A Trail of Crumbs Read online

  “Ray,” Daddy called after us. “You take care of my girl, will ya?”

  “Yes, sir,” Ray hollered back, looking over his shoulder.

  We circled around to the front of the house. There Beanie still sat, her head against the slats of the porch. But when I saw her just then, her eyes were open wide as they could get, and she seemed to be breathing in the air like she was catching some kind of a scent.

  I swallowed hard, pushing down the scared feeling that bubbled up in me. And I tried to tell myself that nothing bad would happen. Not that day, at least. All I had to do was look up at the blue sky to prove it was true.

  Mama hadn’t pulled my hair back that day, so it fluttered behind me, long and blond and wild. Months before I might have broken into a gallop, pretending my hair was a horse’s mane and my feet hooves. But that was before, and I didn’t make believe anymore, not like I used to, at least. Those days were gone.

  Still, running alongside Ray with my hair loose felt good. I thought we could have gone on like that forever, the land wide-open as the sky. It was as if the whole world had changed while we slept the night before. The air even smelled different, like fresh-washed clothes. I wondered if that wasn’t the way spring had always smelled in the days before the dust had come. If it had, I’d forgotten.

  Down the center of the road, Ray and I slowed. I hadn’t taken off my shoes, and they’d gotten full of grit. I took a second to dump them out. He waited for me.

  Standing up straight, I thought about Jesus coming into the town of Jerusalem and wondered if it’d been springtime there that day. Pastor’d gone on and on that morning in church about Palm Sunday, not saying anything about what the weather might’ve been like. I did hope it had been sunny and warm that day as Jesus rode along on the donkey.

  Just then the street running through Red River was empty of people. I figured, though, if Jesus came to town they would come on out of their shacks or dugouts or from where some stayed in the Hooverville. They’d come from miles, happy enough to greet Him. There weren’t too many still around, but enough folks for a good welcome.

  I didn’t know that Jesus would pick a donkey to ride into Red River. Maybe He’d come on an old, squeaky bicycle. Folks in town wouldn’t have palm branches to wave for Him like they’d had in old Jerusalem. Nothing green had grown in Oklahoma in about forever, but they’d wave their hands and say “howdy,” which I thought Jesus would like just fine. Since they were at it, that “howdy” would work for a “hosanna.”

  Once Jesus was in town, He wouldn’t go straight to see Pastor just like He didn’t seek out the scribes and Pharisees. Instead, I figured, He’d take His time shaking hands and slapping backs that belonged to the regular old folks in Cimarron County.

  I just hoped He wouldn’t find us the kind to wave our howdies on Sunday only to turn tail on Him by Friday.

  Before I knew it, we were well past town and weaving around behind Pastor’s house. Once we got by their backyard fence, Ray stopped and dropped down to peep through a hole in the wood. He waved for me to come beside him. I looked around me to be sure nobody saw before I kneeled and took a peek for myself.

  “What is it?” I asked, quiet as I could, trying to find a gap in the fence.

  Ray shushed me and pulled me closer to him where there was a space to look through. Closing one eye, I focused my sight through the space in the crumbling wood. There on the other side of the fence was Pastor’s wife. Most people called her Mad Mabel on account she was loony in the head.

  Mad Mabel scared me something awful, even though Daddy said more than once that she wouldn’t hurt a fly. But I’d seen the snakes she’d killed and set to dry on the fence line to try and bring the rain. If that didn’t give a body the willies, I didn’t know what would.

  She stood at the back of the yard, Mad Mabel did, spinning in circles, a dingy rag in her hand that she waved up and down and all around. The dress she had on seemed like it had been fine long ago. Lace hung wilted off the yellowed fabric. When she turned her back toward us, I could see the buttons lined up from top to bottom. Years before, those buttons maybe had a shimmer to them. But just like most other things, they’d got the shine rubbed right out of them.

  Mad Mabel’d only managed to get a couple of those buttons through the holes, though, keeping her pale, mole-spotted flesh open to the day.

  The way the dress hung loose made me think she’d been a good deal bigger when she’d first worn it. She’d withered over the years, I imagined. I could see just about every bone in her spine and that made me feel embarrassed on her behalf.

  “What’s she doing?” I whispered, glancing at Ray.

  “Don’t know,” he answered before putting his finger to his lips, hushing me again.

  We watched her strange dancing for a few minutes. It seemed something that wasn’t for us to see, but we didn’t move away or cover our eyes. I wondered if it wasn’t something she did just for herself, maybe for God even.

  I made to get up to leave, but Ray grabbed hold of my arm, keeping me next to him.

  Pastor called from inside the small house, his voice thinner than I was used to it sounding. Mad Mabel didn’t seem to hear him. She just kept on spinning and waving her rag, her eyes closed.

  He stepped out of the house, his suspenders hanging off the waist of his trousers, making them hang on his slender hips. The good shirt he’d worn to preach in that morning was unbuttoned all the way, showing his sweat-stained undershirt. Everything about him drooped, hung, sagged.

  “Mabel, what in tarnation are you doin’?” He put his hands on his hips. “Come on in and take off that dress. You’re fixin’ to spoil it.”

  There wasn’t a hint of authority in his words. Just weakness. Exhaustion. Plum wore out.

  Mad Mabel didn’t obey him. What she did was raise her voice, singing some tune I couldn’t place. The words didn’t make sense, like she was making them up as she went along. She went to swinging that rag even more wild in the air. Her dress slipped off one of her shoulders and she didn’t bother to push it back up, like she didn’t even notice.

  Ray raced me to the old Watson ranch. I didn’t know why I even tried catching him. He’d always been faster than me by a mile. Still, I pumped my legs, not caring how my skirt flipped up on my thighs or how my shoes rubbed against the backs of my heels. I’d not felt that free in months. It was worth a blister or two.

  Yards ahead of me he dropped in the dirt of what used to be the Watsons’ front yard. I made it to him, huffing and puffing, trying to catch a breath.

  “What took you so long?” he asked, winking up at me.

  I kicked dust on his feet. He laughed and put out his hand.

  “Help me up,” he said.

  “Nuh-uh.” I stepped back and crossed my arms, jutting out one of my hips like Mama often did. “Get your own self up, ya lazy dog.”

  He did just that, but not before tossing a handful of dirt at me. I shoved him, almost knocking him back to the ground. We never meant any harm. I knew he could’ve hurt me if he’d wanted to. But it wasn’t in him, much as it could have been, the way his father’d mistreated him.

  “Come on,” he said, nodding at the Watsons’ house.

  I followed him to the porch that wrapped all the way around both sides of the ranch house. I remembered Mrs. Watson’d kept rocking chairs on that porch back in the day when they still lived there. Mama’d sit in one, sipping sweet tea and chatting with Mrs. Watson about whatever it was women had to say when times were good.

  We’d been invited to eat supper there many times. I’d made chase with their boys around the ranch, playing pirate ship on their porch on days when Mama and Mrs. Watson were inside putting up cans of food for winter.

  It would’ve surprised me if Ray and his family ever got an invitation to so much as step inside that place. Rich people didn’t like to rub shoulders so much with poor folk. Not in the long-gone days of plenty, at least.

  The Watsons’ house had stood empty m
ore than a year. That was how long it’d been since that family had packed up their things, even tying the rocking chairs to the side of the truck, and rumbled away from Red River.

  They’d lost everything, that was what Daddy told me. Their crop failed, their stock died out, and the bank came calling in their debts.

  Same old story all over Cimarron County. All of Oklahoma, too.

  Only thing that land was good for anymore was rounding up the plague of jackrabbits for the slaughter.

  On the day they’d left, Mrs. Watson had promised Mama she’d write, let us know where they ended up and if they were all right. Far as I knew, Mama had never gotten that letter.

  “Ray, you think you’ll ever leave?” I asked.

  “You mean Red River?” He turned toward the house, tugging at a loose nail in the porch.

  “Yeah,” I answered.

  “Don’t rightly know.” Not getting the nail to budge, he gave up and put both hands in his overall pockets. “Guess it matters what my ma wants to do.”

  “I hope you don’t,” I said. “Leave, I mean.”

  He nodded and scratched at his chin.

  “If my ma wants to go West, I gotta go, too,” he said. “Can’t stay here all my life. Ain’t nothin’ for me to do but go, I reckon.”

  I held myself against a shiver that traveled up my skin. Seemed the day was getting colder.

  “I’d miss you,” I said.

  He squinted at me, giving me his most crooked smile. “Course you would.”

  Ray Jones always did know how to make me laugh.

  I shoved him, and he tried to run from me. In our chasing I got all turned around so I was looking in the direction of home.

  My smile dropped hard as a brick along with any hope in the blue-sky day. My shiver turned to a shudder. Fear froze me all the way to the soles of my feet.

  “Ray,” I said.

  He was still laughing and kicked a toe-full of dirt on my shoes. “You’re gonna miss me so bad.”

  “No, Ray.” My voice was full of panting breath and shaky quakes. “It’s coming.”

  “What’re you talkin’ about?”

  I lifted my hand and pointed, not knowing what words to use so he’d know what I saw. “It’s coming.”

  He turned and was quiet, seeing what headed our way.

  Birds came flying over our heads, moving fast along the pushing wind. So strong that wind blew, they hardly had to flap a wing. They didn’t squawk or twitter or scream even. No time for alarm. Only time to flee.

  It was coming.

  Needle pricks of flying sand stung my arms, my legs, my face. It worked its way into my eyes and my nose. When I opened my mouth it stippled on my tongue. My ears filled up with the angry, hateful roaring as darkness itself came rolling across the fields.

  It was coming.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Pastor liked to preach about the wrath of God flattening the old Bible cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. His eyes would take on a certain kind of wild glow when he talked about the sulfur raining down on the sinners. He’d say how Lot and his family escaped the blazing anger of God by the skin of their teeth. I wondered if Pastor wasn’t disappointed that they got away.

  “But Lot’s wife, in her unfaithfulness, turned to look back,” he’d roar. “And for her godless doubt, she got turned into a pillar of salt. Praise God!”

  Red River was no Sodom, and Cimarron County no Gomorrah. Still Pastor’d told us the dust storms were the weight of God’s punishing hand for our sin.

  Like Lot’s wife, I couldn’t keep from turning to see the rolling punishment headed our way. I didn’t turn to salt, but the weight of fear fell heavy on me anyhow, making me like to crumble to nothing.

  Taller than any building, wider than the whole Panhandle of Oklahoma, darker than any night I’d ever seen, the full fury of dust rushed toward Ray and me. Thick, evil-black earth moved across the land, picking up what was left loose and working it into its crushing, rolling, sideways cyclone.

  Above it, the sky stayed bright as God’s promise to never destroy the earth with floodwater again.

  He never did promise not to destroy it with dirt, though.

  Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.

  “We gotta get down in the cellar,” Ray hollered at me, grabbing hold of my wrist.

  “No,” I yelled, wishing he knew how I’d rather die than go underground. “I want to go home.”

  “Storm’s gonna hit there first.” He tugged me, making me turn around toward him. “We’ll be safe if we get in that cellar. Come on.”

  I yanked my hand from him.

  “We’d get buried,” I screamed.

  Turning to see the storm once more, I saw an outline of somebody running ahead of the roller. Wild hair stood up all over her head; her dress was blown this way and that, showing her legs all the way up to her under-things. I tried to get to her, to fight my way against the force of wind. I stumbled and fell. Stumbled and fell. I screamed in frustration that I was not so strong as the storm.

  “Beanie,” I hollered, hoping she’d hear me over the roaring wind.

  She stopped and I struggled to see her face, unable to keep my eyes open too long for the stinging dust. Lifting her arms, Beanie turned away from me, reaching for the swirling dirt like she hoped to hold it back, to keep it from getting to me. The sun seemed to work with her, breaking through the pelting dust with small beams that glowed every color I could imagine.

  “Come on,” Ray yelled, his voice cracking.

  Thick and hazy the air moved around Beanie, moved around me. Again I tried to get to her, and again I got knocked down. She somehow stood firm in the charging wind.

  “Beanie,” I screamed over and over again. I crawled, my hands and knees sinking into the shifting sands beneath me. No matter how I tried I couldn’t get close enough.

  Then the dust overtook her.

  She was gone. Swallowed up. I couldn’t see so much as her outline or her shadow. It had come on so quick, the roller. Squinting, I tried to find her, but all I could see was black and tan and gray. Even though I knew it couldn’t help, I kept calling out for her.

  It didn’t take long for the storm to take me, too. It gobbled me up, chewing on my flesh with the stones and scraps of sharp things that flew around in its cycle.

  All I could think to do was fall to the ground and curl into a ball, holding my face in my hands. I screamed with my mouth closed. I screamed for terror and for anger and for the feeling that I’d never be found.

  I prayed and prayed.

  Save Beanie. Save Beanie. Save Beanie.

  Every inch of dust that fell over me pushed me down, down, down. I feared soon I’d end up underground.

  “I wanna go home,” I whimpered. “I want my mama. I want my mama now.”

  Lost in the wind, lost in the storm. Hidden from help by the inky-thick sky.

  Nobody’s gonna find you here.

  Eddie’s ghost howled along on the wind.

  Ain’t nobody comin’ lookin’ for you.

  But Beanie, she’d come. She must’ve known the storm was brewing. Probably smelled it on the air. She’d always felt them before anybody else.

  Beanie had come.

  She’s a idiot, ain’t she?

  But she had known to come, that I’d needed her. She’d figured that much out.

  Nobody’s gonna find you here.

  Daddy would. And Mama’d sit, wringing her hands with worry.

  They ain’t your real family. They don’t love you.

  They did love me, I knew that much.

  Nah, they just feel sorry for you. Pity ain’t love.

  Rage blended with my fear, pulling a savage shriek from me. I tried with all my mental strength to remind myself that Eddie was dead. He had a bullet in his head and he was dead, never to bother me again. Dead and gone. Still, his memory haunted, pulsing against me like the shredding storm.

  You’re never gonna make it back, his voice whispered on the wind.
r />   The black cloud of dirt rolled over me, pulling at me, trying to make me join its turning, churning path.

  Pushing my hands against my head even harder, I held myself tight.

  I was as good as lost.

  I walked into Meemaw’s bedroom. It was a waking dream and I knew it. Still it seemed as real as anything else. And better by miles than hearing Eddie’s haunting.

  Mama stood by the bed. A sheet covered the lump that I knew to be Meemaw’s lifeless body. Touching the crisp white cotton, Mama asked if I wanted to feel the cold skin.

  I made a sound from the back of my throat, wanting to say no, but afraid if I opened my mouth I’d let in too much dirt.

  Snaps of static popped blue in the air when Mama pulled the sheet up, sparking bright and cracking loud. Meemaw’s eyes jolted open.

  “Good morning, Mother,” Mama said.

  Loose and shaky, Meemaw’s head rolled to one side so she could face me. Her mouth opened once, twice, again before any noise came out. The jaws creaked like a thirsty hinge. A small moaning escaped, sticking in her throat like a warped door getting forced open.

  “The Lord is near,” she rasped, her eyes piercing through the haze in the room. “He sees you. He knows where you’re at. All you gotta do is be still.”

  Her eyelids snapped shut and her head creaked back to the way it was before. The sheet dropped gentle over her face.

  “She’s at rest,” Mama said.

  Outside Meemaw’s window, the black swirl of dust raged.

  My name. I heard my name hollered through the still-roaring wind. The voice wasn’t a dream, or a haunting either. My name. It was real. The voice belonged to Ray. It drew nearer and nearer until I felt hands groping, landing on my back.

  “Ray?” I said, dust rushing into my open mouth.

  “Where’s Beanie?” he asked.

  I tried to tell him I didn’t know, but all I managed was a choking cough.

  “We’ll find her,” he said. “We will.”

  My name again. A deeper voice called it out. And another voice, deeper still. Daddy and Millard. I let Ray yell to them. He kept his arms around me and I was glad to be held down so I wouldn’t get lost again.