Three men sat on the bench Jack Grogan and Dewey Winthrop were playing checkers, the board laid out between them. The third man, Hiram Johnson, was carving a whistle out of a tree branch for his grandson. It was a Thursday. Armistice Day. Uncommonly hot for November, the temperature pushing 85 degrees. The town was almost deserted.
“Must be the holiday,” Grogan said. “Everybody’s at home or gone to a parade som’ere’s.”
“You hear?” Hiram answered. “They canceled the parade over to Lippencott.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Sand blizzard. They say it’s worse’n that winter fog three years ago. Can’t see a foot in front of yuh.”
“Who says that? Harvey Logan, bet.”
“Right, was ol’ Harve.”
“Shit, you can’t believe a word he says,” said Grogan. “He’ll stand in the rain n’tell you the sun’s shinin’.”
“All I know, they canceled the parade. All them vets over there in their overseas caps with their medals pinned on and the high school band and all went in the auditorium over to the school t’wait it out.”
“If it’s like over in Tulsa last summer, it ain’t gonna blow over,” said Dewey. He pursed his lips and a black streak of tobacco juice squirted into the grass.
“1 heard they had a black blizzard so bad it turned day to night in Chicago,” Hiram said.
“Yeah,” Dewey chimed in. “Read in the papers they could see it in Albany, New York. New York! Why hell, that’s half the country away.”
“Aw hell, Hiram, you don’t believe that, do you?”
“Papers don’t lie.”
“Sez who?”
“Not about somethin’ like that they don’t.”
“Shit.”
They saw the LaSalle a mile away as it came down the flat highway toward them, churning up dust behind it. It looked yellow from a distance but as it drew closer they could see the car was pale blue, its paint covered by a thick cake of dust. The car pulled into town and stopped at the square. The driver, his tie pulled down from an open collar and his shirtsleeves rolled up, got out and brushed dust off his pants. Sweat stains spread down under his arms almost to his waist.
Drummer, thought Hiram.
The driver pulled his shirt away from his sweaty chest and strolled over to the Pepsi machine in the vestibule of the courthouse and dropped a nickel in.
“Sure hot for November,” he offered.
Hiram nodded.
The drummer took a deep swig from the bottle and swished the fizzing cola around in his mouth before swallowing it.
“Whatcha sellin’?” Grogan asked.
“Ladies’ wear,” the tall man said with a smile. “Not doin’ too well, either.”
“Seen any dust?”
“Everywhere. Not like what they had south of here yesterday but I’ll tell you, I had to close up m’windows and I damn near fainted from the heat. Dust just seeped right through around the windows. Hell of a note.”
He shook his head and took another swig.
“Where you from?” Hiram asked.
“St. Louis.”
“Long way from home.”
“Well, it takes a big territory and a lot of travelin’ to make a livin’ these days.”
“I heard you say that, all rightee,” Grogan agreed. “Nice car.”
“Was before I hit that wind yesterday. Look here, like sandpaper. Took the finish off m’hood.”
He wiped his hand across the front of the car, sweeping a small dune of dust into the air. It was just as he said, the blue paint was nearly sanded off.
“Damn, would yuh look at that,” Grogan said.
“Where you headed?”
“Thought I’d make Lippencott and spend the night. I forgot it was a holiday t’day.”
“F’get it,” said Grogan shaking his head.
“What’s the matter?”
“Black blizzard. Had to cancel the Armistice Day parade. Tell me you can’t see your feet, it’s so bad.”
“Could be blowin’ this way,” Hiram said.
“You know that for a fact?”
“Just talk,” said Grogan. “He’s been on the phone with old Harvey Logan.”
Hiram shook his head. “Could be blowin’ this way,” he repeated.
“I’d sure find out,” the drummer said. “It can kill you, y’know. Dust is so thick it’ll just choke your life out. If it does come, you need to be inside. Maybe wrap a hanky around your nose and mouth.”
“I heard of a man who got caught outside and actually vomited dirt, it was that bad,” said Hiram.
“There you go again,” said Grogan.
“Well, if it’s blowing in Lippencott I’m not going near there,” said the drummer, walking to the edge of the sidewalk and looked west, down the ribbon of black top toward Lippencott. “Got a hotel?”
“Back down the road about ten miles. Bradyton.”
He squinted his eyes, focusing on the horizon, looking for the ominous wave of sand and wind chat had plagued these prairie towns for months. The previous summer, the ‘neat in Kansas had stayed at 108 for sixty days in a row and there had only been twenty inches of rainfall in the year. That had started it. The earth, weary from years of poor farming practices, dried up, cracked, turned to shale, then to dust. Then heavy winds came and like a giant hand scooped the earth up and threw it into the air. The clouds of dirt tumbled over each other like waves, built into towering black oceans of dirt, engulfing everything. Roads disappeared before the clouds. Homes were buried in mountainous dunes. Whole towns vanished in a night, buried under the sea of sand. Animals suffocated in their tracks and people died of pneumonia, their lungs ruined by the sod. In nine months, one hundred million acres of topsoil had blown away. The deadly bowl spread from Texas north to the Colorado border. The prairie land looked so much like a beach that a reporter for the Tulsa Tribune had written: “I was driving and suddenly the road disappeared. Then I saw the roof of a house, just the very peak of it, sticking up through what looked like dunes at the beach. I almost expected to smell salt air.”
The drummer had driven through a small wind storm the day before and that was bad enough. Now as he watched, the black cloud obscured the horizon and grew like a great broiling, black thunderhead. There was no sound yet, just the ominous towering black cloak swirling before gale winds, towering up into the sky even as he watched it. It was headed straight for them.
“My God,” the drummer breathed.
The three townsmen joined him at the curb, followed his eyes and saw the deadly cloud. As they watched it kept swirling higher into the sky, darker than a storm cloud, darker than dusk.
“God a’mighty,” Hiram breathed.
“Is it comin’ this w-w-way?” Grogan stammered, his eyes bulging at the sight of the growing cloud.
“It ain’t goin’ on vacation,” said Dewey.
“I got t’get home,” Hiram said. “God, don’t tell me we’s gonna get what Tulsa got!”
“It’s comin’, it’s comin’,” Grogan cried as the three men scurried for their vehicles. The drummer stood hypnotized, watching the storm of sand build. Then faintly he heard the wind, a low rumble, almost like thunder. It was probably fifteen miles away, he thought, and it’s already twenty thousand feet high. He bought another Pepsi, got in the car and roared away, back the way he had come.
He drove back toward Bradyton ignoring the thirty-five- mile-an-hour speed limit. Behind him, the giant wave of dirt seemed to chase him down the highway. The drummer wrapped a handkerchief around his face and kept the windows open because of the heat. Farm after farm on both sides of the road was deserted. Signs flapping on the front doors told the world the bank now owned the property. Once he passed a farmer, his wife and their two children, rushing in and out of their small frame home, valiantly struggling to pile possessions on a battered old Model T. The wind was already whipping sand into twirling dervishes around them.