Dust girl

4

Dust sluiced off the stranger’s shoulders and was whipped away by the wind. He was tall and skinny and dark. His eyes flashed beneath a wide-brimmed, high-crowned hat. But all I could really see was that he wasn’t my mother.

“Mama!” I screamed past the man. Dust poured straight down my throat. I gagged and heaved. A big, rough hand clamped across my mouth, shoving my scarf back into place.

The wind gusted hard, driving dust into my eyes, and the hand slithered away as the man fell to his knees again. Dust filled up the whole world, and my lifeline was stretched taut. No matter how bad I wanted to, I couldn’t go any farther. The stranger slumped down lower, his hands digging into the hot dust, looking for solid ground to hold him up. I didn’t know who or what he was, but I couldn’t leave him out here.

Hanging on tight to the rope with one hand, I tugged on the man’s shirtsleeve until he staggered to his feet again. I pressed his hand to my shoulder so he could hold on to me. His grip tightened, signaling he understood.

I found the rope with my fingers, and hand over hand, I followed it. There was nothing to hear but the roaring wind. Nothing to see but the rolling red-tinted darkness. That bony hand clamped tight to my shoulder was the only way I knew the stranger stayed with me.

After what felt like a year in that roaring dark, my toes hit the back steps. I kept one hand on the rope and groped with the other until my fingertips found the kitchen door. Fumbling, I gripped the handle and yanked it open. The man fell inside behind me, sprawling full length on the floor.

“Mister!”

The man didn’t move. He lay there, still as death among the dust drifts on the yellow linoleum.

Water. Had to get water. There was water in the icebox. I gulped a swallow straight from the pitcher, and coughed and choked and spat red mud into the sink. Even with the door shut, the dust hung in the air, as thick as coal smoke. The wind howled all around, and the dust scrabbled at the windowpanes, prying at the seams, looking for the weak spots. My throat was still choked half full with dust but I could breathe, and think.

I got down on hands and knees and tugged against the fallen man’s shoulders until he rolled onto his back.

“Mister, wake up!” I splashed water onto his face. “We can’t stay here! Wake up!”

The stranger’s eyelids snapped open. For a second, I saw two black holes where his eyes should have been. But then he blinked, and they were just eyes.

“Get up!” I hollered over my shoulder as I ran to grab the clean dish towels off the shelf by the stove. “We gotta get in the parlor!”

The man said nothing, just followed me as I staggered through to the ladies’ parlor carrying the water jug and towels. The chandelier had only one bulb left, but it lit when I flipped the switch. Dust turned the light hazy and pink. So it was red dust. Kansas dust is gray. It’s Oklahoma dust that’s red. This was Oklahoma blowing over us.

I kicked the door shut and stuffed the dish towels into the water jug to wet them down.

“Here, get the windowsills.” I shoved a wet towel at the man. He stared at it like he’d never seen such a thing before. But as I jammed my own roll of damp cloth beneath the door, he seemed to get the idea.

All around us the Imperial groaned long and slow, complaining as it leaned into the wind. We kept stuffing towels around the edges of the doors and the one window behind its velveteen draperies until they were all used up. Then we both kind of backed into the middle of the room and stood there, panting. Finally, I had a chance to take a good long look at the stranger I’d pulled out of the storm. He was an Indian-Apache, maybe, or Shawnee. He had copper-red skin, a long face, and a long mouth to go with it. His skin hung loose around his bones and dragged the corners of his mouth down, making him look like the saddest thing in the world. He wore his black hair in two club-shaped pigtails tied with leather thongs and blue beads. Somehow he’d kept hold of his hat. It was as black as his eyes, with a couple of feathers stuck into a furry band that had a loose end dangling over the brim like a tail. His bright red shirt and blue jeans were stiff with dust.

“Did you see a woman out there?” I asked. “My mother?”

His black eyes emptied right out, the way Mama’s did when she talked about Papa. My heart froze.

“I saw a white woman, dressed all in sorrow.” He had a deep, rumbling voice, like he was pulling it right out of the ground. “She called for her lover.”

“Where’d she go?”

Light and shadow shifted in his black eyes. He blinked and shook his head. “Sorry. Can’t see that far.”

I felt light, like my feet didn’t touch the floor. I couldn’t hear anything right. I thought maybe I had gone deaf from the pounding the wind had given my ears. I drifted over to the window and shoved the red velveteen back with both hands.

Outside was gone. There was only a wall of shifting dirt pressed up against the window. I’d have thought we were buried, but the wind rattled the glass in its frame as if it was a burglar checking the latch.

Mama was out there.

“It’s my fault,” I whispered.

“How your fault?” asked the man.

Weeee sssseeeee you noooow! Weeee got you now! The voice swirled through the memories in the back of my head.

“I played the piano and the storm came. Now it’s got her. It’s all my fault!”

I shook. The tremors loosened a cough, and another, and a dozen more, and I couldn’t stop them. My lungs were on fire. I was burning to ash, to dust. Brown Callie dust to mix with the red Oklahoma dust and then blow away.

I kind of passed out after that.

When I came to, I was lying on the couch and staring up at the ceiling. My throat hurt bad. My mouth tasted like dust, but I could breathe. I sat up. The stranger sat in front of the marble fireplace, his huge hands dangling on his knees.

“You’re back.” He climbed to his feet. He was big too. From where I lay, it looked like his hat almost brushed the chandelier. “That’s good.”

The pitcher sat on the coffee table. The man poured clean water into a glass I didn’t remember bringing in. I didn’t think there was any water left. He could have gone out and gotten some, except it looked like the towels were all still in place around the door.

While I drank the sweet, clean water and tried to get my head back together, the man paced around the edges of the room. His dusty cowboy boots made no sound at all on the carpet. His steps were long, but he moved carefully, gracefully. In fact, he seemed to kind of flow around the furniture.

“That was you making the music?” he asked.

I nodded, and he grunted. “Thought I heard something new. ’Swhy I came. Too curious for my own damn good, like always.” He sighed. “You’re not strong enough to do this, though.” He flicked his eyes toward the curtains that hid us from the storm. “This is somebody else.”

“Who?”

“If I knew, you think I’d let them on my land?” he snapped.

“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.

“But… I don’t understand,” I said finally. “Spirit man? How can my papa be a spirit?”

Baya shrugged. “There are all kinds of spirits, Dust Girl.”

“But if my papa’s a spirit… what does that make me?”

“Different.”

“Thanks a lot.”

He shrugged again. “Hey, even old Baya only knows so much at once.”

My eyes burned. Tears leaked out the corners. Baya tucked his rough hand under my chin and lifted my face so I had to look into his eyes. Those eyes were old and young; there was dawn light in them and starlight. I hadn’t seen the stars since the dust came, years ago now, and I hadn’t realized until that moment how much I missed them.

“I wish I knew who I am,” I whispered to the stars in Baya’s eyes.

Slowly, Baya shook his head. “Oh, Dust Girl, that’s the hardest wish of all. Not even Baya can give you that one. That one you earn.”

“Then I wish I could find out.”

Baya put a hand on my head and he started to talk. I couldn’t understand the words, but his voice rose and fell like the song of the wind. Not the hot dust-storm wind, but the gentle summer wind that piled up the clouds overhead and smelled like rain. I forgot to be afraid. I forgot to be careful. I looked deep into his eyes, because I wanted to stay with the stars. Then I was falling into pure, empty darkness.