Out of the Dust

This section summarizes Poem 32: “The Accident,” Poem 33: “Burns,” Poem 34: “Nightmares,” Poem 35: “A Tent of Pain,” Poem 36: “A Night of Drinking,” and Poem 37: “Devoured.”

Billie Jo reveals a terrible accident in July. Daddy placed a pail of kerosene by the stove; Ma assumed it was water and poured it into the coffee-making pot on the lit stove. The flame jumped up to ignite the whole pail, and Ma ran out for Daddy. Billie Jo thought to throw the flaming pail of kerosene out the back door but did not know Ma turned to come back. The flaming kerosene engulfed Ma’s clothing and body. Billie Jo tried to beat the flames out with her bare hands. Burns cover Ma’s entire body. Billie’s Jo’s hands are severely burned too. The pain is agonizing after Doc Rice treats her: “He cut my skin away with scissors, / then poked my hands with pins to see what I could feel” (62).

In “Nightmare,” Billie Jo dreams that she comes home in a dust storm to find the piano ruined. She is angry at Ma for letting the dust in. When she tries to play, it sounds like “shrieking” (64). She brings Ma a fiery pail to drink from. Ma births “a baby of flames” (64). Billie Jo goes to the Eatons’ in her dream and takes their piano home, but when she tries to play, she cannot because of her burned hands.

Ma’s burns are not treatable; she can only lay under a tented sheet and moan. Daddy finds money Ma hid and uses it to go out drinking. While he is gone, Billie Jo tries to squeeze water from a rag into Ma’s mouth, but she cannot manage the task with her burned hands. In “Devoured,” a cloud of grasshoppers descends on the farm, destroying the wheat and Ma’s apples. Billie Jo climbs the trees despite her hands and tries beating the pests away, but the grasshoppers are a swarm with which she cannot contend. There is no need to tell Ma: “Ma died that day / giving birth to my brother” (69).

This section summarizes Poem 38: “Blame,” Poem 39: “Birthday,” Poem 40: “Roots,” and Poem 41: “The Empty Spaces.”

Aunt Ellis, Daddy’s sister, arrives to take the baby, but the infant boy dies. Aunt Ellis does not stay nor talk to Billie Jo. Neighbors come to bury Ma and the baby together on the property “on the rise Ma loved” (70). Reverend Bingham performs the burial. His words are empty, though, as he did not know Ma well. Daddy is silent when the Reverend asks for the baby’s name, so Billie Jo says his name is Franklin, like the president. She overhears women neighbors: “‘Billie Jo threw the pail / […] an accident’” (71).

On her birthday in August, Billie Jo walks to Arley’s house and hides out back where she can hear his piano music. In “Roots,” Billie Jo thinks President Roosevelt’s advice to plant trees on the plains will not work; she thinks neither trees nor people are destined to survive there. Billie Jo and Daddy grow increasingly distant with one another by September. In his grief, Daddy stares at Billie Jo’s hands. She does not want to be near him but has no one else.

This section summarizes Poem 42: “The Hole,” Poem 43: “Kilauea,” Poem 44: “Boxes,” Poem 45: “Night Bloomer,” and Poem 46: “The Path of Our Sorrow.”

Daddy decides to dig a pond 40 feet by 60 feet. Neighbors think it is a pointless endeavor, and so does Billie Jo. She also does not care if he is seeking to make things right: “But as long as I live, / no matter how big a hole he digs, / I can’t forgive him that pail of kerosene / left by the side of the stove” (78). Billie Jo mentions how the eruption of the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii is like a dust storm with its suffocating smoke. In “Boxes,” Billie Jo tries to go through some trinkets and keepsakes from early childhood as she told Ma that she would but gives up on the task. The poem title “Night Bloomer” refers to Mrs. Brown’s cereus plant, a flower that blooms only for a few hours. Billie Jo goes in the middle of the night for the blooming, but when the sun rises and the flower wilts, she cannot bear to see it.

Billie Jo’s teacher Miss Freeland summarizes how the conditions on the Great Plains became so bad in “The Path of Our Sorrow.” Economic prosperity was easy during the Great War because America sold wheat to Europe. When the price of wheat fell after the war, farmers planted many more acres to try to make up for losses. Livestock overgrazed the fields, and farmers plowed under the good sod that kept the prairie grass and underground moisture in place; the exposed soil dried in the sun, and now powerful winds cause dust storms. (84). Billie Jo compares this “sorrow” to her family’s tragedy.