Plain Language by Barbara Wright

Author:Barbara Wright
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2007-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

After spending the morning cleaning, she gathered the laundry and drove to town. The air was muffled and quiet, the way it is just after a snowstorm. Last night’s wind had ground the silt to a fine whitish powder, then sculpted the drifts into unexpected contours that created a strange, lunar beauty against the cloudless blue sky. In one place, a drift reached the highest strand of the fence so the barbs stuck out like sand spurs at regular intervals along the ridge. The roads had vanished completely under the dust. Virginia drove on the high ground between the bar ditches. The dust fluffed up around the truck and sifted down again, blurring the fresh tracks she had made.

In town, the talk at Dave’s General Store was all about the storm. A holiday atmosphere prevailed as men gathered around the stove to trade hard-luck tales. Edgar Ingram had been forced to postpone his gallbladder operation because the doctors couldn’t sterilize the instruments. Harley Feathergill’s ceiling had collapsed under the weight of the dirt that had blown into his attic.

“No trick a’ t’all to tell where these things came from,” said Harley, who seemed enlivened by the misfortune. “The red ones are from Oklahoma, the dirty-yellow ones from the Texas-New Mexico plains. This one here’s brown. I got it sittin’ in my living room, a present from Kansas.”

Virginia found Dave on a ladder, his head hidden by the overalls and hats that were hanging from the rafters. “We’re clean out of brooms and wash pails, Mrs. Bowen,” he said. He took a cowboy boot from the ceiling and turned it upside down. Dirt dribbled out. He dusted the boot off and hung it back up.

“At least the storm’s good for somebody’s business,” she said, looking up. “What about coffee?”

“I personally ain’t going to dust off every individual bean in that bag, but if you’ll take it as it is, we got it.”

She paid for the coffee, then drove to Ida Pinska’s house to drop off the laundry. No one had entered or left Ida’s since the storm—she could tell by the unmarred drifts around the house. She waded through dust to the back stoop. There she dipped her toe into the dust, as if testing cold water, in an effort to find the flat platform of the steps. From inside came a low keening sound. She opened the door a crack.

“Ida, Ida, are you here?” she called out. She pushed the door harder. It made a wedge in the dust, like a windshield wiper.

Ida sat with the heels of her hands against the edge of the kitchen table. Her mouth hung slack, and her face was smeared, as if with camouflage paint, where tears had turned the dirt to mud, streaked, and then dried again.

“What’s wrong?” Virginia said, setting her dirty laundry on the table. As long as Ida followed her daily routine, she was fine, but anything out of the ordinary befuddled her.

“My beauties. They’re gone.”

“What are you talking about?”

“My cats are buried alive.

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