Sarah Zettel: Dust girl

With the other end tied around my waist, I stepped off the back porch and sank right up to my knees in hot dust.

Each step forward wrenched another cough out of me. Each step brought the silhouette in the dust a little closer, but behind that thickening screen of dust, it kept changing its shape. First it was a person. Then it was a skinny dog. Then it was a person again.

The silhouette crumpled. I screamed and lunged forward, scrabbling in the dust. A hand grabbed mine. I heaved myself backward so hard I almost fell.

But it wasn’t Mama who staggered upright in front of me.

It was a man.

Dust sluiced off the stranger’s shoulders and was whipped away by the wind. He was tall and skinny and dark. His eyes flashed beneath a wide-brimmed, high-crowned hat. But all I could really see was that he wasn’t my mother.

“Mama!” I screamed past the man. Dust poured straight down my throat. I gagged and heaved. A big, rough hand clamped across my mouth, shoving my scarf back into place.

The wind gusted hard, driving dust into my eyes, and the hand slithered away as the man fell to his knees again. Dust filled up the whole world, and my lifeline was stretched taut. No matter how bad I wanted to, I couldn’t go any farther. The stranger slumped down lower, his hands digging into the hot dust, looking for solid ground to hold him up. I didn’t know who or what he was, but I couldn’t leave him out here.

Hanging on tight to the rope with one hand, I tugged on the man’s shirtsleeve until he staggered to his feet again. I pressed his hand to my shoulder so he could hold on to me. His grip tightened, signaling he understood.

I found the rope with my fingers, and hand over hand, I followed it. There was nothing to hear but the roaring wind. Nothing to see but the rolling red-tinted darkness. That bony hand clamped tight to my shoulder was the only way I knew the stranger stayed with me.

After what felt like a year in that roaring dark, my toes hit the back steps. I kept one hand on the rope and groped with the other until my fingertips found the kitchen door. Fumbling, I gripped the handle and yanked it open. The man fell inside behind me, sprawling full length on the floor.

“Mister!”

The man didn’t move. He lay there, still as death among the dust drifts on the yellow linoleum.

Water. Had to get water. There was water in the icebox. I gulped a swallow straight from the pitcher, and coughed and choked and spat red mud into the sink. Even with the door shut, the dust hung in the air, as thick as coal smoke. The wind howled all around, and the dust scrabbled at the windowpanes, prying at the seams, looking for the weak spots. My throat was still choked half full with dust but I could breathe, and think.

I got down on hands and knees and tugged against the fallen man’s shoulders until he rolled onto his back.

“Mister, wake up!” I splashed water onto his face. “We can’t stay here! Wake up!”

The stranger’s eyelids snapped open. For a second, I saw two black holes where his eyes should have been. But then he blinked, and they were just eyes.

“Get up!” I hollered over my shoulder as I ran to grab the clean dish towels off the shelf by the stove. “We gotta get in the parlor!”

The man said nothing, just followed me as I staggered through to the ladies’ parlor carrying the water jug and towels. The chandelier had only one bulb left, but it lit when I flipped the switch. Dust turned the light hazy and pink. So it was red dust. Kansas dust is gray. It’s Oklahoma dust that’s red. This was Oklahoma blowing over us.

I kicked the door shut and stuffed the dish towels into the water jug to wet them down.

“Here, get the windowsills.” I shoved a wet towel at the man. He stared at it like he’d never seen such a thing before. But as I jammed my own roll of damp cloth beneath the door, he seemed to get the idea.

All around us the Imperial groaned long and slow, complaining as it leaned into the wind. We kept stuffing towels around the edges of the doors and the one window behind its velveteen draperies until they were all used up. Then we both kind of backed into the middle of the room and stood there, panting. Finally, I had a chance to take a good long look at the stranger I’d pulled out of the storm. He was an Indian-Apache, maybe, or Shawnee. He had copper-red skin, a long face, and a long mouth to go with it. His skin hung loose around his bones and dragged the corners of his mouth down, making him look like the saddest thing in the world. He wore his black hair in two club-shaped pigtails tied with leather thongs and blue beads. Somehow he’d kept hold of his hat. It was as black as his eyes, with a couple of feathers stuck into a furry band that had a loose end dangling over the brim like a tail. His bright red shirt and blue jeans were stiff with dust.

“Did you see a woman out there?” I asked. “My mother?”

His black eyes emptied right out, the way Mama’s did when she talked about Papa. My heart froze.

“I saw a white woman, dressed all in sorrow.” He had a deep, rumbling voice, like he was pulling it right out of the ground. “She called for her lover.”

“Where’d she go?”

Light and shadow shifted in his black eyes. He blinked and shook his head. “Sorry. Can’t see that far.”

I felt light, like my feet didn’t touch the floor. I couldn’t hear anything right. I thought maybe I had gone deaf from the pounding the wind had given my ears. I drifted over to the window and shoved the red velveteen back with both hands.

Outside was gone. There was only a wall of shifting dirt pressed up against the window. I’d have thought we were buried, but the wind rattled the glass in its frame as if it was a burglar checking the latch.

Mama was out there.

“It’s my fault,” I whispered.

“How your fault?” asked the man.

Weeee sssseeeee you noooow! Weeee got you now! The voice swirled through the memories in the back of my head.

“I played the piano and the storm came. Now it’s got her. It’s all my fault!”

I shook. The tremors loosened a cough, and another, and a dozen more, and I couldn’t stop them. My lungs were on fire. I was burning to ash, to dust. Brown Callie dust to mix with the red Oklahoma dust and then blow away.

I kind of passed out after that.

When I came to, I was lying on the couch and staring up at the ceiling. My throat hurt bad. My mouth tasted like dust, but I could breathe. I sat up. The stranger sat in front of the marble fireplace, his huge hands dangling on his knees.

“You’re back.” He climbed to his feet. He was big too. From where I lay, it looked like his hat almost brushed the chandelier. “That’s good.”

The pitcher sat on the coffee table. The man poured clean water into a glass I didn’t remember bringing in. I didn’t think there was any water left. He could have gone out and gotten some, except it looked like the towels were all still in place around the door.

While I drank the sweet, clean water and tried to get my head back together, the man paced around the edges of the room. His dusty cowboy boots made no sound at all on the carpet. His steps were long, but he moved carefully, gracefully. In fact, he seemed to kind of flow around the furniture.

“That was you making the music?” he asked.

I nodded, and he grunted. “Thought I heard something new. ’Swhy I came. Too curious for my own damn good, like always.” He sighed. “You’re not strong enough to do this, though.” He flicked his eyes toward the curtains that hid us from the storm. “This is somebody else.”

“Who?”

“If I knew, you think I’d let them on my land?” he snapped.