THE DUST STORM

Jenny sat on the brick walk and looked up at the sky. It had been green all afternoon, just like when she put on Daddy’s colored glasses that he wore to keep the sun out of his eyes. Although it was late winter, the air was quite warm. She listened to Mother and Daddy talking in the house.

“If we’d been smart,” Mother said, “we’d have sold out and gone back east like Louie’s. They
were smarter than any of us. Looks like another dust storm is brewing.”

“Sure,” Daddy said , “I know about them. They couldn’t buy a piss ant a necktie. They sold out to pay their debts and had to borrow money from relatives to move. They’re having hard times back in Illinois, same as here. Yeah, they can make it sound big in a letter, but come to find out, I bet they’re livin’ off the government. Is this what you want? Want me to get on W.P.A.? Not by a damn site.”

Jenny wished they wouldn’t talk like this. It worried her when Mother said they should move. This was home. She would hate it in a strange house. Sometime she had bad dreams about it.

“Of course not. It’s just this everlasting dry weather. Some people say this part of the country is turning into a desert. I’d just like to see some green things growing for a change. Maybe they are poor back in Illinois, but at least the corn grows tall, and there are more trees and grass and good crops.”

There had been almost no crops this year and scant pasture for the cattle. Many of the trees had died, and dust, the good black top soil of the land, was piled along the fences like snow drifts. It made a person want to give up. Now the gray clouds of dust seemed very close, and Daddy brought Margaret home and then quickly took the other children home from school to their homes and took the teacher to Mrs. Gobel’s, where she boarded. The hired man came in from the field early. The little birds stopped chirping and the chickens went to roost and everything was quiet for a little while. Mother said she’d have to light the lamp, even though it was only two o’clock in the afternoon. Jenny and Margaret sat at the table, cutting out people from the Sears catalog for use as paper dolls, letting paper scraps pile up on the floor. They thought it was fun to have the lamp lit in the daytime. Margaret was delighted to be home from school early. Mother and Daddy and the hired man kept going to the big west window in the parlor to look at the darkening sky. The wind had begun to come up. They could see great rolling clouds of dust. They could smell it, taste it and breathe it. It got in the corners of the eyes and made the teeth feel gritty. They stuffed rags along the doors and windows. Mother put a cover on the water pail. They had pancakes for supper that night. They ate lots of pancakes that year. Mother made little ones for Jenny and Margaret. Jenny liked them with lots of syrup. Like the sparrows and the chickens, they all went to bed early that night. They put the covers over their heads and hoped for the best. The wind and dust continued, swaying the house and rattling the windows.

The next morning was clear, cold and calm. Piles of powdery dust lay along the doors and windows. Mother had already swept up a dishpan full of dust before breakfast and would get the
rest later.

Jenny awoke and wandered out to the kitchen in her pink sleepers, where the rest of the family was already eating breakfast. The hired man took one look at her and burst out laughing, slapping his knee and the table. Daddy too, chuckled and Mother and Margaret joined in. Jenny didn’t know why they were laughing, but she liked to laugh, so she laughed too.

“Wait till you see your face,” Daddy said, and he held her up to the looking glass. Two blue eyes looked out from a totally black face. Her hands were black too.

“She’s Mother’s little dust syrup pickininny,” said Mother, and she began washing away the black sticky stuff.

Out of the storm had come humor. They had started the day with gaiety. Their spirits were lighter because they had laughed, and even the ugly piles of dust failed to quench their faith that things were going to get better.