by John Saul
Diana and Christie spent the morning of the Fourth of July in the kitchen, happily building a macaroni salad that would serve sixteen. Ever since Jay-Jay’s funeral, the weather had been calm, and the tension in the Amber house had eased, though Christie could sense the constant strain between the two women she lived with. But as the week had gone by, and Diana had shown her nothing but love, she had begun to think that maybe the bad times, the times when people had died and she had never known what to expect from her guardian, were over. Slowly she had begun to relax. Now, confident that she wouldn’t be punished for it, she filched a piece of boiled egg as Diana scanned the cupboard.
“What about tuna?” Diana asked. “Shall we throw some in?”
“Yuck,” was Christie’s automatic response.
“It might be good,” Diana protested. “We can at least try it.”
She took the can off the shelf, opened it, and shook it into the salad. When she’d stirred it in, she offered a spoonful to Christie, who made a face, tasted it, then grinned. “Hey! It is good. What else can we put in?”
She began going through the pantry and eventually piled several things on the sink. Diana looked them over, then approved all but the marshmallows.
“My dad always used to put them in fruit salad,” Christie objected as Diana put them away.
“That’s fruit salad. This is different. The olives, pimientos, and water chestnuts are plenty.” While Christie began opening the little cans, Diana started cleaning up. As she wiped the sink Edna appeared at the kitchen door. She stood silently, her face fixed in an expression of disapproval, watching them.
“Are you sure you don’t want to change your mind and come, Mama?” Diana asked.
“Why would I? I’ve never gone to their little parties, and I’m too old to start now.”
“But it’s going to be fun,” Christie said. “We’re going to have games, and contests, and fireworks. You’d have a good time, Miss Edna. Really!”
“I hardly think a nine-year-old knows what would amuse a woman of eighty-odd,” Edna observed. As Christie’s happy expression crumbled Edna turned to her daughter. “I think we’d better have a little talk before you go, Diana,” she added. Then she turned to leave, and Christie and Diana listened to her cane thumping on the stairs as she labored up to the second floor.
“Isn’t she going to let us go?” Christie asked anxiously when they were alone.
“It’s not up to her,” Diana declared. “Finish cleaning up, and I’ll go talk to her.”
Leaving Christie in the kitchen, Diana climbed the stairs. Edna was in her room, standing at the window, staring out. She seemed to be looking at the mine.
“Mama?”
Edna turned, and her clear blue eyes held Diana’s. “I don’t suppose there’s any point in trying to talk you out of going to that picnic,” she said.
“No, Mama. If it were just me, I wouldn’t go. But I don’t want Christie to miss it.”
“She could go with the Crowleys,” Edna suggested. “They seem a decent enough couple.”
Diana took a deep breath. “I’m going, Mama. Bill Henry is picking us up, and that’s all there is to it.”
Edna sighed and lowered herself into a chair. Over the past few days her age seemed to have caught up with her, and she felt too tired to argue with Diana. “Very well, but I want you to promise me something. If the wind comes up, I want you to come home right away.”
Diana’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What makes you think the wind will come up?”
“I didn’t say it would,” Edna corrected her. “I said if it does. You know how the wind affects you.”
“It gives me a headache, sometimes,” Diana admitted, her voice guarded. What was her mother getting at?
Edna wrapped an afghan around her shoulders, despite the growing heat of the day. “It does a lot more to you than that, and if it begins blowing, I want you at home.”
“All right, Mama,” Diana said. She, too, was tired of arguing with her mother, but she couldn’t keep her exasperation out of her voice.
“And don’t use that tone of voice with me, young lady,” Edna automatically responded.
Anger welled up in Diana, but she knew there was no point in expressing it. Her mother would only match it, and soon they would be involved in one of their battles. In the end she was certain to lose.
“I’m sorry, Mama,” she said, injecting her voice with as much contrition as she could muster. “I’ll leave you some lunch.”
Edna glared at her balefully. “Are you sure it won’t be too much trouble?” The acid in her voice stung Diana, but she tried not to show it.
“It won’t be any trouble at all.” She left her mother’s room and hurried downstairs.
“Christie? Are you going to change your clothes?”
“No.”
Diana surveyed the little girl and wished she could convince her to change from her jeans into a dress. She would be so much prettier. But she knew it was useless—all the kids would be wearing jeans.
“Okay. What else do we need?”
“What are we going to put the salad in?”
Diana thought for a minute. “A picnic basket. There’s one upstairs. Come on.”
They climbed up to the third floor, and Diana unlocked one of the storerooms. As she rummaged around, searching for the ancient wicker basket that she remembered having seen up there, Christie began looking around.
Something caught her eye.
“That’s my suitcase,” she said, pointing to the top shelf.
Diana straightened up and looked where the child was pointing.
“No, it’s not,” she said uncertainly. “Why would it be up here?”
“It is mine,” Christie insisted. Using the shelves as a ladder, she scrambled up and pulled at the suitcase.
“Leave it alone, Christie,” Diana said sharply, but it was too late. The suitcase crashed to the floor, and the lid flew open.
Out of it tumbled the Lyons family album. Christie stared at it, then at Diana.
“Why did you put it in here?” she complained.
Diana, flustered, tried to think of a reason.
Vaguely she could remember having put the suitcase on the shelf, but she couldn’t remember why.
“I don’t know,” she said softly. “Take it to your room, if you want to.”
As Christie picked up the album and left the storage room, Diana continued hunting for the picnic basket. And as she hunted she tried to remember the day she had brought Christie’s things home. But all she could remember was that on that day, the wind had been blowing.
Bill Henry slid his car into a spot between the Crowley’s pickup and the Penrose’s new Chevy and grinned at Diana. Though he was still concerned about his talk with Dan Gurley earlier in the week, he had not mentioned it to Diana, nor did he have any intention of spoiling the picnic for her by telling her today. Perhaps he would never have to tell her at all.
“Sure you’re ready for all this bucolic excitement?”
“I’m going to love it,” Diana assured him. “I don’t know why I’ve let Mother keep me from coming all these years. Christie, isn’t that Jeff over there?”
Christie scrambled out of the car and ran off toward the baseball diamond, where Jeff and Steve Penrose were trying to find enough people for a softball game. So far the square wasn’t crowded, but here and there various people had spread blankets on the tables, reserving space for themselves and their friends.
Diana noticed that the Jenningses and the Sandlers had chosen a spot as far away as possible from the area near the statue of Amos Amber, where Joyce Crowley and Rita Penrose were unloading baskets of food. While Bill lifted Diana’s basket from the trunk of the car, she hurried toward the two women.
Diana tried to concentrate on the chatter that Joyce Crowley was determinedly keeping up, but as the square began filling up she was acutely aware that many people seemed to be avoiding her.
The mothers of Am
berton were keeping their distance.
On the baseball diamond, Steve Penrose had finally succeeded in getting a game going, though he didn’t think he had much of a team. He was pitching, and Jeff Crowley was catching, but he was stuck with only Christie and Susan Gillespie to cover everything else.
“Come on, Susan,” he yelled. “What are you doing in right field? Nobody hits out there.”
Susan obediently trotted up toward first base, and the next ball went flying over her head into right field.
“I don’t wanta play,” she shouted, but ran after the ball anyway. By the time she had fielded the fly a home run had been scored.
The other team, seven boys, hooted and jeered. Steve Penrose shrugged and walked off the field.
“Come on,” he called. “This isn’t even fair.”
The rest of his team joined him, and the other team began a game of work-ups.
Bill Henry was the first to see the four children coming toward the tables. “Beat ’em already?” he asked Steve.
Steve made a face but said nothing.
Diana, seeing that Christie’s eyes were filling with tears, asked her what had happened.
“The other kids didn’t want to play with us,” she said. “They wouldn’t choose up sides, so we said we’d be a team. But there aren’t enough of us, and Susan and I aren’t any good anyway.”
“Susan can’t throw, and Christie can’t catch,” Jeff added. Then his eye began to twinkle. “But it didn’t matter because none of us can hit anyway.”
Steve Penrose suddenly started laughing. “Who cares about that? We would have just chased balls for them all day. We never could have gotten them out.”
“Sounds like you quit while you were ahead,” Joyce Crowley said.
“We were six runs behind,” Jeff told her, then looked perplexed when the adults laughed. “Can we eat now?” he said.
Late in the afternoon the breeze picked up, and instinctively everyone looked toward the mountains. The clouds that had been visible all day were roiling in the distance, and the people of Amberton looked at each other and nodded.
“Off-season chinook,” someone said. “Gonna blow all night.”
Dan Gurley glanced up at the sky, then casually strolled over to the little group that included Diana Amber.
“Enjoying yourself?” he asked. Bill shot him a look of warning, but Dan ignored it.
“It’s fun,” Diana said, smiling at the marshal in spite of the headache that was beginning to prod at her. “I’ve missed a lot in my life, haven’t I? Do you suppose it’s too late to catch up?”
“I doubt it.” Dan sat down on the blanket and stretched his long legs out. “Hear your mother wants to blow up the mine,” he said suddenly. He watched Diana carefully and was sure he saw her flinch.
“I think it’s a good idea,” Bill said quickly. Dan glanced at him, then his eyes returned to Diana.
“What do you think?”
“I’m not sure,” she said. “I know how dangerous the mine is, and I know all the horrible things that have happened there, but I have the oddest feeling. It’s as if, with the mine destroyed, something will be taken away from me, something that I don’t want to lose.”
“What?”
“That’s what bothers me. I don’t know. All I know is that it would be like … losing a child.”
Dan Gurley frowned. “That’s an odd thing to say,” he observed.
Suddenly Diana felt trapped. She looked from Dan to Bill, then back to Dan again. Were they looking at her strangely? She couldn’t be sure, but she knew she had made a mistake.
The wind was blowing harder, and her headache was getting worse.
The children’s games began, and Diana tried to concentrate on them but it was difficult. Something was happening in her mind. Sounds were coming to her, calling to her.
The three-legged race began, and Diana was dimly aware that Christie was out there, her left ankle tied to Jeff Crowley’s right, but she couldn’t seem to make out exactly where Christie was.
Instead she saw herself on the field, but it was another field, a field near her house, and she was playing with Esperanza. And then she saw her mother moving toward her, her face angry, her clenched fist raised in the air.
“No,” she whimpered. “Please, no …”
Beside her, Bill Henry squeezed her arm. “Diana? Is something wrong?”
It seemed to bring her back to reality, and her vision cleared. But her head still ached, and dimly, in the back of her mind, she could still hear a voice.
A baby, crying out to her. She forced herself to ignore the sound.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Just a little headache.” She searched the field, then saw Christie.
The little girl was running, leaning heavily on Jeff, and anger suddenly welled up in Diana. Where was she going? Was she running away? Her head was throbbing. Suddenly she called out Christie’s name and took a step out onto the field.
Christie turned at the sound of Diana’s voice, and the motion threw her and Jeff off-balance. They fell to the ground, and Christie felt a sudden pain in her leg. When she looked at it, blood was pouring from a deep gash in her calf. Horrified by the sight of the blood, she began screaming.
Diana, along with everyone else, was running across the field now, but inside her head chaos raged. Images, real and imagined, mixed together. The baby was calling to her, screaming in agony, and ahead of her she could see it, lying on the ground, its face contorted with pain. She had to get to it, to ease its pain and make it stop crying.
But there were people around it now, and she couldn’t get to it. Someone was lifting her baby, carrying it away.
“No,” Diana mumbled. “It’s my baby. You can’t take my baby away from me.”
But they were.
Diana Amber, her head throbbing with pain, the wind moaning loudly in her ears, watched as Christie Lyons was carried away.
She couldn’t let it happen. She lurched forward, determined not to let them take her baby away from her.
21
Diana opened her eyes and looked up. She was lying on her back, a blanket covering her body. Bill Henry’s face loomed above her.
The wind, in its capricious fashion, had faded away as fast as it had come up.
“Diana?” Bill’s voice seemed far away, as if he were speaking to her through a tunnel. “Are you all right?”
“Wha—what happened?”
“There was an accident.”
Fear clutched at Diana and she struggled to sit up, but Bill restrained her.
“It’s nothing serious,” he told her. “Christie tripped and fell on a piece of glass. When you saw the blood, you fainted.”
Diana heard the words, but they had no meaning. Blood? What was he talking about? She couldn’t remember any blood. All she could remember was—what?
It was gone, all of it.
She sat up slowly. “Christie? Where’s Christie? Is she all right?”
“I’m okay, Aunt Diana.”
Diana looked around and saw Christie standing near her, a bandage wrapped around her right calf. “It isn’t as bad as it looks,” Bill told her. “There was a lot of blood, but I didn’t have to take any stitches. It won’t even leave a scar.” He looked into Diana’s eyes and took her wrist, checking her pulse. “In fact, I’m more worried about you than I am about her.”
Her eyes searched his, looking for a clue. What had she said? What had happened to her, and why couldn’t she remember it? Desperately she tried to sort it out in her mind, but there was nothing there. Only one more of those terrible voids, as if she had stood still and time had passed her by. She tried to get up, but Bill stopped her.
“Just lie there awhile,” she heard him saying. “You only fainted, and you’ll be all right in a few minutes. Between the sun, the wind, and the blood, it was just too much.”
Diana closed her eyes but couldn’t relax. She could feel her heart pounding, and her whole body felt clammy, as if
she’d just thrown up.
But everything was all right. All that had happened was that she’d fainted. Everybody did that now and then, didn’t they? Except that other people remembered what had happened, and she didn’t.
She mustn’t let them know. If they knew, they’d think she was crazy, and they’d take Christie away from her. Again she struggled to sit up.
“I’m all right now,” she insisted when Bill still tried to restrain her. “I just feel like an idiot, that’s all. Is there any water?”
Joyce Crowley handed Diana a glass of iced tea, and she gulped it, though she wasn’t really thirsty.
“Thank you.”
She looked around now and saw that she was surrounded by a crowd of people. As they saw that she was recovering they began to drift away. Soon no one was left but their own small group, which Dan Gurley had joined. He was staring at her.
“I’m not sick,” Diana said quickly. Too quickly? She searched the faces around her, but except for Bill, no one seemed concerned. Only Dan, whom she was almost certain was eyeing her strangely. But before he could say anything Matt Crowley distracted him.
“What do you think? Calm enough for the fireworks?”
Dan seemed to forget about Diana as he scanned the sky. “Looks good to me. Shall we start setting up?”
As the two men walked away Diana spoke to Christie. “Honey, don’t you think we ought to go home?”
“I want to stay for the fireworks,” Christie said. “My leg doesn’t hurt. Really it doesn’t!” Then, her eyes pleading with Diana: “Besides, we have to plan the camp-out!”
The camp-out. Diana had forgotten all about it, but suddenly that day with Jeff and Christie came flooding back to her. Except for that moment in the mine, it had been a good day; out of the house, away from her mother. And there had been no wind to plague her that day.
Today had been a good day, too, until the wind had come up.
But the wind was gone now. Everything was fine.
In Shacktown, Esperanza and Juan Rodriguez sat on the porch of one of Esperanza’s friends and watched the fireworks in the distance. The Shacktown people never went to the picnic, but instead gathered together in front of their houses while their children played in the dusty streets. It was hot, and as the day wore on, bringing the searing wind, tempers, ever-edgy, frayed, and fights broke out.
