They’d later say Everett Hurley’s wife died during a snowstorm, but really it was sand: ten months of wind, smothered town, blistered earth. Ceaseless silt, water brown. Parakeets at RJ’s Exotics dropping like fruit. Elsewhere, hippies tripped in parks lush as God’s mouth. A hundred miles north, floods. But here, ossified cottonwoods, flash-fried corn, crabapple spuds. People ate cattle hung up in fences, sneaking at night to clip that mean wire, to quarter and skin—why, years later, snow? Maybe sand was their fault: all that new industrialized fertilizer, land sacked by ag giants, overworked fields, soybeans, cheap corn.
March, 1972, a community meeting. On the docket: experimental windscreens, food stamp crash, bottling plant crisis. They catcalled the mayor until he brought up this Palmquist— applause—who’d seeded clouds down in Templeton, brought days of good rain. The Templeton Shuckers won the AA final (probably, someone hollered, ’cause their minds were off rain!).
Their mayor (someone else) coughed up the funds! Our cattle (another) are dying! Palmquist, rumor spread, took rabbits as payment from poor Masonville, a massive hunt. For a pet he kept a skunk on a leash. They voted and left, drove sand-smothered roads. Headlamps flashed trash, whitetails tangled in fences. They gasped at lone farmhouses glowing through haze: people were alive out here, clinging to night like stars burning out.
***
Hurley would later seek miracles: resurrectionists, clairvoyants, specter-revealing UV. But back then, Mary months dead, he had the plow. His boss telephoned late at night, apologized, said, Mayor needs us—now. (Why, the mayor’s men asked, clear the plaza? Why not let Palmquist see how bad it is? Town without clean plaza, replied the mayor, ain’t a town worth saving.) Hurley, on the phone, said he liked plowing past midnight, that’s when Mary would wake and whisper, he liked coffee from his thermos, smell of diesel, heater chugging, doo-wop on the radio, thin cabin glass beating back dark—Yes, yes, said his boss, can you pick up the keys?
She’d been struck walking home from dinner with a friend. The driver, a grocery mart owner from Templeton, had been drinking at Donnelly’s, now held at the state pen in Albertville. First thing, Hurley went and grabbed Frank Donnelly, pinned the old man against bar, accused him of over-serving again. Several drinkers dragged him outside. (Don’t do nothing stupid, Mister Hurley, that boy of yours needs you.) At Mary’s memorial an odd little man, blue teeth, papier mâché face, approached rubbing hands, asked, What have you seen? Hurley, shaken, said, What? What have you seen? repeated the man, rubbing hands. Where are you going? The chapel was full of chittering strangers. Music groaned from hidden speakers. The man, very loud, said, There are places, you go and come back—different, changed, fucked! Hurley stumbled backwards, into a curtain partitioning the room. Behind it, he saw, knelt his son, scooping soil from a potted ficus, mewling. When he looked back, the man was gone.
Friends offered to smash up the grocer’s impounded truck. Hurley refused, drove through a sandstorm to Templeton. At the grocery mart, shaking, unsure what to do—topple a pyramid of Pet Milk?—he merely pocketed a candy bar without paying, wept driving home, veered across sand-obliterated lanes. Now he wakes before dawn, browses his son’s homework, walks him to school through ankle-deep drifts. The boy laughs as wind lashes his handkerchiefed face. What, Hurley wonders, is wrong with him? (Mary, after the bottling plant closed, didn’t like being left alone with him. Doctor Chauvin recommended an expensive specialist in Muster.) The boy hums and scribbles at the kitchen table as if unaffected, giggles wildly over the local call-in conspiracy show—that’s Misses Baluth, from school, he shrieks, she thinks she had dinner with an alien! What about Mom? Hurley asks and the boy twitches, spaces out, says, I love you, Dad.
***
Sand, unlike snow, spills unpredictably off blade, requires multiple runs up and down Main, then Walnut, Larch, Warsaw, past midnight. Sand pings cabin glass. His boy, at home, hopefully sleeps. Sparks shower when blade grazes pavement. Hurley, wearing sweat-soaked gloves— electricity churned by storm, people afraid to touch doorknobs—plows to a dead-zone past downtown, the chain-linked-off bottling plant, a terra cotta compound employing, just last year, nearly a quarter of town. Glowing ivory-white, like the old asylum in Guernsey where they sent Mary’s mother. A mountain of sand—Hurley’s work—rises on either side of the fence.
Mary once showed him inside the shipping office where she worked as secretary, hallways wild with art deco accoutrements (where, he wondered, did she learn those terms?), green-tiled floors, copper railings tangled with flora and finches, mouldings like snowdrifts—all this for soda pop? he’d asked. The architect, she said, was communist, the good kind, labor a pleasant dream dreamt together. Hurley chuckled. Passersby, wearing white jumpsuits, did seem happy, copper sconces glowing goldenly, color-caked hallways, thermal baths where workers soaked post-shift. Those workers would, a decade later, take the plant’s closing hard: a manager climbed onto roof, threatened to leap; Mary burst into tears when Hurley uncapped root beer. The mayor, rumors swirled, now recruited a Canadian toy-maker, electronic gizmos, fence erected to keep out chemical-fried hippies from Templeton.
Charging down Larch, sand shoved through chain-link, he pictures Mary inside: rubbing whorled railings, ogling light fixtures, dipping in thermal bath. Lured by red smoke down echoing halls. Perhaps, he dreams, she isn’t dead, is merely inside amongst renegade Templeton peaceniks. (There was that woman, at Mary’s mother’s asylum in Guernsey, found dead in her bed, processed and blessed, buried or cremated only to appear months later on hospital’s doorstep, twigs in her hair. Blips in the world, rents in dimensions—the local call-in show affirmed such things all the time.)
At one a.m., folks stumble from Donnelly’s ahead of the plow, eyes iridescent in headlamps. Hurley, heart racing, gestures them to safety but the people, drunk or blinded by sand, are already gone. Then, working north-south, headlamps catch a sign at edge of the plaza:
SNAP’S CAT & DOG CLINIC
& OTHER CRITTERS TOO
Hurley’s gut churns. Snap Boehner was Mary’s cousin, closest friend. She’d crossed the plaza that night to meet him for dinner at the Vado Hotel. Her ruts, she called them, a term Doctor Chauvin dismissed, days in bed then insisting, come nightfall, on meandering sandstorms. Only dinners with Snap seemed to bring joy. After the bottling plant closed she hid in the bedroom, made Hurley sleep with the boy. (When Hurley once suggested they scavenge cattle from fences, Mary screamed and slammed the door.) That afternoon she’d shouted for water, more water, until Hurley, affecting kindness, said, Time for dinner with Snap. Joy swelled her face like a gas. He led her to the bathroom, her nightgown dark with sweat, hands trembling. Leaned against sink, made sure she washed. Their son knocked, peered in—what’s he doing here? Mary hissed. Hurley said, You’re being a shit. She departed that night wearing threadbare tweed coat. (All that money on a new radio, Snap would ask, and you couldn’t buy her a better coat?) Hurley found the boy, asked if he was up for some call-in. Your mother… he began but didn’t finish. During proceeding months he’d remember things differently, tell others she was in high spirits that night, visiting family. When Elena White said she’d seen Mary downing wine at the Vado, he asked, But wasn’t she celebrating something?
Cranking blade, revving engine, he pictures Palmquist, that eagerly anticipated cloud- seeder, leading skunk on leash, kiting dynamite into mud-colored sky. Eating steak, bloodied neck, drinking blood amidst thick smoke. Stabbing needles into women, chasing women into cornfield— Hurley snaps to, sees he’s heaped sand upon sand against Snap’s clinic door. On the radio plays strange, menacing doo-wop recorded in some cavern, two hiccup-voiced men murmuring threats: “I may not walk amongst your people / but I’ve been inside your house…” He parks. Moans. Clenches teeth. He’s going to scream. The rhythm continues nine, ten minutes, slows to sludge, rumbling guitars, ricocheting drums. He doesn’t scream, tries to breathe. Transfixed, he watches sand swirl, wipes his eyes, sips cold coffee. The station usually plays doo-wop at this hour. A second song: same band, churning shuffle, but cut by airplane sounds, sirens, chanting. Streetlamps unplugged, the world looks obliterated. A local disc jockey, Hurley figures, is at that moment losing his job, or mind, or both.
***
The next morning, April 2, 1972, Templeton Statesman’s front page, brief article, long headline:
“Psychedelic Psycho-Punk Band Pranks Town’s April Fools in Late-Night Fairgrounds Freakout!”
(Typical, some say, cocky county seat using exclamation points in headlines, welcoming wild bands from out west—what happens when no longer humbled by drought.) The band was called the Total Voids, from northern Arizona, near the Yavapai reservation. (Likely Indians themselves, readers at Donnelly’s sneered; there’d been a spat with a local tribe over water rights, river access, installation of dam. The town swapped water for land. Months later, drought. River soon tainted by industrial runoff, town and tribe in same boat, yet locals insisted they’d been swindled.) The Voids, like many, moved west: parks and fog, salty breeze, people camping and dancing, making peace and masturbating in the dark. Their small, loyal following trailed them up and down the coast, east into desert, unfazed by shows at old skating rinks and gyms, theaters plagued by rats. Their sound matched the venues, jukebox rock decaying with reverb, scuzzy rhythms shuffling into oblivion for fifteen, twenty minutes.
The fairgrounds hall, read the Statesmen, was nearly empty, hundred people max. Compare to the previous weekend’s revival: nearly a thousand, bleachers packed, everyone dancing, even poor farmers bused in from the country. The Voids’ fans behaved like paranoiacs, congregating beneath bleachers, skittering, whispering. The band looked grungy, lead guitarist Leonard Casto’s Fender howling outer-space notes, his back to the hall, sunglasses on, face blanketed by black hair and beard. Warplanes and fascist parades boomed beneath music. A red spotlight struck disco ball, flecking the place with blood. No one, wrote the reporter, manned the concessions. No security, no staff. As if the band had broken in. People ran around blindly, full-speed. Indeed, wrote the reporter, I feared for my safety. Left after two songs that lasted an hour. I waited outside in the wind, watched the band exit a side door, peel away in a van, instruments inside still screeching feedback. When the sound finally stopped, out staggered fans who disappeared into storm, mostly on foot. Lord knows how long it took to reach home, wherever home is, or if they reached it at all.
***
He imagined, hearing that music, a machine belching steam, a tractor-sized factory stuffed full with men. (A live broadcast from the fairgrounds, he’d later learn, replayed several times the following days by the Templeton Socialists Club.) He closed his eyes. Shuddering plow. Scuzzy, echoing surf-rock. Bloody purée sprayed from a chute, snow-blown flesh, combined meat. He pictured those strange illustrations in his son’s language arts journal: vortex-eyed men stabbing shovels into maned creatures, women or horses.
It was gripped with such thoughts that he witnessed the truck glide down Larch, meters past plow’s headlamps, a rattling old pickup, red, PALMQUIST stenciled along its bed, impervious to storm. Hurley’s stomach spasmed. The truck disappeared. That unsettling refrain returned: “I may not walk amongst your people / but I’ve been inside your house.” He touched his chest, tried to breathe. (Palmquist, it turned out, conducted predawn preliminary inquiries: barometric pressure, dew point, etc.) When the broadcast ended Hurley climbed from the plow, shovel in hand, crossed the plaza to Snap’s. I’m not going that path, he said, stooping to work, chopping with shovel, gasping, heaving sand. He shoveled and heaved, scraped the sidewalk clean. Wind died to a breeze. He slumped against the mound he’d created, lungs raw with dust.
***
The seeding was scheduled for two in the afternoon—optimal time, according to Palmquist, who emerged from the Vado to a resident-packed plaza. He wore, true to rumor, silk scarf rather than tie, purple suit, purple derby tipped back, pockmarked face, tobacco-browned mustache. The crowd erupted. People hung from gazebo. Applause turned to gasps at his black-and-gray mammal. High school pep band banged out the fight song. In his cordoned-off quadrant Palmquist inspected a kite, yanked creature’s leash. It squealed, claimed those near the barricade, before collapsing into dirt. Badger? Skunk? No one agreed. Black and white, bushy but muscular, peculiar tail—anteater? (The following morning’s hazy newspaper photo hardly helped.) Deputies lined cordoned-off Larch. Crowd strained as Palmquist, behind barricade, attached device to kite. Cubic and glinting. Questions were shouted. Then it was time. As if by supernatural force or maybe just engine, the kite—vinyl, tied to rubber cording—levitated out of the cloud-seeder’s hands. Soft applause. Arms aloft. Twice he blew kisses. Murmurs. (Several Templetonites, people later claimed, hid amongst crowd, snickering this ritual was different than theirs. Then again, their mayor shelled $3,000 for something called “Divinity Deluxe.” Here, $1,500 only afforded “Heaven’s Key.”) Palmquist worked cord like the stays of a boat. The kite vanished, another eruption, creature rolling in dirt. Police pinched their noses, complained of a smell. Jack Vado emerged, bellowed Half-priced drinks all night! Applause, men tossing caps. Then a scream: a woman claimed to smell rain. People scanned sky, mouths agape. Shouted questions: how long? how high? good as Templeton? Palmquist torqued when the cord bucked, boots inching off ground—crowed gasped—before touching back down. In years to come they’d argue whether they ever heard his voice.
***
Twelve hours earlier, three a.m., Hurley spotted the quartet stumble down Larch, young maniacs in shitty clothes, eyes black in headlamps, two women, two men, thin-boned, practically starving, baggy denim, wig-like hair, sandals, no socks—during a sandstorm! He flicked off the headlamps, leaned out, shouted, Are you crazy? Along the Templeton River, he’d heard, youngsters like these squatted in cabins. One of the women, up close, looked like Mary at that age, a handmade crown of freesias savaged by wind. Are you on something? Hurley asked. (Town’s newest concern, people elsewhere on something while here they struggled for food.)
The young men and women giggled. The girl shouted, over engine: A secret show—inside the old factory, some sort of funhouse! (How, he’d later lament, didn’t he realize they came from that concert on the radio?) He told them his wife used to work there. The flower girl shouted, They’ve promised a miracle. Who? Hurley yelled. Then he shouted a rainmaker was coming, Mister Palmquist. The girl nodded, shouted that in Templeton he washed away death.
He showed them the mountain of sand he’d been building, high enough now one could grip top of fence. The compound, in predawn light, looked like an Arctic prison, bas-relief cola- spray fanned over entrance. Were there a concert, he’d have seen vans or trucks, people. Plus, the factory had no electricity. (He’d summoned the nerve, a month or so back, to break in, to sift Mary’s ashes in the bottling sector where, she showed him, cola ate through the floor’s polished concrete. But inside, flashlight scouring dusty metal-works, pigeon droppings, he couldn’t bear to discard them.) He shouted which loading-dock door he’d busted open, how to navigate those hallways and rooms, such a fantastical place for such mundane work. Folks today, he shouted, withered by drought, spoke of cola as if it were fairy-tale potion, his boy begging to uncap the bottle in back of the fridge, stored there by Mary when factory closed. He pictured zigzagging ziggurat floors, defunct copper fountains (used to spew cola! Mary had said). There couldn’t be a concert, not this town, not nowadays—the youngsters, climbing over fence, had been duped.
***
Some later swore Palmquist eyed the crowd with spite, hissing in foreign accent, looking like corpse propped by up kite. After a while, people funneled into Donnelly’s. Children restless. Parents hissing. An hour passed. Suddenly, Palmquist torqued. A speck in the sky. People rejoiced, scanning for rain. But fifteen minutes later, kite on ground, Palmquist packed up.
Catcalls rang out. His skunk, or whatever it was, sprang to its feet, trotted towards the Vado.
Drinkers emerged to jeer. Others stayed silent, hands behind backs, certain a difference had been made—the seed of a miracle, planted by Palmquist, his apparatus begging rain from the sky.
***
Hurley, back home, found his son in the kitchen, breadknife in hand. I thought you were a killer, the boy whispered. Or maybe it was I thought you were killed. Hurley eased free the knife. Sit, he said, flipping on Philco: initial rebroadcast of the fairgrounds concert. (Years later, his mid- fifties, he’d wire an embarrassing sum of money to a man in New Mexico who mailed a cassette—recordings of the Voids’ performances were hoarded, he learned, by people across the country, communicating like secret terrorist cell via hand-printed newsletters.) Light leaked through sheets tacked to catch sand. Music droned. Listen, said Hurley, but the boy squealed Turn it off, turn it off! Then he was shrieking, head between knees, rocking on floor. Jesus, said Hurley, what’s happened, what’s inside you? As though the boy had returned from Mars with some illness. He sank onto floor and, voice shaking, said to have faith. There are things out there, son, he whispered, stroking boy’s head, unexplainable things that will make life soon bearable. Please, he begged, it’s only radio, just listen, stop crying. Have faith.
***
The following week, or the week after that, some week during those tempestuous days (town now withered, all but gone), people went out, braving wind, swearing they heard something. Flashing light. Distant thunder. Trees clacked like ancient shorebirds. Soon, here and there, mud splatted earth. Hardly rain but better than sand. The next night, globs pummeled roofs. She’ll run clear before long, people whispered, livestock will drink, crops burst like bombs. Hurley, like everyone else, rushed to the door. Threw it open. Marveled at mud, drank down cool air, imagined those scents—lilac, mowed grass, chaff—of things as they’d been.
