All the Earth, Thrown to the Sky

4

Now, before you figure Jane and Tony as just straightaway thieves, I think I ought to do a little explaining.

They told me how they came by their plan, and when I heard it, I sort of liked it and decided to count myself in. I had to. Neither of them could drive a car, and I could. We’d had one once, right up until a month before, when Daddy sold it to pay for some flour and such, and some medicine for Mama. I guess he knew right then that that was the end. When he took that car into town and gave it up for a few dollars, I seen the light go out of his eyes sure as if someone inside his head had pulled a light cord. He was near to being a dead man walking from then on. Only thing that kept him connected to life at all was Mama, and when she died, that was the end of it. If there were any lights left on anywhere inside him, they went dark right then, and that was all she wrote.

But the thing was, Old Man Turpin had a car, and he had died, which was something I didn’t know. No one around our parts had known of him having any next of kin, so there wasn’t anyone next in line for that automobile, and the way Jane explained it, it was a shame to let a good Ford stay under a tarp, get all rusted out and eventually full of dust.

Jane had a way of talking that could get you on her side of things, even when you were certain you weren’t going to agree. I think it was all that reading she did. In her mouth, words were as sweet as candy or as sharp as razors, and she could switch from one to the other in midstream. She was one of them kind that loved to hear herself talk.

What I didn’t know was Jane and Tony’s mama had run off with a Bible salesman, and their daddy, not long after, had a tractor accident while trying to plow out some rows, long after there was any chance of things growing. Way Jane explained it, their dad was real stubborn, right up until the time his Poppin’ Johnny tractor rocked over and caught him under it and squashed him like a bug.

They was going to try and bury him, but couldn’t get him out from under the tractor. He was bedded down good in the sand with the tractor on top of him. Jane come up then with the idea just to shovel sand over him and the tractor, at least until they could have a proper burial, ’cause there were hungry dogs roving around. But the sandstorm had come up and they went into the house and Mother Nature covered him up for them.

Their house, which had mostly been supported by good luck and a prayer, finally blowed down, and they stayed in what was left of it for the night. Next morning they had to dig out a little, and once they were out, they figured their place was done for and they had to leave.

They decided to walk out and try to get some help so maybe they could get their daddy buried proper and find a place to stay. Jane found a couple of her books that hadn’t been blowed away or buried by the sand and put them in a pillowcase. As the storm hadn’t hit yet when they did this, they headed out, got to Old Man Turpin’s, and found him sitting in a rocking chair in his doorway, the door open. He was covered from head to foot in sand.

“It didn’t take no wizard,” Tony said, “to figure he was dead.”

Jane nodded. “I figured he did it on purpose. Just didn’t care anymore, sat out there and let the dust get him. We started looking around in the house. Everyone knows Old Man Turpin doesn’t have any kin, so we knew we weren’t going to disturb anyone. We got some flour sacks and put some things in them he wouldn’t need anymore, like canned goods. I put my books in there with the cans, and we made us packs. Then we went out to his barn and found that Ford under a tarpaulin. Course, then we realized it didn’t do us any good, ’cause neither of us could drive. We covered it up and started out this way, hoping to find somebody to help us, and then the storm hit.”

“Why didn’t you stay there? Turpin has a pretty good house.”

“ ’Cause he was dead on the porch is one thing,” Jane said, “and the other is staying there wasn’t going to get us any farther than there.”

“I thought you was just looking for some help to bury your pa?” I said.

“Was,” she said. “At first. Then me and Tony got to thinking that Pa was pretty well covered up as it was, and what we needed more than anything was just to be gone from here. I don’t see no cause just to stay around and eat dirt and get old, if I even manage to get old. Way things are going, I’ll be out on some porch somewhere in a chair with the dust covering me up. It’s not much of a future, way I look at it.”

“I suppose not,” I said.

“So,” Jane said. “We left out of there thinking we could find someone who could drive the car, but then we got caught up in another storm before we got very far. Just walking out there in all that dirt is some real trouble. There’s still roads, but they’re pretty covered up too. Not so much I don’t think a car could make it. And if it can’t, I’m still willing to give it a try, if I can get someone to drive.”

“It wasn’t for that old bridge over the creek, we’d have been done in just like Turpin,” Tony said. “We crawled under there and pushed up against the bank. There wasn’t no water in the creek, and we just listened to the wind blow all the morning, and watched that old dry bed get drier and fill up with sand. This afternoon when it was all winded out, we was still sitting, and that sand was over our ankles, but soon as it quit we started out walking, and it was like it was waiting on us to come out of hiding, because we hadn’t gone more than a mile or two when the storm hit us again.”

“Wasn’t nothing for us to do but keep on coming,” Jane said. “And we did. We knew if we lay down and waited somewhere, unless it was some good place like that bridge, we was done for, we’d never get up. We didn’t have any real choice but to put our noses forward and our ears back, like plow mules, and just keep on coming.”

“The wind blowed us down three or four times,” Tony said.

“We found the old fence line that runs from the Thompson property to yours, and we clung to that where it was standing, and we crawled where it wasn’t. When it was standing again, we took to it, and finally we come to your place and you come out to help us.”

Jane paused and looked around.

“By the way,” she said, “where’s your folks?”

I took a deep breath and told them. I was pretty weak by the time I was done explaining.

The last thing I said was “I buried them together in the barn.”

“You seem to be the only one of us that’s any good at getting anyone buried,” Tony said.

Jane just stared at me for a long time, long enough I could see how red-rimmed her eyes were and how the corners of her mouth was cracked from sand getting behind the scarf she’d had on.

“I’m real sorry, Jack,” she said. “Looks like we’re all orphans.”