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Albion College
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Those
who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God.
--Thomas Jefferson
The dust swirled around her feet as she walked;
Sarah kept her eyes down to the road. She did not look out into the
fields.
The baby she pressed close to her chest
squirmed and began to cry. Sarah turned her head slightly and shooshed
softly into the child’s ear, rubbing gentle circles on the girl’s
back with her fingers. The baby quieted. Sarah sighed deeply through the
white cloth that covered her nose and mouth to keep out the dust. She
blinked her eyes hard to moisten them, keeping them closed for a moment
to keep the wetness from tumbling out. A light feeling in her lower lip
made her tighten her jaw. She twisted her neck and placed her lips
against the top of the baby’s head. She did not cry.
* * *
They had married twelve years before, when
grain prices were high. Sarah was young then. They settled into his
West-Kansas farm, nine hundred and sixty acres of soft golden wheat,
wheat that would ripple and roll with the prairie breeze. Those fields
were beautiful to her; she often looked out on them from the house,
thinking of him as he worked to make a harvest. She herself had been
born on a farm; she helped him to care for the livestock, learned to
perform various small maintenances on the machinery that he used to
break the land and raise the wheat. She tended his house as well. Each
day as she prepared his supper she would watch for his return from the
fields. He came in with proud eyes beneath his sweat-soaked brow. She
could see he was proud of his hands, proud of the work they did, proud
of his fields.
Each day when he came in it was the same. She
watched for him; when she saw that he was coming she would wet a cloth
and stand in the door, waiting. Leaning on him slightly and rising on
her toes she kissed his smiling lips, after which she would wipe the
sweat from his face and neck with the wet cloth. She would lead him to
the bed, removing his dirty clothing and working his aching muscles with
her hands; she would make love to him, and when it was over she finished
making his dinner while he napped. At supper he would talk of the crop,
of grain prices and autumn rains. His words said such things as,
“Ought to be a fine crop come selling time” and “Should get almost
two-fifty a bushel this year”, but to her his voice spoke with pride
of more magical things; his voice spoke of shaping the earth and making
the wheat grow. One evening when his words were forming for her a
glittering picture of the new reaper he thought they would be able to
afford with the profit from the coming harvest, she asked him quietly,
“Do you think we’ll have enough extra this year to buy that fine
wooden cradle?” He paused, his amazing machine forgotten for the
moment. Spoon suspended halfway to his mouth, he looked at her silently,
furrowed forehead worrying his eyes.
“Are you . . .?” he hesitantly began to
ask.
“No,” she answered, “No, not yet. I just
think we ought to think about buying it now, if we can afford to.” She
waited for him to answer, her breath suspended and her hands clasped
under the table.
He sighed, relaxing his brow. “We’ll
see,” he said, and he went back to his supper with a distant look in
his eyes. He spoke no more that night, and she did not mention the
cradle again after that.
At night she would lean against him, her head
on his chest, listening to his strong heart beating. A good man, she
thought; a strong man. Lightly running her fingertips
through the dark, curled hair on his chest as he slept, she would dream
of the children he would father. Good children, she thought; healthy
children.
And then grain prices began to fall. Each year
brought larger crops; the fall rains and winter storms flooded the
plains with wheat, millions of bushels of the stuff that were loaded
onto the trains and sent east for bread. And each year the East sent
back less money for more wheat. She could see that he was worried; he
did not speak any more at supper, and he did not smile when he came in
from the fields. She still met him at the door each day, wiping the
sweat from him; now, when she pressed the cloth across his brow, he
would look at her forehead, not into her eyes. When they made love he
was often passive, distracted. It seemed to her that he had grown
older-- his face seemed to have become permanently creased with the
effort of drawing the wheat from the fields. She knew it was not the
work that had aged him, though; he had loved pouring his sweat into the
land. Once, it had kept him young and strong. What had made his face
older was the worrying, the frustration that came from knowing that no
matter how much grain he willed up from the fields this year he would
not make a profit.
Her own face in the mirror looked older to her
as well. Although she too worried that the harvest would not bring a
profit, it was not that thought that had drawn the flesh from her
cheeks, speckling her hair with gray. They had been married for more
than ten years, and she was still childless. Once, when he was out in
the fields, she looked at her image in the mirror, forcing herself to
say the word—“Barren,” she whispered, touching her lean cheeks in
the mirror. “Barren,” she said, more loudly, tracing the lines of
her face with her fingers, afraid to look into the eyes of the woman she
saw reflected. The word had been a part of her life ever since; she
heard it sometimes in his heartbeat as he
slept, whispered in her ear as she prepared his supper, cruelly repeated
in the squeaking of the windmill that drew their water-- barren, barren,
barren . . . She fought to keep hoping, faithfully waiting each day at
the door, praying at night as she stroked his chest, praying to a high
and distant God that it might not be so. The struggle had aged her.
* * *
Two years before, the summer rains and winter
snows had produced the largest crop ever. He brought in the harvest, and
he sold it for almost nothing. Grain was like dust, abundant and
worthless. He did not talk anymore. One day she did not meet him at the
door, and he seemed not to notice; he went to the bed and slept fitfully
until she woke him for supper. After that, the rains stopped. There was
no rain in August, no rain in
September. The feed crop burned in the fields. She no longer slept with
her head on his chest; he slept fitfully, and she was forced to the far
edge of the bed to avoid his thrashing. They lived in silence, never
touching, hardly speaking; “Supper,” she would say to wake him, and
he would eat without a word. Some days that was the only word that
passed between them.
A dry winter passed; spring came, and still no
rain. The strong winds of March began to rush over the fields, lifting
and swirling the topsoil, pushing it up against houses, cars; the dust
piled as high as fence rows, and dust storms drove the farmers from
their fields. Some packed their families and started west, the doors of
their tiny balloon-frame houses left open behind them. Most stayed,
however; like her husband, they continued to go into the fields each
day, slicing up the dry, sun-baked earth with their steel shear plows.
They tore up the earth, and they watched the skies for rain. They seeded
the earth, and the rain did not come. They harvested the little grain
that was not devoured by herds of starving jackrabbits and clouds of
humming grasshoppers, and the rain had not come; more fields lay
abandoned each month.
While her husband worked in the fields, Sarah
swept. She swept the dust from their tiny house, and when she had
finished she began again. The fine gray dust seemed
to creep in as quickly as she could sweep it out, whispering through the
tiniest openings, covering everything. It made its way into their
cupboards, into their bed, into their food; it ground between their
teeth when they ate. It became a part of Sarah’s life; dust and
sweeping became her life.
And then one day he returned early from the
fields. He stood in the doorway with an expression that she had never
seen; she looked at him, the broom in her hands halted in mid-sweep. His
eyes scraped from her brittle, gray hair to the frayed, dust-smudged hem
of her dress; his lips were slightly parted, his breathing deep, heavy
and slow. Sweat had beaded on his brow, absorbing dust. He finished his
inspection and fixed his eyes on hers; as he unblinkingly stared into
her, he pressed his lips together and swallowed. His breaths became
shorter, faster.
Unbuttoning his shirt, he stepped across the
room to the bed. She stood thinking for a moment, then began to remove
her dress. Naked, they met at the side of the bed. His eyebrows pressed
together; he lifted a hand to touch her cheek, hesitated, and wrapped it
around the side of her neck instead. His thumb pressed up into the soft
flesh under her chin; he pushed her firmly and slowly down until she sat
upon the bed. He looked down at her as if he were seeing her body for
the first time; she looked far older than her almost-thirty years. She
leaned back into the bed, lifted her legs onto it; he
settled clumsily between them, allowing most of his weight to press down
on her. Uncertainly at first he began to move against her, his head bent
down into her shoulder; she lay motionless, her arms at her sides. Sweat
poured from his body as he plowed into her; soon they were both covered
in a salty, dusty moisture that hid her tears. When it was over, he
slept. She ran her fingers through the hair on his chest; it was gray
now, like hers. She remembered that it had been dark once. Without
waking him, she put on her dress and went back to sweeping.
* * *
When she discovered that she was pregnant she
began to think about leaving. She thought about it while she swept,
thought about packing up their beaten Ford and driving to California.
She thought of ways to ask him, made arguments in her head. Others had
gone; it was said that there was work in California. More and more
children of those who stayed were contracting the illness, the “dust
pneumonia”; she would convince him
to leave the farm, to find a new life.
When they were together, though, she could not
speak. At supper, while he ate, her hands would pull at each other
nervously under the table; she would take a breath intending to speak,
but the words were lost just behind her tongue. It had been so long
since they had spoken, it seemed a very difficult thing to her. He did
not say anything to indicate that he noticed her distress. He ate in
silence, just as he had for years, his attention not really on the food,
his eyes elsewhere, distracted. She did notice, however, that at times,
when he thought she wasn’t looking, he would give her a curious sort
of
glance; he always looked away before she could guess its meaning.
Finally she broke the silence.
“Joe,” she managed.
He stopped his chewing, looking up from his
food with slightly raised eyebrows.
She waited for him to speak, wanted him to
speak. He did not; he waited. She looked down at the table.
“Joe,” she said again, her voice breaking
on the word; “I’m pregnant,” she breathed. She turned her eyes to
see his reaction. His expression did not change. He sighed deeply,
looked away from her as if thinking, and then resumed chewing.
That night he slept a still, deep sleep.
The next day he bought her a wooden cradle.
* * *
After that she would hum softly to herself as
she swept. Although they still did not talk, and their days were much
the same as they had been for many months, she could once again lay her
head on his chest while he slept. Her fingers drifted through the gray,
curled hair; she thought about California. She knew why she had never
asked him to leave; she did not need to ask him to know that he would
not. She knew that he would not leave his farm, just as she knew that he
would work the dry, barren land until the dust rose up to cover him. She
did not ask to leave; she floated her fingers across his chest and
prayed for rain.
The rain did not come. One evening, after the
pregnancy had begun to show, she caught him looking at her as she swept.
The air escaped from her chest, causing the song she had been humming to
fall to the swirling dust. His face was angry and red; his breathing was
throaty, rattling slightly as he inhaled, growling softly as he exhaled.
He stood abruptly; for a brief second she was afraid. He strode to the
door and left the house; she stood for a moment, unsure of what to do.
Walking to the still-opened door she watched him walk out into the
field, watched until he wandered too far and she lost him in the night.
She stood at the door a while longer, worrying, wondering.
When she woke later that night he was beside
her, sleeping fitfully.
* * *
She gave birth to a girl. She lay exhausted in
the bed, cradling the baby to her chest. When the doctor had gone he
came in and stood at the foot of the bed. Looking down, he glanced a
moment at the child, and then his eyes met the tired eyes of his wife.
His face bore no expression.
“Hope,” Sarah said. “Her name is Hope.”
His eyes became distant, looking somewhere
above the woman’s face. He tilted his head back as if to nod, inhaled
deeply as if to sigh. He did neither; rather, he turned and walked out
of the house. She watched his back as he stood beyond the open doorway,
framed against the still night. He looked down, then up to the sun that
balanced on the horizon. She watched as he slowly lowered his head to
the side and spat on the ground. She closed her eyes, allowing her tired
head to tumble towards the baby in her arms.
* * *
For two months the baby was healthy. For two
months Sarah sang to her while he was in the fields, smiling at the
baby’s bubbling laughter. For two months she rubbed her back when she
cried, cradling the girl to her breast. She watched the baby for signs
of the dust pneumonia, sweeping forcefully, beating the dust away from
her baby. And then the baby grew ill, her breathing troubled.
They both slept fitfully now, husband and wife.
Once, a nightmare awakened her; the vision of a suffocating blanket of
dust descending on the sleeping baby caused her to rush to the cradle.
The baby was as she had left it, wheezing softly as it slept. She
listened for a few moments to its breathing, decided, and returned to
bed.
* * *
In the morning she asked him.
She pretended to sleep as he got out of bed and
began to dress, gathering courage to speak.
“Joe,” she said, more loudly than she had
intended. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, pulling on his socks.
He stopped, listening.
“Hope is sick, Joe,” she said softly.
“It’s the dust, Joe. She’ll die if we stay here.”
He said nothing; he did not turn to look at
her, and she could not see his face.
“We could go west, Joe, we could go to
California. There’s work there, Joe, there’s work that you could do,
and I could help, and the baby would be out of the dust,
Joe. Please, Joe. We could leave today. Please.”
He sat still for a long time; she waited for
him to speak. She felt weak but relieved; the effort of speaking had
exhausted her. As he sat with his back to her,
however, she felt tension begin to fill her body once again.
Finally he moved. He pulled his socks on, put
his shoes on, and walked out of the house without looking at her.
Sarah’s eyes filled with tears. She knew he had gone out to the fields
to work. She knew he would never leave his farm. She rose, dressed
herself and the baby, preparing the few things the baby needed. She
thought about taking the car, but she had never learned how to drive it.
She paused, remembering how, shortly after they were married, Joe had
mentioned to her that it would be a good idea for her to be able to
drive the car, in case there were an emergency. She shook the thought
from her head and finished packing.
She wrapped the baby in a blanket to protect if
from the blowing dust, walking out of the house, walking to the road.
She started walking westward; it was a few miles, she knew, until she
would come to a major road. There, she thought, maybe she could find
someone going to California. Maybe someone would be kind enough to give
her a ride. The dust swirled around her feet as she walked; Sarah kept
her eyes down to the
road. She did not look out into the fields.
* * *
He squinted, watching as she walked down the
road, watching as the dust swirled up around her. His jaw clenched; he
swallowed, painfully squeezing his dry throat. His eyes still watching
her, he turned his head to the side to spit. His tongue scraped against
the roof of his mouth; he choked slightly. Blinking hard, he looked down
to the barren earth that surrounded him. He returned to his plowing. He
did not look up again.
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