Random Winds

by Belva Plain

  THE CRITICS LOVE

  BELVA PLAIN

  and RANDOM WINDS

  “Belva Plain is a talented tale-spinner with an almost Dickensian ability to keep her stories going.”

  —The Philadelphia Inquirer

  “ENGROSSING … Belva Plain knows how to sweep from one dramatic scene to another.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “THE QUEEN OF FAMILY-SAGA WRITERS.”

  —The New York Times

  “A SUPERB STORYTELLER … a talent worth remembering.… Mrs. Plain’s novels are good stories well told.” —The Star-Ledger (Newark, N.J.)

  “Belva Plain doesn’t know how not to write a bestseller.” —Newsday

  “AN ACCOMPLISHED STORYTELLER.”

  —The Washington Post

  “Belva Plain writes with authority and integrity.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  BOOKS BY BELVA PLAIN

  LOOKING BACK

  AFTER THE FIRE

  FORTUNE’S HAND

  LEGACY OF SILENCE HOMECOMING

  SECRECY

  PROMISES

  THE CAROUSEL

  DAYBREAK

  WHISPERS

  TREASURES

  HARVEST

  BLESSINGS

  TAPESTRY

  THE GOLDEN CUP

  CRESCENT CITY

  EDEN BURNING

  RANDOM WINDS EVERGREEN

  Published by

  Dell Publishing

  a division of Random

  House, Inc.

  1540 Broadway

  New York, New York 10036

  Copyright © 1980 by Bar-Nan Creations, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.

  For information address: Delacorte Press,

  New York, New York.

  The trademark Dell® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-57506-7

  v3.1_r1

  To my children,

  and to the memory of my parents

  “For where there is love of man,

  there is love of the art.”

  AESCULAPIUS

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue: Day of Wrath

  Book One - The Ascent

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Book Two - The Web

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Book Three - Passages

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Book Four - Visions

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Book Five - Losses

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Book Six - Time and Tide

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  About the Author

  Prologue:

  DAY OF

  WRATH

  On Adirondack lakes ice boomed and cracked. Grainy snow, melting at last, slid into the ditches along mired roads. Dr. Enoch Farrell drew his watch out of his vest pocket: he had made good time. Once past the Atkins’s farm the road flattened and there were only three easy, level miles to home. He drew the buggy’s curtains tighter against the sweeping rain that threatened his fine, polished bag. The best black calf it was, with brass fittings, the parting gift, along with a well-bound Gray’s Anatomy, of Dr. Hugh MacDonald, who had been his preceptor in Edinburgh. He never went anywhere without the Anatomy, although surely he must have memorized it by now! He never went out without his current reading either, for this hour trotting home at the end of the day was his best, perhaps his only, truly private time. And rummaging, he searched for Bleak House. To think that Dickens was dead these thirty years or more and now, in this first year of a new century, his work was as alive as if it had been written yesterday!

  Things were heaped in the bag. Jean was always straightening it, but it never stayed that way. Opium, laudanum, stethoscope, Hop Bitters—fine stuff, good for any dozen ailments—no Dickens. He must have left it home. Damn, he was always forgetting things! If it weren’t for Jean … Well-matched they were: she so practical and precise, while he—could he dare think of himself as a leaven, bringing brightness and humor to the household?

  So his thoughts ran.

  Left now, and across the wooden bridge where the river, which had been iced over only last week, was running fast. The little mare began to speed, and there was home with its twin chimneys, front porch and two square office-rooms. Very nice! Nicer still when the mortgage should be paid off, whenever that might be! It didn’t look imminent. A man could count himself lucky to keep abreast of the daily expenses: four children with another on the way.

  Enoch climbed down in the barn, unhitched Dora and led her to the stall. A couple of hens, disturbed in their straw, rose squawking. The barn cat rubbed against his ankles while he covered the mare with a dry blanket. It gave a man a good feeling that even these poor, dependent creatures were safe and warm under his roof. And speaking of roofs, he ought to get that leak mended before it got much worse.

  The children were halfway through supper. Alice, the baby, clattered on the high chair tray when she saw him.

  “I thought you’d be even later in this weather,” Jean said. “Heavens, your cap’s wet through! Your knickers are soaked! Sit down, while I get the stew. I’ve kept it hot and there are biscuits, too.”

  “Ah, those’ll hit the spot on a night like this.”

  He washed his hands at the sink. A fine convenience it was, to have water running in the kitchen. Easy on the woman of the house and sanitary besides. He took his place at the head of the table, said grace and picked up his fork.

  Jean’s hands rested on the apron beneath which lay her growing baby, in its seventh month. Her pink, anxious face was flushed from the kitchen’s heat. Four child-faces turned toward Enoch, mixed of his flesh and hers: her bright almond eyes in Enoch Junior and the baby, Alice; his temper and his laughter in May; her quickness, her reserve in Susan.

  “Well, anything new happen around here today?” he inquired.

  “Nothing much. Oh yes, Mrs. Baines came. She always manages to come when you’re out.”

  “What’s the troubler?”

  “Walter again. Sounds like the quinsy sore throat, the way he always gets.”

  “I suppose I’d better hitch up and go back over there.”

  “Indeed you’ll not, after the day you’ve had, and in this rain! Besides, they never think to pay you. It’s always ‘next time, Doc.’ ”

  Enoch sighed. “I know. But he tries, Jean. The man works awfully hard.”

  “So do you.” She rose to put more stew on his plate and poured coffee. “I made brown Betty for dessert.” Then she added mischievously, “Anyway, I told her what to do for the throat.”

  “You did what?”

&nbs
p; “I told her what to do. I’ve heard you tell it often enough to know it by heart, haven’t I? Red flannel around the throat, goose grease on the chest, soak the feet in a tub of hot water, powdered mustard and camphor ice to keep the fever from cracking the lips. Right?”

  “Dad! Dad! I did elevens and twelves in the multiplication tables today and I—”

  “Enoch Junior,” Jean rebuked him, “you’re interrupting. And anyway, this is grown-ups’ time. You’re not supposed to talk at the table.”

  “Let him talk, Jean. What’d you want to tell me, son?”

  “I wanted you to hear my multiplication.”

  “Tell you what. You go start your homework on the parlor table, and soon’s I finish my supper, I’ll join you. May and Susan, you’re excused, too.”

  The room grew quiet Alice sucked on her bottle and Jean dished out the pudding. A coal fell softly in the stove.

  “Had a nasty business today with Hettie Simpson,” Enoch remarked. “Did I tell you this would have been her eleventh? Just as well she miscarried, I suppose. Except she might have bled to death if I’d been much later getting there. I packed the uterus, but I’ll need to go back early in the morning. It worries me, she looked so white.”

  “She can’t be more than thirty, can she?”

  “Thirty-two, and looks nearer fifty.”

  If she lives this time, he thought grimly, it’ll only happen again, unless the consumption gets her first. And Jim Simpson? Why, hell cry a bit and have another wife in a couple of months, some strapping girl of seventeen who’ll start a family for him all over again. Yet you couldn’t blame a man. Who would do the work and look after the children if he didn’t marry in a hurry?

  “You look so tired,” Jean said softly.

  “I didn’t know how much till I sat down, I guess.”

  She peered through the window into the dismal murk, out of which the wet tin roof of the shed glistened like dull silver. “This weather’s enough to exhaust a person. Seems as if spring’ll never come and it’ll never stop raining.”

  When they went to bed the rain was still beating mournfully, persistently, upon the roof. For a long time Enoch lay awake, listening to the ominous beat.

  In the morning they were astonished that the rain had not slackened. All through that second day it never varied in its determined steady fall, neither speeding up nor slowing down, just marching evenly, like soldiers’ stern and solemn feet.

  And the third day.

  Then came the north wind. It struck with fury and the night was loud with complaint. Water poured like a river through the gutters; the house shuddered. The rain swayed as the wind gusted and died, gusted and died. The roof was lifted from the toolshed, the torn wood screeching as it parted. From the tight house where his children were asleep, Enoch peered into the yard and saw that the chicken coop was holding. But he went back to bed with uneasy thoughts of planets rending, flung away from the sun.

  Just after midnight, there was an almost imperceptible slowing of the rain. Alert ears could isolate the sound of individual drops, with a fraction of a pause between them: cessation, then a violent spurt, and another cessation. Finally came a startling stillness in which one heard, regular as a metronome, great drops plopping from the eaves and the shaken trees.

  At last in the morning the sun came out with a burst of spangled light. Water stood in a pond two inches deep in the yard. Under the porch roof, soaked sparrows clustered, chirping through the daily family prayers. Jean had lit the Franklin stove, but the parlor was cold and Enoch hurried the prayers.

  “The sun will soon draw all this water up,” he observed, closing the great Bible with a bang. The children wanted to know whether there would be school that day.

  “Of course there will, but the road will be a mess. You’ll need your high galoshes,” Jean told them.

  “I’ll try to get back early enough to do something about the toolshed roof,” Enoch said. “See if you can dry off the tools before they rust, will you?”

  Jean packed the lunch boxes and tied May’s scarf, fastening it down with a large safety pin on the chest. May, like her father, always lost things.

  “Now, Enoch Junior, mind you don’t run on ahead. It’s slippery wet I want you to help your sisters through the muddy spots so they don’t fall and dirty themselves.”

  “Aw,” said Enoch, “why do I always have to?”

  “Because you’re a big eight-year-old boy, and your sisters are small.”

  The parents watched their three march down the road, the boy obediently between his sisters. There marched the future! Yes, and the sum of the parents’ pasts; such love, such hope encompassed in those chattering three, so carelessly kicking pebbles on their way to school! They watched until the children were out of sight, then smiled at each other. Jean went back into the kitchen and sat down heavily in the Boston rocker by the window to enjoy a second cup of coffee. Enoch went to the barn and hitched the horse. The storms had set him three days behind with his house calls and he would have to cover a lot of ground.

  At noon, just as the children were having lunch, it began to rain again. But it was a very light rain this time. No need to send them home early, the young teacher thought as she glanced out of the window, especially since they had already missed a couple of days that week. The younger children played indoors during the lunch recess, while some of the older boys, wearing rubber mackintoshes, went outside. In any case, by two o’clock, shortly before school was dismissed for the day, the drizzle had stopped.

  And at two o’clock, a mile and a half upstream, in one incredible, unexpected instant, an old earthen dam collapsed. Rumbling and crumbling, with thunderous roar and colossal surge, it burst, it fell apart. A blinding spray rose into the air, tumbled, splashed and crashed, leaving a dazzle of fine mist upon the ruins. The lake behind the dam, swollen by tons of melted ice, poured into the river. And the river slid over its banks. It plunged through the narrow valley. It gathered strength and speed. Like a merciless, violent army come to pillage, it advanced.

  At two-fifteen the children were dismissed from school to walk home. A quarter of a mile behind them the mighty wall of water rushed, flooding the whole valley now, flooding the houses up to the second story, wrecking and smashing. It gained on the little flock of children as they meandered and as the seconds passed. They heard its distant rumble before they saw it Towering doom rose high at their backs. They began to run. Horrified and screaming, they scrambled and raced. But the water raced faster.

  Late in the afternoon Enoch came down from the hills and beheld catastrophe. He pulled on the reins and stared aghast. Water lay where farms and roads had been that morning. Stagnant at the edges, it was torrential in the middle, speeding in a dirty brown froth.

  My God, the schoolhouse! That was the schoolhouse roof, the only red roof in the neighborhood! A dreadful faintness almost toppled him. Then panic came. He thought he heard himself screaming at the mare. He whipped her, which he had never done before, and the mare sped.

  Here the road lay on an elevated ridge from where he could look down on the water, some twenty feet below. Treetops poked up from the swirling current, strewn with terrible debris: here a dead cow, its stiff legs spread as if beseeching the sky; there, drowned chickens in a coop; an ice-chest; a parlor table with a square marble top. On a flimsy branch a terrified cat clung, its mouth strained open in a wail too far away to be audible.

  Enoch trembled and went cold.

  His own house lay beyond the place where the river curved sharply to the east, and he saw as he approached that the water had risen over the front steps. The stable, lying on lower ground, was covered to the eaves. One of the three strong, young maples that fronted the road had been ripped up. Flung into standing water in the yard, its fibered roots protruded like torn ligaments.

  He jumped down, waded thigh deep to the porch, and banged the front door open.

  “Jean! Jean!”

  Water had seeped into the parlor, soakin
g the Brussels carpet, trailing long feelers down the hall toward the kitchen. Over everything lay the foul stench of wet wool.

  “Jean! Jean!”

  He ran upstairs, bounding two steps at a time. “Jean, for God’s sake, answer me! Where are you? Jean?”

  He went back to the porch and stood in his waterlogged boots looking wildly around, up at the sky and down. Under his tongue there was a burning and the salt taste of blood. It was so quiet! The yard was always noisy. The first things you heard were the cackle of chickens and the dog’s bark. Then he realized that the chickens had been drowned and the doghouse was underwater.

  He climbed back into the buggy, wrenching the mare’s head roughly, lashing her toward the road leading to the village center, which lay beyond the curve of the river and the flooding.

  The crazed man and the terrified horse tore down the road. So quiet, he thought again. Eerie quiet. Even the birds were still. April, and no birds.

  At the church there was a crowd of buggies and wagons and people on foot He pulled into the yard.