Summary
In July 1935, Billie Jo addresses a poem to her mother’s piano, calling it “my silent mother.” She expresses appreciation for the piano’s willingness to “stay with me, talk to me.” She calls the piano her companion, and “the mirror with my mother’s eyes.” Lying awake at night, Billie Jo feels herself full of bitterness about the dust, her father’s silence, and her mother’s absence. She feels that her father once loved her, and she’s given him chances to understand her and reach out and love her again, but he isn’t taking them. She believes he is digging his own grave and merely calling it a pond. She believes he has resigned himself to rotting away like his own father. She says she is leaving first.
In the middle of an August night, Billie Jo leaves her father’s house with the kerchief of dimes her mother squirreled away and a few biscuits. She is slowly smothering; she cannot stay. She walks to a place where the train slows long enough for her to hop on. She slips inside a boxcar to let the train carry her west, out of the dust. On the ride, she feels stiff and sore. It is hot in the desert and freezing in the mountains. From the train, she sees Dust Bowl migrants along the tracks.
A man in tattered, sour-smelling clothing climbs into her boxcar. He shows her a picture of his wife and three boys; the photo is all he has. She gives him two stale biscuits from the lot she has been hoarding. He is gaunt with hunger. The man says he couldn’t feed his family and couldn’t stand the baby always crying. He lost his land, and rented some after that, but couldn’t make anything grow. Billie Jo sympathizes and explains the sorrows she has been through. She feels guilty for leaving her father, who remained grounded and kept the house through everything. Billie Jo wakes up to find the man is gone and he has taken her reserve biscuits, leaving the photograph in their place. His address in Kansas is on the back. She decides to mail it back to let the woman know her husband is still alive. Billie Jo gets off the train in Arizona and a government agency lady gives her water and food. From the woman's office, Billie Jo calls Mr. Hardly to ask him to let her father know she is coming home.
Daddy is waiting for her at the station; it is the first time she has called him that since Ma died. They walk home together and she explains that she wanted to get out of the dust, but that the dust is what’s inside her. She is like the wheat, and she can grow here with a little rain, care, and luck. She admits to being scared about the spots on his skin. She can’t be her own mother and she can’t be her own father, she says. He promises to call the doctor about the spots. He says the pond is done; once filled, he’ll stock it with catfish they can fish out and fry up. He says she can even plant flowers. As they walk together, she feels herself forgiving him for the kerosene he left next to the stove. She is also forgiving herself for everything else.
In October, Billie Jo goes with Bayard to the doctor, who asks why he waited so long to show someone the spots. Billie Jo thinks that he didn’t care if he had cancer. They leave with Daddy in bandages covering where the doctor cut the spots off. Doc Rice looks at Billie Jo’s hands and tells her to stop picking at them and to apply ointment before bed. He also tells her, “They’ll heal up fine if you just use them.” At home, Bayard says he used to dream about running off too; he wasn’t sure about becoming a wheat farmer in the panhandle. Billie Jo realizes they have more in common than their red hair and long legs.
Billie Jo talks for the first time about Louise, her father’s new partner. Louise kept her father company during the nights Billie Jo was away on the train. Louise is a good cook but doesn’t show off. Billie Jo is impressed that her father cleans up after dinner when Louise is there. After eating, they walk around the farm. Despite feeling resistance, Billie Jo likes Louise for how plain and honest she is, and for how she makes Bayard laugh. Bayard says he never wanted Billie Jo to go live with Aunt Ellis, and they chuckle over the thought of Aunt Ellis trying to raise Billie Jo differently. Billie Jo only hopes that there is still a place for her in her father’s life and that Louise doesn’t crowd her out. The only place on the farm that Billie Jo doesn’t want Louise to be is at Ma’s grave. She says there isn’t enough room for her there, despite Bayard’s insistence that there is. Billie Jo believes Ma and Franklin’s bones would not like to meet Louise.
In November, on the tenth time Louise comes to dinner, Billie Jo tells her that she took the train looking for something but didn’t see anything better than what she already had. Billie Jo says she could play the piano but doesn’t want to bother getting the dust out of it yet. Billie Jo appreciates that Louise nods and listens, not telling her what to do. Can tell that Louise also understands the importance of the things Billie Jo is neglecting to talk about. The wheat is growing, though the dust still blows in occasionally. The pond is still full of water. Mad Dog passes once a week when visiting from Amarillo, where he works for the radio. If the dust doesn’t crush the winter wheat, they will have a bit more than last year to harvest.
On Thanksgiving, Billie Jo lists the things she is thankful for. It includes the smell of grass, friends like Mad Dog, the cattle in the river, Daddy’s smile, Louise, dust-free food, Daddy getting Ma’s piano tuned and cleaned, the pond staying full of water, the damp earth, the poppies set to bloom on Ma’s and Franklin’s grave, and the “certainty of home, the one I live in, and the one that lives in me.” Billie Jo is playing music again. She makes an analogy, saying she is getting to know the music and the music is getting to know her, like creatures sniffing each other’s armpits and necks. She says that she was trying to get out of the dust, but what she is is because of the dust. She says what she is is good enough even for her.
In December, Billie Jo comments that she and Louise take walks after dinner while Daddy cleans the kitchen. Louise was Bayard’s night school teacher. She never married and didn’t know how lonely she was until she fell for Bayard. Billie Jo is grateful for Louise’s ability to smooth things out between Billie Jo and Bayard and for her understanding of the importance of not imposing herself on Ma’s memory.
Bayard wants to plant the rest of the acres with wheat, but he decides to stick with what they’ve got now. Billie Jo practices piano for half an hour a day to make the skin and scars stretch on her hands. She says that hard times aren’t just about drought, dust and poverty; they’re about losing spirit and what happens when dreams dry up. From watching her father learn to work with the land he has, Billie Jo realizes that you can stay in one place and still grow. Every time Louise visits, Billie Jo wishes she’d stay longer. Eventually, she would like Louise to stay at the farm for good. The novel ends with Billie Jo saying that Louise wears a comical hat with flowers. When she smiles, her face is “full of springtime.” Billie Jo sometimes sees her father and Louise reflected in the piano. Billie Jo stretches her fingers over the keys and she plays.
Analysis
In Summer 1935, Out of the Dust reaches its climax when Billie Jo fulfills her dream of escaping the Oklahoma Panhandle. In the middle of the night, she is overcome with despair, resenting the dust, her emotionally repressed father, and herself for the role she played in her mother’s death. Billie Jo believes that her father has given up on his own life and is allowing the growths on his skin to kill him. Spitefully, she decides to abandon him before he can abandon her.
With few possessions to her name, Billie Jo leaves with only a few biscuits and the dimes she earned performing with Arley and the Black Mesa Boys. Unable to afford a ticket, Billie Jo sneaks into a boxcar—an empty cargo compartment linked to a train heading west. Although she is achieving her wish of escaping, from the boxcar she sees more miserable, desperate people along the tracks. The traveling companion she meets and gives food to is a broken man who has abandoned his wife and children after having lost his land. Meeting this man makes Billie Jo appreciate how her father has managed to hold on to his farm despite the adversity they’ve been living through. When the man steals Billie Jo’s food while she is asleep, Billie Jo feels compelled to turn around and return to her father—an imperfect but far more honorable figure than the selfish, duplicitous man in the boxcar.
The theme of emotional repression arises when Billie Jo returns to Cimarron County and finally communicates with her father, overcoming the invisible barrier of silence that has characterized their relationship since Ma’s death. Billie Jo allows herself to be vulnerable when she admits that she is concerned about the growths on Bayard’s face because she doesn’t want to lose another parent. Having realized that her dream of escaping was merely a fantasy, Billie Jo recommits herself to the land she has always known and hopes to emulate her father’s solidity and perseverance—to grow in one place.
Hesse continues developing the theme of hope when Bayard promises to see the doctor about his condition. An air of hope also prevails with the news that Bayard has finished the giant pond, which will help them keep their crops watered and will become a source of protein once he stocks it with catfish. Although she previously believed that she could never forgive her father for leaving the kerosene next to the stove and for going on a drinking binge when his family needed him most, Billie Jo finds that by talking with him honestly she can overcome her resentment of both her father and herself.
Hesse builds further on the theme of hope with the introduction of Louise, the night school teacher whom Bayard has started dating. While Billie Jo is initially cautious around this new maternal figure, she soon begins to open up emotionally to Louise, realizing that she can trust Louise to respect her unspoken boundaries about what she would rather not talk about. Louise is also careful to respect Ma’s memory and not impose herself on the still-grieving family. However, Billie Jo, having become accustomed to the way Louise lights up the lives of her and her father, hopes that Louise will move in with them.
Billie Jo also returns to playing the piano everyday, suggesting that she has learned to accept her mother’s death and feel joy again. At the end of the novel, Billie Jo concludes that the “hard times” she has been living through in the Dust Bowl have been particularly difficult because despair has made her lose her spirit. However, it seems that her spirit has returned to her, and the difficult experiences she has survived have shaped her into a wiser and more thoughtful person.
