Falling to Earth by Kate Southwood

instead, to shake each of them so that he can see their eyes again, and take hold of them so hard he risks crushing them. He’s never felt any particular way toward the Almighty, but he’s shaking now with gratitude and Mae is crying and he hears himself saying thank you and thank you and thank you.

7
    T hree and a half hours. Three states. Two hundred and nineteen miles. Well over two hundred dead in Marah alone, and counting.
Started over in the Ozarks, they’re saying, jumped the Mississippi into Illinois, hit the Big Muddy and Little Egypt, petered out somewhere across the border in Indiana
. News circulates, and the good fortune of the living is thrown into bare relief.
They found out who that little girl was out in Harrington’s field. The one who wouldn’t talk. Someone finally recognized her, and they sent her out on the train to her grandparents in De Soto. Can you imagine?
People stand in lines at the grain elevator downtown, waiting for the Red Cross blankets and donated clothing to be had there. Each arrives with facts and particulars to trade, hoping to talk more about others than about themselves. There is solace in greeting friends and occasionally even relief to be had in the absurd.
I heard Opal Tolliver still won’t come out of her bedroom closet. Her son’s tried telling her its foolish, her squatting in a closet when the rest of house is lying flat around it like playing cards, but she won’t listen. Figures it saved her life, and there he is, stuck bringing food to the closet every day.
    Newspapers from surrounding cities make their way in on the trains and the people read, amazed and gratified, the many accounts of the storm and the messages of sympathy and condolence that President Coolidge has accepted on their behalf.
Will you look at that. They heard about us all the way in Italy and Japan.
The wondrous news multiplies with reports of aid streaming in from the state, from neighboring states and towns, the nation. Drives for donations in aid of the survivors of March 18th spring up from St. Louis to Chicago with churches, schools, even newspapers organizing seemingly overnight.
Folks aren’t careful, they’ll be needing aid from us pretty soon.
    The men and women visit cautiously with each other while they wait in the lines, surprised by life’s pulling them forward and wary of moving too quickly, like a widow flirting over her husband’s grave. They feel the ruined town spreading out behind them and beyond it the endless ruined farms and the dead livestock still lying in the fields. Each fears the day and the night that will follow; the snow or rain that will fall, the cold, the uncertain food. The newspapers have told that the National Guard is mobilizing. They are coming, they are coming with tents and food, and although each person can imagine sleeping in a tent, each wonders how long they are meant to live in them and how exactly a hunk of canvas and a handful of poles can form a bridge back to employment and a solid roof.
    The aid workers, doctors, and nurses streaming into town, housed and fed in sleepers and dining cars sent in by the railroad. The grim lists—dead, injured, missing, found—revised and stuck again to the doors of the library. The men and women huddled in front of the doors, jostling for the place in front, impatient fingers trailing down the lists, and the wretched faces of those pushing their way back out of the crowd.

8
    A scraping sound wakes Paul, scraping and wood being thrown on top of wood. Like something at the lumberyard, the clatter of plank against plank. Little Homer has climbed into bed with them again, although Paul can’t remember when. He’s coming slowly out of his dream, a dream he’s glad to be leaving. He can hear Little Homer’s breathing, a dry open-mouthed rattle just this side of snoring. Mae is lying as she always does, on her side facing out toward the wall, and Little Homer is