When the Wind Blows

by John Saul

  Once he and his assistants had taken Hayburner away, she had decided to fix herself an omelet—another thing Diana should have done for her—but when she opened the refrigerator, she found no eggs. She had gone to the chicken coop to get some.

  Now she stared at the pile of oats that sat in one corner of the hen house.

  Hadn’t Diana even taught the child what to feed the chickens? And where to put the food? Left where it was, it would only attract rats.

  She picked up one of the food pans, then stiffly stooped down to brush the oats into it.

  As she touched the pile of grain the rattrap sprang.

  Edna screamed as the heavy wire trap closed on her fingers.

  She dropped her cane and struggled with the trap, but the spring was too strong. As the fingers of her right hand began to swell and turn red, she cursed out loud.

  “God damn that child! God damn her to hell!”

  Then she got to her feet and, with the trap dangling from her damaged hand, began trudging back to the house to call Bill Henry.

  She hated the idea of having to call the doctor, but there was nothing else she could do.

  Her right hand throbbing with pain, she began clumsily dialing the telephone with her left.

  14

  Bill Henry pried the trap lose from Edna Amber’s fingers, set it on the the kitchen table, then gently massaged the damaged hand. There were deep grooves where the jaw of the trap had bitten into her flesh, and the ends of her fingers were swollen and turning black. The skin, however, was not broken.

  “At least we won’t have to give you a tetanus shot,” he said.

  “Are they broken?” Edna asked. She flexed the fingers experimentally, and pain shot up her arm.

  “I don’t think so I can take some X rays if you want, but I think they’re just badly bruised. You should be fine in a couple of days. How’d it happen?”

  Edna’s face tightened in anger as she remembered.

  “That child!” She spat the word out as if it tasted sour.

  “She put a rattrap in the hen house and covered it with oats. Can you imagine? Oats!”

  Bill frowned. “Why would she do that?”

  “Why do children do anything?” Edna asked bitterly. “I don’t understand why Diana insists on keeping her here. She’s no more equipped to be a mother than—” Words failed her, and she glared at Bill. “—than I don’t know what!” she finished.

  Bill bathed her injured hand with alcohol, then rubbed some ointment on it.

  “What’s that for?” Edna asked, peering at her hand suspiciously.

  “Nothing, really. It’s some zinc oxide, and it’s more to make you feel as though I’ve done something than for any good it will do you.”

  “A placebo.”

  “Exactly.”

  Edna got up and went to the sink and proceeded to wash the salve off, then dried her fingers. “I don’t approve of such things, Dr. Henry,” she said. She returned to the table and sat down again. She studied Bill’s face for a moment, then looked away from him.

  “I want you to help me.”

  “That’s what I’m here for.”

  The old woman ignored his comment. “You have a—” She paused, as if groping for words, then went on. “—a certain amount of influence with Diana. I want you to convince her to send Christie away.”

  Bill shook his head. “I can’t do that,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  Now he leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. “Lots of reasons. Mostly, I don’t see any reason for it. If you want to know the truth, I think Christie’s good for Diana. It’s time Diana had someone in her life other than you.”

  “Don’t be impertinent, young man,” Edna snapped.

  “I’m not.” Bill’s voice became more intense. “I’m telling you the truth, Miss Edna. You’ve had Diana to yourself for years. But you’re not going to live forever. Have you thought about what’s going to happen to Diana when you die?”

  The old woman frowned at him. “What are you talking about? I have no intention of dying, not for a long time yet.”

  “But it will happen. And what happens to Diana then? What’s her life going to be like? Have you thought about that?”

  The old woman stood up and began pacing the floor, unconsciously massaging her injured hand. “Of course I have. And frankly, I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t know what I can do. Diana can’t take care of herself, you know.”

  Bill bristled. “I don’t know, Miss Edna, and neither do you. You’ve never let her have a chance to take care of herself. You’ve kept her cooped up here, like your hens.”

  “There are reasons for that,” Edna said, her voice cold.

  “Well, if there are, I don’t know about them.”

  Edna’s mind raced. Perhaps she should tell him the truth. If she told him the truth, perhaps he’d understand and help her. She turned to face him and braced herself with her cane.

  “Did you know that Diana once had a baby?”

  The question hit Bill like a physical blow. He sank back in his chair, suddenly feeling dizzy. Then he recovered himself.

  “No, I didn’t,” he said, forcing himself to keep his voice under control. What on earth was the old lady up to now?

  “No one else does, either.” Edna’s eyes glittered as she spoke. “It happened thirty years ago. You were away at school, I believe. The father was a man named Travers.”

  “I don’t remember anybody by that name.”

  “You wouldn’t. He wasn’t here long—I hired him for the ranch, but as soon as I found out what he’d done, I fired him. I don’t think he was here more than six months. I doubt if many people remember him.” She paused, then delivered the second blow. “Even Diana doesn’t remember him.”

  All Bill could do was stare at her, and when he finally found his voice, it had a hollow sound to it. “I beg your pardon?”

  Edna sat down at the kitchen table again, and as she went on with the story she stared at her hands, rubbing them occasionally, though Bill wasn’t sure if it was because of the pain, her own nervousness, or both.

  “Diana doesn’t remember Travers. She doesn’t remember the baby, either. She doesn’t remember any of it.”

  Bill’s hands fell to the tabletop, and he shook his head as he tried to sort out his thoughts. “You’ve lost me.” he said. “What do von mean she doesn’t remember? You don’t have a baby and not remember.”

  “The baby was born dead,” Edna said. She sat down again, facing him. “When I told Diana about it, she became hysterical.” Her voice softened, and Bill thought there was a look of something akin to satisfaction in her face as she continued. “She screamed for hours, but eventually she went to sleep. When she woke up, she’d blotted it all out of her memory. All of it, Dr. Henry. She had no memory of being pregnant, no memory of Phillip Travers, no memory of the birth—nothing! Nine months of her life, gone!” She paused, then: “I think she must have thought it was her fault that the baby died, and blotting it out of her memory was the only way she could handle her guilt.” She grinned humorlessly. “Of course, back then we didn’t know about such things, did we?”

  Bill stared at the old woman. Was it possible? Could any of it have really happened? For a few moments he was silent.

  “Where was the baby born?” he asked at last.

  Edna smiled coldly at him. “Right here. I wanted Diana to go to a hospital, but she refused. She wouldn’t even go away to one of those homes they had back then. So she stayed here. I delivered the baby myself.”

  “And where is the baby?”

  “I buried it,” Edna said, and the words seemed to Bill to be almost a challenge.

  “You buried it?” He stared at the old woman, aghast. “You delivered a baby, and you buried it?”

  For the first time Edna Amber’s voice rose in anger, displaying her emotions. “It was dead, Dr. Henry. It was born dead! What would you have had me do?”

&nbs
p; “What anybody else would have done,” Bill told her, his voice quivering with his own barely controlled rage. “Call a doctor when she went into labor. You could have killed her, Miss Edna. And how do you know the baby was born dead? Did it ever occur to you that you might have killed it yourself? Assuming, of course, that any of this is true.”

  Edna rose to her feet and stood over Bill, her eyes blazing with fury. “How dare you, William? I told you all this for only one reason: I want you to understand that Diana is not the person she seems to be. I’ve protected her as much as I can, and I’m still trying to protect her. But her mind isn’t quite right, William. She has spells! Can’t you understand that a woman like Diana has no business trying to raise a child?”

  Now Bill, too, was on his feet.

  “I understand a lot, Miss Edna. I understand that ever since Diana was a child, you’ve held on to her. You’ll do anything to keep her to yourself. I don’t know why—I’m not sure most of us can ever understand the motives of someone like you. Selfishness, I suppose—pure selfishness.” He knew he was going too far, but he was helpless to contain the bottled-up rage of thirty years. “You don’t care what you do to Diana, do you? Not as long as you keep her here, with you. But I won’t be a part of it, Miss Edna. I won’t help you destroy what might be Diana’s last chance to have a normal life.”

  Bill Henry picked up his bag and with Edna Amber still glaring at him, walked out of the house.

  The afternoon was bright and clear, and as Diana led Christie and Jeff along the trails that crisscrossed the ranch, she breathed deeply of the spring air. The new wheat was coming up, and for a few weeks, until the summer heat set in, the valley would be gloriously green, broken here and there with the upthrusting red rocks that dotted the area. Though her mind was still occupied with the memory that had come to her in the mine, Diana was determined not to betray her emotions to the children.

  She paused in a small stand of aspens and cottonwoods and sat down on a boulder.

  “Getting tired?” she asked as Jeff and Christie flopped onto the ground at her feet.

  “I like it out here,” Christie replied. She sat up and looked around the grove. “Could we come out here and camp sometime, Aunt Diana?”

  Diana glanced around, trying to see the grove through a child’s eyes. There was a natural spring, bubbling under the spreading branches of the cottonwoods, and a large rock that even to Diana’s eyes resembled a table. She smiled.

  “I don’t see why not. We could bring some canvas and string it up for shelter.”

  “I have a sleeping bag,” Jeff said eagerly, the idea of an adventure immediately appealing to him. “And I bet we could borrow Mom’s and Dad’s, too.”

  As she considered it Diana began to like the idea. She decided that Joyce Crowley was right—she should get more involved with all the kids. Her mother, of course, would object, but for once Diana didn’t care.

  Then she thought of the wind and her strange memory lapses. She glanced up at the mountains and wondered if her mother were right. Did the wind have some sort of strange effect on her? Did it make her behave irrationally? But today the mountains stood out against the blue of the sky, every detail etched in the clear sunlight. The day was still; perhaps, for this year, the winds were over. She dismissed her worries.

  “Maybe next month,” she said. “I’ll tell you what. Why don’t we talk about it at the picnic?”

  “On the Fourth of July?” Jeff asked. “But you never go, Miss Diana.”

  “I never had a reason to go,” Diana replied. “Not till this year. It’ll be a first for Christie and me both.”

  Jeff frowned. “What about Miss Edna? Will she be there, too?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” Diana said carefully. “But I don’t think so. She doesn’t like that sort of thing.”

  “Didn’t she even take you when you were a little girl?” Christie asked.

  Diana smiled bitterly. “No. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t go. I’d tell her I was going riding, then I’d leave my horse somewhere and sneak off to the picnic by myself.”

  The two children stared at her. Was it possible that she really had once done the same things they did themselves? They grinned at each other.

  “Didn’t she ever find out?” Christie asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What happened?”

  The smile faded from Diana’s lips, and her eyes clouded. “She told me never to disobey her again, or something terrible would happen.”

  Now the childrens’ eyes rounded in anticipation. “Did you?” they whispered in unison.

  Diana’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Only once.”

  “What happened?” Jeff asked, his voice as low as Diana’s.

  Diana paused, then looked at the children.

  “Something … terrible,” she said. A tear suddenly welled in her left eye, and she hastened to wipe it away, then got to her feet. “Come on—it’s getting late.”

  The children looked at each other and silently wondered what might have happened, but both of them knew that whatever it was, Diana wasn’t going to tell them.

  It was one of those things, they were sure, that was on the list of things they were too young for.

  As they began the long hike back the three of them fell silent, but as they neared the house Christie suddenly asked a question.

  “Aunt Diana? What if Miss Edna doesn’t want us to go to the picnic?”

  Diana hesitated only a moment, then reached over and patted Christie’s hand. “Then we’ll go without her.”

  “But … won’t something terrible happen?”

  Diana chuckled softly. “Don’t you worry, honey. That was all over with a long time ago. I grew up, remember?”

  Christie turned the matter over in her mind. “But she’s still your mother, isn’t she?”

  Now it was Diana who thought for a few moments before speaking. “Yes,” she said at last. “She is.”

  Edna Amber was waiting for them when they came in, and Diana immediately knew that there was going to be trouble.

  “Jeff, I think you’d better go home,” she said. Edna stood in the dining-room door, her left hand holding her cane, and her right hand wrapped in a large bandage. Jeff, realizing what must have happened, began backing out the door.

  “I-I’ll see you tomorrow, Christie,” he said. Then, remembering his manners, he spoke to Diana. “Thanks for taking me hiking, Miss Diana.”

  “You’re very welcome, Jeff,” Diana said, watching her mother as she spoke. “Come back any time.” As Edna’s eyes narrowed she repeated her last words. “Any time.”

  Then Jeff was gone, and the two Amber women and Christie were alone.

  “What happened, Mother?”

  Edna’s cane came up and pointed at Christie, who cowered against Diana.

  “That child!” Edna burst out. “Look what she’s done to me! Just look!”

  She pulled off the bandage and held up her damaged hand. Diana recoiled from the sight of the bruised, swollen flesh.

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “What do you mean Christie did that to you? She wasn’t even here, Mother.”

  “She didn’t have to be here,” Edna hissed. Her angry eyes fastened on Christie, she repeated what had happened. “A rattrap!” she finished. “A rattrap in the hen house!”

  Diana turned to Christie.

  “Did you put a rattrap in the hen house?” she asked. Christie, her arms wrapped around Diana’s waist, nodded.

  “It was Jeff’s idea,” she whispered, frantically groping in her mind for a reasonable explanation. “He said that rats like to eat the chicks.”

  “It wasn’t set for a rat, and you know it!” Edna railed.

  As rage contorted her mother’s face Diana searched for a way to protect Christie. “It was my fault,” she said at last. “I wasn’t watching what the children were doing, Mother. I was talking to Joyce.”

  It worked. Edna’s furious eyes focused on Diana, and sh
e emitted a crackling laugh. “You were talking to Joyce,” she mimicked. “And what was so important that you let the children run wild?”

  “Mama—” Diana began, but Edna cut her off.

  “Be quiet!” The old woman’s voice lashed out like a whip. “You shouldn’t have been talking to her at all! You’re an Amber, and don’t ever forget it!”

  Diana’s control suddenly snapped. “How can I forget it?” she burst out. “How can I ever forget it, when you keep shoving it down my throat? Who cares? Mother, who the hell cares about the Ambers anymore? What are we? We’re the people who made all the money off people dying, that’s who we are! It wasn’t coal that made us rich, Mother! It was people! All I can remember is that because of us, people died!”

  Edna stepped back, shaken by the outburst. Then, her voice suddenly gentle, she spoke to Christie.

  “Go upstairs, child. Go upstairs, and don’t come down until someone sends for you.”

  Christie, stunned by what she had just heard, ran up the stairs.

  In the nursery, she tried to block out the sound of the two women arguing, but it was impossible. First she heard Diana’s voice, shouting unintelligibly, and then Miss Edna, her voice softer, but somehow even more frightening.

  Christie put her fingers in her ears, but still the sound penetrated. She lay down on the bed and put the pillow over her head. That did no good either.

  As the argument raged on, two floors below her, she took off her clothes and got into her pajamas. She picked up the teddy bear that was propped up against the wall by the bed and went to the crib.

  Being in the crib made her feel better, safer—as if in the tiny crib with its four fencelike walls, nothing could hurt her.

  She lay very still, the bear cuddled against her chest, and tried to shut out the sounds that were filling the house.

  Her mother.

  She would think about her mother.

  If only she were still a baby, her mother would still be with her, and none of this would be happening.