Sarah Zettel: Dust girl

“Your land?”

But he wasn’t listening to me. “Stupid white people. Stupid yellow people, or stupid brown people. Bringing in all kinds of ghosts and little spirits. Can’t even tell who’s in the game anymore.” He shivered and coughed and spat on the floor.

“Hey!”

“Sorry. No manners. Me dirty injun.” He grinned, big and stupid. His teeth were all brown, and he smelled like tobacco and whiskey. His tail waved back and forth.

Tail? I ground my knuckles into my eyes. The tail was gone. When I blinked again, he wasn’t taking up so much space. I’d thought he was big, but he was a little old man, with a million wrinkles around his black eyes and sagging skin on his bony hands. I could’ve taken one of the droopy feathers out of his hatband and knocked him over with it.

Except he hadn’t been like that a minute ago. Except he’d always been like that. I knuckled my eyes again.

“Who are you?”

“Who are you ?” he shot back.

“Callie McGinty.”

He grunted. “That’s what you’re called. Who are you?”

I didn’t mean to answer. I never told anybody about my real last name. But he looked at me so steady, and he’d seen Mama in the storm. I wanted to know what he knew. To do that, I had to answer him.

“Calliope LeRoux.”

He considered that. “Closer. Try again. Who are you?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered.

He blinked. “Me neither. Well, Calliope LeRoux, you can call me Baya.”

I wrinkled my nose. “I thought injuns all had names like Crazy Horse or Sitting Bull and stuff.”

“You need to be real careful, Dust Girl, before saying you know the right names for what walks this world. It’ll get you into even more trouble.”

I almost said I wasn’t in any trouble, but you know what? I was alone here with a strange red man, and outside, Oklahoma was rolling over the top of Kansas. I was in huge trouble.

I had only one question left in me. It was a stupid, nutty question. But because of how the storm started, because of my music and what Mama said before the storm came down, I had to ask.

“Are you my father?”

Baya looked at me for a long moment. He didn’t seem quite so old and wrinkled anymore. His eyes went from midnight black to autumn brown.

“No,” he said at last. “I don’t think so.”

I collapsed back on the sofa, which just made me start coughing again. Baya settled back down cross-legged in front of the fireplace, like he was waiting for something. I didn’t want to look at him anymore. I didn’t want to think about him. I got up, switched on the radio, and spun the dial, searching for a voice, any voice, just so I’d know there was somebody else left alive in the world. There had to be somebody out there, saying what was going on, how big the storm was, and when it was going to be over. But there was just the crackling static that rose and fell with the wind. I shivered and shut it off. I looked at Baya again. He just sat there, saying nothing, doing nothing.

“Do you…” I found myself wondering desperately what Mama would do with a stranger in the parlor. “Do you want something to eat?”

“You got food?”

The clock on the mantel said it was only just going on eleven. But cooking us up lunch would mean I could think about something besides the storm and Mama being gone.

“Put the towels back under the door as soon as I’m out,” I told him. I eased the door back, squeezed through, and shut it tight behind me.

It wasn’t too bad in the kitchen. The windows were still taped over from the last duster, but an inch-deep drift had already sifted under the back door. I put on the lights, and they flickered hard but stayed lit.

The stove was working too, and that was something. I pulled a bowl down from the cupboard and wiped it out. There was one can of condensed milk left in the pantry, and one can of stewed tomatoes. I thought about holding those back, but then I got reckless. If this was the end of the world, why save anything?

I dumped the tomatoes in a pot and put them on the back burner to heat. There were two potatoes left in the root bin. I peeled and sliced them up and tossed them into the skillet and got them cooking, making sure I put the skillet lid on tight. I wiped the bowl out again, cracked the eggs, and whisked in some of the condensed milk. When the potatoes were tender, I pushed them to the side with the fork and poured in the eggs. The whole mass sizzled and steamed. I couldn’t smell anything, though. My nose was too filled with dust.

While I worked, I was sure I was being watched. It was that feeling right in the back of your neck that gets tighter and tighter the harder you try to ignore it. I knew they were right outside the window, hands and faces pressed up against the glass. But it didn’t matter how many times I looked over my shoulder; I couldn’t see anything except the dust. But I knew they were out there. I knew it.

I fixed up a tray with the food, laid a towel over it, and carried it all back to the parlor. Baya pulled the door open when I kicked it.

We ate at the coffee table. He sat on the floor. I sat on the couch. The water pitcher was still full, and there was an extra glass I didn’t remember bringing in. We had plates of eggs and potatoes, and I put the tomatoes in a bowl between us so we could help ourselves. I couldn’t taste much of anything except more dust. Despite my being careful, the dust got into the food, and it ground in my teeth and grated against my throat.

But the food felt good in my stomach, so I guessed I was hungry. Baya polished off his portion while I was still working on mine, and he stared at the bowl with the tomatoes. I pushed it toward him. He poured them onto his plate and ate them all.

At last, the food was gone, including the rest of the condensed milk, which we drank as a kind of dessert.

Baya rested his arms on his knees and looked up at me.

“Time was Baya would have married you for this,” he said. “Last girl, though, she had these teeth… well, never mind. You’re a good girl, Calliope LeRoux, and you saved old Baya. What can he do for you?”

I almost laughed at him. “What? Are you going to give me three wishes or something?”

He considered this. “Three wishes, hey? Could do that. What would you wish for?”

I didn’t even have to think about it. “I wish the dust couldn’t get me.”

He nodded. “Easy enough. What else?”

“I wish I knew where Mama is.” My heart thumped once. “And Papa too.”

He gave another one of those grunts. “Mama and Papa too, hey?” His eyes narrowed, as if he was squinting into the sun. “There’s a spirit man, tall and fine. He’s full of love and mischief. He’s promised to a spirit woman of his enemies, but he doesn’t want her. He wants his other woman. She’s fair and fine, and she’s got his baby. He stands up in the council tent and he says he won’t stay with his tribe anymore. He runs for that other woman, but he can’t run fast enough. The Shining Ones capture him and lock him away, but he still won’t marry their woman. They tie him up tight, in the golden mountains of the west, above the valley of smoke. Now both tribes go looking for his other woman and his baby. They look for years but they don’t find her, because he won’t tell them her name. They set their wisewomen out on a vision quest, and still they cannot find her.

“Then they hear music. Music of magic and power and spirit heart, and they find the woman. They take her to the house of St. Simon, where no saint’s ever been, and they hold her there.” Baya shook himself and came back into his skin. “That’s where they are.”

I was silent for a minute. The long, strange, terrible day washed over me.