The Four Winds(23)

A blast of wind hit the house, so hard it seemed the roof would be torn off.

And the noise.

It was like a locomotive bearing down on them, engines grinding. The house shuddered as if breathing too hard; a banshee wind howled, mad as hell.

The door opened and her husband and Tony staggered in. Tony slammed the door shut behind them and threw the bolt. A crucifix fell to the floor.

Elsa leaned back against the shuddering wall.

Elsa could hear her mother-in-law’s breathy, scratchy voice as she prayed.

Elsa reached sideways, took her hand.

Rafe moved in beside Elsa. She could tell that they were both thinking the same thing: What if the children had been out on the playground? This storm had come up fast. With everything dying these days, there were no strong roots to anchor the soil to the earth. A wind like this could blow whole farms away. At least that was how it felt.

“They’ll be okay,” he said, hacking through the dust.

“How do you know?” she yelled above the sound of the storm.

The despair in her husband’s eyes was all the answer he had.



LOREDA SAT ON THE floor of the quaking schoolhouse, her brother tucked in close beside her, both wearing bandannas drawn over their mouths and noses bandit-style. Ant was trying to be brave, but he flinched every time a particularly fierce gust of wind hit the building and rattled the glass.

Dust rained down from the ceiling. Loreda felt it collecting in her hair, on her shoulders. Wind battered the wooden walls, wailed in a high, almost human scream. Panicked birds kept hitting the glass.

When the storm first struck, Mrs. Buslik had called them all in and made them sit together in the corner farthest from the windows. She’d tried reading a story, but no one could concentrate, and in time no one could hear her voice, so she gave up and closed the book.

There had been at least ten of these dust storms in the past year. One day this spring, the wind and dirt had blown for twelve straight hours, so long that they’d had to cook and eat and do chores in the raging dust.

Grandma and Mom said they should pray.

Pray.

As if lighting candles and kneeling could stop all of this. Clearly, if God was watching the people of the Great Plains, He wanted them to either leave or die.

When the storm finally ended and silence swept into the schoolhouse, the children sat there, traumatized and big-eyed and covered in dirt.

Mrs. Buslik slowly unfolded from her seat on the floor. As she stood, dirt rained down from her lap. The sand outline of her body on the floor remained behind, a dirt design. She went to the door, opened it to reveal a beautiful blue sky.

Loreda saw Mrs. Buslik sigh with relief. The exhalation made her cough. “Okay, kids,” she said in a scratchy voice. “It’s over.”

Ant looked at Loreda. His freckled face was brown with dirt above the bandanna that covered his mouth and nose. By rubbing his eyes, he’d given himself a raccoon look. Tears hung stubbornly onto his lashes, looking like beads of mud.

She pulled down her bandanna. “Come on, Ant,” she said. Her voice was thin and scratchy.

Loreda and Stella and Ant retrieved their book bags and empty lunch pails and left the schoolhouse. Sophia shuffled along behind them, her head hung.

Loreda held Ant’s hand firmly in hers as she stepped from the building.

Town was catastrophe-quiet. The carbide arc streetlamps—such a source of community pride four years ago when they had been installed—were lit because people and cars and animals needed light to find safety in the storm.

They walked up Main Street. Tumbleweeds were caught in the boardwalk. Windows were boarded up, from both the Depression and the dust storms.

When they neared the train depot, Stella said, “It’s gettin’ bad, Lolo,” quietly, as if she were afraid her voice would carry all the way to her parents’ house.

Loreda had no answer to that. In the Martinelli house it had been bad for years. She watched Stella walk away, shoulders hunched as if to protect her from whatever hardship was waiting; she climbed over a new dune of sand that had been swept into the street and turned the corner on her way home. Sophia followed her sister.

Loreda and Ant kept walking. It felt as if they were the only two people left in the world.

They passed several FOR SALE signs on fence posts, and then there was nothing. No houses, no fences, no animals, no windmills. Just endless brown-gold dirt molded into hills and dunes. Sand piled up at the base of the telephone poles. One pole was down.

Loreda was the first to hear the slow, dull clip-clop of hooves.

“Mommy!” Ant yelled.

Loreda looked up.

Mom drove the wagon toward them; she sat strained forward, as if she wanted Milo to move faster, faster, but the poor old gelding was as exhausted and thirsty as the rest of them.

Ant pulled free and started to run.

Mom brought the horse to a halt and jumped down from the wagon. She ran toward them, her face brown with dirt, her dress shredded into fraying strips from the waist down, apron flapping, her pale blond hair brown with dust.

Mom swept Ant into a hug, pulled him off his feet, twirled him around, as if she’d thought she’d never see him again, and covered his dirty face with kisses.

Loreda remembered those kisses; Mom had smelled of lavender soap and talcum powder in the good years.

Not anymore. Loreda couldn’t remember the last time she’d let Mom kiss her. Loreda didn’t want the kind of love that trapped. She wanted to be told she could fly high, be anything and go anywhere—she wanted the things her father wanted. Someday she would smoke cigarettes and go to jazz clubs and get a job. Be modern.