Maggie could see nothing. There was no definition to anything around her or beyond her. Everything, including the interior of her truck, was a rapidly swirling, featureless mass of white. Her sense of sight—the most used and relied-upon physical sense humans possess—had, in the tiniest part of a second, abandoned her. She huddled behind the steering wheel of her truck, hands pressed ineffectually against her ears. Her shoulder harness dug into her body as she cringed forward against the restraint, disoriented, in full panic. She may have screamed, but there was no way her voice could register over the wrath of the storm.
It hit like a hunger-crazed, marauding grizzly in a pioneer cabin. The storm struck in all directions at once, tore down trees that had stood through a half century or more of Montana winters, ripped TV antennas from roofs, and scattered satellite dishes from their allegedly impervious foundations. Outbuildings—sheds, freestanding garages, cattle shelters—whirled off, some intact as they stood, others in pieces, never to be seen again.
The sole telephone booth on Main Street leaned with the wind, hesitated, and then wrenched away from the bolts that held it to the cement and flipped over itself three times before it careened off the top of a parked FedEx truck and ultimately shattered against the stone façade of the Coldwater Bank & Trust.
Cattle instinctively huddled tightly together. Three- and four-hundred-pound calves were blown from their feet by the strongest gusts as they hustled to the clusters of the heavier animals, white-eyed and bawling with fear.
The six feet by four feet metal-edged sign in front of Coldwater Church listing times of services was ripped away from the ground and flung two hundred yards into town, where it sheared the top several feet off a mercury vapor light stanchion in the parking lot of Coldwater Power and Gas.
Rough, clutching hands poked and grabbed at Maggie, and instinctively, she tried to fight them off. A sharp slap registered on her cheek and in her mind, and then Danny Pulver’s face was inches away from hers—and Ian Lane was fumbling at the release of her seat belt. Danny hollered into her ear, “The house—we’ve gotta get to the house. Now! Come on, Maggie!”
The seat belt whirled into its retractor, and the two men tugged Maggie from the driver’s seat into the full force of the wind. She stood between them, her arms linked with theirs, and they all leaned clumsily forward into the power of the storm.
The snow was a type that Maggie had never experienced. The flakes were small and crystalline and stung exposed flesh like wind-driven sand. There was a frightening density to the snow; it made them gasp for breath as if the very oxygen that sustained life had been dashed away by the snow and wind. During the strongest blasts the visibility was virtually inches and the churning snow seemed to dissolve any concept of direction. The floodlight over the back door of the Morrison home offered only the faintest corona of light, and they trudged toward it like ships struggling through gigantic swells to a safe port.
At the moment the light went out, Maggie’s foot tangled with that of Ian and he fell, dragging her and Danny down with him, their arms welded together with the strength of panic and desperation.
The storm howled at their ludicrous attempts to get to their feet, taunting them with its strength. Maggie realized that their links to each other were their links to life itself. Their weight was what saved them from being flung about like chickens in a tornado, but they had another enemy now: directions were totally obscured by the whiteout. Maggie took a step along with Ian and then felt a wrenching at her other arm when Danny tried to set off on an opposite course.
One of the men—she thought it was Ian, but she couldn’t see his face, which was a foot away from her—pulled the other two together, heads close.
“This way—I’m sure it is! When we went down I kept facing the way we were going.”
“So did I—and you’re going away from the house!”
Maggie’s face was already numb from the subzero temperature and the wind. She no longer felt the scourging snow, and her feet in her Western boots were clumsy blocks of frozen wood.
“Look—wait—we gotta...”
“It’s this way. I’m sure of it, Dan. We...”
Danny’s voice—she could tell it was his because his face was touching her own—was strident now, and the words rasped from his throat at the top volume he could project. “... if I have to knock both of you down and drag you there, Ian! I mean it—I’ll...”
Ian’s voice, more of a screech than a shout, came from a few inches from Maggie’s face, but she could barely see him. “You’re wrong!”
The clanging of a bell was the most welcome sound Maggie had ever heard. The two notes, unmelodious but plainly audible, pealed rapidly. “Sarah’s bell!” Ian hollered. “Thank God.”
The trio lumbered toward the sound; Ian tripped over something and went to one knee, but the others remained upright and hauled him back to his feet. Clutching one another with aching arms, they passed the corner of the house, and blocked by the building, they felt the wind diminish slightly. Ten feet ahead they could barely see a figure in red cranking the lever on the antique bell. They stumbled to the figure, still not daring to release one another.
Tessa had her back to Maggie and the men. When they touched her she shrieked and spun to them, forcing words through her bloodless lips. “Here! Here—this way!”
The old-fashioned wooden door that opened like the flap of a box from its almost ground-level position had whirled off in the clutches of the storm. Tessa led her friends down the stone stairs.
The normal, year-round temperature in the basement was about fifty degrees. The missing door allowed the storm to immediately drop the temperature to below twenty. The cellar was as dark as a crypt, with the wind whistling through like an express train—and to Maggie it was the most beautiful and welcoming place in the world. A cone of light appeared, and Sarah, holding a six-cell flashlight, rushed to them across the hard-packed dirt floor. She spoke quickly but calmly, in the tone of voice Maggie imagined she’d use during a crisis in the operating room.
“There’s a good fire in the fireplace and I’ve collected blankets. Let’s hurry now—we don’t want to give frostbite or hypothermia a chance. Hurry—you need heat.”
Maggie’s face, mere moments ago without sensation, now felt aflame, and her hands and arms trembled almost spastically. “Leave your coats here,” Sarah said as they entered the kitchen, “and then get to the fire. Don’t sit too close to it—your skin won’t be perceiving its heat for a time. Take off anything that’s wet and get your boots and socks off as soon as you can. Wiggle your toes. Hurry, now.”
The gentle flames of flickering candles spread light throughout the Morrison home. They seemed to be everywhere—standing in dinner plates, in formal silver candleholders, and on saucers. “The realtor told us about the storms and how the electricity goes out, so we bought a case of candles at the hardware store the day we moved in,” Sarah said in answer to the unasked question.
The fireplace of original stone in the living room was a thing of beauty, spreading its warmth throughout the room. Sarah had tugged a couch close to the flagstone apron, and a kettle of water boiled over the flames, suspended from one of several hand-forged hooks that had been installed when the home was built well over a hundred and twenty years ago.
Maggie, Tessa, and Danny collapsed onto the couch, pulling quilts and blankets around themselves, Sarah tucking in loose edges. Ian remained standing, his face blotchy red as his circulation returned.
Sarah’s medical tone was gone and her words were now those of a mother and a friend. “I’m so glad that bell was so important to me when I first saw it.” She smiled. “Even Ellie said I was crazy when I told her how much it was going to cost to have it sandblasted and cleaned and how much the carpenter wanted to build the frame and rehang it.” She laughed. “Tessa and I don’t have any cowhands or workers in the field, and there are no raiding Indians. But I fell in love with the bell, and now I’m so happy that I did.”
“Kind of providential, no?” Ian said.
No one disagreed with him.
It was a feast of sorts, even if Sarah’s twenty-two-pound turkey remained in the electric oven, barely half cooked. Canned soup heated just fine over the fire in the fireplace, and crackers and peanut butter were perfect appetizers before the main course of tuna sandwiches on slightly stale white bread. Cold cuts, potato chips, Diet Pepsi, a large bag of salted-in-the-shell peanuts, a tin of anchovies, and most of a bag of Oreo cookies were strange fare for Thanksgiving dinner, but the candlelit buffet had a certain charm all its own. And the black olives, fresh carrots, broccoli, and celery were, everyone agreed, excellent.
Tessa’s portable radio brought news from the outside into the Morrison home, but the news was grim. Through the hissing of static and over the relentless pounding of the storm and the rattling of windows, the announcer’s voice faded in and out.
“... since the storm of February 1916. Don’t bother with your cell phones, folks. The tower was knocked... roads impassable... no vehicular traffic of any kind... winds of seventy-five miles per... minus twenty-six degrees... expected for seventy hours... snowfall up to... National Weather Bureau... and stay where you are... we repeat...”
Danny, easing a log into the fireplace, glanced at the quickly diminishing pile of wood. Tessa followed his eyes. “We just had two cords delivered this week. We’re in good shape.”
Danny straightened from the fireplace and brushed his hands together over the flames. “Where’s it stacked?”
“On pallets under a tarp just outside the main basement door. It’s easy to get to—you hardly have to go outside.”
“Good,” Danny said. “The tarp’s probably long gone, but if the wood is stacked decently, it’ll be there.”
“Our diet won’t be fancy,” Sarah said, “but we have a ton of soups and other canned goods in the pantry, and there’s rice and noodles and spaghetti and all sorts of things. We have more pots and pans than Kmart, and we’ll cook in the fireplace.” She paused for a moment. “One other thing—we can flush the toilet by dumping pails of melted snow into it. It’s not genteel, but it’ll be sanitary.”
“Will that work?” Tessa asked.
“Sure,” Danny answered. “It’s a kind of a gravity thing, actually. You need electricity to pump water to the toilet tank, but once the water is there and the toilet is flushed, it should work. I have the same system at my place.” He shook his head. “This thing came on without warning. Lots of cattle are going to die where they stand before it’s over.”
Tessa looked at Maggie with fear in her eyes. “The horses,” she said. “What about the horses?”
“Yeah,” Danny added. “I’ve got an awfully good dog in a mudroom with only a pan of water and his morning meal.”
Maggie forced a half smile onto her face. “The horses will be fine, Tessa,” she said, avoiding looking at Danny. He knew as well as she did what hungry, thirsty, storm-panicked horses could do to themselves in a closed barn.
A moment of uncomfortable silence hung over the room until Ian broke in. “Danny, how about if we haul some wood in? We might as well get that taken care of and make sure we have enough up here to get us through the night.”
Danny stood. “Good point. Let’s do it.”
“Are your things dry yet?” Sarah asked. “You don’t want to be working in damp clothes.”
“Real men—like veterinarians—don’t notice the elements. We strong like bool,” Danny added in a harsh, heavily accented voice.
“Ministers notice, though,” Ian said. “I could use a sweater under my coat if anyone has a spare one.”
“One thing we have is a ton of sweaters,” Tessa said. “As long as you’re not too particular about the fit, we can fix you up.”
“It’s not the fit I’m concerned with,” Ian said seriously, “but the color, and how it coordinates with what else I’m wearing.”
Maggie played along. “Good point,” she said dryly. “How’s this—the ladies will close their eyes, and Danny doesn’t much care, so you should be OK.”
A few minutes later the clunk and clatter of logs hitting the dirt floor of the old basement added a new sound to the racket of the storm. Danny and Ian worked hard and fast, not bothering to stack the lengths of wood in the frigid, doorless basement, since after being brought inside, the wood needed to be hauled up the stairs to the fireplace. If there was conversation between them it didn’t register upstairs. Maggie and Sarah sat on the couch, each lost in her own thoughts. A loud snap as a knot burst in the flames seemed to awaken both women from their introspection.
Tessa dropped an aluminum bowl onto the ceramic tile floor of the kitchen, and the sound rang through the house like a bell, as did the girl’s exasperated “Rats!”
Sarah moved a bit closer to Maggie. “You heard that ‘real men’ bit, didn’t you?”
“Just a joke,” Maggie answered in a low voice, barely louder than a whisper.
“Semi, Maggie—a semi-joke, at best.”
A long moment passed. “Yeah,” Maggie said. “I guess you’re right.”
“You know how those two feel about you, don’t you?” Sarah found Maggie’s eyes with her own. “Ian is less obvious than Danny is, of course. Ian runs deep, Maggie, and he’s protective of his heart, but the feelings are there. You can take my word on it—I don’t miss things like that. My point is that there are two very good and very different men interested in you.”
“I suppose so. It’s just that I don’t know what to do about it.”
“Not a terrible position for a young woman to be in,” Sarah said. “All in all, I mean—and after some time passes.” Maggie sighed but didn’t speak.
“Gonna be a long storm, no matter how long the weather lasts,” Sarah said.
The storm never quite became background noise.
The house shuddered and creaked and rattled and moaned under its virulent pummeling, and the occasional pockets of quick silence as the wind careened in from a different direction were somehow louder and more frightening than the storm’s onslaught. During those moments the snow—already accumulated to almost three feet—presented a bizarre panorama of gentle-edged sculpture, with sweeping, four- and six-foot waves lapping at the sides of the old house, and a barren spot of brown, dead grass the size of the Thanksgiving table of a large family surrounded by sloping, solid walls of snow. After the moments of respite, the wind destroyed its handiwork like a cranky and spiteful child but began rebuilding again immediately, shaping new drifts and images.
“I saw a storm in the Sahara that was like this, except with sand,” Sarah said, stepping back from a window. “It made me feel very small and insignificant, but I don’t think it scared me like this does.”
“This house has seen stuff like this before, Sarah,” Danny said. “We couldn’t be in a better place—we have shelter, food, and heat. We’ll wait it out.”
“I don’t think we have a choice in the matter,” Maggie said. “But Danny’s right—we couldn’t be in a better place.” After a moment, she added, “Or with better people. Suppose we weren’t all such good friends? As big as this house is, things would get awful tight if we didn’t get along so well.”
Ian waited a moment. Then he snarled, “Will you please stop your nagging, Maggie? You’re driving us all nuts!”
Danny, at first startled by Ian’s outburst, joined in. “Tessa, your giggling grates on me like fingernails on a blackboard. Go to your room, ya little twerp!”
“At least my clothes don’t smell like a wet dog,” Tessa said. “And how about sharing that box of Cheez-Its you have hidden in the dining room?”
Sarah and Maggie’s eyes met, and both of the women smiled. Sarah sighed. “All three of them are fourteen, Maggie.”
“I noticed that,” Maggie said. “And it’s a young fourteen too.”
For a while, the snapping of the fire and the voice of the storm were the only sounds in the candlelit room. Tessa br
oke the silence.
“I think it’s fair to say that I’m the best Monopoly player in the world, and I know right where my game is.”
“You’re awfully young and filled with childish notions, Tessa,” Ian said. “It’s really part of my ministerial obligation to help you see the truth, even if it hurts your pride.”
“Wait a minute here, folks,” Danny said. “Do you think I’ve amassed my vast fortune, my real estate empire, my international reputation, through luck?” He sighed dramatically. “Monopoly is too easy for me. But I’ll play—at least to teach you all a lesson about finances.”
Maggie cleared her throat. “I’d like to play,” she said in a falsely plaintive voice, “but my checking account is down to six dollars. Does that disqualify me?”
“I want to be the banker,” Sarah demanded.
It was an interesting, if somewhat freestyle, game. About halfway through, Maggie paid Danny five hundred dollars to take her turn to fetch wood from the basement for the fireplace. Grumbling, Danny got the wood. Twenty minutes later he agreed to lend Maggie a thousand dollars—but she was required to go to the pantry immediately and scrounge for snacks for the players.
Sarah played conservatively and accumulated an immense wad of cash—which she was forced to hand over to Tessa when she landed on her daughter’s Park Place with four houses on it. On the next roll, Ian landed on the same square. When he refused to pay Tessa’s usurious lending rates, Tessa forced him into bankruptcy. When Maggie was caught attempting to surreptitiously slide Ian a few hundred dollars, she was fined two thousand dollars and forced to miss two consecutive turns by Sarah, the flint-hearted banker. During that time, Maggie wasn’t allowed to collect if others landed on her properties.
Changes of Heart Page 11
