On the day it happened, Elsa told herself it was nothing. They all did.
She woke early, feeling restless. She’d slept badly and didn’t know why. She got out of bed and splashed water on her face and realized suddenly what was wrong: she was hot.
She braided her hair and covered it with a kerchief and went out into the kitchen, where she found Rose standing at the window.
Elsa knew they were both thinking the same thing: It was already hot.
And it wasn’t even seven o’clock in the morning.
“What’s one hot day?” Elsa said, coming to stand by her mother-in-law. “I used to love hot days,” Rose said.
Elsa nodded.
They stared out at the blinding yellow sun.
 |
EIGHT STRAIGHT DAYS OF hundred-degree heat. In mid-March.
They renewed their efforts to conserve: energy, water, food, kerosene. They darkened the windows and carried water by the bucketful, poured it sparingly on the garden and on the grapes and in the animal troughs, but it wasn’t enough; the new growth began to wilt in the inexorable heat. By the fourth day, the wheat was dead. Not a hint of green for hundreds of acres. Elsa watched her father-in-law’s steady decline in spirit. He still woke early and drank a cup of bitter, black coffee and read the newspaper. It wasn’t until he opened the door that his shoulders slumped. Each day, he was
destroyed anew at the sight of his land. Some days he spent hours at the edges of his dead wheat field, just staring out. He would come home, smelling of sweat and despair, and sit in the sitting room, saying nothing. Rose tried everything she could to revive his spirit, but none of them had much optimism left.
Still, even as the crops died and the fields dried up and their skin burned, life went on.
Today, Elsa and Rose had to do laundry. In this blinding, headache- inducing heat.
Elsa wanted to simply let her children wear dirty clothes, and say, Who cares? Everyone was dirty these days, but what would that say about the kind of mother she was or the lessons she was teaching them? What if one of the few remaining neighbors stopped by and saw her children in unwashed clothes?
So she washed out the tubs and filled them with water, and spent more sweaty, exhausting hours washing towels and bedding and clothes. First, of course, every item had to be carried outside and shaken. The cistern had gone dry in this unseasonable heat, so all the water she needed had to be hauled up from the well and carried into the house in buckets. Thankfully, Loreda was good at hauling water and lately she was too tired and dispirited to complain.
By the time Elsa finished the laundry, it was well past noon and over 105 degrees. The sheets were pinned onto the lines and flapping in the breeze; she could barely lift her head, and every joint in her body ached. And all of it was a waste because dust would rise or fall or puff up from nowhere and leave a film on everything she’d just washed.
She returned to the dark, stuffy kitchen and started bread by mixing together last night’s leftover potato water, a boiled potato, sugar, yeast, and flour. At two o’clock, Loreda walked into the kitchen.
“Good,” Elsa said, covering the bread mixture with a dish towel. “You’re just in time to help me bring in the laundry.”
“Joy,” Loreda said, following Elsa outside.
|
ON THE FIRST DAY OF spring—yet another sweltering day—Mom decided it was time to make soap. Soap. Loreda was too tired to complain—and it wouldn’t do any good anyway. Mom and Grandma were warrior women. Nothing stopped them when they’d made up their minds.
Loreda followed her mother out to the barn.
Working together, they rolled a big black cauldron across the hard dirt yard and set it up. Mom knelt beside the three-legged pot and built a fire.
As flames took hold and licked upward, Mom said, “Start hauling water.”
Loreda said nothing, just grabbed a pair of buckets and headed off.
When she got back, Grandma was with Mom, watching the fire.
“We should have laid pipe,” Grandma said. “Back when times were good.”
“You know what they say about hindsight,” was Mom’s reply.
“Instead, we bought more land, a new truck, and a thresher. No wonder God is smiting us. Fools,” Grandma said.
“Keep jawing,” Loreda said. “I can handle all the water myself.” Grandma smacked her lightly in the back of the head. “Basta. Go.”
By the time the cauldron had enough water in it, Loreda’s neck ached, her knees hurt, and the dang heat was giving her a headache. She tugged the bandanna at her throat free and used it to blot her cheeks.
When the water began to boil, Grandma scraped lard into the pot and then carefully poured in the lye. The hot, humid air instantly turned toxic. Mom coughed and covered her mouth and nose.
The heat headache intensified behind Loreda’s eyes. The blue of the horizon became hard to look at without blinking. She stared instead at the field of dead potatoes; the empty windmill platform made her miss her daddy, an emotion she clamped down quickly. She was done missing her dad. Good riddance, she thought (or tried to).
Mom stood at the pot, stirring the mixture of lye, grease, and water with a long, pointed stick until it was the right consistency.
Making soap to sell. As if soap would save them, as if it would make them enough money to feed them all this winter.
Mom ladled the soap into wooden molds while Grandma kicked sand on the fire to extinguish it.
“Loreda, help me carry these trays to the root cellar,” Mom said.
Grandma wiped her hands on her apron and headed back to the house.
Loreda knew that as soon as the cauldron was cool they’d have to roll it back to the barn, and the thought of it made her want to scream in frustration. Instead, she grabbed a tray full of unset soap and followed her mother down into the dark, relative cool of the root cellar.
Empty shelves.
After years without a wheat harvest or much of a garden, they’d been living on the bounty of better years, but those supplies were going fast.
She and Mom exchanged a look, but neither of them spoke. There was no comfort in pointing out their lack of food supplies.
Loreda followed Mom back out into the heat. She was about to ask for a glass of water when she heard a strange sound. She stopped, listened. “Do you hear that?”
It was coming from the barn.
Mom headed toward the barn, opening the barn door in a giant sweep of creaking wood.
Loreda followed her inside.
Milo lay on his side, his sunken belly wheezing up and down as he tried to breathe. Dirty mucus slid from his nostrils, pooling on the ground.
Grandpa knelt beside the horse, stroking his damp neck. “What’s wrong with him?” Loreda asked.
“He collapsed,” Grandpa said. “I was leading him out of his stall to water.”
“Go to the house, Loreda,” Mom said. She walked over to Grandpa, dragged a milking stool toward him, and sat down. She placed a hand on his shoulder.
“I got to shoot him, Elsa. He’s suffering. The poor boy gave us his all.”
Loreda stared at Milo, thinking, No. So many of her good memories included Milo.…
She remembered when Daddy taught her to ride on this old gelding.
He’ll take care of you, Lolo, trust him. Don’t be afraid.
Loreda remembered Daddy swinging her up into the saddle, and Mom saying, Isn’t she too little yet? And Daddy smiling. Not my Lolo. She can do anything.
Up on Milo’s back, Loreda had conquered fear for the first time. I did it, Daddy!
It had been one of the best days of Loreda’s life. She’d gone from a walk to a trot in one day, and Daddy had been so proud.
For years afterward, Milo had been her best friend on this vast farm. He followed her around like a puppy, nibbling at her shoulder, bumping her for carrots.
And now he’d fallen.
“Don’t just sit there, do something,” Loreda said, her eyes burning with tears. “He’s suffering.”
“I failed at all of it,” Grandpa said.
“You didn’t fail,” Mom answered. “The land failed you.”
“The government man said we did it to ourselves with greed and bad farming. If I’m a bad farmer, I got nothing, Elsa.”
Milo shuddered, wheezed, made a low, desperate moan of pain, and kicked out his front legs.
Loreda walked dully to the workbench and picked up her grandfather’s Colt revolver. She checked the chamber, closed it with a snap, and returned to Milo, who wheezed and snorted at her touch.
She saw the pain in his eyes, the muddy mucus in his nostrils as she stroked his damp neck. “I love you, boy,” she said. Tears blinded her, blurred his beloved face. “You gave us everything you had. I should have spent more time with you. I’m sorry.”
“Loreda, no,” Grandpa said. “That ain’t—”
Loreda put the muzzle of the pistol to the gelding’s head and pulled the trigger. The gunshot cracked loudly.
Blood splattered Loreda’s face. After that, silence.
Tears streaked down Loreda’s cheeks. She wiped them away impatiently. Useless tears. “The government will pay us sixteen dollars for him. Dead or alive,” she said.
“Sixteen dollars,” Grandpa said. “For our Milo.”
Loreda knew what the grown-ups were thinking. They’d have sixteen dollars, but no means of transportation. And no crops. No food.
“How long before we all start falling to our knees and can’t get up? How long?”
She threw down the gun and ran out of the barn. She might have headed for the driveway and kept running, all the way to California, but before she
even reached the house, she felt the wind pick up. She looked out and saw it: dust storm, barreling down from the north.
Coming fast.
|
THAT WEEK, THE WIND became a clawing, screaming monster that shook the house and rattled the windows and pounded at the doors. Wind blew at over forty miles an hour, day after day, no reprieve, just an endless, terrifying assault. Dust rained down from the ceiling constantly. All of them breathed it in and spit it out and coughed it up. Birds were disoriented by the dust and slammed into walls and telephone poles. Trains stopped on the tracks; drifts of sand moved like waves across the flat land.
They woke to find outlines of their bodies in dust on the sheets. They put Vaseline in their noses and covered their faces with bandannas. The adults went out into the maw when they had to, following the rope that they’d strung from the house to the barn, going hand over hand, blinded by dust. The chickens were wild with panic and breathing in dirt day after day, and the children stayed in the house, wearing gas masks. Ant hated to keep his mask on—said it gave him a headache—even though the dust bothered him more than it did the rest of them.
Elsa worried about him, slept with him, sat in bed with him, reading as best she could in her scratchy voice. Stories were the one thing that calmed him down.
Now, on this fifth day of the storm, he was in her bed with the covers drawn up, wearing his gas mask, while Elsa swept the floor. Dirt slipped through cracks in the rafters and fell on everything.
She heard a thump, nearly lost in the maw of the storm. Ant had dropped his picture book onto the floor.
Elsa set the broom aside and went to his bedside. “Ant, baby—” “Momm—” He coughed violently; he’d never coughed this hard before;
she thought it might crack his ribs.
Elsa pulled down her bandanna and eased the gas mask off of his face.
Mud collected in the corners of his eyes, crusted his nostrils.
He blinked. “Mom? Is that you?”
“It’s me, baby.” She pulled him up, poured water into a glass, and made him drink it. She could see how much it hurt him to swallow. His breathing, even without the mask, was a terrible drawn-out wheezing.
Wind clattered at the windows, squealed through the cracks in the wood. “My stomach hurts.”
“I know, baby.”
Grit. It was in all of them, in their tears, their nostrils, on their tongues, serrating their throats, collecting in their stomachs until they were all nauseated. Each of them lived with a gnawing stomachache.
But Ant felt the worst. His cough was brutal and he couldn’t eat. Lately, he said the light hurt his eyes.
“Drink some more. I’ll put some turpentine and hot towels on your chest.”
Ant sipped at the water like a baby bird. When he finished, he slumped back, wheezing.
Elsa climbed into bed beside her son, taking him into her arms, murmuring prayers.
He lay frighteningly still.
She took some Vaseline out of a tin and smoothed it in Ant’s raw, dirt- clogged nostrils, then refit the gas mask over his face. He blinked up at her, crying; mud formed in the corners of his red eyes.
“Don’t cry, baby. This storm will stop soon and we’ll take you to the doctor. He’ll make you all better.”
He wheezed through the gas mask. “O … kay,” he said. Elsa held him close, hoping he didn’t see her tears.
|
NINE DAYS, AND STILL no respite from the storm. Wind rattled the walls and scratched at the door.
When Elsa woke to yet another day of wind, she checked on Ant, who slept beside her. He hadn’t been strong enough to get out of bed in the last four days. He didn’t even play with his soldiers anymore and didn’t want to be read to. He just lay there wearing his gas mask, wheezing.
That terrible, drawn-out breathing was the first thing she listened for each morning when she woke and each night when she drew him close.
She heard his breathing and said a quick prayer to the Virgin Mary and got out of bed. Pulling the crusty bandanna down to her throat, she stepped down on the fine layer of silt that had collected on the floorboards overnight. Leaving footprints across the room, she went to the nightstand to wash her face.
The mirror stopped her, as it so often did these days.
“Lord,” she croaked. Her face looked like a mile of desert in the summer
—brown, cracked, furrowed. Her lips and teeth were brown with grit. Dust had gathered in the corners of her eyes and on her lashes. She washed and dried her face and brushed her teeth.
In the sitting room, she stepped into her boots by the door and paused, staring down at the rattling knob. The walls shook at the force of the wind. She slipped her bandanna back up over her nose and mouth, then put on her gloves and used all her strength to open the door.
Wind pushed her back. She leaned into it and squinted into the driving dust.
Finding the rope they’d strung between the house and the barn, she pulled herself across the yard, hand over hand, making her way slowly. At last she came to the barn. Once inside, she snapped a lead rope onto Bella’s halter and led the poor, stumbling cow out of her stall and into the barn’s wide center aisle. The walls clattered and shook; dust rained down from overhead.
Setting the pail in place, Elsa sat down on the milking stool and took off her gloves, tucking them into her apron pocket. Lowering her bandanna, she reached for the cow’s dry, scabby teat. The barn rattled around them; wind whistled through the cracks, broke through boards.
Elsa’s hands were so chapped and raw that it hurt her as much to milk as it did the cow. She took hold. The cow bellowed in pain.
“Sorry, girl,” Elsa said. “I know it hurts, but my boy needs milk. He’s … sick.”
Thick brown milk came out in oozing muddy globs, splattered into the bucket.
“Come on, girl,” Elsa urged, trying again. And again. And again.
Nothing but milky mud.
Elsa closed her gritty eyes and rested her forehead on Bella’s great, sunken side. The cow’s tail swished at her, stung her cheek.
She didn’t know how long she sat there, grieving for the lost milk, wondering how she would feed her children without milk or butter or cheese, grieving for this good animal who was breathing in dirt all day long and wouldn’t live long. The other cow had stopped producing milk months ago and was even worse off than Bella.
With an exhausted sigh, Elsa put her gloves on and pulled her bandanna up and led Bella back into her stall.
By the time Elsa made it back to the house, her forehead was scraped raw and she could barely see. This wind grated skin away.
“Elsa? You okay?”
It was Tony. He came up beside her, put a steadying arm around her. She pulled her bandanna down to talk. “No more milk.”
Tony’s quiet was heartbreaking. “So, we’ll sell the cows to the government. Sixteen bucks apiece, wasn’t it?”
Elsa tried to wipe the grit from her eyes. “We’ve still got soap to sell and a few eggs.”
“Thank God for small miracles.”
“Yeah,” Elsa said, thinking of the root cellar’s empty shelves.
