The Four Winds(37)

Wind yanked the kerchief off her head.

Elsa saw her kerchief sail out into the air. The platform shook; the blades overhead creaked and spun.

Storm coming.

Elsa climbed down from the shaking platform. As she stepped onto the ground, a gust swept up topsoil and lifted it upward in a great, howling scoop and blew it sideways. Sand hit Elsa’s face like tiny bits of glass.

Rose ran out of the house, yelled to Elsa, “Storm! Coming fast!”

Elsa ran to her motherin-law. “The kids?”

“Inside.”

Holding hands, they ran back to the house, bolting the door shut behind them. Inside, the walls quaked. Dust rained down from the ceiling. A blast of wind struck hard, rattled everything.

Rose jammed more wads of cloth and old newspapers in the windowsills.

“Kids!” Elsa screamed.

Ant came running into the sitting room, looking scared. “Mommy!” He threw himself at her.

Elsa clung to him. “Put on your gas mask,” she said.

“I don’t wanna. I can’t breathe with it,” Ant whined.

“Put it on, Anthony. And go sit under the kitchen table. Where’s your sister?”

“Huh?”

“Go get Loreda. Tell her to put on her gas mask.”

“Uh. I can’t.”

“Can’t? Why not?”

He looked miserable. “I promised not to tell.”

She lowered herself to her knees to look at him. Dirt rained down on them. “Anthony, where is your sister?”

“She ran away.”

“What?”

Ant nodded glumly. “I tol’ her it was a dumb idea.”

Elsa rushed to Loreda’s bedroom, shoved the door open.

No Loreda.

She saw something white through the falling dust.

A note on the dresser.

I’m going to find him.

Elsa rushed downstairs, yelled, “Loreda ran away,” to Rose and Tony. “I’m taking the truck. Is there gas left in the tank?”

“A little,” Tony yelled. “But you can’t go out in this.”

“I have to.”

Elsa fished the long-unused keys from the junk bucket in the kitchen and went back out into the blasting, gritty dust storm. She pulled her bandanna up around her mouth and nose and squinted to protect her eyes.

Wind swirled in front of her. Static electricity made her hair stand up. Out where the fence used to be, she saw blue fires flare up from the barbed wire.

Feeling her way in the dust storm, she found the line they’d strung between the house and the barn.

She pulled herself along the rough rope toward the barn, flung the doors open. Wind swept through, breaking slats away, terrifying the horses.

Bruno bolted out of his stall, through a broken slat, and stood in the aisle, nostrils quivering in fear, panicked. He snorted at Elsa and ran out into the storm.

Elsa pulled the cover off the truck; the wind yanked the canvas from her grasp and sent it flying like an open sail into the hayloft. Milo whinnied in terror from his stall.

Elsa climbed into the driver’s seat and stabbed the key into the ignition, turned hard. The engine coughed reluctantly to life. Please let there be enough gas to find her.

She drove out of the barn and into the storm, her hands tight on the wheel as the wind tried to push her into the ditch. A chain tied to the axle rattled along behind her, grounding the truck so the vehicle wouldn’t short out.

In front of her, brown dirt blew sideways, her two headlights spearing into the gloom. At the end of the driveway, she thought: Which way?

Town.

Loreda would never turn the other way. There was nothing for miles between here and the Oklahoma border.

Elsa muscled the truck into a turn. The wind was behind her now, pushing her forward. She leaned forward, trying to see. She couldn’t drive more than ten miles an hour.

In town, they’d turned the streetlamps on in the storm. Windows had been boarded up and doors battened down. Dust and sand and dirt and tumbleweeds blew down the street.

Elsa saw Loreda at the train depot, huddled against the closed door, hanging on to a suitcase the storm was trying to yank out of her hand.

Elsa parked the truck and got out. Thin halos of golden light glowed at the streetlamps, pinpricks in the brown murk.

“Loreda!” she screamed, her voice thin and scratchy in the maw.

“Mom!”

Elsa leaned into the storm; it ripped her dress and scraped her cheeks and blinded her. She staggered up the depot steps and pulled Loreda into her arms, holding her so tightly that for a second there was no storm, no wind clawing or sand biting, just them.

Thank you, God.

“We need to get into the depot,” she said.

“The door’s locked.”

A window exploded beside them. Elsa let go of Loreda and clawed her way to the broken window, climbed over the glass teeth in the sill, felt sharp points jab her skin.

Once inside, she unlocked the front door and pulled Loreda inside and slammed the door shut.

The depot rattled around them; another window cracked. Elsa went to the water fountain and scooped up some lukewarm water and carried it back to Loreda, who drank greedily.

Elsa slumped down beside her daughter. Her eyes stung so badly she could hardly see.

“I’m sorry, Loreda.”