Through The Dust storm
Corie Hudspeth
Higgins waits in a rocking chair by the front window and watches Dodd stroll through the dust storm toward the house. A bandana is wrapped around Dodd’s face to shield him from flying sand. He stops and picks something up from the road and examines it. His fingers open and the wind whisks it into the evening sky.
Higgins wonders if Dodd will make it to the house before dark. He rocks the chair in a slow rhythm to keep patience. As a kid, Dodd always lagged behind. His attention was frequently snagged by some wild imagining, an interior world hidden behind glazed, daydreaming eyes. Their father would tap Dodd’s forehead and ask, “Can you feel that?”
Dodd opens the screen door and steps into the enclosed porch, shakes the dust from his hair, and violently whips his bandana clean. He shakes his coat outside the screen door before hanging it up, then carefully examines his clothes for dirt. He gazes into the storm as though something in the distance is urging his response.
“So meticulous.” Higgins whispers, impatient.
When Dodd steps into the house, Higgins greets his brother with a firm handshake.
“You made it, Dodd. I thought the storm would swallow you up.”
“Not me.” Dodd laughs. He pats Higgins on his shoulder and walks anxiously into the den to find their father. The conversation they have is identical every year. Their father will say, “So how’s the Big Apple?” Then he’ll lean in and say quietly, “Does it really look like an apple?” and they’ll chuckle a bit with each other.
“At least the old man still recognizes him,” Higgins mumbles as he mashes up potatoes, grills chicken, and boils corn. The conversation from the front room floats in and retreats, from clarity to muffled murmuring. Dodd talking about New York, his job, his office, the pace of the city. “I feel more alive there than anywhere else on Earth.”
The water in the pot bubbles up. Higgins stares out the small kitchen window, the black of it reflecting his face, or a steamed version of his face. He and his father have kept a modest garden that produces little, just some radishes, carrots, and snap peas. They keep the garden at the insistence of his father’s need to believe he still runs this land, and that this land still provides. But the animals have long been gone. The fences are all leaning, and the barn, sheds, and stables are threatening collapse; the wood of them all the color of cold ashes. Higgins wonders if Dodd will say anything about it. How the place looks barren and abandoned. But with their father getting up in the night to put the ghosts of loose cows back behind fences, Higgins sees the decay as a necessary reminder. There are no horses, cows, or goats roaming loose in the night anymore.
“Dodd,” their father says loudly. Higgins can hear the slap of a knee, “Why aren’t you married yet?”
Dodd chuckles. “I’ve been so busy. Everything just moves so quickly now. Soon. I’ll meet a nice girl soon. A good Christian woman.”
Higgins pauses to listen if his father responds to this. Instead, his father inquires about Fick, their brother. Higgins resumes cooking as Dodd tells him how well Fick and his business are doing. He goes on about Fick’s lovely wife, Loretta, and his two boys, Daryl and Tom.
Fick’s boys have met their grandfather twice. Higgins thinks about his father staring at two school photographs, on some days, for most of the afternoon. He’ll set the photographs on his knee, lean back in his chair, and look as if he’s disappeared.
“Supper’s on!” Higgins calls as he sets the food on the table for them.
They walk in quickly, their faces glowing. Their father begins stuffing his face with chicken and corn faster than Dodd can put his hands together for prayer.
“Don’t we want to say a prayer?” Dodd asks.
“What for?” Their father responds.
“To thank Him.”
“Thank Him?” Their father points his fork at Dodd. “Did he kill this chicken? Did he shuck this corn? We ought to say a prayer and thank Higgins.”
Dodd searches his father’s eyes for humor. He isn’t joking. The darkness of his eyes makes that clear. Higgins stiffens; he wants to urge Dodd to silence, but his brother doesn’t glance over.
As young boys, they would sit restlessly in the front pew facing their father, as he would talk to the congregation about the nailing down of Christ. His voice would quiver as he posed the question, ‘Did Christ put his weight on his arms or his feet to hold him up? Did he alternate between the two?’ The statue of the ten-foot crucified Christ behind his head would tremble with pain. Blood from the puncture wounds streamed down the wood.
Just like the congregation, his sons fell under the spell of his smooth voice as it passed, like a warm wind, through each of them. His whispers were inside their heads. His questions made them ache.
In the evening, after their father has gone to bed, Higgins and Dodd sit in the front room. Dodd watches Higgins build a small fire. He chucks a few loose wood scraps in, but his eyes are tight, his mind occupied with a riddle in repetition.
“But you didn’t kill that chicken, Higgins, right? It is store bought. Unless you have chickens again?”
“No, we don’t have chickens.” Higgins leans slowly back in the chair and watches his fire grow. “You have to understand, Dodd, it’s different now. These days he hates any talk of God. He’s bitter.”
“What caused it?” Dodd asks.
“Who knows? One thing, maybe, could be a series of things. Hard to tell. Things appear to move slow here, but you’d be surprised how quickly something will vanish or appear. Then everything changes, and even though you were right there the whole time, it’s hard to see it happening. Out here you just gotta roll with things. These days I can’t tell what to expect from him. His moods get crazy sometimes, like he’s got a thunderstorm always rolling through him. Sometimes it’s that real quiet rain before everything lets loose, and other times, he just erupts.”
“What do you do when he erupts?”
“You roll with it, Dodd.”
Dodd stares into the fire. “Remember, Higgins, when Dad used to tell us that if life got too hard for us, we could pray, that God would share our burden? ‘Let the Lord hold on to your troubles tonight,’ he’d say.”
“Dodd, he won’t even let Mr. Johnson at the corner store help him out with the groceries.”
Dodd is quiet again. Higgins realizes Dodd is churning this through his brain, searching for the way out.
“I wish Mom were here.” Dodd says softly. Higgins feels a sting, wishing for their mother is like wishing for a hole in the bottom of your lifeboat. Dodd could always run back to the big city and lose himself in the hustle and bustle. Fick can do as he always does: stay gone. It would be Higgins in that sinking boat.
The fire snaps and pops. The flickering dance of the flames throws a warm orange over their faces. Everything behind them vanishes into darkness. Higgins remembers nights so quiet that they couldn’t hear crickets singing. All the boys could hear were the stifled sobs coming from their mother’s room. Her cries became bedtime music, a faithful lullaby. Higgins didn’t understand his mother, her life of ease that filled up quickly with so much pain. Her inability to see any of them, to love, to hold, to smile.
At her Funeral their father softly cried to a handful of the people that turned out. Their father tried to reason, to explain his wife’s malaise, her emotional home of darkness. ‘And even with her desire to be free from life, inside of her was a seed, a light, this spiritual protection that we all have buried inside of us. Because, you know, when that cancer came for her, we all thought she would surely welcome it. But she didn’t do this. No, she began to fight, and to the end she fought. The Lord had to pry her fingers from her life in order to take her with Him.’ He stopped and looked at his sons with an expression both far away and close enough they felt as though he were falling into them, ‘Now is my soul troubled.’ From heart, he was quoting the Bible, ‘And what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.’
She had fought like mad, from her hospital bed, to hold on to a life that was burdened with malaise. Later he had said, ‘You hold on with all your might, then one day, without even realizing it, your hands open themselves and everything just falls where it may.’
Higgins is brought back by Dodd’s rustling. He leans back in his chair, throws his arms out, and yawns. “Well, I better be heading off to bed.”
“Alright then,” Higgins says. He sits a moment longer before putting the fire out.
As the wind tears at the house, Higgins knows the shaking structure, the groaning wood, the endless howling, makes Dodd uneasy. The city, with its gunshots, sirens, and screaming in the night, doesn’t bother him. It’s the quiet threats that scare him, making him feel that if he closes his eyes, whatever it is that is lurking behind it all will snatch him up.
In the morning, Higgins walks silently through the house. He loves mornings. He loves the absence of everything but himself. A chance to lose himself in daydreams, a life he may have once had. Dodd appears in the doorway, startling Higgins.
“How’d you sleep?” Higgins asks and listens as Dodd complains about the wind, the creaking old house, frightening noises that he has grown up with.
“Pancakes or eggs for breakfast?” Higgins offers.
“Coffee,” Dodd says.
Higgins starts the coffee and fries up two eggs, the only thing their father will eat in the morning.
Higgins hears their father begin screaming in the next room, then kick over a chair. They rush to his room. His face is red. He turns and looks at his boys.
“Someone has stolen my wallet!” He screams.
“What?” Dodd says, shocked. Higgins grabs Dodd’s arm and urges him to go to the front room.
“Father, go help Dodd look in the front room. He thinks he may have seen it there.” Dodd walks off, confused, and they search the front room.
Higgins steps into the front room.
“Any luck?”
“Luck? It’s not here Higgins, because it’s been stolen!”
“Go look in your room some more, and I’ll help Dodd look out here.”
Their father marches off, swearing under his breath.
“What’s going on?” Dodd asks as he searches under the cushions for the wallet.
“Stop looking. He always does this. He’s convinced someone will steal his wallet, so he hides it. Then, of course, he can’t remember where he hid it, so he thinks it’s been stolen. Happens all the time. If you find it for him, then he’s suspicious all day. But if you go in and find where he has hidden it, then re-hide it in a much easier place to find, then he gets to find it and he’s happy.”
“I found it!” Their father shouts from the bedroom.
“Another thing Dodd, don’t talk about it at all, alright? Let it go, or he’ll get mad again.”
“Who would steal his wallet?”
“No one.”
“Can’t you tell him he’s hiding and losing the wallet himself?”
“Yes, I could do that, and then we can fight for the rest of the day about how I’m lying and trying to make him think he’s crazy. So, coffee for breakfast, you said?” Dodd nods in agreement and walks into the kitchen.
“Dodd!” their father says excited, “How is the Big Apple?” Then he leans in and says quietly, “Does it really look like an apple?”
Dodd chuckles uncomfortably. Higgins gives him a cross look. Come on, Dodd, roll with it.
With a mouthful of egg, their father points to Dodd and says, “Aren’t you going to thank the Lord for your coffee?” Then he laughs, and an egg falls from his mouth, and Dodd rolls with it as best as he can.
After breakfast Higgins and Dodd sit on the porch together. Their father is in his room hiding his wallet so that the thieves cannot find it.
The dust shakes the windows of the porch. It whirls up in cone shapes. It’s dying to wrap itself violently around something, anything.
“He seems worse.” Dodd says.
“He is. He will always be getting worse, Dodd, until he no longer recognizes you or me, and we won’t know who he is anymore, either.”
“Do you ever wonder if it’ll happen to you?” Dodd asks. Higgins doesn’t answer him.
“What sort of things do you guys do all day long? The same thing every day?” Dodd asks.
“Oh, you know, we play the game, Memory. The night before you came, we watched An Affair to Remember, you know, fun stuff.” Higgins smiles, and Dodd relaxes.
“It’s not so bad, Dodd. There are a lot of things he can still do. A lot of days he’s a real pleasure.”
“What about the other days?” Dodd asks.
“What about them?” Higgins shrugs. Dodd turns his attention back to the storm.
“What would you be doing if you didn’t have to… if you weren’t caring for him?”
“I’d be a carpenter.” Higgins tells him.
“Well, at least it’s not something like a doctor or lawyer. I’d feel bad for you, having to sacrifice that,” Dodd tells him. Higgins stirs a little at his brother’s comment. He remembers his hands, the cracked knuckles. He thinks of the first chair he made. The idea of opening his own store that would smell of wood, maybe having a wife who might also smell of wood.
“Fick never makes it out this way, does he?” Dodd says.
“No. He says he hasn’t the time or money. Maybe it’s true.”
“What a feisty one that guy was, remember?”
Higgins smiles. He can see Fick’s wild grin, his vicious mind urging the other two boys to join in some prank. His willingness to take all the blame when caught. To Fick it was credit.
“Do you talk to him often?” Higgins asks.
“Once a week or so, sometimes every two weeks, you know.”
Higgins hasn’t talked to Fick in over a year. He thinks it’s because he doesn’t want to be asked to visit, to feel obligated, so he hides, and Higgins lets him.
“Can you stay an extra day?” Higgins asks Dodd. There is a longing in his voice. It triggers something in Dodd that he quickly pushes away.
“I wish I could, but I have to be on the West Coast tomorrow afternoon. I’ve got a meeting I can’t miss.”
“You’ve done so well for yourself, Dodd,” Higgins tells him. Dodd smiles but doesn’t say anything.
They sit together quietly for hours as the porch trembles and shakes and threatens to cave in.
In the evening, when Higgins announces dinner, their father takes his teeth out and tries to walk out the back door. Higgins runs after him.
“Father, I’ve made dinner for us, so you’ll want to put your teeth in now and join us at the table.” Their father smiles and pats his arm, then laughs at himself. Dodd stands and watches as Higgins, laughing along, leads the way to the table.
“So, Doddy, what did you get done today?” Dodd’s eyes widen. Their father hasn’t called him Doddy for fifteen years.
“Well, I talked with Higgins a bit, got caught up, watched the storm some. That’s quite a storm out there.”
“Good, that’s good.” Their father says, squeezing Dodd’s shoulder.
Higgins wants to point out to Dodd that at least they’re not having that stupid Big Apple conversation, but Higgins can see the fear in his brother’s eyes and doesn’t want his father to see it.
“Hey Dodd, are you still on a softball team?” Dodd turns to Higgins.
“What?”
“Remember when you were on a softball team with your colleagues? Do you still play?”
“Oh,” Dodd says, registering Higgins’ comments, “I don’t even have time for that, but I sure do miss it.”
“You’re quite the pitcher, Dodd.” Their father says, smiling fondly at him.
“I loved it, but it’s hard keeping up with all the work I have these days.”
“Yes.” Their father adds and stares blankly at Dodd, then smiles. When the smile fades, Higgins can see the faint confusion in his father’s eyes. His father has learned how to smile and nod in place of understanding.
“I’ve sure loved my visit.” Dodd says, to kill the creeping silence.
“You should come around more often.” Their father says and grips Dodd’s shoulder again. “I remember the three of you little boys running wild through my house….” He begins and drifts away, back to the time when he had screaming, giggling boys, killing snakes, building forts. Three small bodies diving off the cliffs of Blind Dog Bluff and sailing like birds in the sky until the waters swallowed them whole.
After dinner, Dodd and their father sit by the fire while Higgins cleans up. He washes the dishes slowly to enjoy the solitude and allow Dodd to take the old man on for an hour.
When he joins them, their father is nodding off, fighting sleep like a small boy with the fear of missing out.
“Come on Dad, I’ll help you off to bed.” Higgins gets him up out of the chair and walks him to his room.
“I will see you in the morning.” He tells Dodd as he closes his door.
“Goodnight, Father.”
Higgins helps his father into his pajamas. He is startled by the frailty. This frailty he sees nightly and now can feel what Dodd must be seeing. It’s been a slow-motion crumbling for Higgins, but for Dodd it probably is the sudden shattering of a man. He looks into his father’s eyes, the smiling eyes of a small boy. Higgins feels the fear of when his father called him one afternoon, shaky, saying he didn’t know where he was or how he got there, just that he left that afternoon to pick up a new hammer and now he was lost.
Higgins pulls the blanket up and tucks it under his father’s chin.
“Goodnight, Father.”
“Goodnight, Dodd.”
Higgins returns to find Dodd asleep by the fire. He sits in the chair next to Dodd, stretches his feet close to the flames and lets the warmth of the fire and his brother’s presence consume him. Closing his eyes, he thinks of the time his father cleared the trees and brush from the east pond, and all the neighboring men stacked and burned it all up as the women sat on the ends of truck beds talking and laughing. Higgins smiles, thinking of it. That fire must have been three stories high. They had let it go wild. Higgins had run back to the house for extra beverages and snacks for everyone. He could see those flames stretching into the sky clear from the house, like a monster clawing upwards.
Those were the days of parties. The boys would help prepare the feasts. Fick and their father would be to the side of the house killing chickens. He remembers watching through the kitchen window, their father bringing a dull hatchet down quickly, and tossing the chicken to the side to let it spin like a mad carousel that broke loose. Sometimes they’d spin straight up into the air.
Dodd and Higgins were inside mashing up potatoes, boiling corn, and getting ready to cook the birds. Dodd baked pies like a culinary artist. Their mother was always upstairs, unable to drag herself out from under the covers and walk down the stairs into the world.
Higgins looks over at Dodd, and his memory vanishes as he studies the sleeping face of a grown man, and for a moment, he doesn’t recognize his brother.
Higgins rises and wakes Dodd. He leads him, like he had their father, off to bed. He knows Dodd is too tired for the storm to keep him awake. Higgins lies in bed and tries to hear crickets or lullabies, but there is only wind.
In the morning, Higgins fries two eggs and makes the coffee strong for Dodd’s day of travel. Dodd calls a cab that will meet him at the end of the road in half an hour.
“Half an hour? That soon?” Higgins says, surprised.
“I’m later than I thought. I’d love to stay longer, but I just can’t, you know.”
“Yeah, the West Coast beckons.” Higgins says, smiling to ease any of Dodd’s guilt.
Their father sits at the table and laughs and jokes, but Dodd is worried about the time. He drinks his coffee too fast, burns himself a couple of times, glances frequently at his watch, then stands.
“It’s been great visiting.” He tells them.
Their father stands and embraces Dodd.
“I love you, son,” he says.
“I love you too, Father.”
“Don’t be a stranger,” their father says. He gives him a couple of pats on the shoulder, then he heads off to his room as Higgins walks Dodd out to the porch.
“It was great seeing you, Higgins,” Dodd says.
“It was good to see you too.”
Dodd smiles and ties the bandana tightly around his face and grabs his bag. He waves and steps out the door. Higgins relaxes into the rocking chair and watches Dodd walk away. Dodd moves a little more hurriedly than normal. He doesn’t pick anything up along the way. He doesn’t admire anything to the sides of him.
“Damn it all to hell! My wallet’s gone!” he can hear his father scream.
Higgins turns and yells, “Look for it in the front room!” He turns back and he can’t see Dodd anymore. He’s disappeared. All he sees is spinning dust.
