Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse Page B

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.
    March 1934



Tested by Dust
    While we sat
    taking our six-weeks test,
    the wind rose
    and the sand blew
    right through the cracks in the schoolhouse wall,
    right through the gaps around the window glass,
    and by the time the tests were done,
    each and every one of us
    was coughing pretty good and we all
    needed a bath.
    I hope we get bonus points
    for testing in a dust storm.
    April 1934

Banks
    Ma says,
    everything we lost
    when the banks closed
    ’cause they didn’t have enough cash to go around,
    all the money that’s ours
    is coming back to us in full.
    Good.
    Now we have money for a doctor
    when the baby comes.
    April 1934

Beat Wheat
    County Agent Dewey
    had some pretty bad news.
    One quarter of the wheat is lost:
    blown away or withered up.
    What remains is little more than
    a wisp of what it should be.
    And every day we have no rain,
    more wheat dies.
    County Agent Dewey says, “Soon
    there won’t be enough wheat
    for seed to plant next fall.”
    The piano is some comfort in all this.
    I go to it and I forget the dust for hours,
    testing my long fingers on wild rhythms,
    but Ma slams around in the kitchen when I play
    and after a while she sends me to the store.
    Joe De La Flor doesn’t see me pass him by;
    he rides his fences, dazed by dust.
    I wince at the sight of his rib-thin cattle.
    But he’s not even seeing them.
    I look at Joe and know our future is drying up
and blowing away with the dust.
    April 1934

Give Up on Wheat
    Ma says,
    “Try putting in a pond, Bayard.
    We can fill it off the windmill.
    We’ve got a good well.”
    Daddy grumbles, “The water’ll seep
    back into the ground
    as fast as I can pump it, Pol.
    We’ll dry up our well
    and then we’ll have nothing.”
    “Plant some other things, then,” Ma says.
    “Try cotton,
    sorghum. If we plant the fields in different crops,
    maybe some will do better,
    better than wheat.”
    Daddy says,
    “No.
    It has to be wheat.
    I’ve grown it before.
    I’ll grow it again.”
    But Ma says, “Can’t you see
    what’s happening, Bayard?
    The wheat’s not meant to be here.”
    And Daddy says,
    “What about those apple trees of yours, Pol?
    You think they are?
    Nothing needs more to drink than those two.
    But you wouldn’t hear of leveling your apples,
    would you?”
    Ma is bittering. I can see it in her mouth.
    “A pond would work,” she says,
    sounding crusty and stubborn.
    And Daddy says, “Look it, Pol, who’s the farmer?
    You or me?”
    Ma says,
    “Who pays the bills?”
    “No one right now,” Daddy says.
    Ma starts to quaking