Dust Bowl Boys

For Joanie Wilson and Floyd DeMarco, The Great Depression wasn’t depressing at all. Sure, they were starving, all ribs and collarbones. Floyd held on to jutting hip bones instead of love handles and felt ribs where there should have been breasts. But there, in the back of the rumbling freight train, two friends shared their first time together, and that was all that mattered.

Floyd noticed nothing out of the ordinary. He had only a basic, animal knowledge of sex, supplemented by tales of outrageous escapades from his older brother, who, in truth, was no more educated in the realm of women and intercourse than Floyd– on several occasions, he emphasized the importance of a post-coital Lysol douching to ‘wash away the spunk’ and prevent pregnancy.

He had no idea what a typical female body looked like beneath clothing, so he was delighted, not surprised, by what Joanie called her ‘catty-pillar,’ and her willingness to share it. Floyd lamented the lack of breasts, but they both supposed it was due to the starvation. Joanie explained with a somber certainty that they were sure to come in when she had more to eat. They both understood that, for now, her flat chest was a blessing.

Joanie, always a talented actress, had the remarkable ability to switch her sex at will, tucking her hair into her hat and lowering her voice. She could become Johnny when it was convenient, and it was almost always convenient. Farms balked at hiring a fourteen year old girl, but an enterprising young man could earn himself a day’s work. Men leered at Joanie, with her soft blonde curls and baby’s cheeks, but Johnny was all but invisible to them, just another dustbowl boy looking to send some money to his mother.

But to Floyd she was Joanie. The same Joanie he’d known almost his whole life, the same Joanie he caught frogs with under the summer sun, the same Joanie he loved with his entire heart and soul. So as Floyd sat against the metal wall of the boxcar, panting, after the most special moment of his entire life, he was upset when Joanie began her transformation.

“Joan, God, what’re ya doin’?” He groaned.

Like the all encompassing tiredness that comes after a blissful day at the river, Floyd was exhausted, and entirely fulfilled. He became anxious at that moment, that maybe Joanie hadn’t enjoyed herself as much as he did, or maybe she was ashamed. He wished that he was holding her.

She didn’t answer. She was on the opposite end of the boxcar, suddenly shy about him seeing her nakedness, putting on trousers with panicked zeal. And tucking her hair into her hat.

“Come on, there ain’t nobody around, whatcha doing that for? Can’t we just lay down a minute? You don’t hafta be embarrassed or nothin’. I like ya, Joanie. ”

“Ain't causin’ you no harm,” she dismissed.

Floyd scowled. So did Joanie. They sat as far away from each other as possible and Floyd didn’t feel full anymore.

…

They came together again later that afternoon in Richmond. Finally, at their destination- or close to it. Joanie’s grandfather lived just outside of Richmond in Short Pump. They disembarked, and Floyd grabbed Joanie’s hand while the uniformed bull chased them through the railyard, and they laughed, sprinting through the brambles.

“Boys, you come back here, have some sense!”

Floyd looked over his shoulder to share a knowing glance with Joanie, but she was looking ahead. Away.

Empowered by the virility of youth, the two easily evaded the bull and collapsed in the bracken, giggling and grinning among the ferns and blackberry bushes. Floyd was so thrilled he could hardly feel the bloody pinpricks and scratches left by thorns.

They laid together in the shade of tall bushes, and became quiet. Floyd took off Joanie’s paperboy cap and set it between them. He felt its woolen fabric pressing against his stomach as they embraced. It almost made him angry, but Joanie kissed him, and a jolt of pure ecstasy shot through him once again.

“Ain’tcha hungry?” Joanie pulled away, standing up straight. “Whaddya say we head into town somewhere and find sumptin’ to eat?”

Floyd wasn’t. His stomach was full. Full with hot anticipation and butterflies and love, and somewhere deeper down, burning brightly, anger, fear, even.

“Sure baby,” he agreed. “I’m hungry.”

She put that cap on again.

They walked towards the setting sun and Richmond, Joanie two paces ahead. Or maybe it was Johnny.

…

Floyd was at the counter of the general store, buying two cans of Bush’s baked beans and a Snickers bar. He bought a few single cigarettes as well. The clerks were hungry too, and as long as a child had money, cigarettes were fair game. But it was Joanie who was getting the real haul. Normally she took essentials, like peanut butter and bread, but today, she was stuffing candy– black crows, sugar babies, tootsie rolls, Butterfingers that were sure to melt in the heat–, Nabisco cookie tins, and a bottle of gin into her pack. Prohibition had been lifted the year before, conveniently, when Joanie had discovered the joys of alcohol. Floyd was yet to truly enjoy the burn of liquor and the subsequent numbing effect. He preferred Root Beer, so she took a bottle of that off the shelf. They were due for a celebration.

They convened outside of the store, but walked down the road a few yards before talking.

“What’dya get?” Floyd tapped her bulging bag.

“Lotsa good stuff, Floyd, you’ll get to see it, don’t worry, we just gotta find a place to set down. Can I have a cig-ret?”

“Sure,” Floyd produced a cigarette from his pocket. She didn’t slow down a bit to accept it; he had to chase her to catch up, to earn the privilege of putting a cigarette between her lips. She lit a match, her long legs still outpacing his.

He huffed, half joking, “Damn it, girl, slow down!”

“Don’t call me that. We’re in public,” she hissed.

He became quiet and puffed on a cigarette of his own, glaring.

…

The Virginia sky had grown dark, and it was darker yet beneath the trestle, where the two children sat on the grass. With the light of their cigarettes and the light of the moon, they shuffled through Joanie’s pack.

“Wow, thanks!” He grinned at the bottle of Dad’s rootbeer. It meant that she still loved him, he thought.

“Yup,” Joanie was popping Lifesaver after Lifesaver into her mouth. It was her mantra, that the more of something you have at the same time, the better.

“Can’t believe tomorrow we’ll get to sleep in a real house.” Floyd laid on his side and bit the bottlecap with his back molars. Hissss.

She rolled her eyes. Floyd couldn’t see it but he felt it. “It’s only if we get lucky, I don’t got no idea if he’s still here. Hoover put a lot of folks out of their homes.”

“Applesauce! Why you bein’ such a pill lately?”

“I just don’t think we should get so excited over somethin’ that might not happen.”

Floyd felt his eyes brim with tears. He turned away from her. Him, maybe. She was still wearing that stupid hat. She never took it off anymore and she got mad when he called her Joanie, even when they were all alone. Under the trestle that night, whispering her name into the crook of her neck as she slept, forming the sweetest of sounds with his tongue, he could feel her body bristle and harden in his arms, even in its slumber.

“Why don’t you love me?” His voice cracked just like his heart did and the hot tears were stinging his eyes again.

I just don’t think we should get so excited over somethin’ that might not happen.

Isn’t that what life is? He thought. And it was, for him. Floyd spent his boyhood like the others, for the most part. Playing baseball, watching trains flatten pennies, building forts, starting small fires… Yet he had a ceaseless, dreaming way about him that never quite let up. Maybe it was intrinsic, something in his nature, maybe it had to do with the poverty he grew up in, a little tree reaching for a ray of sunshine. But either way he dreamed, and hoped against hope. For a respectable career, for education, for family, for fullness. For love.

…

Grampa Wilson was an authoritarian, a shrewd businessman– and also a human. So of course the state of the world hit him. In fact, he believed that the world was actively conspiring against him, Frederick Ernest Wilson Sr. The evidence was compelling.

He had fathered seven children. Two died before reaching maturity, one after adolescence. Theodora, his daughter, secretly eloped in 1909. The remaining three faded, slowly disappearing from his life. He couldn’t remember when exactly. He had upwards of twenty grandchildren, but knew of only a few, and met even fewer. The love of his life died, and the women that followed left, one by one. It was the same with his businesses. His first business, transporting live animals across state lines, was a booming success. The ones that followed were fleeting, up until he monetized his passion for booze and crime in 1920, but that screeched to a halt when prohibition was lifted and his services were no longer needed. So there he lived, in a derelict Victorian on a dead end road in a dead end town. A life of misery and toil and nothing to show for it.

Ernest was alone, fully and completely. He didn’t get visitors, not unless they were fixing to cause trouble. So when the two children showed up on his stoop he opened the door with one hand and held a rifle in the other.

“Grampa Wilson?” She choked the words out. It was him alright. Tall and scary like in that picture of her mother, Theodora, as a kid.

The next words tumbled out. She couldn’t stop them. “I’m your grandson- Dora’s boy- Johnny.”

It sounded natural. So natural that it took a moment to register in Floyd’s mind. But to Grampa Wilson it was all the same. He knew no Joanie or Johnny.

The old man’s face softened. “Well, I’ll be. You look just like my Theodora- I had no idea she had children. Is she well? And, you, boy, who are you?”

“This is my good buddy, Floyd. And I’m sorry to say it, but my mama died three years back. She said you had a business, we’re hopin’ we can help, maybe earn our keep,” Joanie (Johnny?) explained. Floyd was glad he didn’t have to talk.

“Sorry to hear it, boy,” he leaned his rifle against the wall. “Come on in, I can fix us some breakfast.”

They followed him into the house. For a poor man, he owned many things, junk accrued over a lifetime. Floyd almost tripped over a stone statue of a cocker spaniel lying on the stairs among other clutter.

Grampa Wilson opened the door to a room. It was filled with cheap books, rotten newspapers, children’s clothing… there were pillows and blankets buried somewhere in the mess and mildew. “You can set down here. I’ll be cooking for a minute. Don’t mess with my things.”

And he was gone.

When Floyd turned to gawk at Joanie, she was already staring at him, with the same look of panic.

“What in the hell did you do? Why’s you lyin’ to your own grandad?” Floyd whispered through gritted teeth.

“I’m not lyin’,” tears sprang up in her eyes. “I’m not.”

“You ain’t Johnny and you ain’t a boy.”

Joanie grabbed his hand. “I want to be. Floyd, help me.”

He couldn’t be angry anymore. He wanted to be but Floyd was never an angry boy.

She took off her hat. “I can’t have my hair like this. Cut my hair before he notices. Please.”

“You still gonna have girl hair, girl hair ain’t the same as boy hair– them flapper girls, they got short hair but it’s still girl hair!” He pulled away from her.

Joanie was crying now, holding the scissors they used to cut fishing line. “Please.”

He wanted to say no. To tell her to do it herself or wrestle the scissors out of her hands and talk some sense into her. He wanted to but Floyd was never an angry boy.

He took the scissors, held the blonde curls in the other hand, and began to cut over his bag. Partly to avoid trouble with Grampa Wilson, partly to keep the thing he loved so dearly. Her hair. It was greasy and it smelled like sweat and dust and damp, it tangled in his fingers and it was the color of spoilt wheat. But he loved it all the same because it belonged to Joanie. It was torture, to lop it off so unevenly with rusted scissors.

He looked at his work. Joanie was still there, but he saw him too. Johnny.

“Well. You feel like a boy Joanie?”

“Don’t call me that.” The tears returned. “Not ever again.”

“Long as you don’t wear that hat no more.”

Joanie pitched it to the side. “Never liked it one bit neither.”

They were quiet for a moment, but the question crashed through. “Do you still love me then?” Floyd’s voice was trembling. Yes, that was what made him afraid, not that she was changing, just that maybe Joanie was gone forever and that meant all the times they shared died along with her, the memories, the friendship. The love.

“Always, I always love you.”

“I love you too, John Wilson.” Floyd grinned. He savored the name in his mouth, so familiar yet so strange, like he savored the taste of the young man’s lips, and later yet, the taste of burnt coffee and toast.