"Joseph!" My mother called from the doorway, "Come inside." I stopped trying to catch my cricket and stood up. The sky was getting darker, and a slight wind picked up. I slowly walked to the door.

"Mama," I asked her as I ran my hand along the 7-UP walls, "Why did we move?"

She sighed, as if not sure how to respond. I don't know why. My question wasn't that hard, was it?

"The storms blew away all the crops and Papa didn't have enough money to pay off the bank loan-"

"The bad guys?" I interrupted.

"Yes, the bad guys. They were mean and took more than they needed from us, and then, one day, they just took our home, so we had to move."

"So who's going to beat the bad guys and make them give our house back? That's what it's like in the book, right?" I held up the tattered copy of Robin Hood I had left by the door.

"Not in real life child, now come inside." She held the door open, and I followed her in. She started moving the big couch in front of the door.

"Is there a storm coming, Mama?" I watched her hurry to pull the pot off the stove and pour it into two bowls, handing one to me along with a piece of bread.

"Hush, child. Eat your soup." I plopped on the floor, spilling some over the sides.

"Joseph!" Mama yelled, "Don't waste that soup!" It was too late, already sinking into the dry, cracked ground.

"I'm sorry Mama." I looked down, but she didn't look at me, instead she took her bowl bowl and dipped her bread into the soup, chewing it slowly. She didn't sit down by me. We sat for a few seconds in quiet, listening to the crickets outside. Normally, I thought they sounded merrily, but now there chirping sounded like an eerie warning. At least they gave us that. Mama stood up and grabbed the broom from the corner and started sweeping the dirt and dust off into a crack to the outside, but it was fruitless. The next wind gust drove it all back inside.

"Why do we have to have this every day?" I asked suddenly as I slurped at the remaining broth in the bowl, though I knew what she was going to say. I had asked the same question almost every other day, always to the same answer: Stop complaining, at least we have food!

"Stop complaining. At least we have food! We could have gone hungry like the Fredricksons next door!"

I shrank against the wall. She never brought up the Fredricksons from the last house. It was a long time ago, but I remembered.

Mama beat me away from it with a straw broom. That's how I knew she was worried--she didn't bother to snap at me or make me sit up, just get away from the walls. She didn't even push the last whoosh of dust out the crack, just stopped and looked at the picture hanging up solemnly.

"What about Papa?" I asked her, starting to get nervous. Whenever Mama was upset, it was something important. This storm must have been big.

She put the broom back in the corner and started twiddling with the knobs on Papa's radio. She loved that radio.

"Papa will be fine. He's waiting at the bank for the storm to pass."

I looked at her, confused. Wasn't the bank where the bad guys were? Why was Papa there? But I didn't bother to ask. One whap with the broom was enough for me to know to keep quiet.

The wind started howling outside. I jumped, spilling the last drops of soup onto the floor, and coating the wooden bowl in a thick layer of dust. Mama didn't even yell at me, just clutched her rag tighter in her hand. The radio started coming in, fritzing in and out, adding loud noises in between. It was deafening, and it just added to the storm's scariness.

"Turn it off, turn it off!" I begged. Mama did as I asked, slamming the thing to the ground. I watched her whisper a prayer under her breath as she made a discrete sign of the cross.

"Come here, baby." she ordered me. I didn't need another reminder this time. I pulled the old rocking chair into the middle of the small room, and Mama sat down. I crawled into her lap, even though I knew I was too big. The plywood walls rattled around, whipping dust under the crooks and crannies and filling my lungs and causing me to cough.

"Tell me a story." I whispered, my voice hoarse and dry. My mother noticed and handed me the handkerchief from her apron pocket. I dipped it in the cooling bowl of soup on the ground and tied it around my nose and mouth. She did the same. The watery smell of potato dripped around my neck, but it was better than the dirt.

"Tell me what it was like before!"

Mama sighed, though I could barely hear it over the dust starting to mercilessly beat the walls.

"This all started a few years before your time. I was carrying a babe the first time we had to move."

"Me!"

"Yes," she smiled and tickled me lightly, causing me to laugh. "But before we moved into the last house, we had a wonderful palace outside Ponca City, just into the countryside. We had a nice, big farm, with huge fields of cotton you would have loved to run through each night. There were even black workers, who tilled everything up. They were real nice, and earned a nice salary too. We owned a black horse named Millie, too. She was the most beautiful horse there ever was, and a gentle beast if I ever saw one. But the best thing we had by far was the food."

The wind and dust picked up, shaking the little shack violently. Mama paused.

"Tell me more, Mama!"

"All right. The food. It was the most delicious thing you've ever tasted. There was even meat every Sunday. Big, juicy, tender steaks from our own cows. And vegetables, carrots, beans, the whole works. Everyday we got big glasses of cool milk, filled to the brim. Fresh from the cows, they were the perfect thing to go with cereal. Once in a while, I would have the time to make a pie. Cherry pies were your Papa's favorite. Mine were the apple pies, with just a hint of cinnamon to them, and a piping hot, thick filling to the them. Oh, they were the best things I have ever tasted. When we get our money back, I will make you one." She was reduced to yelling, and I could still barely hear her.

"What happened?" I had never heard this story before.

"Lucusts. Big, thick clouds of them that blocked out the sky for days. When they left, all of the crops would be gone, reduced to stubs in the ground. They would make your crickets look like specks of dirt. They ate everything we had, but one day we'll get everything back and it'll all be like it should have been."

The wind was the loudest I had every heard it. It picked up a panel of the wall and just carried it away. The dust flew inside through every crack there was, the dry, hot air adding to my coughing fit. It felt as if my lungs were sealing up, shriveling and drying and slowly killing me.

"This is the biggest storm I've ever seen." She yelled to

When I finally caught my breath, "I'm scared, Mama."

"I know, Joseph."

"Are we going to die, Mama? Die like the Fredricksons?"

I had to yell and wheeze.

"I don't know, baby."

"I love you."

"I love you too."

She held me closer to her, as close as I could get. I curled up to a ball into her lap, embracing it. My tears moistened my cheeks and dropped unto my arm, the only relief to our dry, hot pain. The dust swirled around us, making everything hazy as the little balls of dirt whipped into our skin. We sat there, watching, waiting, never knowing when it would end.