Warday

Being triaged can make you feel very naked at a time like this.

Joan Wilson isn’t forthcoming, which is understandable, considering that she’s got eighteen third-graders to worry about, not to mention the unexpected crowd from our train and the six or seven who have come in off the street.

She will not give us an interview. We have to content ourselves with a few quick questions.

“What are living conditions like here?”

She looks at me. She does not smile. “It was getting better.”

“Do you have many dust storms?”

“This isn’t a dust storm. It’s the land, don’t you understand that?”

“The land?”

Her voice is low and fierce. “The plains themselves are blowing, right down to their core. There’s never been a dust storm like this.

But I’ll tell you something, mister. I don’t care how bad this storm is, or the next one or the one after that. I am staying here. I was born in Kansas City and I am not going to leave, and I’m not the only one. We made this place grow, and we’ll make it grow again.”

She turns away. She doesn’t want to keep talking. But there is one more question. In spite of her feelings, I must ask it. “What about the children, Miss Wilson?”

She looks at me. The air between is brown now, as if a polluted fog had crept into the room. Wind screams outside. In the distance something clatters, maybe a tin roof blowing through the streets.

“The children?”

They do not look like the kids Andrew went to school with.

They are as hard and tight as their Miss Wilson—quick, serious little people with sharp eyes. When I meet those eyes, they do not look away and they do not smile.

Soon one of the other teachers begins reading a book for the benefit of the whole student body, which counts perhaps eighty children. It is Beauty and the Beast They listen in silence.

Kansas City—Children’s Thoughts

Essays on spring from Miss Wilson’s third grade, Shawnee Elementary School.

SPRING RAIN INSTRUCTIONS

If it rains get inside right away. And if you get wet you have to go to the office for geiger, then showers and get rid of your clothes.

If you don’t have any more you have to be in your underpants. You have to be careful, but spring rain is also nice.

I LOVE SPRING

The frogs croak and the mayflies fly. Mommy prays for the cabbages, which are just now coming out of the ground. They say spring is the time of hope. We read about lilacs.

SPRING RAIN DANGER

I got inside to keep it off me. I saw it go down on Barko. They won’t let me have Barko. Spring rain danger. My daddy tried to keep it off our onions but he got all wet himself and there wasn’t enough plastic from the allocation. Rain from the east is good, but if it comes from the west, just say your prayers, like it did Thurs-day.

RAINBOW

Lord Jesus sent a rainbow to say its OK, folks. Dad and Mom went on the cleanup. I was scared, I was home alone all night. Then Miss Wilson came and said come to the cleanup. They taught me how to get the particles with the Dustbuster, and I got a lot. They paint a red circle around them. Then you suck them up. Then you go to the next one, until your Dustbuster is out of juice. The Dustbusters are heavy because they have lead on them.

OUR FARM IN SPRING

Our mare is getting ready to foal. I am going to help deliver her with my dad. Mom and Dad said God gave us this foal, but I think War Cloud and Joanie did it when they jumped on each other last year. And we also have pigs.

WARM DAYS

To me spring is warm days. The sun is out and we don’t have to worry about the coal. We are OK on money. I am often in the garden. We have a general permission because my mom is a garden freak. She makes salad all spring and summer. We sit outside on the back porch and shoot rabbits to eat with it And I do not hurt when it is warm.

Documents on Limited War and the Limited Economy

Red wine in the sunlight,

May weather—
While white fine fingers
Break the thin biscuit…

—Osip Mandelstam, from Stone

LET THEM EAT WORDS

The official word from the Federal Complex in L.A. on the economy was one of cautious optimism.

In fact, there is no single American economy. It is possible to define the two big ones of East and West, but beyond those there are many, many more.

As we crossed the country from the prosperous valleys of the Pacific Coast to the dark Northeastern ports, we encountered dozens of economies. Life has focused down: people don’t think in terms of long-range movement and trade anymore, outside California anyway. The concern is the farm on the hill, the plant down the street, the condition of one’s own belly.

The following three documents illustrate how we have refocused to microeconomics because of the suddenness with which the macroeconomy disintegrated and the deep consequences of the shortages that resulted.