Sarah Zettel - Dust girl

“Careful there, Jew boy,” Morgan snarled. “You keep it on the road, or my hand might just slip.”

Jack’s jaw clenched, and I felt the anger flash through him. He wanted to do something, wanted me to do something. He was wishing for it, wishing hard. But I glanced at Shimmy, and she shook her head.

“That’s better.” Morgan grinned. Blood speckled his blue lips.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Oh, there’s plans for you, girlie. You’re gonna be took care of good and proper, you are.”

My heart turned upside down and tried to burrow itself behind my stomach, which was already working up a good sick from the fear and the stink.

“Why are you doing this?” Jack asked suddenly. “Why not just shoot us?”

I knew what he was trying to do. He was trying to get Morgan talking so maybe he’d let slip something we could use. But still, that was not the kind of thing you wanted to hear from your only friend, especially after he’d run out on you and gotten himself kidnapped by a dead man.

“Now, there’s a thought,” sneered Morgan, and the revolver swung toward me. “What do you say, girlie? Should I just shoot you?”

A gun is a terrible thing. It’s a dark hole pointed at you, and that hole swallows up everything else in the world, your friends, your nerve, until there’s nothing but you and what’s waiting in that little round space of dark.

“I asked you a question, girlie,” wheezed Morgan. “Should I shoot you?”

“No, sir,” I whispered.

“No, sir.” Morgan grinned. His teeth were black with blood and dirt. “Didn’t think so, somehow. You just keep your fine ideas to yourself, boy, and keep drivin’.”

Jack kept driving.

“Pull over here,” Morgan ordered.

We’d been on the road about an hour. Morgan had made Jack turn off the main highway a while back, sending us bumping slowly over dirt roads between dunes and what was left of old farm shacks. Where he ordered Jack to stop was the edge of what had been a cornfield. Rows of broken brown stalks still rattled in the wind, their bases all tangled up with the remains of grass stems and tumbleweeds. No one had cut down last year’s plants, let alone tried to plow the ground to hold the blow dirt, or attempted to sow a crop for this year. To the north I could just see a hogback ridge curving above those chattering, whispering cornstalks. An old gray house stood sentinel on the ridgetop, the light glittering on its broken windows. Just another abandoned farm in the middle of the Dust Bowl, and we were in the middle of it with a dead railroad bull.

Morgan marched us straight into that tall, dead corn until I lost sight of the ridge and the house and the road. The only thing that told me we were still headed south was the sun over our shoulders. I thought maybe now I could cut and run. I told myself that Morgan wouldn’t really shoot Jack or Shimmy. I was the one he wanted. He’d follow me, and I was smaller and faster than him. The other two could run away on their own.

Except he might just shoot them before he came looking for me. Or he might shoot me in the back while I was running. I saw the black hole of the barrel pointing at my face again, and a wave of weakness ran down my spine.

We broke through into a little clearing in the corn, and Morgan ordered us to stop. There was no sound except the rattle of the dead and broken stalks. I tried to remember how to pray. Jack flexed his hands, like he was gauging whether he could knock Morgan down before the bull got a shot off.

Shimmy, though, Shimmy had her nose up in the air, like she was trying to catch a whiff of something on the wind.

“What’s out there?” she murmured. “What is that?”

Morgan just grinned and held the gun steady in his saggy gray hand.

I twisted my head around, trying to figure out what Shimmy was talking about. To the north, where that ridge had curved up, I saw smoke rising. No, not smoke. I squinted. It was dust. But not like a dust storm. It was a long, puffy gray cloud lifting up from the ground, like something was moving closer. Something big.

With the dust cloud, a jangling, clanging noise came drifting down over the corn’s endless chatter, the sound of dozens of pieces of metal being slammed together.

The corn in front of us rustled and bent. A rabbit raced by so fast it was nothing but a streak of brown and white. It was quickly followed by another, and a third. All of them tore through the corn in the mad dash that means the critter is afraid for its life.

The banging got louder. The corn shifted and swayed, and more rabbits-six, eight, a dozen-sped past us. One bounded right over my shoe tops, like it didn’t even notice a human was standing there. It was just trying to get away from whatever was coming up, making all that noise.

Then I knew. “It’s a rabbit drive.”

Shimmy’s eyes went wide. “Have mercy.”

“What?” croaked Jack. “What’s a rabbit drive?”

Morgan grinned his rotting grin and gestured with the revolver barrel, telling me to go ahead.

“Since the dust came, there’s no grass for the rabbits to eat, so they eat the crops, when there are crops,” I told Jack. My voice had gone hoarse, and I couldn’t even find the breath to clear my throat. “So in some places folks round up all the rabbits and kill ’em. They get in a long line and they walk in the same direction, making a big noise with pots and pans, and that scares the rabbits and they run… but there’s a big pen set up in front of them and the drovers herd ’em in and the people waiting… they shoot ’em or club ’em to death…” My voice faltered. The banging was getting louder. That’d be the drovers, banging on their pans as they marched through the old, dead corn. The rabbits would run from the noise and the line of people. The people would keep moving forward, herding the rabbits toward the pen. Others would be waiting behind that pen with shotguns and clubs. The first rabbits would run into the pen and be trapped. But the other rabbits would keep running in until they all piled up, clawing each other to try to get over the edge of that big pen, and they’d just be clubbed back down…

“They shoot some on the way in, if they’s too slow.” Morgan straightened his arm to level the revolver at us.

Shimmy grabbed my wrist, backing away and pulling me with her.

“No,” whispered Jack. “The people won’t hurt us. Not if they’re just after the rabbits…”

“There’s magic happening here,” snapped Shimmy. “You think we’re gonna look like people to whoever’s coming?”

“If I was you, I’d run.” Morgan cocked the revolver’s hammer back another notch.

We ran.

We slammed through the cornstalks and stumbled over tangles of dead weeds. A living river of jackrabbits ran in high flood around us. Brown, black, and white, they squealed in fear. We couldn’t see the drovers, but we felt them at our backs. They raised the dust and their banging filled the air, louder even than the chuckling of the corn.

They were getting closer.

I tried to cut sideways, but I tripped over the solid mass of fleeing rabbits and fell sprawling into the dirt. Rabbits squealed and leapt over me. Their claws scraped along my back and got tangled in my hair. I screamed and screamed, trying to beat them off and keep my head covered at the same time. Jack hauled me to my feet. Shimmy grabbed my hand and dragged me forward.

A gunshot exploded above the banging. And another. I heard Morgan laughing, back there in the corn. He’d joined the drovers. I knew it. He was marching with them, his revolver held high.

“They wishin’ dead.” Shimmy panted. “Can’t get hold of anything… All they wishin’ is dead…”