The Dust Dancers of Abilene
I.
The oranging of the earth as the sun dipped below the horizon. Dirt stirred around ankles, skated on the wind between legs and over cotton skirts, caught on men’s good trousers and women’s bonnets. The last scraps of sunlight scattered through the Abilene dust; the city was a lightbulb seconds away from flickering out altogether. There were no replacements. It had its own sort of charm, if you tilted your head to the right angle: up, to see the sky curve into the earth in every direction, or down, to trace the patterns in the ground and imagine the steps of the churchgoers dissolving into a waltz.
Never straight on. Straight on, Abilene was the easiest to choke on, too much of everything and nothing at the same time. It was impossible, the throngs of people that pushed through the streets from church to the farms, the miles worn into the lines of their hands. It was impossible, the space they all still held between them, the smallness of the flies buzzing between rotting conversations. But at an angle — yes, you could drown in the beauty of Abilene at an angle.
The city faded into a grainy photograph, light lingering in the needles of haylofts, the carelessly golden hair of the women on their husbands’ arms. Children ran through the church doors, inmates freed from life sentences. Everything stretched in front of them, every love in the pound of their feet against the ground, every burst of laughter in the way they tore off their forced suit-coats and ties, held them streaming in the wind like flags behind them. The children wove through the streets and kicked tornadoes after them, past the bank and post office and Kahn’s bakery, past strawberry fields and broken fences and the Harper’s sprawling estate. Slower, their mothers came, and their fathers, rounding the bend back to their lives.
II.
Gene’s hand was warm in the crook of Alice’s elbow as he guided her toward the door of the Harper estate, trailing their pairs of parents up the lane. She could feel his gaze on her face, full of admiration and care and the promise of the rest of her life, with everything it should be, and she leaned into his solidity, his certainty. His fingers stroked the soft fabric of her sleeves, long despite the groaning heat in the Texas air, and he smiled with only the corner of his mouth. How she ached for the future she would have with him, down to her every cell. How could she not want it? Him? The marriage was to be perfect, everything any girl could ever want. Alice wanted it just as much as anyone, surely.
She glanced away from Gene, shocked by the strange unease blooming in her stomach when she watched him, and turned her eyes toward the ground. Sometimes that was easier to see, a good way to clear her head. She focused on the movement of her feet over the well-worn path . Her church shoes had picked up a thick layer of dust on the walk back, and she longed to peel them from her sweating feet and run the way her younger sisters did, skirt hiked high and tumultuous legs free, toes curled into the soft ground at every step. Happy, face tilted away from the way people watched.
“Is everything all right, darling?” The honey-sweet sound of Gene’s voice, the genuine concern on his tongue, cut through her fantasy. She shook her head to clear the thought, the horrible thought, away, and smiled at Gene.
“Fine,” Alice said, “just fine.” It was, all fleeting wonder and what-if vanished. Because he was what she longed for, truly, and he was here, next to her. There was nothing good to be said about a soon-to-be-married girl running down the lane like a child, and everything good to be said about a wedding. Hers and Gene’s. They came to a stop at the entrance to the estate, where they would part ways, and Gene released her arm.
“So lovely to see you today, Mrs. Bell, Mr. Bell, Alice.” Mrs. Harper clasped Alice’s hand in both of hers and looked her in the eyes as she spoke. “Soon, we’ll go to church together as a family every Sunday. What a wonderful idea, that marriage unites two into one! Less than a week to the wedding, now.”
“Oh,” said Gene, “that reminds me.” He fished in the pocket of his suit for a moment before producing a glass bottle painted with pale pink flowers and a gold stopper in its mouth. “Perfume, Alice. I thought you might like something new to wear when we marry.”
Alice took the bottle from Gene, noting how gentle his fingers were with its fragility. She told herself this was what she wanted, needed, this moment with Gene passing her the future with careful hands. She told herself that the rolling in the pit of her stomach was an unfamiliar brand of happiness, and as she breathed in the rose scent of the perfume, she believed it.
III.
“Are you excited, Ali?” Her youngest sister’s silhouette in the doorway three nights later, against the soft flicker of the electric bulb in the hallway.
“Of course.”
“You don’t seem it.” Virginia crept into Alice’s bedroom on soft twelve-year-old feet and stood at the dresser, ran the pads of her fingers over the glass of Gene’s perfume bottle. Alice’s perfume bottle. “Your wedding is in two days!”
“You can use a bit of the perfume, if you’d like,” Alice murmured, not moving from her seat by the window, eyes trained outside but unfocused.
“But aren’t you saving it? It’s your wedding perfume. Don’t you want to wear it for the first time while you’re walking down the aisle? Imagine that, Ali! You walking down the aisle!” Virginia’s voice took on a dreamy tone, faraway and love-choked. “Soon that perfume’ll be the signature scent of Mrs. Alice Harper, given to her by her adoring husband Gene just before the wedding of the decade! The century!”  Virginia fell upon Alice’s bed, mad giggles muffled against the pillow.
“ You’re right. Maybe saving the perfume will make it special.”
Virginia lifted her head. “It’s already special, because it’s from Gene.” Virginia drew out his name in a singsong and blew a kiss at Alice before running out of the room, the conversation, for her, over.
Alice’s mind lingered on it. She retrieved the perfume bottle from her dresser and turned it over and over in her hands as she stared out the window. Perhaps she could make it feel special, though it felt like nothing more than her countless other perfume bottles. Perhaps if she knew the feel well enough, she would know too what waited for her after marriage, for the rest of her life. Whenever she turned her mind to her life, all she could see was her bare feet slapping the sun-warmed ground and her face turned toward the sky. But it was Gene, and it always would be. She tried to recall the feeling of hope that had bloomed when Gene gave her the bottle, and she wound it through her fingers and into her bones, trying to ground it. Doubts were common before a wedding, she thought. Everyone doubted, and everyone turned out happy. She uncorked the perfume and again swallowed the feeling it gave her, keeping the hope for later. Alice set the perfume bottle under her pillow with a soft smile, hoping to dream of Gene. Mind settled, she shut the blinds and slipped into bed.
IV.
Alice woke to the smack of glass against her floor, the dry rush of wind between the layers of her nightgown. The barest slivers of light shivered into her room, more idea than actual brightness. Dust followed, because dust followed everything in Abilene. Coughing, Alice pulled her thin blanket over her face, blocking her mouth and nose from the rancid sting of the air, and tugged the perfume bottle from under her pillow, clutching it close as a sort of shield. She made her way to the window to see if there was anything to be done about blocking the emptiness for a night, or if she would have to move to Virginia’s room, or Jane’s.
What the window had been was nothing but a hole, the glass entirely gone, devastated across the floor in the force of the dust storm. Alice looked out, surveying from her first-floor bedroom the land she had known all her life, the land she felt she had never understood until this moment. Outside, wind whipped clouds of dust through the streets, bowing and twining into each other in a perverse almost-dance. Alice thought it was the most beautiful thing she had ever witnessed. Something seized in her heart, a reasoning she had experienced before but never acknowledged. Before she could name it, she was halfway through the window, dropping her blanket and the perfume bottle to the wood floor harshly and letting the storm overtake her. .
Most of Alice’s life was quiet, a low whisper in a dark house. It made her afraid to speak sometimes, the worry of sending her plans off-kilter by being too loud. Somehow, Alice had expected the dust storm to be quiet, too.
      It screamed. In the middle of everything, Alice stood with eyes screwed shut and arms thrown to either side, letting the dust swarm over her body. She laughed. When she opened her eyes, head tilted to an angle, never straight on, the street stretched ahead of her, and she remembered.
She remembered the softness of Gene’s hands as he placed their future in her palms alongside the perfume bottle, Virginia’s unwavering voice as she proclaimed that the bottle was special because Gene had given it to Alice. That was what Alice was supposed to want: the sureness of Gene’s skin against hers. The dust stung Alice’s exposed skin and swarmed into her eyes, and she whipped her arms recklessly, wonderfully in the storm. She feared her hands were too wild to hold the bottle.
“I don’t want it,” Alice murmured, into the wind. “I don’t want him!” The realization shuddered her heart as though shaking it out of chains it had forgotten it wore. “I DON’T WANT HIM! IT! ANY OF THIS!” She yelled this time, her words tumbling through the air with the same graceful violence as the dust. Without thought, Alice grabbed the hem of her nightgown, holding it up to free her legs, and ran. Her laughter rode the wind to the ends of the earth, out of Gene’s arms, Abilene, Texas, anything she already knew. She ran until the bottoms of her feet bled and her calves were caked in dirt, until the dust storm ended, and she knew she had never understood happiness before tonight, that joy was the ache of her lungs as she heaved breath into them, the groan of her muscles as she ran. The carelessness of her being.

V.
Coming to a stop was like waking from a dream, a blur of reality and flight. Alice unwound her hands from her skirt and simply stood, letting the sweeping winds die down around her. Day climbed over the horizon and sense settled back into Alice’s head. She pictured herself as she would look to Gene, standing in the street barefoot and clothed in nothing but a nightgown, hair snaking down her back. Insanity painted across her flushed cheeks.
A hysteric episode, Alice told herself. Pre-wedding nerves manifesting in an extreme form. Quickly, she turned and began to walk back toward her house.
VI.
Alice and Gene married two nights later, in the back garden of the Harper house at dusk. The space was flush with flowers and guests, and Gene slipped the ring onto Alice’s finger with the right emotion in his shining eyes. There was nothing extraordinary about the affair; they vowed to love each other for as long as they had, to hold each other in their hearts always, and they kissed quickly at the altar and danced quietly at the reception to the music of a string quartet. Alice covered herself with the scent of roses.
Gene carried Alice across the threshold of Harper house, where they would live until their new home finished rising from the dirt and scattered wooden beams, and later a car came by with her things. They were happy, Alice thought. She had never been so happy.
VII.
“Did Virginia drop this?” Gene’s voice was slow, heavy. Alice paused in hanging up her clothes in the new closet and turned to Gene, who unpacked another box a few feet away. He cradled the perfume bottle in his hands like a wounded bird. A crack ran across its surface, breaking the floral pattern on the border. A drop of perfume squeezed out. The sight stirred something in Alice, and she felt her eyes begin to water.
“She can’t have, she never picked it up. I can’t believe I didn’t notice this morning,” Alice choked, “I’m sorry, Gene. You gave me such a lovely wedding gift and I’ve already ruined it.”
“Don’t be sorry. You were probably too nervous about the wedding to pay it much attention. You know what? It must’ve been broken during the dust storm. I’d say for certain that’s what happened.”
“Oh,” said Alice, tears sliding down her face. “Oh, you must be right. The dust storm –” here Alice felt as though there were something very important just out of her reach, something too recent to be forgotten yet forgotten anyway. “It must have broken in the storm.”
“Is everything all right, Alice? Aren’t you happy?” Gene wiped a tear from her cheek, and Alice licked salt from her lips.
“Of course,” she said. “Of course. Why on earth wouldn’t I be happy?”