Dust girl

10

It took me and Jack three days to get to the town of Constantinople. And I’ll tell you this-Jack was lucky to be alive by that time. Not because the walking was so hard, which it was, but because I was ready to kill him stone dead.

The whole three days we walked, Jack Holland would not shut up. He kept after me and after me to sing something so he could see what would happen. It was like he’d forgotten all about the Hoppers and how he’d almost gotten stuck in that railroad work camp out of the olden days. He kept trying to tell me all these stupid, baby fairy stories he’d heard from some crazy Irish guy, or some crazy Negro, and even this extra-special crazy Eye-talian. Kept trying to tell me I must be all fairy magic and everything. He thought it was so exciting. He didn’t get it. It was bad enough when I had to hide being half black. Now I might not even be human at all. How was I supposed to hide that?

Pretty soon I found out the only way to shut him up at all was to ask what happened to his little sister, Hannah. But then we’d go maybe another mile, and he’d start right in again. And every night, before it got too dark to see, he’d pull out this little notebook and stubby pencil he carried and write stuff down. Stuff about me, I just knew it.

I lay awake nights, listening to the wind until my head hurt. But there were no more voices. That didn’t make me feel any better. That could just mean whatever was out there was keeping quiet, and waiting.

Jack woke up sweating and staring every night, calling out for Hannah to stop whatever it was she was doing.

Even with my special dust eyes to see the way, it was hard to keep to the road buried under drifts of blow dirt and tumbleweeds. We passed people working their way out from under the storm. We saw a farmer hauling his wife and kids out of the second-story window to stand on the roof. The dust had buried the rest of the house. We saw another man sitting on the hood of his tractor, his head in his hands. We stopped and helped a woman and her three little kids pull their cow out of a drift. She shared their supper of fatback meat and beans, and let us sleep on their roof with them that night. We stopped again and helped a man and a pregnant woman dig out their Model T. They gave us some water from their canteens and let us ride with them toward Constantinople, until we got stopped by more drifts over the road. They said they’d wait for the plow trucks. We wished them luck and started walking again.

The third night we stayed in a cellar hole. We lit a fire from the timber pile that used to be the house overhead and took turns sleeping, in case a duster came up.

By the time we stumbled to the edge of Constantinople, I was ready to drink the Mississippi dry and then fall down and sleep for a year.

I’d been to Constantinople before, but not for a long time. It was bigger than Slow Run. They had a clothing store as well as a general store, along with five saloons, but only four churches. As if to make up for this, the churches were all built of brick, with steeples sticking high and proud into the dusty sky. There was even a real movie theater-the Bijoux-with a big, flashy marquee out front announcing they were showing The Man Who Knew Too Much starring Peter Lorre, along with a SECOND BRAND-NEW FEATURE.

Constantinople had people too. They came and went from those stores and churches, or stood on the board walkways talking with each other. They glanced at me and Jack as we stumbled up the street, but just as quickly looked back to their own troubles. A group of men clustered around the curving bumpers of a Packard car all leaned in so close to the radio that their hat brims touched.

“Colorado’s governor has authorized the mobilization of National Guard troops to help Denver in the aftermath of what may have been the biggest dust storm ever to hit…”

The problem was, there we were, walking into town all filthy and hungry, our feet burning from the hot dust, and we had nothing but the crumbs of a dead leaf in our pockets. I turned to Jack. “Now what?”

But Jack didn’t answer right away. He just kind of faded into the shadow beside Morrison’s Hardware Store. As he surveyed the main street with its battered cars, rickety wagons, and starving mules, Jack’s face changed. He tightened up. The “gosh wow” dreamer with his big grin who could believe in magic and fairies without blinking was gone. This was the hobo kid who could hot-wire a car and drive it like a bootlegger.

“Won’t be no trains yet today,” he said. I knew that much. On the way in, we’d skirted the rail yard and saw the men fighting the wind to get the tracks cleared. “So we’re gonna need to find food, and maybe a place to bed down.” His narrow gaze flickered this way and that, taking the measure of the whole town. “Callie, you just go stand in front of the window of that lunch counter and look hungry.”

I’d tried to get ready for the idea we’d have to bum something, but now that I was actually faced with begging, I balked. “Why me?”

“ ’Cause you’re a girl,” Jack said, really slowly like I wasn’t too bright. “Folks’ll give a meal faster to a girl than a boy.”

“Why?”

“Just will, that’s all. Besides, you’re smaller than me. That always helps.”

I looked out onto the main street. Men in overalls and women in dungarees or worn dresses went in and out of stores with dusty windows. They stopped to talk with each other. A dented, lopsided truck rattled by. Away on the other side stood the lunch counter. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t beg with all these people around to see.

Then the wind twisted until it was blowing straight from across the street. The smell of hot grease went right to my stomach and kicked out my pride. I could do anything if it meant I could get one mouthful of whatever was making that smell.

“So I just stand there?”

“That’s about it.” Jack kept his eyes on the street. I didn’t know what he was looking for, but he looked for it hard. “If a customer sees you and offers to buy you a meal, you take it. If the waitress or the fry cook comes out, you offer to sweep up or do any kind of work they got. Be sure to tell ’em you been walking all day and your brother’s out looking for work.”

“My brother?”

“Me.”

I eyed him up and down, from his bright blue eyes and brown hair to his knobby knees. “Nobody’s going to believe you’re my brother.”

“Most people believe what you tell ’em. Oh, and one thing to remember.”

“What?”

“Don’t go nowhere with nobody unless you take me with you. Some people ain’t safe.”

“I knew that one.”

“Just makin’ sure. Now go on.” Jack gave me a shove on the shoulder. He could smell the cooking too, and he’d been hungry longer than I had.

I didn’t like it, but what was I gonna do? We weren’t going to get any farther without something to eat. My throat felt like it had been sunburned, and my legs felt like rubber bands. I wasn’t sure I was even going to make it across the street.

But I did, and I stood in front of the big plate-glass window with CARMODY’S APOTHECARY written across it in fancy gold letters. It was plastered over with signs for aspirin, Pepsodent toothpaste, and food: COFFEE AND PIE, TEN CENTS. HAMBURGER, FIVE CENTS. They had the radio going too, all about the duster.

“… declaring from the floor of the United States Senate that now is the time for decisive action on the question of soil conservation and agricultural reform…”

Right behind the dust-dimmed window stood a couple of wooden booths and tables, and past them was the long counter with its red-and-silver stools. In one of the booths sat a windburned man with his shirtsleeves rolled up past his rough elbows. While I watched, he scooped up a big, fat hamburger from a nest of french fries and bit off a hunk of meat, cheese, bread, and onion. Juice dripped down onto the napkin tucked into his shirt. The waitress came by with a coffeepot and a slice of bright yellow pie topped with three inches of fluffy meringue balanced on a tray.

I thought I was going to faint dead away on the sidewalk boards.

The waitress poured a stream of black coffee into the man’s cup. She glanced up, and our eyes met. I didn’t have to try to look hungry. I felt sick just trying to stand there. The next good blast of wind would have blown me right over.

The man, still chewing, turned his head. He saw me too. He wiped his mouth with the corner of his napkin and tossed it on the table, climbed to his feet, collected some things from the seat beside him, and stumped toward the door.

The bell rang as he came out, and the smell of cooking hung all around him. The world reeled again. I’d have done anything to get some of that food. I’d have gotten down on my knees right there on Main Street.

Then I saw the gun hanging from his belt. And the nightstick. I looked around frantically for the badge, and finally saw it clipped beside the weapons. It wasn’t a sheriff’s star, though. It was a golden shield.

“What you want here, girlie?” The man smelled like onions and tobacco.

I looked the whole way up into his hard gray eyes. “P-p-please, sir. D-do you have a job of work I could do? I been walkin’ all day with my brother, and…”

He crouched down so his eyes were level with mine, and he smiled all across his broad, tanned face. “Well now, girlie, I’ll tell you what,” he began. Hope filled the hungry parts of my insides. Then he pushed his hat back on his head and went on. “I’m gonna give you exactly thirty seconds to get off this street. If you ain’t gone by then, I’m gonna take this club and crack you a good one across your backside. If you don’t run fast enough after that, you’re gonna find yourself on the chain gang choppin’ cotton for the rest of your natural-born days. How’s that sound?”

I backed up, one step, two, three. The man kept right on grinning.

“Bull Morgan don’t allow no bums on his trains, girl, or in his town.” He reached down and pulled that shiny brown club out of its holster beside the wooden-handled revolver.

Fear found the last of my strength, and I bolted like a scared rabbit. Jack caught hold of me as I ran past, and swung us both around behind the hardware store. All the while, I heard that big man-Bull Morgan-laughing.

I was shaking and I couldn’t stand anymore. I slid down the clapboard wall until I was huddled on the ground. I could still smell the grease and the onions, and tears were starting.

“It’s okay.” Jack put his hand on my shoulder. “It happens sometimes. We just wait till he’s gone. Then we try again. Back door this time. That waitress felt sorry for you, I could tell.”

I shook my head hard. “I can’t do that again.”

“You’re just not hungry enough yet. Give it another hour. You’ll go back.”

“Well,” said a new voice, “I call that an awful shame.”

A Negro woman was walking down the backstreet, swinging a little white handbag.

“A great big girl like you begging in the streets.” She stopped right in front of us and planted a fist on her hip.

She had a pretty face, with round cheeks and a wide mouth that looked like it was holding back a smile. Her skin was the color of the earth in good times. The blue flowers on her white dress made splashes of bright color against our dust-dimmed surroundings, and a wide-brimmed white hat shaded her face, making it hard to see her eyes.

Jack was on his feet. “ ’S not her fault, missus,” he said in a high, pathetic voice that sounded a lot younger than his own. “We been knockin’ and knockin’, lookin’ for a job of work, but there’s nothin’, not with the duster, and we were so hungry…”

I’d been right about Jack Holland. He had the kind of face that could make you believe. He made his eyes go all wide and puppy-dog as he twisted his cap in his hands and hunched over so he didn’t look so tall.

“Tsk-tsk.” The woman shook her head slowly. But she wasn’t paying attention to Jack. She just kept looking at me.

“Come here, girl,” she said at last.

Jack gave me a hint of a nod. So I got up and brushed myself off and walked to the woman. She was pretty, in her flower-print dress, white hat, and white gloves. Now I could see her eyes were the color of strong coffee.

She looked at me hard with those eyes, and then broke into a big smile. Unlike Bull Morgan’s, this one was full of joy.

“Well, well.” The woman clapped her hands together. “If I haven’t gone and found myself Callie LeRoux.”

“ ’Scuse me?” I said, forgetting my manners entirely. “I don’t know you.”

“No, you don’t, but I know your papa, Daniel.”

Just like that, I was struck as dumb as a dead stump. Jack slipped closer, but I couldn’t so much as turn my head away from this lady. I couldn’t have moved if the whole Hopper clan had come pouring out of the hardware store.

“You got us confused, missus,” Jack said clearly and politely. Probably to keep her attention off the fact that he was also kicking my ankle. “Our daddy’s name is Dennis, Dennis McClaren.”

She looked down her nose at him. You could tell she’d had a lot of practice doing that. “Is this… boy with you, Callie?”

I licked my lips and remembered I actually had a voice. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Well, all right then. You can both come with me.”

“Where to?” demanded Jack.

“Why, to lunch, of course. There won’t be talking sense to either of you if you’re half starved.”

Jack gripped my arm, and to my utter shock he said, “Thank you kindly, missus, but I don’t think so.”

She shrugged. “Suit yourselves.”

And just like that, she walked away, swinging her handbag, switching her hips, and not looking back.

I yanked my arm away from Jack. “What’re you doing?” I whispered fiercely.

“I don’t trust her.” Jack stuffed both hands in his pockets and looked after the woman with his hard hobo eyes. “How does she know your name?”

“She knows my papa!”

“How can she just be walking down the street and know your father?”

I pulled back and shook the question away. “He was a musician! He must’ve played towns all over the state. I bet we could have met somebody who knows him in Dodge, or Topeka.”

“And you should think careful about what kind of people that’d be,” Jack said. “Remember what Baya said about your papa.”

“I remember,” I snapped back. “And I remember how you’ve been jabbering on about how he was a fairy and I’m a fairy and how we’ve got to find out what that means. But when we meet somebody who might actually know, you don’t want anything to do with her!” I bit down on both lips. I’d never win if I got Jack’s back up. “Look, she said she’d feed us. Do you want to eat or not?”

“We can’t! The stories all say if you eat anything in Fairyland, you can never leave.”

That was all I could stand and a little bit more. “We’re not in Fairyland! We’re in Kansas! Whoever she is, she knows something about my papa and she’s got food and I am going after her!”

I pelted around the corner of the store, afraid the woman would have gotten out of sight. But no, there she was, marching down the dusty hardpan street between the backs of the shops and the fronts of the first low houses. As I ran to catch up, she disappeared into a shuttered clapboard building, not much more than a shack, really. It wasn’t until I got to the porch that I saw the hand-painted cardboard sign tacked to the door that read SHIMMY’S.

Piano music trickled out around the door, a soft, wandering blues tune. I shifted my weight, and the porch boards creaked under my shoes. I knew what this was. It was a juke joint-a place where people could come and hear music and dance and drink. We’d had a place like it on the edge of Slow Run called the Turn Out. It was a big dare with the kids to sneak down there at night and try to see in the windows, or maybe watch the dice games out back.

But it was the music that made me hesitate. There’d been a lot of music in my life lately, and following it had not been getting me anyplace good. If I followed this music now and something went wrong, I didn’t have anything or anybody to help me. Not even Jack.

I put my hand on the knob. I didn’t bother to knock; I just pushed the door open and stepped over the threshold. As I did, I got that twisting key-in-the-lock feeling again, like I’d had when I opened that window or gate or whatever it was to the living prairie and the railroad men working. I knew I wasn’t just walking into an ordinary room; I was walking into Someplace Else.

This time, though, Someplace Else didn’t look like all that much. The room on the other side of that doorway was dim and hot. The smells of tobacco, dust, and beer rose up from scarred floorboards. Crooked chairs stood around bare wooden tables. As my eyes adjusted, I could make out a small stage in the far corner. The woman we’d met in the street rested her elbows on the top of an upright piano and smiled big and bright down at the player. He was a lean black man with a pencil-thin mustache and his black hair slicked down tight against his scalp. A cigarette burned in the stand ashtray at his elbow. His long hands moved slow and easy across the keys, coaxing out the tune.

“Let him go, let him go, God bless him…,” crooned the woman, and the player smiled into her eyes. “He can roam this wide world over, and never find a sweet gal like me…”

I took a step. The dusty floor creaked underfoot, and the man and woman stopped.

“Well, it’s about time.” The man swiveled his stool toward me. “Shimmy said you’d be coming along. Hello, Callie girl.”

“Who’re you?”

“Well,” said the woman, “I guess I’d better perform the introductions. Callie LeRoux, meet your papa, Daniel.”