Joe Lansdale - All the Earth, Thrown to the Sky

“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.”

“And you would be correct,” she said. “I apologize.”

“But it didn’t taste so good,” Tony said.

“That’s ’cause it was a rabbit that had been dead awhile,” I said. “I cooked it hard on account of that. I guess now you’d like dessert and some finger bowls.”

“That would be nice,” Jane said, “and maybe a nice hot towel.”

She grinned at me, and I grinned back. It was hard not to. I hadn’t seen her in a long while, and since I’d last seen her, me and her both had grown quite a bit, and she’d grown in a real nice way.

I had been standing by the table, like a servant, but now I dipped me a cup of water from a bucket and sat down at the table with it.

“What you coming this way for?” I said.

“We come in the storm,” Jane said.

“No you didn’t,” I said. “You couldn’t have come in that storm.”

“Did too,” Tony said. “We darn near died doing it.”

“You couldn’t have,” I said. “That storm was one of the worst I’ve seen.”

“Ought to have seen it close up,” he said.

“If it wasn’t us that come in the storm,” Jane said, “it was a couple looked just like us.”

I shook my head. “I can’t imagine how you did it.”

“ ’Cause Sissy is smart,” Tony said.

“Smart ain’t got nothing to do with sand,” I said, “and if she’s so smart, what in the world has she got you two out in a sandstorm for in the first place?”

Tony turned and looked at Jane like this was a question he hadn’t thought of and felt ought to be answered.

She said, “Well, it wasn’t like we had a choice. The house was nearly blown flat. We could have stayed there in the ruins of it, I suppose, but I decided the better part of valor was to abandon it.”

“The better part of valor?” I said.

“She reads books,” Tony said, as if it was a thing he couldn’t really explain.

“That’s true,” she said, “and someday I’m going to write for a real fine newspaper. The problem is I can’t type. I’m going to find a school somewhere that can teach me, and then I’m going to be a journalist. But I’m going to look around first, learn a little about life.”

“Journalist. That’s what they call them that type on typewriters for newspapers,” Tony said. He looked proud of himself for knowing that.

“Right now,” Jane said, “I’m getting me and Tony out of this gritty hell. I’m going to take me and him somewhere else. We’ll walk if we have to, but I thought it might be better if we drove Old Man Turpin’s Ford.”

“How in the world would you drive Old Man Turpin’s Ford?” I asked “He ain’t much of a loaner kind of person.”

“Oh, well, we thought we’d borrow it,” she said. “Sort of.”

4

Now, before you figure Jane and Tony as just straightaway thieves, I think I ought to do a little explaining.

They told me how they came by their plan, and when I heard it, I sort of liked it and decided to count myself in. I had to. Neither of them could drive a car, and I could. We’d had one once, right up until a month before, when Daddy sold it to pay for some flour and such, and some medicine for Mama. I guess he knew right then that that was the end. When he took that car into town and gave it up for a few dollars, I seen the light go out of his eyes sure as if someone inside his head had pulled a light cord. He was near to being a dead man walking from then on. Only thing that kept him connected to life at all was Mama, and when she died, that was the end of it. If there were any lights left on anywhere inside him, they went dark right then, and that was all she wrote.

But the thing was, Old Man Turpin had a car, and he had died, which was something I didn’t know. No one around our parts had known of him having any next of kin, so there wasn’t anyone next in line for that automobile, and the way Jane explained it, it was a shame to let a good Ford stay under a tarp, get all rusted out and eventually full of dust.

Jane had a way of talking that could get you on her side of things, even when you were certain you weren’t going to agree. I think it was all that reading she did. In her mouth, words were as sweet as candy or as sharp as razors, and she could switch from one to the other in midstream. She was one of them kind that loved to hear herself talk.

What I didn’t know was Jane and Tony’s mama had run off with a Bible salesman, and their daddy, not long after, had a tractor accident while trying to plow out some rows, long after there was any chance of things growing. Way Jane explained it, their dad was real stubborn, right up until the time his Poppin’ Johnny tractor rocked over and caught him under it and squashed him like a bug.

They was going to try and bury him, but couldn’t get him out from under the tractor. He was bedded down good in the sand with the tractor on top of him. Jane come up then with the idea just to shovel sand over him and the tractor, at least until they could have a proper burial, ’cause there were hungry dogs roving around. But the sandstorm had come up and they went into the house and Mother Nature covered him up for them.

Their house, which had mostly been supported by good luck and a prayer, finally blowed down, and they stayed in what was left of it for the night. Next morning they had to dig out a little, and once they were out, they figured their place was done for and they had to leave.

They decided to walk out and try to get some help so maybe they could get their daddy buried proper and find a place to stay. Jane found a couple of her books that hadn’t been blowed away or buried by the sand and put them in a pillowcase. As the storm hadn’t hit yet when they did this, they headed out, got to Old Man Turpin’s, and found him sitting in a rocking chair in his doorway, the door open. He was covered from head to foot in sand.

“It didn’t take no wizard,” Tony said, “to figure he was dead.”

Jane nodded. “I figured he did it on purpose. Just didn’t care anymore, sat out there and let the dust get him. We started looking around in the house. Everyone knows Old Man Turpin doesn’t have any kin, so we knew we weren’t going to disturb anyone. We got some flour sacks and put some things in them he wouldn’t need anymore, like canned goods. I put my books in there with the cans, and we made us packs. Then we went out to his barn and found that Ford under a tarpaulin. Course, then we realized it didn’t do us any good, ’cause neither of us could drive. We covered it up and started out this way, hoping to find somebody to help us, and then the storm hit.”

“Why didn’t you stay there? Turpin has a pretty good house.”

“ ’Cause he was dead on the porch is one thing,” Jane said, “and the other is staying there wasn’t going to get us any farther than there.”

“I thought you was just looking for some help to bury your pa?” I said.

“Was,” she said. “At first. Then me and Tony got to thinking that Pa was pretty well covered up as it was, and what we needed more than anything was just to be gone from here. I don’t see no cause just to stay around and eat dirt and get old, if I even manage to get old. Way things are going, I’ll be out on some porch somewhere in a chair with the dust covering me up. It’s not much of a future, way I look at it.”

“I suppose not,” I said.

“So,” Jane said. “We left out of there thinking we could find someone who could drive the car, but then we got caught up in another storm before we got very far. Just walking out there in all that dirt is some real trouble. There’s still roads, but they’re pretty covered up too. Not so much I don’t think a car could make it. And if it can’t, I’m still willing to give it a try, if I can get someone to drive.”