Out of the Dust

“How supremely / heaven / playing piano / can be.”

Billie Jo’s inner light and spirit break free when she plays piano for a crowd at the Palace Theater. Her music and the energy of the audience members feed off one another. Billie Jo communicates the sensory experience of playing to the reader through description of tones and tempo and the feeling of unity and warmth in the theater; she sums up the feeling she experiences with this last line of the poem “On Stage.”

“Chocolate milk for dinner, aren’t we in clover!”

Billie Jo’s father breaks from his typical somber style with levity at the dinner table. There is of course no chocolate milk; he refers to the color and thickness of the milk in their glasses mixed with dust. The dust gets everywhere, even on the food on one’s plate and the liquid in one’s cup. Daddy’s attempt to lighten the situation with irony—they have no money for a luxury like chocolate—represents his and Ma’s determination to outlast the dust and stay on their land.

“Instead, she goes out to the chickens / and / her anger, / simmering over like a pot in an empty kitchen, / boils itself down doing chores.”

Billie Jo’s description characterizes Ma as a woman who holds her tongue when angry; Ma knows nothing will come of a bigger argument with Daddy, so she chooses to walk away instead. The line contains a simile full of imagery and meaning in “like a pot in an empty kitchen.” Curiously, the sequence of simmering to boiling implies that Ma gets angrier after walking away before cooling off. Additionally, the “empty kitchen” foreshadows the impending tragedy of Ma’s death.

“And as the dust left, / rain came. / Rain that was no blessing. / It came too hard, / too fast, / and washed the soil away, / washed the wheat away with it.”

Rain is not the answer to prayers, necessarily, for those afflicted by drought during the Dust Bowl. The dried and crusty “hardpan” dirt, created when settling farmers destroyed the prairie vegetation and rich layer of soil beneath it, cannot absorb water in a driving storm, so the water runs off into gullies instead of soaking into the ground. These lines of Billie Jo’s description contribute to overall conflict of Man Versus Nature and the theme of The Impact of Ignorance on Environment and Society.

“It’s being part of all that, / being part of Arley’s crowd I like so much, / being on the road, / being somewhere new and interesting. / We have a fine time.”

Billie Jo’s usual muted tone takes a positive turn in these lines that summarize her fun experience of playing piano for Arley’s musical group in small town venues around Joyce City. Her words reveal her desire to see more of the world as well as her happiness with joining a new group of people. While this is likely the most adventure Billie Jo has had, her understated description of the events—“fine time”—convey her lack of pretention and her unassuming nature.

“Only then the pain came.”

Billie Jo burns her hands so severely trying to extinguish the flames during the accident that she cannot feel pain in them at first. The doctor must cut away the dead skin and flesh and treat the raw skin left behind with stinging antiseptic. The line serves as an emotional metaphor as well as strong imagery; Billie Jo is numb at first to the tragedy, but grief and guilt soon sink in.

“But the grasshoppers ate every leaf, / they ate every piece of fruit. / Nothing left but a couple apple cores, / hanging from Ma’s trees.”

Plagues of grasshoppers sometimes descended on the beleaguered farms of the Dust Bowl, as if residents did not have enough with which to contend in droughts and poverty. Here, the pests arrive as harbingers of death in both a literal and symbolic way; they destroy the wheat and the apples, and their frantic feast precedes Ma’s and Franklin’s deaths.

“Such a sorrow doesn’t come suddenly, / there are a thousand steps to take / before you get there.”

Miss Freeman lays the blame for the terrible climate conditions at the feet of humans, who sought ways to make more money at the expense of the North American prairie—which existed for millennia in a careful balance between sod, roots, and moisture. Digging up the grasses and drying out the soil led to the dust storms that plague the Kelbys and others in the Oklahoma Panhandle and other Dust Bowl locations. This line and the rest of Miss Freeman’s lesson in “The Path to Our Sorrow” contributes to the theme of The Impact of Ignorance on Environment and Society.

“I’m good at digging.”

Bayard Kelby does not say very much in the narrative, which results in a longing for parental love and guidance in Billie Jo after Ma is gone. Here he shows his understated, reticent manner when he takes a job excavating for tower construction for a power company and describes his motives in the simplest of terms. Billie Jo becomes skilled at reading her father despite his quiet ways; here, for example, she sees the value of his decision to “hire on” since the crop likely will fail and the work may improve his spirits.

“My father used to say, why not put those hands to / good use? / He doesn’t say anything about ‘those hands’ / anymore.”

Billie Jo feels as if she wears the evidence of the accident and her role in it on her person because of the appearance of her hands. She feels others cannot help but focus on her “deformed” (92) hands and have forgotten who she is. Context clues indicate that although her hands certainly show signs of the injuries she sustained, they are far from useless or deformed, as she can still play notes on the piano.

“He looks at me like I am / someone he knows, / someone named Billie Jo Kelby.”

Billie Jo struggles with her identity after losing Ma and Franklin. She sees that others do not associate her with the girl she used to be and instead see her as a victim of tragic circumstances. Mad Dog is the exception; when Billie Jo has the opportunity to play for the dance revue, she appreciates that he treats her as he always has.

“I can’t have my wife sleeping in the cold truck, / not now. Not with the baby coming so soon.”

Readers get another glimpse of life during the historical Dust Bowl with the migrant family who shelters in the school. Leaving their homes in search of employment and subsistence, thousands of American families traveled from drought-afflicted areas toward California during the 1930s. Billie Jo’s emotional connection to this family is immediate and heartrending because the mother soon gives birth to a newborn girl. Billie Jo gives the family the feed-sack nighties Ma made for Franklin.

“It’s the playing I want most, / the proving I can still do it.”

In Section 5, Billie Jo seeks ways she can begin to heal from the tragedy of Ma’s and Franklin’s deaths. She also wants to reconnect with her own identity despite the way others treat her with pity or distance. Her desire to play piano is a natural connection to the Billie Jo she once was, but the scars on her hands make practicing difficult, and she is not emotionally strong enough yet to practice on Ma’s piano. Through indirect characterization, readers see Billie Jo’s inner strength in her desire to move on from grief but also note the emotional challenges holding her back.

“I just want to go, / away, / out of the dust.”

This line caps Section 5 and includes the titular phrase. Events and emotions build throughout the section to bring Billie Jo to this strong conclusion: She watches the migrant family depart, wanting desperately to go with them and their new baby. Also, she recognizes how lonely and difficult her existence is without the love of her mother. Additionally, people she knows die of old age or dust pneumonia. Her need to escape her dreary life for different experiences is growing stronger.

“We’ll be back when it rains, / they say, / setting out with their bedsprings and mattresses, / their cookstoves and dishes, / their kitchen tables, / and their milk goats / ties to their running boards / in rickety cages, / setting out for California…”

Drought conditions, failed farms, and dust force local families to leave their land and head west. These lines of verse are full of sensory imagery and give the reader a clear picture of Billie Jo’s observations as neighbors leave in search of work and plenty elsewhere in this poem titled “Migrants.” Billie Jo’s mood is one of yearning as her desire to leave too strengthens and grows more defined.

“He just keeps that invitation from her, / glowering down at me from the shelf above the piano.”

Billie Jo does not want to go to live with Aunt Ellis in Lubbock, but these lines convey her complicated feelings on the subject. The word “glowering” has an impactful negative connotation that reveals deeper meaning to the reader. Billie Jo certainly wants to go somewhere, but ironically, she rejects the one place to which she could easily go. These lines illustrates that she second-guesses that choice.

“It’s best to let the dead rest.”

Billie Jo wants to witness the archeologists unearthing the fossilized bones of the dinosaur they discovered nearby; she hopes to experience whatever lesson those bones from a creature who lived eons before must tell. She also astutely sees the irony of the dinosaur’s leaving Joyce City only now—far too late to enjoy it. Daddy says no to her request; his refusal caps this poem, “Old Bones,” as well as Section 6 and brings an air of finality to the topic that further entrenches Billie Jo in her surroundings.

“You are the /companion / to myself. / The mirror / with my mother’s eyes.”

These lines appear in the poem titled “The Dream” in July 1935—one year since the horrific accident that took Ma’s life. In her dream, Billie Jo can touch Ma’s piano and feels the connection to her dead mother through the instrument—though when she is awake, she cannot. The poem demonstrates Billie Jo’s yearning for her mother while seeking to come to terms with her own identity. This line alludes to the mirror that Billie Jo can see as she sits at the piano, in which she might see her mother or herself.

“My father’s digging his own grave, / he calls it a pond, / but I know what he’s up to.”

Billie Jo is upset that her father has skin spots that resemble his own father’s, who died of skin cancer. She uses metaphorical language in these lines to explain that by refusing to see Doc Rice, her father is risking death, and that he would rather throw his energy into the distraction of digging the pond than deal with more painful or troublesome issues. She is concerned about him, but she is also concerned about herself if he dies, fearing the loneliness.

“Now I slip under cover of darkness / inside a boxcar / and let the train carry me west. / Out of the dust.”

Her desperate loneliness, fear, and eagerness to get away from the grief that plagues her even a year after the accident drive Billie Jo to the climactic event of the narrative: She leaves in the middle of the night with no plan except to escape. Here, she associates the dust with all the sadness and hardship she wants to leave behind. The dust itself has come to symbolize pain and everyday struggle of life under the burden of guilt and sorrow.

“I tell him he is like the sod, / and I am like the wheat, / and I can’t grow everywhere, / but I can grow here, / with a little rain, / with a little care, / with a little luck.”

Billie Jo returns home after a short-lived attempt at fleeing west, but her brief sojourn effectively opens the floodgates of honesty and emotion to her father. She not only comes to these metaphorical conclusions about her role and identity (and his) in their small family, but she also—finally—wants to share with him how she feels. The train trip teaches Billie Jo that she may not be better off anywhere else, and that if she can learn to seek what she needs to grow, home is the best place for her for now.

“I didn’t have half your sauce, Billie Jo…”

Billie Jo’s father tells her on her return that he often considered setting out for parts unknown, but never did. Here, he compliments her boldness using the idiomatic expression “sauce” and allows that she shows more daring and confidence than he could muster in his early, more doubtful days on the land of the Panhandle. The line is brief but significant, as it shows Billie Jo that she and her father have similar feelings about home and identity.

“I’m getting to know the music again. / And it is getting to know me.”

Having moved toward absolving herself of guilt and blame for the accident that led to Ma’s and Franklin’s deaths, Billie Jo’s natural inclination for playing piano begins to surface. She can use Ma’s piano even while her father’s new love interest Louise is in the house. Here, she personifies the abstract idea of music with the trait of human interaction to best account for the reconnection she feels to her most passionate interest.