Out of the Dust

the way i see it, hard times aren't only about money, or drought, or dust. hard times are about losing spirit, and hope, and what happens when dreams dry up.

And I know now that all the time I was trying to get out of the dust, the fact is, what I am, I am because of the dust. And what I am is good enough. Even for me.

I hear the first drops. Like the tapping of a stranger at the door of a dream, the rain changes everything.

I have a hunger, for more than food. I have a hunger bigger than Joyce City. I want tongues to tie, and eyes to shine at me like they do at Mad Dog Craddock. Course they never will, not with my hands all scarred up, looking like the earth itself, all parched and rough and cracking, but if I played right enough, maybe they would see past my hands. Maybe they could feel at ease with me again, and maybe then, I could feel at east with myself.

each day after class lets out,each morning before it begins, i sit at the school piano and make my hands work. in spite of the pain, in spite of the stiffness and scars. i make my hands play piano.i have practiced my best piece over and over till my arms throb.

Apples Ma's apple blossoms have turned to hard green balls. To eat them now, so tart, would turn my mouth inside out, would make my stomach groan. But in just a couple months, after the baby is born, those apples will be ready and we'll make pies and sauce and pudding and dumplings and cake and cobbler and have just plain apples to take to school and slice with my pocket knife and eat one juicy piece at a time until my mouth is clean and fresh and my breath is nothing but apple. June 1934

I turn my back on him as he goes, and settle myself in the parlor, and touch Ma's piano. My fingers leave sighs in the dust.

When I rode the train west, I went looking for something, but I didn't see anything wonderful. I didn't see anything better than what I already had. Home.

...the morning with the whole day waiting, full of promise, the night of quiet, of no expectations, of rest. And the certainty of home, the one I live in, and the one that lives in me.

By the summer I turned nine Daddy had given up about having a boy. He tried making me do.

And she knows how to come into a home and not step on the toes of a ghost.

His mother is wishing her boy would come home." Lots of mothers wishing that these days, while their sons walk to California, where rain comes, and the color green doesn't seem like such a miracle, and hope rises daily, like sap in a stem.

Mr. Noble and Mr. Romney have a bet going as to who can kill the most rabbits. It all started at the rabbit drive last Monday over to Sturgis

Ivy Huxford kept peeking out and giving reports of who was there, and how she never saw so many seats filled in the Palace, and that she didn’t think they could squeeze a rattlesnake into the back even if he paid full price, the place was so packed.