tiny pieces of Tom Wilson all over it, as if Carter were Wilson at that moment, the same reddish-black face, the same startled eyes, the same dumb-animal look of fear. A look he remembered from a long time ago, from his small, newly feral dog before it bit him.
; He’d wanted to talk to Carter about this, about all of it. But when the Texan came and sat down next to him outside the tent, put his hand to Gerald’s shoulder, and said gently, “How you holding up, Murphy?” Gerald could only turn his face away and answer: “I’m fine, thank you.” After that, Carter left him alone.
In the world of other men, he’d always been stiff. Polite kindness and decent interest in their welfare—that was all he had to offer. So self-conscious, he came off as indifferent, his true feelings left unrevealed. It enraged him, it ate him up, how he couldn’t make his affection, his camaraderie, felt.
How would he be able to live with men, fight with men, die with men at war? In a trench, in an airplane, with a leg blown off, would he say politely, I’m fine, thanks. You? Your skull does seem to be missing a piece…?
Now, sitting on his cot, pen in hand, he looked over at Carter, who was cleaning his boots, a shock of brown hair in his eyes as he worked away the dust. He had so much to say, to share, but it was too late. The moment had passed. He had to accept that there was only one person in the world who knew him. And she would probably be the only one who ever did. Gerald put the pen to paper.
My darling wife,
Forgive this short letter. I am writing now only to say that it gives me such courage to think of you, of us, our family. Thank God for you, the only person in this world to whom I’ve been able to show the full weight of my love. I believe in it, completely, this dream of ours. It is my creed.
Love,
G.
Sara was sitting in front of the fire in her bedroom in the house on West Eleventh Street, Honoria sleeping in her basket beside her. The heat was making Sara feel drowsy and she stretched carefully on the settee so as not to tear the stitches again. She’d done that in January, a month after Honoria’s birth, and now it was March and she still hadn’t healed fully from the second go-round with the needle.
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