Dust Devils

The wind kicked up dust and sworled it around in the old farmyard. It chased leaves up against the side of the empty house and whistled across the clothesline pole. Nobody heard it because there was nobody there. The Western Kansas wind kept on blowing anyway. It blew against the wire window screens that had holes stuffed with cotton to keep out flies and mosquitoes. It banged the old screen door on the back porch where the cistern was. It tore through the front yard, past the dried up yellow and blue Iris and on out to the old barn where it went in the open front and exited out the top of the metal sheet roof causing the corner of one sheet to flap back and forth, its metallic holler rolling over the flatlands with the wind. It blew through the creeky old Aeromotor windmill, stopped dead by the brake and the rust, never to pump again. It didn’t matter, there wasn’t anything to pump. No water, no oil, no nothing. It blew through the skeleton eye sockets of the cow skull which lay by the wind dried pond, gazing forlornly and forever at the cracked mud. It blew and blew and blew. With the wind came the dust, and with the dust came the dust devils that laughed and danced across the Kansas prairie.