On Shifting Sand Read online

  “Too peaceful, if you ask me.”

  “How can a home be too peaceful?”

  “Too quiet. What would be the harm of bringing in a bit of noise?”

  “And what kind of noise would that be?” Though I know what he’s getting at.

  “Maybe a little one, cooin’ in the corner.” He says it with an affected accent, as if that will speak to my rancher’s daughter’s heart.

  “More like cryin’,” I say, steeling my resolve. “’Cause he’s hungry. You taken a look at the ledger books lately? I don’t know how I’m going to feed the four of us in the next months. Let alone five.”

  “We can leave those worries off for a time, don’t you think?”

  He runs his knuckle, the one on his first finger, up the length of my arm, catching my heartbeat up with its travel, and that’s all it takes.

  Later, after, while Russ rests in slack-jawed sleep, I climb out of bed, put on my nightgown, and creep to the bathroom for a washup before checking on the children. They, too, sleep with the peace that comes from innocence. Satisfied to be every inch alone, I make my way through the dark of the kitchen to the door that leads downstairs to the feed and hardware store below. It is ours now. My brother, Greg, and I own the property, but it’s been up to Russ and me to run it since Uncle Glen died ten years ago, and that’s just about the last time it turned a profit big enough to live on. The little it brings in supplements Russ’s church salary, and minding the store gives us all something to do during these long days of drought.

  Streetlight streams through the big glass window, casting the letters Merrill’s Tools and Feed in shadow across the floor. Around a sharp corner at the bottom of the steps is a small storeroom, dwindled to empty these days, as we can barely move the inventory we have on the shelves. The storeroom has a door that opens out to a platform where the trucks backed up to unload pallets of cattle feed in the days when local farmers had the wherewithal to buy such a thing. On a hook beside it is my ratty gray cardigan sweater, a gift from my mother to my father that did nothing but baffle him from the minute she finished the last stitch.

  I dig into the pocket of the sweater and find what I’m looking for—a half-crumpled pack of cigarettes and a book of matches. With deft fingers, I slip one out of the pack and another one into my pocket and strike a match against the darkness. I touch the flame to the tip of the cigarette and inhale until it glows red, then shake the match and drop it between the slats of the loading dock.

  Peaceful, Russ had said. Not so peaceful, perhaps, if he finds me here, and I briefly wonder if I wouldn’t have been safer staying inside the storeroom closet. But our bedroom window is on the side of the building, meaning we never have complete darkness for sleeping, but also assuring me that the smoke from my cigarette isn’t going to drift in past the starched white curtains.

  I take another drag, determined not to be wasteful and let the cigarette burn to nothing of its own accord. I only get one a day, and not even every day—only those nights when Russ falls asleep first. Otherwise, he is always there. Working in the store while I clean the house upstairs. Sitting beside me on the sofa, across from me at the table. Staring down at me from behind the pulpit while I sit with the children in the pew at church.

  Another drag. I hear the burning of the paper and tobacco. Half-gone already, and I touch the one in my pocket, counting. Calculating, again, just how many are left, wondering when I’ll have another perfect night like this one.

  Clear and cool and clean.

  “Beautiful night, isn’t it?”

  The voice startles me so, I fumble the cigarette before stubbing it out on the railing and dropping the butt to the platform, using my toe to nudge it between the planks.

  “Good heavens, Mrs. Brown. I didn’t expect to see you out at this hour.”

  Merrilou Brown lives across the street and down the block from the store, having stubbornly refused to sell her property even as business after business built itself up on what the town council renamed Commerce Street in an effort to persuade her and her husband to move. She is a tiny woman, bespectacled and beloved. Each week, the children in Sunday school scramble to measure themselves back-to-back against her, and it is an anticipated rite of passage to be taller than Miss Merrilou. Most achieve that status before the age of twelve.

  “Luther needed a walk. And at his age, who am I to say no?”

  Luther is a once-white poodle, his coat a perfect match for the neat cap of curls on Mrs. Brown’s own head. The two are inseparable, more so since Mr. Brown, as massive in stature as Mrs. Brown is diminutive, has taken to passing his days listening to gospel radio and writing fiery letters to stations whose programs fail to line up with Scripture.

  “It’s late, is all,” I say, tugging my sweater tightly against me. “You might feel safer walking on the lighted side of the street.”

  She makes a dismissive sound. “I’ve been out and about around here before there was a street. What kind of life would it be if a person can’t take her buddy out of her own backyard? I noticed you weren’t in prayer meeting tonight. Thought you might be ill.”

  “I’m fine. The baby, she was sick.”

  Before she can respond, Luther takes that moment to lift his leg and do his business against the side of our building. Thankfully, I have a mask of darkness to hide my irritation.

  “That’s it, then,” she says, unmistakable triumph in her voice. “Here, let me give you this.” She wears a battered sweater of her own, and fishes around in its pocket as she approaches. Even though the loading platform is less than three feet off the ground, I loom above her like a monster. The night crackles with the sound of cellophane, and I see she is holding something up to me in her tiny hand. “A peppermint. For when you go back inside. I never developed a taste for the things myself, but I had a grandma who was never without her corncob pipe. And let me tell you, her breath . . .”

  She makes a high-pitched sound that sends Luther into a frenzy as he howls to match her tone.

  “Thank you.” I take it with sincere gratitude and hope the howling won’t wake Russ.

  “And maybe a spritz of perfume in your hair. It’s the hair that really traps the smell.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “And don’t worry. Your secret’s safe with me. And with Luther here, so long as he doesn’t learn to talk.”

  I indulge her joke with a shallow laugh. “Really, it’s not so much of a secret.” Russ knows, of course. He simply doesn’t approve. And because he doesn’t approve, I think it best he doesn’t know.

  “Still,” she says, “I won’t breathe a word.”

  “Well, I appreciate that.” She feels more like an ally than a conspirator, and I make a grateful show of unwrapping the mint and popping it into my mouth while Luther prances an arthritic circle around her leg. “Thanks again,” I speak around the candy.

  Mrs. Brown scoops Luther up, wishes me a good night, and sets off in a purposeful stride. The second cigarette lingers, forgotten, in my pocket while I suck on the candy, the taste of tobacco mixing in soothing concert with the mint, until it is dissolved to nothingness on my tongue.

  Once I’m back upstairs, having stolen my way into the bathroom, I wash my hands, tap a drop of Ariel eau de toilette on my fingertips, and run them through my hair, ready to slip back into bed beside my slumbering husband, all evidence of my secret erased.

  CHAPTER 2

  LIKE A BURDEN AROUND MY NECK, I carry all my secrets from Russ. The smoking, for one, though he knows but allows me the satisfaction of indulging without judgment. And the fact that I spend time each morning mercilessly plucking gray hairs from my head. I once spent an entire year inflating our grocery bill by ten cents every week and stashing away the extra dime until I had enough to buy a radio for our bedroom. I surprised him with it on his birthday but kept the details of the scheme to myself. I’d been halfway to a down payment on a new settee when the price of wheat collapsed and the earth dried up and that
extra dime made all the difference in the world.

  Pa says I have enough Indian blood in me to make me a liar. Just not enough to make me a good one. Says there is nothing like a redskin mask to hide the truth. My mother proved that well enough, as she was a half-breed who claimed to love him. How any woman could claim to love such a man as my pa, I’ll never understand. He was steel-tempered and cruel, lashing out with a switch or a belt if he had one at the ready, and with a slicing remark if he didn’t. His marriage to my mother was more like a trap she couldn’t escape, and I never witnessed a day of her life that didn’t include some sort of taunting torture.

  I remember standing next to her casket, envying her escape, and laying out the plans for my own. Even then, at ten years old, I knew my escape would be with a man. Not one like my father, though. My mind constructed someone the opposite of him in every way—somebody without sharp edges at the ends of his words. A man with strong arms and a soft heart who could fill a room, but still leave enough space for the rest of us to breathe. I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to look up into the face of my brother.

  “It’s going to be all right, Denola. I’m here. I’ll take care of you.”

  For a time I thought maybe Greg would be my escape. Pa always declared my brother to have itchin’ feet and highfalutin dreams, and I prayed that he might take me along wherever his feet and dreams took him. When the war came and he signed up, I think I would have gladly stowed myself away in his duffel bag rather than face those coming cold years with my father. Greg fought our war in France, I fought my war at home, until the day Russ Merrill offered me a path of desertion, free and clear.

  I have these moments when I wonder if I loved him. Ask him and he’ll say not only did he love me first, he also loved me more. And that’s true. He had the luxury of loving me, because he wasn’t running away from anything. I wasn’t a source of rescue, and that’s all he was to me. I love him now, of course, but since he loved me first, I fear sometimes I’ll never catch up. And now that there’s nothing to run from, I wonder if he’ll ever be enough.

  The morning Russ says he wants to invite an old friend for dinner—the same man our son had prayed for earlier in the week—I agree with my practiced enthusiasm.

  “You realize,” I say, “it can’t be anything too fancy. I’ll need to keep our groceries the same and stretch the portions.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be grateful to have the meal.” We are sitting in our kitchen, lingering with the last of the morning’s coffee and listening for the bell over the door to the store downstairs.

  “And it can’t be Sunday, when Pa comes. I can stretch for one more, but not for two, unless I make a stew. But I wouldn’t want to make a stew for company.”

  “I told him tonight. Six o’clock, and we can listen to the Harvest Hour after.”

  “Think you could watch Ariel for a bit then, this afternoon? Rosalie couldn’t take me yesterday because the baby was sick, and if I don’t do something about this hair—”

  He interrupts me with a kiss. “You’re beautiful just as you are.”

  Before I protest about the kerchief on my head and the bits of breakfast on my apron, Ariel comes bounding into the room, her curls flying wild behind her. Without the slightest hesitation in her steps, she bolts straight into her father’s arms, and he lifts her high off the ground, as if months rather than a single night’s sleep have kept them apart.

  “There she is, the princess of dreamland.” He says the same thing every morning, and has since we first watched her slumber in the packing-box cradle next to our bed the night she was born.

  She buries her face in his neck, and any reservations I have about leaving the two to each other’s company disappears. I envy Russ’s ease with her, the affection that seems to come to him as easy as breathing. I don’t have a single memory of running into my father’s arms, or any embrace that wasn’t fueled by hurt. Perhaps that’s why, with both my children, I have to steel myself for each embrace, and sometimes feel painful relief when they pass me by. I tell myself it’s more important, anyway, that a daughter feel the ease of her father’s love. Might keep her from running so fast to find it someplace else.

  “Good morning, sunshine,” I offer, hoping I don’t sound like the interloper I feel myself to be. “We have Cream of Wheat this morning. With brown sugar. Would you like that?”

  She scrambles down from her father’s embrace and climbs into her place at the table.

  “Where’s Ronnie?”

  “He’s already gone to school,” I say. “You are a late sleepyhead this morning.”

  The bell rings above the store entrance downstairs, calling Russ away, and I go to the stove to set a small pot of water to boil. Ariel comes to my side, hugs my leg, and I touch her hair, thinking for a minute that I might take her with me when I go to my friend’s house to get my hair done. She could play with Rosalie’s new baby girl while we chat. But then she asks a question about how long it takes for the water to boil, and why the boiling bubbles don’t float away the way soap bubbles do, and how come they call it Cream of Wheat when it’s dry like dust with no cream in it, and if she could have three spoons of sugar instead of two, please please please . . . I answer each question, careful to make my voice soothing and kind—even giving her the extra spoonful of sugar, though none are heaping. With each answer, I picture a long stretch of silence while Rosalie shampoos my hair. Finally, as Ariel tucks into her bowl of warm, creamy cereal, I kiss the top of her head and say, “You are going to have so much fun helping your daddy in the store today.”

  By noon I have cleaned up the breakfast dishes, made the beds, and dragged our sweeper across the bit of carpet in the front room. The whole of our home could be cleaned in under an hour, something that pleases and vexes me in equal measure. When we first moved in, newly married and poor as possums, with a baby due most any time, we’d been thankful enough at Uncle Glen’s generosity to give us the apartment, rent free, as long as I helped out in the store downstairs while Russ was still away at school. I can look back now and count it as my favorite time of life, the evenings of solitude eating the warmed-over dinners while the baby kicked within me. I loved the anticipation of Russ’s coming home on the weekends, and even more the quiet that settled in after he drove away on Sunday evening. It had seemed, at the time, so very adequate. One room for us, one for the baby. I painted it all a bright yellow that a dissatisfied customer had returned to the store, and filled it with bits and pieces discarded in the street or pilfered right from under my father’s nose.

  And there, in the same way we now watch the skies in hope for rain, I’d waited to become truly, exuberantly happy.

  Downstairs, the feed and hardware store is half the size it used to be. Meaning the space is the same, but the inventory has been reduced to the imperishable: small tools, gardening implements, household fixtures, and the like. The price of feed has risen higher than the thin white clouds that refuse to rain, so much of the stockroom sits empty.

  After seeing Ariel softly to sleep for her afternoon nap and hollering down the stairs to the shop to tell Russ to check on her in an hour, I tie a scarf around my head and take fifty cents from the grocery jar. I am in the bathroom, dabbing on a bit of lipstick—the single cosmetic Russ can abide—when I catch the change in the air.

  That’s how it happens. An electric charge that flickers at the top of the throat, something between taste and touch. There will be no afternoon at Rosalie’s today. I put the cap back on my lipstick, drop it into my purse, twist the clasp, and prepare for another day of darkness.

  I hear Russ coming up the steps and meet him in the kitchen, where I’m filling the sink with water.

  “I know,” I say before he can get a word out.

  “Looks to be a mile out.”

  “They’ll be sending the kids home from school.”

  “I expect.”

  We take the basket of old linens out from under the sink and one by one soak the torn, stained shee
ts and towels and twist them into thick, wet ropes. The first I carry to our sitting-room window, which faces west. I see the mass of dirt in the distance, like a mountain uprooted, being bowled straight for us, leaving crumbling excess in its wake.

  I lay the soaked linen along the windowsill, knowing within a matter of hours it will be caked with mud the likes of which usually comes with rain. We’ve been living in a reversal of nature for a while—dirt from the air with water waiting to meet it. Behind me, Russ drapes a sheet over the furniture and tells me he’s already done the same over our kitchen table and chairs. Ronnie bounds in, excited as always to be released from school for the day, and I put him to work, soaking rags and stuffing them around every window, along the bottoms of the doors. The storms have revealed every crack in our walls—most would be invisible if not for the tiny drifts of dust we find after they pass by. We mark them with black wax pencil, and Ronnie plugs them with the smallest scraps of cloth.

  We work silently, so as not to wake Ariel. While the rest of us see the storms as a necessary burden, they strike pure fear in her tender heart.

  Looking outside, I see my fellow townspeople scurrying through the street, bent low against the onslaught of wind, hoping to get home in time to create the same defenses we have just completed. The air howls, and evening light takes the afternoon by force. Not pure dark yet, but soon. I’ve sent Ronnie into Ariel’s room with a flashlight and a box full of funny pages and am stripping the linens from the beds when the sound of the store’s bell pierces through the increasing volume of the wind.

  “You didn’t lock up?” I call from our bedroom.