Out of the Dust

This section summarizes Poem 96: “The Dream,” Poem 97: “Midnight Truth,” Poem 98: “Out of the Dust,” Poem 99: “Gone West,” Poem 100: “Something Lost, Something Gained,” Poem 101: “Homeward Bound,” and Poem 102: “Met.”

Part 7 opens with a dream of Billie Jo’s in which she can touch and communicate with Ma’s piano: “Piano, my silent / mother, / I can touch you, / you are cool / and smooth / and willing / to stay with me / stay with me / talk to me” (193). In “Midnight Truth,” Billie Jo determines that her father’s emotional distance from her cannot be resolved. She decides to leave before he can allow himself to “rot […] away” from cancer and grief. She runs away in the dark and rides a boxcar west. Two days pass as she watches deserts and mountains, and she sees a young girl watching the train from a migrant camp.

A man boards the boxcar; he left his family in Kansas to ride the rails west in search of work. He and Billie Jo share stories of hardship. She offers him some of her biscuits. As Billie Jo talks about Ma and Daddy, she begins to feel that she left her father unfairly: “He had kept a home / until I broke it” (202).