Julie exhaled. “I don’t think so. After that lawyer’s involvement, and what Nancy said afterward, I think it’s a dead subject for me.”
“Well, I guess that’s that, then,” Danny said. After a moment, he asked, “What’s next? The series wasn’t terminated, was it?”
“No—not at all. I’m going out to talk with Cyrus Huller within the next couple of days. I rode over to the edge of his land and took a bunch of photos of his fields.”
“Bad?”
“Hideous. Acre after acre of dead corn spikes. It was like a desert—and that’s not an exaggeration. Anyway, Cyrus has been around here for a long time. I hope I can get some first-person history from him, and if the interview goes well, I’ll lead the series with that.”
Danny began to respond when a gust throttled the barn, shaking beams and rattling windows and frames. The lights wavered but recovered. Long-undisturbed dust and bits of bird’s nest drifted to the floor from the interior of the roof. Drifter snorted and backed into the corner of his stall.
“Wind’s getting stronger,” Danny said. “Are all the windows closed in your house? Doors shut tightly?”
Julie was on her feet. “I think so. I didn’t pay much attention when I came to the barn. I didn’t think I’d—”
Another blast of wind struck the barn. “Your house is going to be a sandbox if there’s any way for the dirt to get in,” Danny said. “I’d better go check. I’ll go out the front, and you close the door after me. We don’t want the wind to catch it and rip it off the—”
“No, Danny! You’re not going out there!” Even to Julie’s own ears her voice sounded on the cusp of panic.
“Hey—OK, Julie,” Danny said, holding up his hands in mock surrender. “I won’t go out. But I’ll tell you this: there’s going to be a monumental amount of cleaning to do when the storm’s over. And, from the looks of things, it’s going to be a long, long day stuck here in the barn.”
Julie exhaled audibly, and her smile was a bit tremulous. “I didn’t mean to shriek like that, but the wind and the storm have me right on edge. How long do these things last? Maybe it’ll die down soon, and we—”
Something metal, possibly a trash can from the sound of it, slammed into the side of the barn with an impact like that of a battering ram striking a sheet of aluminum. Drifter squealed, and the crazed thud of his hooves bashing wood covered the high-pitched screech of a board giving way as its nails were dragged from wood by the force of whatever hit it. Drifter squealed again, this time a long, drawn-out wail of fear.
Danny pawed a leather case about the size of a thin wallet from his back pocket, thumbed it open, and removed a mini-syringe. He dropped the leather case to the floor, used his teeth to separate the plastic cylinder from over the needle, and approached the panicked Quarter Horse’s stall. Drifter had swung to face the corner of the stall, and Danny sank the needle fully into the animal’s haunch.
Drifter began to rear once again, seemed to think it over for several heartbeats, and then stood gaping dumbly at the vet. Ever so slowly he collapsed onto his bed of straw, slack-jawed, his eyelids fluttering as he struggled to keep them open. The drug was stronger than 1,200 pounds of muscular horseflesh; Drifter’s head dropped to the floor as if in slow motion. He snuffed through his nostrils and then slept.
Julie stepped closer to the stall, white faced.
“He’s OK now, Julie,” Danny assured her. “He’ll sleep for a few hours, and by the time he wakes up the storm should be over.”
“What about Sunday?” Julie asked. The collie continued panting, and his body trembled like that of a whipped puppy.
“I’m afraid he’s going to have to tough it out. The tranquilizer is specifically for horses or cattle. It’s too heavy for a canine system. He’ll be fine, as long as he can stick close to one or both of us.”
Julie returned to her hay bale, sat, and patted her leg. Sunday cringed across the floor to her and huddled between her knees.
Danny walked to the window and gazed outward, although there was nothing to see but a swirl of dirt and darkness.
The voice of the storm—varying from a muted growl to the scream of a circus calliope—was the only constant. The barn groaned under the heavier onslaughts of the wind and during lapses seemed to settle into itself, to gird up for the next battering.
Julie allowed her eyes to close. The last image she focused on before she dozed off was that of Danny standing at the window, his shoulders broad and strong, his right arm raised and his palm flat against the siding next to the window frame. It was a good image, a strong one, the figure of a guardian and a protector.
Julie opened her eyes, disoriented. Danny’s hand rested on her shoulder as he shook her gently.
“Hey,” he said, his voice husky. “Listen—there’s no wind. The storm’s over.”
Julie listened, holding her breath. The silence was like that of the deepest hours of the night. She shuddered.
“It’s so quiet it’s scary,” she said.
“Yeah. You OK? You were kind of murmuring in your sleep, but I didn’t want to wake you up.” He smiled. “The best way to get past a storm is to sleep through it.”
“What time is it?” Julie asked, stretching her arms and working kinks from her neck.
“Quarter to seven,” Danny said, glancing at his watch.
“I slept all those hours?” Julie asked incredulously. “What did you do?”
“Well, I gawked out the window for most of the time, just thinking. I checked on Drifter every so often, scratched Sunday, and thought some more. Actually, the time seemed to go quickly. And, speaking of Drifter, let’s take a look at him.”
Julie stood, brushing at her jeans with little success at removing soil or grit, and they stepped to the Quarter Horse’s stall. Sunday, back to normal, followed. Drifter, too, was in the process of waking up. His eyes were half closed, and he was coated with a dull veneer of dirt and dust. He hauled his legs under himself and began the clumsy procedure of a horse rising from the ground. When he had all four hooves under him, he shook his entire body like a dog emerging from water. A thick haze rose about him, dense enough to form a brown cloud in his stall. He attempted a step but lurched against the wall.
“He’s still a little addled by the tranquilizer,” Danny said before Julie could ask a question. “Another hour or so and he’ll be as good as new. We’ll leave him alone for a bit. C’mon, let’s take a look outside.”
They walked together to the front of the barn, Julie again slapping ineffectually at the dirt on her shirt and jeans. She put her hand to her hair but took it away quickly when she felt her hair’s damp griminess. “I’m a mess,” she grumbled.
“Yeah,” Danny said, grinning and rubbing his eyes. “I, on the other hand, look like a dewy spring rose.”
Julie looked at him and laughed. “What you look like is a destitute raccoon,” she said. “The only clean part of you is where you wiped the dirt away from your eyes.”
Danny muscled the sliding door open a foot and a half or so. “The track’s full of sand. I’ll clean it with a cloth and some oil. Do you have a ladder?”
“Just a stepladder, and it’s not tall enough.”
“That’s OK. I’ve got an extension ladder at home. I’ll bring it over and get this done for you.”
“Great,” Julie said.
Danny looked outside, and Julie, right behind him, peeked over his shoulder. For a long moment, neither spoke as they took in the scene. Sunday eased through the opening and stood in front of the barn, peering around as if he’d never been there before. The light remained murky and made it seem as if they were viewing everything through a soiled window. The air was still in an after-the-storm quietude. It was beyond peaceful—almost frighteningly so, like the silence that shrouds a field after a deadly battle.
“Ohhh,” Julie breathed. Danny didn’t speak—didn’t make a sound.
A drift of what appeared to be very pale sand began at the east end of
Julie’s house and swept gently upward until it reached her kitchen door, which was hanging from its bottom hinge as if twisted away from its frame by a crazed creature. The mound invaded the house, penetrating the doorway, sloping upward along the inside wall, perhaps three feet high—or four or five beyond where Julie and Danny could see.
The window over the sink stared out at them, shattered, its frame warped away, its very edge resting on the sweep of sand and soil. A plastic trash can Julie had kept outside the kitchen door had been whisked away, and the outdoor thermometer that had been angled outside the kitchen window had been torn away too—taking a foot or so of siding with it. The roof had come through in good stead, and the gutters seemed to be in their normal positions. A trellis at the side of the house was gone, and so were a folding lawn chair and a plastic table.
“It could have been much worse,” Danny observed. “Your roof looks fine, and that window is no big deal.”
“The roof was new when I bought the house,” Julie said. “My lawyer insisted on it, and I thought he was going to blow the deal for me.”
“Good lawyer. Roofs are expensive.”
Julie nodded. After a moment she said, “Why are we standing out here? Are we afraid to see the inside?”
Danny smiled ruefully. “It’ll look worse than it is, Julie. It’s a matter of mule-work cleanup, is all. We’ll take it a room at a time and, well . . . you’ll be back to normal.”
Danny stepped out ahead of Julie, and Sunday began to follow him, but Danny waved him back with a sweep of his arm, telling him he was free to explore.
Julie walked behind Danny, hand to her mouth. Her home had been invaded by a force over which she had absolutely no control, and she felt the storm’s incursion personally, as if a once-good friend had turned on her for no reason.
A sloping dune of dry soil entered the kitchen and followed the wall, tapering down as it approached the living room. The kitchen and living room were strewn with newspapers and catalogs and junk mail that’d been piled near the door. Julie walked robotically to the stairs, her boots crunching sand and dirt; the sound was loud and abrasive in the quiet house.
She found no dunes or mounds of soil on the second floor, but everything—her sheets and pillows, her bedside table, her dresser—was coated with a patina of grit, as if the bedroom hadn’t been dusted for a very, very long time. The window, open about halfway, had a pool of dirt in front of it that extended across the room like an island in a hardwood sea. Julie’s boots continued crunching as she walked to the bathroom. The surfaces—the sink, the toilet-seat cover, the top of the medicine cabinet, and the floor—were painted with grayish-brown dirt. Her Mickey shower curtain offered the only color in the small room, and it seemed frivolous.
Julie didn’t realize that Danny was behind her until she felt his hand on her shoulder. “Like I said outside, it could be a lot worse. I’ve got a Shop-Vac at my place that’ll pick all this up.”
“That’d be good,” she said. “My old Eureka couldn’t handle a mess like this. I guess I should sweep first, right? Or shovel, in the kitchen.”
“Yeah. That’d be best. I can help you with it.”
“How about your place?” Julie asked. “Did you leave any windows open?”
“No sweat. I closed up everything before I left. The clinic will be fine—I’ve got good windows in it, and the seals are fresh.”
“Hey,” Julie said, “we’ve missed a couple of meals. Let me check what I have in the refrigerator. I know I’ve got some cold cuts and some potato salad.”
“Better yet—let’s go to the café,” Danny said. “If it isn’t open, we’ll go somewhere else. You need to get out of here for a bit before we tackle the cleanup.”
“Sounds good, but look at me—at us. We’re walking dirt piles.”
“Sure we are—and so is everyone else within a hundred or so miles. We know everybody at the café, and they know us. It’ll be like it was after that Thanksgiving blizzard. As soon as people could get out and around, they headed to Drago’s.”
“I don’t know, Danny . . .” Julie slapped at her jeans, putting a brown cloud of dust in the air from each leg.
“C’mon,” he said, taking her hand. “The only thing we have to worry about are the cats . . .”
Julie walked a couple of steps with him and then stopped, turning to face him. “Cats? Why do we need to worry about cats?”
Danny grinned, his teeth very white against the soil on his face. “They’ll think we’re walking litter boxes.”
Danny’s truck protested a bit as he cranked the engine. He climbed out, leaving Julie in the passenger seat and Sunday at her feet—in fact, on her feet. Danny opened the hood, unscrewed the cover over the air filter to the fuel-injection system, and removed the paper mesh filter. He flapped it in the air, and Julie watched through the windshield as the filter changed in color from a drab ecru to a dull eggshell. He reassembled the parts and slammed the hood. When he settled behind the wheel he smiled at Julie and turned the key. The engine growled to life, hesitated once, leveled out, and then purred smoothly.
“My hero.”
“You betcha,” Danny said.
Julie reached over and squeezed his arm as he drove down the driveway. Danny closed his hand over hers for a moment and then removed it to shift into second gear as they reached the road.
The heat had returned, seemingly with new strength and new vehemence. Danny clicked on the air-conditioning, and the vents spewed dirt into the cab. “Bad idea,” he said, turning off the air. Julie sneezed, and so did Sunday. Danny pressed the window button and lowered his and Julie’s windows.
Julie felt like she was riding on a road she didn’t know, in a place she’d never visited. Tumbleweeds littered the roadway, some enmeshed in fences, most resting where the wind had dropped them when the storm died. Some were sizable—a yard and more across—and countless more were close to that size. Danny slowed and downshifted back to first gear as he eased through a mass of them that’d collected on the road and shoulder where a scraggly stand of ponderosa pine had long ago taken root. The truck seemed to push through the gathering of tumbleweeds without actually touching them, as if the mere motion of the air in front of the vehicle was enough to ease them to the sides.
Ahead, at the center of a long curve, a spit of dirt reached halfway across the road. Julie noticed a glint of metal. “Danny, what’s that?” she asked, leaning forward against her shoulder harness. As they drew closer, the object became more visible: a rural mailbox with part of its wooden mounting post still attached to it. Although the box was partially crumpled and more than a bit twisted, the letters “DUN” were still readable in scratched but vivid red hand-painted script.
“That’s the Duncans’ mailbox,” Julie said. “But it can’t be—they live better than five miles from here.”
Danny pulled closer to the shoulder, stopped, shifted to neutral, and flicked on his four-way warning flashers. “Probably more than five miles, but look there.” He pointed across a barren field that seemed to stretch to the far horizon. “That should’ve been a few hundred acres of better’n knee-high barley and oats. But there’s next to nothing to stop that mailbox from blowing all this way.” He got out of the truck and walked to the box. He attempted to wrench its front open, but the distorted aluminum wouldn’t allow him to do so. Danny carried it back and set it down behind his seat. “There’s something in it. I’ll drop by the Duncan farm tomorrow.” He sat with his hands on the wheel but didn’t move to start the engine.
“What?” Julie asked quietly.
“I’m worried about these people.”
For a moment, Julie wasn’t at all sure whom Danny was referring to. “You mean the Duncan family?”
Danny laughed quietly. “No, not the Duncans—I mean the Duncans and everyone else in this part of the state, I guess. At times when I’ve been driving, I’ll pull off to the side of the road and try to remember how the land looked when it was green and healthy, like
it’s supposed to be. And I can’t really remember. I can see images in my mind of crops and fields of corn and so forth, but as to actually remembering the smells and the tactile stuff—how it feels to walk through a good, lush pasture with the grass almost knee high—it seems like it never happened. It’s as if those times were something I hallucinated or imagined and what we have now is the way it’s always been.” He laughed again, this time self-consciously. “I must sound like a wacko, right?”
“No—no, you don’t. I’ve had feelings like that too. I keep wondering how long all this can last, how long people can stand it, before they simply give up. It makes me sad.”
“Yeah.” Danny was silent for a moment. He reached over and took Julie’s hand, and she grasped his willingly, comfortably.
“We haven’t seen anything like this in our country in the time we’ve been alive,” Danny said. “The thing is, history shows us that disasters have happened before—droughts, flooding, disease, wars, all that. I have to believe that there’s something in the American people—in us and the people around us—that helps us survive. Maybe it’s love of God, maybe it’s that we love our country so much—but we always survive and come back stronger.”
Julie realized that she was hearing Danny Pulver’s heart speaking directly to her. She wanted him to continue speaking, to continue sharing, to let her know more about him and what made him the man he was.
Sunday snuffled in his sleep, shifted his position on the floor in front of Julie, and dozed again.
“What I’m the most worried about are the families—the families of the farmers and of the businesspeople too,” Danny said. “It’s a tragedy to lose a farm or a business, the kind of tragedy that can tear at the heart of a family. Remember I was whining about my practice? I feel like a jerk for saying what I did. My obligations will be taken care of, sooner or later. As quickly as I can pay them, I will. I can’t do any more than that. But I ache inside when I think how a farm family feels when they look out over acres and acres of dust and know that any day the bank’s going to put a notice on their door. Or when I think about a family closing the door for the last time on their small business that failed.”
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