The Four Winds

She saw the pain in his eyes, the muddy mucus in his nostrils as she stroked his damp neck. “I love you, boy,” she said. Tears blinded her, blurred his beloved face. “You gave us everything you had. I should have spent more time with you. I’m sorry.”

“Loreda, no,” Grandpa said. “That ain’t—”

Loreda put the muzzle of the pistol to the gelding’s head and pulled the trigger. The gunshot cracked loudly.

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.