Read Online Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse - Free Book Online

his
    family,
    the wife and three boys.
    Maybe the photograph was
    left in trade for the biscuits,
    maybe it was a birthday gift,
    the one thing he had left to give.
    The children in the picture were clean and serious,
    looking out with a certain longing.
    The baby had his eyes.
    On the back of the photograph,
    in pencil,
    was the address of his family in
    Moline, Kansas.
    First chance, I’d send the picture back,
    let his wife know he was still alive.
    I got off the train in Flagstaff, Arizona.
    A lady from a government agency saw me.
    She gave me water and food.
    I called Mr. Hardly from her office and asked him to
    let my father know …
    I was coming home.
    August 1935

Homeward Bound
    Getting away,
    it wasn’t any better.
    Just different.
    And lonely.
    Lonelier than the wind.
    Emptier than the sky.
    More silent than the dust,
    piled in drifts between me
    and my
father.
    August 1935

Met
    My father is waiting at the station
    and I call him
    Daddy
    for the first time
    since Ma died,
    and we walk home,
    together,
    talking.
    I tell him about getting out of the dust
    and how I can’t get out of something
    that’s inside me.
    I tell him he is like the sod,
    and I am like the wheat,
    and I can’t grow everywhere,
    but I can grow here,
    with a little rain,
    with a little care,
    with a little luck.
    And I tell him how scared I am about those spots on
    his skin
    and I see he’s scared too.
    “I can’t be my own mother,” I tell him,
    “and I can’t be my own father
    and if you’re both going to leave me,
    well,
    what am I supposed to do?”
    And when I tell Daddy so,
    he promises to call Doc Rice.
    He says the pond is done.
    We can swim in it once it fills,
    and he’ll stock it with fish too,
    catfish, that I can go out and
    catch of an evening
    and fry up.
    He says I can even plant flowers,
    if I want.
    As we walk together,
    side by side,
    in the swell of dust,
    I am forgiving him, step by step,
    for the pail of kerosene.
    As we walk together,
    side by side,
    in the sole-deep dust,
    I am forgiving myself
for all the rest.
    August 1935



Cut It Deep
    I went in with Daddy to see Doc Rice.
    Doc said,
    “Why’d you wait so long
    to show someone those spots, Bayard?”
    I scowled at Daddy.
    He looked at the wall.
    I think
    he didn’t care much,
    if he had some cancer
    and took and died.
    Figured he’d see Ma then,
    he’d see my brother.
    It’d be out of his hands.
    He’d be out of the dust.
    Now he’s going to wear bandages
    where Doc cut the cancer out
    the best he could.
    And we have to wait
    and hope Daddy didn’t
    get help too late.
    I ask Doc about my hands.
    “What,” I say,
    “can I do with them?”
    Doc looks carefully at the mottled skin,
    the stretched and striped and crackled skin.
    “Quit picking at them,” he says.
    “Rub some ointment in them before you go to bed,”
    he says.
    “And use them, Billie Jo,” he says.
    “They’ll heal up fine if you just use them.”
    Daddy sits on my bed
    and I open the boxes,
    the two boxes
    that have been in my closet
    for years now.
    The dust is over everything,
    but I blow it off,
    and Daddy is so quiet
    when he sees
    some of the things
    that’re still so strong of Ma,
    and we end up keeping everything but a palmful
    of broken doll dishes.
    I thought once to go through these boxes with
    Ma,
    but Daddy is
    sitting on the edge of my bed.
    My mouth feels cottony.
    I fix dinner
    and Daddy tells me about
    when he was a boy.
    He says, “I wasn’t always sure
    about the wheat,
    about the land,
    about life in the Panhandle.
    I dreamed of running off too,
    though I never did.
    I didn’t have half your sauce, Billie Jo,” he says.
    And it’s the first time I ever knew
    there was so much to the two of us,
    so much more than our red hair
    and our long legs
    and the way we rub our eyes
when we’re tired.
    October 1935

The Other Woman
    Her name is Louise,
    she stayed by Daddy the days I was away.
    The first time I met her she came to dinner bringing
    two