Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse Read Free Book Online

eager to go.
    March 1935

Following in His Steps
    Haydon Parley Nye’s wife,
    Fonda,
    died today,
    two months after she lost her man.
    The cause of death was
    dust pneumonia,
    but I think
    she couldn’t go on without Haydon.
    When Ma died,
    I didn’t want to go on, either.
    I don’t know. I don’t feel the same now,
    not exactly.
    Now that I see that one day
    comes after another
    and you get through them
    one measure at a time.
    But I’d like to go,
    not like Fonda Nye,
    I don’t want to die,
    I just want to go,
    away,
out of the dust.
    March 1935



Heartsick
    The hard part is in spite of everything
    if I had any boy court me,
    it’d be Mad Dog Craddock.
    But Mad Dog can have any girl.
    Why would he want me?
    I’m so restless.
    My father asks what’s going on with me.
    I storm up to my room,
    leaving him alone
    standing in the kitchen.
    If Ma was here
    she would come up and listen.
    And then later,
    she would curl beside my father,
    and assure him that everything was all right,
    and soothe him into his farmer’s sleep.
    My father and I,
    we can’t soothe each other.
    I’m too young,
    he’s too old,
    and we don’t know how to talk anymore
if we ever did.
    April 1935

Skin
    My father has a raised spot
    on the side of his nose
    that never was there before
    and won’t go away.
    And there’s another on his cheek
    and two more on his neck,
    and I wonder
    why the heck is he fooling around.
    He knows what it is.
His father had those spots too.
    April 1935

Regrets
    I never go by Arley’s anymore.
    Still,
    every week
    he comes to school to teach and
    sometimes
    I bump into Vera, or
    Miller Rice,
    or Mad Dog.
    They are always kind.
    They ask after my father.
    They ask how my hands are feeling.
    I cross my arms in front of me
    tight
    so my scars won’t show.
    These days Mad Dog looks at me
    halfway between picking a fight and kindness.
    He walks with me a ways some afternoons,
    never says a word.
    He’s quiet once the other girls go off.
    I’ve had enough of quiet men.
    I ought to keep clear of Mad Dog.
But I don’t.
    April 1935

Fire on the Rails
    I hate fire.
    Hate it.
    But the entire Oklahoma Panhandle is so dry,
    everything is going up in flames.
    Everything too ready to ignite.
    Last week
    the school caught fire.
    Damage was light,
    on account of it being caught early.
    Most kids joked about it next day,
    but it terrified me.
    I could hardly go back in the building.
    And this week
    three boxcars
    in the train yard
    burned to ash.
    Jim Goin and Harry Kesler
    spotted the fire,
    and that was a miracle
    considering the fierceness of the dust storm
    at the time.
    The fire boys
    tore over,
    but they couldn’t put the blaze out without water,
    and water is exactly what they didn’t have.
    So they separated the burning cars
    and moved them down a siding,
    away from any little thing that might catch
    if the flames hopped.
    It was all they talked about at school.
    The dust blew,
    they say,
    so you’d think it would have smothered the fire out,
    but the flames,
    crazy in the wind,
    licked away at the wooden frames of the three box
    cars,
    until nothing remained but warped metal,
    and twisted rails,
    scorched dirt, and
    charred ties.
    No one talks about fire
    right to my face.
    They can’t forget how fire changed my life.
But I hear them talking anyway.
    April 1935

The Mail Train
    They promised
    through rain,
    heat,
    snow,
    and gloom
    but they never said anything about dust.
    And so the mail got stuck
    for hours,
    for days,
    on the Santa Fe
    because mountains of dust
    had blown over the tracks,
    because blizzards of dust
    blocked the way.
    And all that time,
    as the dust beat down on the cars,
    a letter was waiting inside a mail bag.
    A letter from Aunt Ellis, my father’s sister,
    written just to me,
    inviting me to live with her in Lubbock.
    I want to get out of here,
    but not to Aunt Ellis,
    and not to Lubbock, Texas.
    My father didn’t say much when I asked
    what I should do.
    “Let’s wait and see,”
    he