Dust

The sun shone down upon man and field, burning and revealing parched crags in both. The summer heat was unrestrained by wispy clouds, nor tempered by humid haze. As he walked along dead and dusty fields, one hand massaged the other, as the twisting of age caught up to him. He stooped and gathered a handful of dirt. Running his hand through, dry silty-brown, crumbled earth more like sand than topsoil. As his experienced hands rubbed the dirt, it blew away in the mild wind leaving nothing but desiccated insects, as even they need water to live. He examined the dead insects, and the dry crumbled earth, no life left in the soil any longer. He turned his sharp blue eyes to the horizon as he stood. Huge clouds of dust were blowing west in the clear blue sky, taking the topsoil that made this the breadbasket of the world and sending it to smother distant lands, not stopping until it hit the front range, or Denver perhaps. He turned and continued walking back toward his distant home. The striking old-style farmhouse painted in fading colors, had seen better days. His path, not walked frequently, was strewn with debris. He had to pay close attention as he walked, with the new pains and swelling in all his joints it became more difficult to walk every day. His eyes squinted with remembered pain, as he recalled his wife teasing him for being too serious, walking this way often.

As he came closer to the house, the irrigation system sat unused. With the pipeline drawing from the Great Lakes, the aquifer under his land dried as well. Further in the distance, dead hulks of cars littered the highway, where they died from lack of fuel. He passed the house and made his way to the road, nothing moved along the road. More derelict cars were strewn along the road, and his old decrepit mail box hung from its post. With the closing of the local post office, there was no need for the box, and nothing important likely needed to be sent to him that required his fixing it. He saw an old advertisement wedged beneath the box. Picking it up he saw it addressed to Miko, she would say that he had won, as all the junk mail was for her. He made his way back to the house; he could see the unmoving tractor beside the fallen down barn. The moaning of the porch swing, and the malevolent hiss of wind blowing away his soil louder than the sound of his thoughts. He walked up the creaking stairs, wondering how long ‘til he’d need to shore them up. Things like that, taking longer and more effort each year. He passed the front door, moving past faded and flaking paint on the splintering and worn porch rails, to the back yard and Miko’s garden area.

Where the fields were dried up and completely dead, you could still see the order of the furrows. The garden area, though much smaller, was much less organized. With the loss of money from selling the crops, most of his food came from the garden. He spent little time weeding and tending the garden, taking food for lunch instead. Standing up something of a chore, with the arthritis in his knees, he brought the armful of food to the house. The back door into the kitchen was less exposed than the front, and was thus not as faded and falling apart. The door opened with a creak from the hinges, in a rusty way. He placed his lunch in the deep sink for rinsing and headed in to wash up before cooking. The kitchen bath had belonged to Miko, so he went into the main bathroom in the front hall. The well-ordered bathroom was meant for guests and visitors, family and friends, nothing adorned the walls and few homey touches were on display. This was a utilitarian room, not meant for dallying. Everything was neat, well-organized, and obviously had a man’s touch.

What water was in the local water table was not as clean and pure as the deeper aquifers that had mostly dried up with the Great Lakes. On the plus side, the deep well had required constant power to draw water, the local well much less. When the Earth First Movement blew up the refineries in Houston and other spots along the Gulf, fuel became too scarce to run the generator except in small amounts. The combine, and other equipment also too expensive to operate, he was unable to do most of the heavy work of the farm. Instead, he resorted to a hand pump for water, and hand tools for subsistence level farming. Really, his needs alone didn’t require much. As he worked on lunch, he could see where the shed had once been. The scar of the removed items with their frou-frou colors glaring in absence. They were replaced by 5 crosses made from the old wood. The green of the garden, and the flowers placed upon the graves of the only ones he’d ever loved a contrast against the sere and bleak backdrop of the farm. He had a frown on his face as he worked to prepare food for himself. With minimal effort he made few items with no real complexity, his labor pointless with no one to share his food. Before long food was prepared, and the silence of the house was complete. He’d cleaned himself up from the fields out of habit, his dark hair thinning and starting to turn gray with age. He frowned again. He gathered the food and brought it to the table. Simple fare prepared with little skill was little but required nourishment, with even less attention paid to its taste. The lack of care and expertise spent on the food, was shown by the old chipped and worn dishes that it was placed upon.

He finished his repast, and spent minimal time on cleaning. Everything he did was quietly efficient, he reused the same dishes and containers for each meal, with little variety, thus requiring little effort to maintain. He returned to the garden, hand-pumping the well water to water the garden. The effort became more daily, as it was evident that his well was starting to dry out. Finishing that chore, he walked to the back end of the garden. With care and gentleness, he laid his withered and cracked hands upon each cross one at a time. “Here lies Kumiko Johnson, beloved wife and mother”, the smaller crosses to the right were simpler, and obviously less effort had gone into their fashioning. They were simply adorned with a single name, Simon, Hiram, Elise, and Adrienne, respectively. The perpetual frown turned to something both more human, and much darker as he gently touched each of them. Overall, he spent most of the afternoon tending the garden, and watering the small fields by hand before preparation for dinner. Again, he ate quietly, the food quickly prepared, and thinking little of what he ate, and enjoying it even less. He cleaned up the small amount of detritus from dinner with little thought or concern.

He poured himself a tall glass of whiskey, and went up to the room he’d shared with Kumiko. He sat beside her old dressing table. In the center of the table was her treasure box. A small rosewood box she had painstakingly joined with no nails or glue. It was hand carved with Japanese characters that she had explained to him once long ago, but he had forgotten some time since. The box was painted in her preferred flowery colors and lacquered so that it would last long enough to be handed down to their children. It now seemed a pointless extravagance. He opened the cleverly made box with just a hint of a sad smile. Several objects with memories and personal value were nestled within. First, he removed several small shiny seashells, claimed from a beach in the Hamptons while they were on honeymoon. Another sad frown touched his face as he touched the shells. Next, he pulled some silk ribbons from the box, they were brightly colored, and one of the hairstyles she liked to wear was those ribbons tying her hair up in odd sideways pony tails, or pig tails or something. He smiles remembering how beautiful she’d looked. He smiled even more as he pulled a set of combs from the box, made from some shiny natural material, wood maybe. She loved those combs, and he loved to see her put her long and lustrous hair up with them. Next, he pulled out an Indian head penny. It might even be worth something, but like everything in the box, she lovingly polished it to a glossy sheen. He next pulled the special locket from the box. The old heart-shaped necklace was crafted by an artist with beautiful designs front and back, but the most amazing part was that if you knew the secret, you could pop the locket open. In the revealed secret place was a black and white picture. While he knew that was a picture of her mother or something, it looked like her, with life in her shining eyes, and her enigmatic smile.

She had a nightly ritual where she polished each item. They all kept some special place for her. For him, the memories were different. The locket was just the image of Kumiko, the ribbons, something she wore, and the penny was from the night their first child, Simon, was born. From the shells, his remembrance was different than hers. They were together at a private cabin in the Hamptons. It was their honeymoon, the most expensive place he’d ever been, with overpriced food, stuck up people looking down on them, and with the lights of New York, it was always as light as daytime. He remembered as they were walking along the beach, she stepped on something sharp and cut open her foot. He was afraid that she would bleed to death, it was gushing so bad. He ran carrying her for a mile or more to get her to a clinic to stitch up her wound, he remembered that she seemed light as a feather at first, but was extremely heavy by the time he reached the clinic. To her, strong memories of a life lived. To him, a past life starting to fade away. As he touched each item, he remembered Kumiko, and the children taken from him by some disease of the lungs brought by the dust.

When the water dried up, and the drought began, First Kumiko, and then in turn each of the children grew sick, coughing, and unable to breathe. Without gas for the car, and the dwindling money, it was near impossible to get them to a doctor at all, and with only excuses, nothing to be done for them. He brought them home, and buried them behind the garden one at a time as they died. He finished drinking the last of his alcohol, and from a dresser nearby he took an old pistol, once belonging to his father. He placed the dull metallic barrel into his mouth. His eyes grew blurry remembering the life he’d lost. The loud report was heard by no one, and there was none to mourn his passing. Outside, the sound of thunder presaged the coming of a summer thunderstorm, bringing with it life and hope for renewed growth. For some it was a time of endings, and it was too little, too late.