Artist Morris Morgan, Dust Bowl Noon, 1997
Depiction of a dust bowl storm on the American plains in the 1930's
Into The Storm
by E.E. Curtis
They wrestled in the sky, those clouds, like two passionate lovers, or perhaps mortal enemies in battle. It was hard to tell.
George didn't care which, he only cared that their writhing forms were directed toward his property, the land he had worked so hard to build up. The land that, as he toiled to build, had left him bruised and bent, and at times, broken.
If those clouds came any closer in their mad rush to earth, he would lose five years of hard work and the crop that was planned to take him through the winter.
He watched, feeling as though if he stood vigil with enough determination, the power of his will and watchful eyes would turn the storm from its course.
But it was not to be. From where he stood in the west pasture, he watched those clouds descend on his home, his crops, the few helpless animals he had penned up and hadn't had time to save.
He watched it beat and twist and suck the life out of his property. Somewhere, hours or days later, those same devoured things would be spit out in some random field, or maybe left to perch in the branches of a tree a hundred miles away, where a stranger would someday peer up and see, and wonder.
George hoped the chickens would die quickly, painlessly. Like they did when he butchered them. He patted Sourdough's neck gratefully. At least he had been out with her when the storm arrived. The chestnut horse whinnied.
George decided that the clouds had been lovers after all. Lovers that, during an intensely heated argument, threw valuables against the ground and walls, smashing them to pieces.
As George rode Sourdough toward what was left of his home, he noticed that the two whirlwinds had blown themselves out a few miles down the road. Just like a lover’s spat.
He stopped Sourdough a safe distance away, to ensure she didn't step on any broken or sharpened edges of any number of previously benign objects that were now dangerous enough to maim.
He decended slowly, heavily out of the saddle and took a moment to survey the layout of his property. He had scanned it before with great pride, a feeling that welled up into his throat at times. Like when he saw the sharp outline of the barn and house he had built by hand, against a stunning sunset, or their inky black silhouettes against the moon.
That silhouette was gone. In its place, a field of littered grass.
***************
She caught them in their bed and almost laughed. Alll she could think of in the first moment of shocking discovery was that this only happened in the daytime soaps her mom used to watch. In their own bed!
She fled. Surprisingly, tears didn't come. Her rage and humiliation were a dry dust storm, suffocating her, blinding her.
Now, a week later, it was her first time back at the apartment. She surveyed the rooms they had once shared, walking through each, deliberately noting what was left and what was missing from years of a life shared and now torn apart.
He had a sharp memory for the material items that had come into the home when they joined lives. For who had purchased what over the years. She had almost forgotten about the abstract painting in the hallway until she noticed it wasn’t there. Funny. She’d always despised that painting, but accepted it when he hung it, because he loved it and she loved him.
She’d have to replace the speakers. She felt a pang of regret when she saw, instead of her favorite reading chair, four distinct imprints in the rug where it had sat, unmoved for years.
Skirting the bar that they had once made love on while dinner burned on the stove, she walked slowly to the bedroom. This was the room she had been hesitant to enter. At one time she though maybe she could just abandon everything and never come back here. There was nothing left about this place that was home anymore.
Surprisingly the bed didn't bother her the most. It was the half-empty closet that made her gasp.
One shirt had fallen to the floor. She wondered at the cruel irony. Did he leave it on purpose?
She picked up what remained of him, the only evidence they had lived together in this house, for he had been thorough in removing himself. The thin grey sweater still held his scent. She always wore it when he was gone at night. Her comfort blanket.
On her way out the door she hesitated a moment before throwing it in the trash.
***************
Here they were, at the end. Actually not they anymore. Him. Solitary — like the word.
After a decade that had revolved around doctors, hospitals, and conversation that consisted mainly of her health. And pain. The ever-present hellacious pain.
People only ever thought of how she must be feeling. Of her pain or comfort level. As he sat on hard chairs by her side hour after hour he'd sometimes wished there was a pill for those people who cared. The Caregiver pill. They'd make billions.
He could have been somewhere else, doing anything he wanted, far away from all of this for the first time in years, but here he was, at his post by the hospice bed.
He swallowed the lump that came from thinking they would be taking the bed soon. In the past he had cursed it many times. It took up all the space in the living room and he was always banging into it in the semi-darkness of early morning hours when he was weary with sleep.
He imagined it still held the imprint of her body.
After all the years that had ravaged them both like wind-tossed kites, he wasn't ready for the quiet.
He could almost feel that he was at rest. But he knew it was the brief rest that follows a storm. Before you take stock of what has been destroyed and what is missing. Before the clean-up work begins.
When they took the bed he remained in his chair, with nothing to lean against.
***************
He’d never seen so many white people in his life. Walking off the plane and into the terminal, he was so overwhelmed he had to sit down.
He had come from a home of rich browns, blacks, oranges. Warm and earthy. The smell of bodies and pungent spices. But also there had been the crimson blood and the smell of gunpowder, and always a gnawing hunger and fear. The war was a great wind, that tossed him and his people around, until finally it threw him right into another world.
Now, he sat, surrounded by cold metal and concrete. He smelled chemicals masked as lemons. Instead of the soothing, reassuring voices of his people, he heard grating and unfamiliar voices that he couldn’t understand. The people were white noise to his senses.
He turned at the sound of water and noticed clear water flowing from a fountain nearby. Such ease.
He had almost nothing. There had been almost no time to prepare. He had so many questions to ask, and no one to answer them. Soon a representative from the government agency would meet him and take him somewhere to start a life here. To start his refuge here.
At the moment he didn’t feel protected or more safe. The sounds were like gunfire, making him jump in alarm now and then. He was still hungry and he was still afraid.
He leaned forward and rested his forehead on his knees. He was surprised when he inhaled. Home. He thought all traces of it had been erased when he left. Peanuts and cumin. Musky goat. He breathed in hungrily to fill himself. It was like he had eaten a meal and, in eating, was now strong enough to continue his journey.
He stood and walked outside into the glaring sun. The sun is the same.
***************
In all the destruction, one single pane of clear, cut glass. The only window to his house. Intact.
Priceless. It reflects the glare of the sun.
Earlier, just seconds before, he had found his hammer lying under some debris. In a fit of anger at his losses he smashes the window with it. Glass falls around his feet, and a tiny shard hits him in the face. He flinches at what he has done. The tool that was used to build most of his house has just been used to destroy the one thing of value left in his property.
Now in a new fit of passion, desperation even, he scrounges for bits of lumber, the four straightest pieces he can find, though all of them have jagged, splintered ends. He tears through debris to find nails which he pries out of equally, less-than-desirable scraps of wood. Roof shingles here, porch planks there.
He sets a nail and hammers. He pounds in nails in a frenzy until all four sides are secure. A window frame. Holding it up at face level, he looks out across the valley, at storm clouds retreating into the distant horizon. The window had been the last thing he had placed in his finished house, completing it.
This time, it is the first thing he builds.
About the artist
Morris Morgan 1920-2018
"Morris took painting classes while attending LSU, spurring a lifelong passion for capturing his visions on canvas. His paintings reflect his unique and extraordinary imagination. Morris felt there was an artist inside everyone and encouraged all to take up their brushes or pens and create. His first art exhibit was held in 2015. His "Writers Challenge," where writers submit works inspired by a given painting, is in its third run." (Obituary, Fairbanks Daily News Miner).
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/newsminer/obituary.aspx?pid=188075055
In 2015, Morris Morgan offered his painting as a writing prompt for a writing competition in Fairbanks, Alaska. I participated in the first Morris Morgan art writing competition, submitting "Into The Storm." The rules were simple: Use his painting as a writing prompt. Any genre. Any word count. The painting truly inspired me and I had such fun doing the challenge that I straigtway did a whole bunch of free-writes using art as a prompt. This competition gave me the idea, three years later, to do the same thing with my website, ArtWrite.
Thank you Mr. Morris.
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