might, so our well hadn’t dried up like so many others.
I had put a rag over the water buckets, and the top of the rag was dark with dust. I got the dipper and shook the dust off it and lifted off the rag and dipped me a drink and put the rag back. The water tasted like I was dipping it out of a mud puddle. Rag or not, the dust had got in.
I cut up the rabbits and tossed the innards in an empty bucket. I had been giving things like that to our dog, Butch, but the dog couldn’t stand the sand neither, and one day he went off and didn’t come back. I liked to imagine he had gone out to California and was living under a tree in an orange grove and there were kind folks who gave him food. California was a place some said everyone ought to go. Said there was work there and there wasn’t no sandstorms and there was plenty of water that didn’t taste like grit. After all that had happened, I was thinking on it. It wasn’t like I had a lot to pack. And besides, the bank was going to take back the property any day now.
I cleaned the rabbits and put some sticks of wood in the stove and lit them and fried the rabbits with a little lard and flour. I didn’t have any eggs, so the batter was flakey and mostly fell off.
I ate some of the meat and put the rest in the icebox, which didn’t have any ice but was about as good a place as there was to keep the dust out. I kept thinking about those rabbits, us killing them and them screaming the way they do, like dying women in lakes of fire is the best I can describe it, but truth to tell, there ain’t no words for it. If I thought too much on it, it spoiled my eating, so I tried to think pleasant thoughts, but right then I didn’t have many.
I took some time to step on centipedes, which were all over the place, and I killed a scorpion that was under the table the same way. I didn’t want to lay down and have those things on me. When I was younger, a scorpion had stung me, and I didn’t like it a bit and didn’t want to repeat it.
When I had killed all I could see, I went over and lay down on the bed where Mama had died. I could smell her on the mattress, the kind of sweet smell she had that didn’t have nothing to do with perfume, ’cause she didn’t have any except once a bit of lilac water and it was long gone. It was just Mama’s smell and it made me cry. I cried and cried and finally I went to sleep.
Outside it was still dark and the sand still blew.
3
I dreamed and remembered how things had been before all the sand. It was a memory thin as the film covering an egg yolk, but it was a memory I liked. I thought about when Mama and Daddy had been happy. How I had been happy too. We hadn’t had much, but there was food to eat and time to be together. They talked about the future like there would be one. They did good honest work, and I went to school and did chores, and when we could, we listened to the radio or talked or sang or laughed. Me and Daddy played checkers while Mama washed the dishes. It wasn’t a big life, but it was a good life.
And then the soil got dry and the plants went dead. Wasn’t nothing to feed the stock, and the only thing left to do was eat them, not only so they wouldn’t starve to death, but so we wouldn’t either. We even ate the horse, which turned out to be a little stringy and sweet, so under normal circumstances, I don’t recommend it. Right then, though, I would have eaten horse or dog or most anything. There came a point when it seemed like I was hungry all the time.
After the crops started to fail from it being so dry, the wind came and plucked them up and finished them off. The wind howled like a wolf, and it was full of sand that scraped and chewed and cut down everything in its path. When the wind wasn’t blowing, the starving grasshoppers was coming at us in a wave so dark it blacked out the sun. And the rabbits. So many rabbits. Everything became a big mess of whirling sand, starving rabbits, and buzzing grasshoppers.
Then the memory of that faded, and all I could see was that grave in the barn. Open, with Mama and Daddy wrapped up in it. I was standing over it, looking down. A hand pushed up from inside the tarp, pushed at it so that I could see its shape. It was a small hand. It was Mama’s hand.
I come awake quick, tears running down my face.
The dark was gone and so was the sandstorm. I sat up and listened to make sure, but didn’t hear any wind. Still, the air was full of fine powder.
I got out of bed and went out on the front porch and pushed three inches of dust off the path from the door to the steps with my shoe. Then I scraped the steps clean. The air was still and the sun was high and the sand had changed the way everything looked again. The earth was Oklahoma red, where yesterday it had been Texas white with some Nebraska black thrown in for good measure.
There were big dunes of sand all over the place, and I could see in the distance that the storm had knocked down what was left of our barbwire fence. It didn’t matter. All the cows that had been inside it were long dead anyway.
And then I seen her and him trudging across the sand. She was wearing boots and dungarees and a plaid shirt buttoned close to the neck and at the wrists to keep the dust out. The boy with her was younger than her, and he had on worn overalls and an old brown shirt. They was both carrying flour sacks stuffed full of something.
They was coming along slowly, and I could see they didn’t have no real strength left and was about to fall over, so I started out to meet them. My feet bogged in the sand as I went, and it took me a while to get up to her, and when I was close, I seen the girl drop to one knee. Now that I could see her good I knowed her right off. It was Jane Lewis, which meant the kid was her little brother, Tony. I hadn’t seen them in ages. Mainly because they was known to have lice on a regular basis, which was an affliction of many in the area. I’d had them myself from time to time. Mama, however, had come to the idea that the Lewises were lice-ridden by nature, so I wasn’t allowed what she had called “an association” with them.
Lice or no lice, I went over and got an arm under Jane, helped her up, and took the flour sack from her. It was as heavy as if it was packed with stones.
I said, “It’s me, Jane. Jack Catcher.”
“I know that,” she said.
“Well, all right,” I said.
I helped her toward the house, and Tony came stumbling after. He said, “You know me, don’t you?”
“You’re Tony,” I said. “I know her, I’m bound to know you.”
“I can’t see so good,” he said. “The sand burned my eyes.”
“Can you see to grab onto me?”
He came over and took hold of my shirttail. I helped Jane to the house, and Tony clung to me until we was up the steps and on the porch. Inside, they collapsed on the floor. Jane unwrapped her face and shook her head, snapping sand across the room. When she was through doing that, her dark brown hair fell down to her shoulders, and even dirty as she was, I noted she looked pretty good, though I took into consideration her family’s reputation and watched for lice.
I got a rag that wasn’t as gritty as some of the others and shook it out. I got some water from a bucket and soaked it a little. I took it over to Tony and pulled the covering off his face and wiped him down with it. When I got through wiping, I saw that what I had thought was tan from the sun was brown from the dirt. Underneath it all, he was as white as the belly of a fish. He had a bony face and his hair looked like a rained-on haystack with chicken manure in it, the way it was stuck together in spots.
“I still can’t see none,” he said, lightly rubbing his eyes.
I helped him up and led him over to the bucket and used the dipper to pour water directly into his eyes. He blinked while I done it, but mostly managed to keep his eyes open.
“That’s better,” he said. “You don’t look like you’re made of sand now. Everything I been looking at looked sandy.”
“Good,” I said, “ ’cause I feel like I’m made of sand.”
They drank some water then, and I got some of the rabbit out of the icebox and put it on the table. They sat and ate. When Jane had her piece of rabbit down to the bones, she said, “That tasted a little gritty and right near spoiled.”
“Well,” I said, “I’ll tell your waiter to tell the chef, and the chef will tell you to go to hell.”
She looked at me and drooped the corners of her mouth. “I didn’t mean it like that. I was just making a comment.”
“Yeah, well,” I said, “I don’t reckon you been eating all that much that ain’t gritty, sister.”
