The Four Winds(49)

Blood splattered Loreda’s face.

After that, silence.

Tears streaked down Loreda’s cheeks. She wiped them away impatiently. Useless tears. “The government will pay us sixteen dollars for him. Dead or alive,” she said.

“Sixteen dollars,” Grandpa said. “For our Milo.”

Loreda knew what the grown-ups were thinking. They’d have sixteen dollars, but no means of transportation. And no crops. No food.

“How long before we all start falling to our knees and can’t get up? How long?”

She threw down the gun and ran out of the barn. She might have headed for the driveway and kept running, all the way to California, but before she even reached the house, she felt the wind pick up. She looked out and saw it: dust storm, barreling down from the north.

Coming fast.



THAT WEEK, THE WIND became a clawing, screaming monster that shook the house and rattled the windows and pounded at the doors. Wind blew at over forty miles an hour, day after day, no reprieve, just an endless, terrifying assault. Dust rained down from the ceiling constantly. All of them breathed it in and spit it out and coughed it up. Birds were disoriented by the dust and slammed into walls and telephone poles. Trains stopped on the tracks; drifts of sand moved like waves across the flat land.

They woke to find outlines of their bodies in dust on the sheets. They put Vaseline in their noses and covered their faces with bandannas. The adults went out into the maw when they had to, following the rope that they’d strung from the house to the barn, going hand over hand, blinded by dust. The chickens were wild with panic and breathing in dirt day after day, and the children stayed in the house, wearing gas masks. Ant hated to keep his mask on—said it gave him a headache—even though the dust bothered him more than it did the rest of them.

Elsa worried about him, slept with him, sat in bed with him, reading as best she could in her scratchy voice. Stories were the one thing that calmed him down.

Now, on this fifth day of the storm, he was in her bed with the covers drawn up, wearing his gas mask, while Elsa swept the floor. Dirt slipped through cracks in the rafters and fell on everything.

She heard a thump, nearly lost in the maw of the storm.

Ant had dropped his picture book onto the floor.

Elsa set the broom aside and went to his bedside. “Ant, baby—”

“Momm—” He coughed violently; he’d never coughed this hard before; she thought it might crack his ribs.

Elsa pulled down her bandanna and eased the gas mask off of his face. Mud collected in the corners of his eyes, crusted his nostrils.

He blinked. “Mom? Is that you?”

“It’s me, baby.” She pulled him up, poured water into a glass, and made him drink it. She could see how much it hurt him to swallow. His breathing, even without the mask, was a terrible drawn-out wheezing.

Wind clattered at the windows, squealed through the cracks in the wood.

“My stomach hurts.”

“I know, baby.”

Grit. It was in all of them, in their tears, their nostrils, on their tongues, serrating their throats, collecting in their stomachs until they were all nauseated. Each of them lived with a gnawing stomachache.

But Ant felt the worst. His cough was brutal and he couldn’t eat. Lately, he said the light hurt his eyes.

“Drink some more. I’ll put some turpentine and hot towels on your chest.”

Ant sipped at the water like a baby bird. When he finished, he slumped back, wheezing.

Elsa climbed into bed beside her son, taking him into her arms, murmuring prayers.

He lay frighteningly still.

She took some Vaseline out of a tin and smoothed it in Ant’s raw, dirt-clogged nostrils, then refit the gas mask over his face. He blinked up at her, crying; mud formed in the corners of his red eyes.

“Don’t cry, baby. This storm will stop soon and we’ll take you to the doctor. He’ll make you all better.”

He wheezed through the gas mask. “O . . . kay,” he said.

Elsa held him close, hoping he didn’t see her tears.



NINE DAYS, AND STILL no respite from the storm. Wind rattled the walls and scratched at the door.

When Elsa woke to yet another day of wind, she checked on Ant, who slept beside her. He hadn’t been strong enough to get out of bed in the last four days. He didn’t even play with his soldiers anymore and didn’t want to be read to. He just lay there wearing his gas mask, wheezing.

That terrible, drawn-out breathing was the first thing she listened for each morning when she woke and each night when she drew him close.

She heard his breathing and said a quick prayer to the Virgin Mary and got out of bed. Pulling the crusty bandanna down to her throat, she stepped down on the fine layer of silt that had collected on the floorboards overnight. Leaving footprints across the room, she went to the nightstand to wash her face.

The mirror stopped her, as it so often did these days.

“Lord,” she croaked. Her face looked like a mile of desert in the summer—brown, cracked, furrowed. Her lips and teeth were brown with grit. Dust had gathered in the corners of her eyes and on her lashes. She washed and dried her face and brushed her teeth.

In the sitting room, she stepped into her boots by the door and paused, staring down at the rattling knob. The walls shook at the force of the wind. She slipped her bandanna back up over her nose and mouth, then put on her gloves and used all her strength to open the door.