Sarah Zettel: Dust girl

He was a tall, skinny white kid with big blue eyes, his ears sticking out beneath a bird’s nest of brown hair, the kind of boy who gets nicknamed Beanpole. His knobby knees pressed against his worn knickerbockers, and the wrists above his too-big hands stuck out from the too-short sleeves of his dirty shirt. His hands and face were streaked with storm dust and coal dust mixed together. His shoes had split at the toes, and one black stocking had a big hole in it.

He started trying to smooth his shirt down but gave it up pretty quick. “Have you got anything to eat? I’m sorry to ask, but I haven’t had a single bite since yesterday and… I’d work for it, you know, if you had a job…”

I thought about the Hoppers back at the Imperial. But truth to tell, this boy didn’t look like he could do anything right now, and I sure didn’t want a hobo in the hotel while I had paying guests, even a kid. Kids off the road could be hard and mean. One little boy Mama had put up for the night stole two of our chickens when he lit out. Some of the girls had done a whole lot worse when they were supposed to be cleaning rooms in exchange for meals. All the chickens were gone now, and I didn’t have anything else worth stealing, but the Hoppers sure did.

I bit my lip. The storm was still going on, and there was no telling how long it would be before it let up. This boy would fill up with dust if he walked out there now. Maybe get the fever and the dust pneumonia, and I didn’t think Baya would be around to help him any.

“You ever wash dishes?” I asked him. “I mean in a real kitchen?”

“Sure.” He cracked a big grin. Somehow he didn’t look so knobby and skinny when he was smiling. “I been a pearl diver in roadhouses, and worked the flat top, and swept up.” Pearl diver, that was a dishwasher, and the flat top was the grill. So he’d been a cook too.

“Okay, then. I got a load of guests at the hotel. I need help in the kitchen and with fetching and carrying. You gotta be able to give ’em the yes, sir and yes, ma’am, and do what I say.”

He nodded immediately. “Sure. I can do that.”

“Okay, then…” I remembered something important. “What’s your name?”

“Jack. Jack Holland, Miss…?”

“Callie… Callie LeRoux.” I don’t know why I said it. It was like since I’d told Baya the truth, I didn’t have to bother with hiding behind the “McGinty” that had never really fooled anyone anyway.

“Pleased to meet you, Callie LeRoux.” Jack Holland stuck out his hand.

“Pleased to meet you, Jack Holland.” His palm was hard, and his fingernails were stained black. He’d worked a lot with those hands, and they felt strong and warm. My insides gave a little squirm and I let go. I didn’t need anything else strange to think about.

“I heard you singing,” I said. “That’s how I found you.”

“I was hoping that’d happen.” He pulled a battered newsboy cap out of his back pocket. “I been singing since the sheriff left. Kept me from going crazy. Shall we?” He bowed and swept his cap like a hotel doorman in the movies.

I giggled. “Let’s do.” I held out my skirt hem and put my nose in the air and tried to mince out the door. He chuckled, and that made me feel kind of good. At the same time, I thought to myself Jack Holland was a boy who could make people do what he wanted. He had the kind of face that could look all sweet while hiding a world of secrets. I’d have to watch him close while he was in the Imperial.

My insides did that squirmy thing again. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, but I couldn’t go back on my word.

“God Almighty,” Jack whispered.

I stopped. He’d been stuck in that cell and hadn’t seen the storm. He was getting his first look at what it had done.

“I seen dusters before, but not like this…”

“Don’t think there’s ever been one like this.” And it was my fault. No matter what Baya said. I knew, somehow, I’d done this. Now I was standing around instead of working for the money I needed to go find Mama. “Come on. We gotta get to the store.”

We waded through the dust to Van Iykes’s Mercantile. The sky still boiled black, and the dust tried to needle its way into my skin. Jack kept his nose pressed to his sleeve. I kept one eye on the street out of town, looking for cars or people. There was nothing, just the houses hunkering down under the storm. There had to be people behind the curtains, all sealed into their rooms. The town only looked empty; it wasn’t really.

The dust swirled around and chuckled in my ears.

The mercantile door was unlocked. The bell rang when I pushed it open.

“Mr. Van Iykes?” I called. “Mrs. Van Iykes?”

No answer. Fresh dust snaked inside around our ankles. I blinked hard while my eyes adjusted to the twilight filling the store’s front room.

Then I wished they hadn’t.

“God Almighty,” croaked Jack, just like he had when he saw the storm.

The mercantile was an old-time general store-one big room with the groceries on the left side, dry goods on the right, and hardware at the back. Right then, it looked like it had been hit by a cyclone. The racks of dime novels and magazines were flopped on their sides next to empty barrels. The butcher’s case was busted open, and sharp bits of glass lay glittering on the dusty floorboards. Heaps of cans lay behind the counter on one side, and shredded bolts of cloth on the other. The fridge door flapped open, and the smashed milk bottles lay in stinking white pools. A green trail leaked down from the icebox, where the pistachio ice cream had melted. Flies had gotten trapped in the sticky green puddle on the floorboards and died.

“Mr. Van Iykes?” I called again. “Mrs. Van Iykes?”

“I’ll go look upstairs.” Jack vanished up the back steps. I heard him clumping around over my head. I just kept turning in a circle, trying to understand. Then I noticed the books were torn like the cloth was. No. Not torn, chewed. They had holes right through them, and big crescent-shaped chunks taken out of the spines-just like the chunk taken out of the door frame where little Clarinda Hopper had been spying on me.

That was when I saw how the bones lay on top of the broken glass-pork bones, beef bones, lamb bones, all picked as clean and white as if they’d been in the desert for years.

Staring at those bones, I barely heard Jack Holland thumping back down the stairs.

“There’s nobody up there,” he said. “Doesn’t look like it’s been robbed or anything…”

“What am I gonna do?” I tore my eyes away from the bones. I couldn’t understand what I was seeing. No, I didn’t want to understand it. So I told myself, all I really understood was that the Hoppers were back at the hotel, hungry and impatient, and I had their fifty in my pocket. “They’re expecting me to feed them. What am I gonna do?”

“Whoa. Wait.” Jack held up both too-big hands. “Who’s expecting you?”

I told him about the Hoppers, and the hundred and fifty dollars. “We need the money,” I said. “I can’t not feed them. They’ll leave and I’ll have nothing.” I knew what I must sound like, worrying about money when it was plain the Van Iykeses had been wiped out by… by something. Wild coyotes, maybe, or crazy people. People went crazy in dust storms sometimes. But I needed that money if I was going to find Mama.

“Okay.” Jack wiped his hands on his pants. “Okay. Look. There’s still the cans, right? You can make plenty out of cans.”

I rubbed my eyes. “Yeah. Yeah.”

“So you see what you can find. I’ll go look for a wheelbarrow or something we can load up.”

I didn’t want him to leave me alone in that ruined place, but I nodded. There were a couple of crates behind the grocery counter. I knocked the dust out and started sorting cans. All the boxes had been torn open. Heaps of cornflakes, shredded wheat, and Jell-O powder were vanishing under a coat of dust. I picked out cans of beans and creamed corn and tomato soup and condensed milk and set them on the counter. I added tins of deviled ham, tuna fish, sardines, and Ovaltine. There were even some tinned clams.