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In addition to Manol's artwork, the story was inspired by the Depression era and the Dust Bowl period.
Ten Years of Darkness
Oklahoma, 1932
When the winds came, they carried earth. Airborne. It was as if the land lifted itself up, tired of lying flat where it could be trampled by wagon wheels, farm equipment and livestock. The cattle in the fields turned their back to the storm which seemed to blow up out of hell itself. But soon it was all around and there was nowhere to hide. Maggie watched her husband move out toward the fields. The sky was as dark as night, but it was noontime. He would check the water, check the feed. He would make sure everything was okay.
“I can’t,” he said, a few hours later, when he had found his way back to the house. It was all he could say until he sat in a chair for a time, brushed layers of dust from his eyes and drank some water. Then he told of the darkness and the disorientation. There was no east or west anymore. No north or south. There was only the dark cloud. And the horrid taste of dust. “I may as well be face down in that corral,” he said. “Just eating that dirt right off the ground.”
Maggie patted his shoulder. She worried about the cattle. About getting meat to the market. And the food stores they had put up for winter. Would they last if the garden died off for lack of sun and water?
She returned to their small kitchen and placed a red checkered cloth on the table, covering a layer of dust. “Are you hungry, Hal? I’ve got some biscuits, a nice gravy, and some coffee and pie.”
Hal shook his head, and Maggie could see that the dust had taken his appetite, the way it seemed to steal everything. She felt ashamed at the odd notion that entered her mind then, that perhaps they would need less food. Everything was already tight, since the stock market crash in ‘29. She winced, thinking of the government pig slaughter she had heard about to stabilize prices. They threw all that meat away, letting it rot when so many people were going hungry.
Hal let out a deep sigh. “I let ‘em go, Mags. When I finally found the corral gate, I just opened it wide and told the cattle to git. They can sniff out the creek down by Karsten’s place, maybe find some grass. But there’s nothing to keep them here. I can’t.”
There was that phrase again. “I can’t.” Hal had never uttered it before in four years of marriage. There wasn’t a hay bale he couldn’t lift, a piece of equipment he couldn’t fix. Now this.
Suddenly they heard the sound of a rattling engine outside, and some commotion. They looked out the window and could just make out the figure of Hans Karsten from the neighboring farm stamping off dust on the old wood porch. Hal opened the door barely wide enough to let him in.
“Folks,” Hans said. “You gotta go. This is the tenth dust storm this year. Everything’s dryin’ up. Lucy and I are packed. We’re headed to the fields in California. There’s work, and places to camp.”
Hal and Maggie looked at one another. “Well,” Hal said, squinting. “Good luck, Hans.”
But when he left again and they could hear the rattle of the engine as it made its way down the road, Hal said, “Honey, we need to do the same. Soon as this storm dies down.”
Maggie nodded. “I suppose so. We’ll die here.” Then after a moment, she added. “There’s one thing you should know, Hal. I’m going to have a baby.”
Bakersfield California, 1936
“Come here, little one.” Maggie held her arms out to Sadie, who rushed into them. “I’ve got a surprise!” Maggie produced from her pocket a ripe persimmon. She had found it along the road, where it had fallen from a truck and was only a little bruised.
They cut the fruit on the small hard bench that served as a food preparation area under a flap of canvas that provided shade from the harsh sun. They savored each bite. Maggie had intended to save some for Hal when he returned from the fields, but there was no place to keep it. It would surely spoil by the time he returned home to their tent in the migrant encampment.
“I’m so hungry,” Sadie said then they had licked their fingers and wiped their faces.
“I know, baby girl. We all are. Maybe daddy will make enough wages this week that we can go to the market.”
That afternoon, she traded the last of her jewelry - a broach that had belonged to her grandmother - for a pound each of flour and sugar. This was how they had survived so far. Finding food, bartering and trading, selling their meager belongings to people who had a little cash, and hoping and praying for better times. They had been in encampments that were torched and destroyed in fires set by locals who had a disdain for the “Okies.” They’d had to flee from two police raids. But here they were, at last, in a legal government encampment. Hal had work. Yet there still didn’t seem to be a way to make ends meet. Hal barely made a few dollars for a full day’s work.
When Hal came home, he was covered in grime from the fields. Sadie poured him a cup of water from the 5-gallon drum they filled every few days from an irrigation pump. He drank it down and asked for another. Sadie filled it again, careful not to waste a single drop. Then she ran back to her mom, who was making pancakes for dinner on a griddle.
She reached up to put her hands on Maggie’s bulging tummy. “I hope it’s a boy! I want a baby brother.”
And Maggie sighed, wondering how she would manage to feed another.
Oklahoma, 1940
Hal, Maggie and the children drove slowly down the old dirt road leading back home - back to the farm plot they had abandoned years before. Maggie felt a mixture of fear and anticipation as they rode along, little Aaron asleep on her lap and Sadie lying down asleep on the back seat.
The government had provided assistance so they could keep their land, as long as they returned to cultivate. The rains had come at last, and other farms had begun to grow crops again. They finally had hope - ten years after the stock market crash that was the harbinger of the worst economic times in history. Of course their livestock were gone, and they would be starting over. But they would make it. She knew now that they could.
At last they turned off the main road and drove down the long lane toward their old farmhouse. But the house didn’t appear to be there. Hal seemed to drive slower and slower as they made their way, seeing nothing but dusty brown fields, fences, and some new trees the government had planted to help control soil erosion.
“Oh my God,” he said at last. “Look.”
Then Maggie saw it too. There, camouflaged and half buried in blown and drifted soil, was their home. The doorway and windows were only half visible, so deep were the soil drifts. “Oh Hal,” she said. “How do we get in?”
For a moment he sat, the truck idling as if even it was feeling fearful and indecisive. Then Hal shook his head and began to laugh. “We dig,” he said.
Maggie laughed too. Nothing had killed them yet, and nothing was about to take them down now. All around them on the plains were green shoots of grass. Life was returning to their valley. The end of their ten years of darkness had come at last.
***
Thank you for reading my story. The Dust Bowl years were a terrible time in American history, resulting from over-cultivating prairie, causing soil erosion across the plains. Hundreds of thousands of farmers were displaced, and became migrant workers who were mistreated as they despondently traveled throughout the west looking for work on farms and orchards. You can read a timeline of the Dust Bowl years here.
If you have ever read John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, it tells the story of a family enduring hardship during the Dust Bowl.
Woodie Guthrie, a famous singer and guitar player of the era sang songs about the times. I'll share this one, which is about the biggest storm of that era.
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