The Glory Wind Read online

  Gracie described the way Roy’s face had turned purple while he stood there and squeezed his hat and stammered and stuttered a few jumbled words about house repairs to Raedine.

  “Momma just stared and stared at him,” she laughed. “I think she had him figured for some crazy person and she was trying to work it out in her mind whether or not he might be dangerous. I had to rescue him by explaining it all to Momma.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Then she made him tea and told him she was right proud to know him and she sure did appreciate his offer. And he said he’d be happy—more than happy—to come by every so often to see if she needed anything done and in the meantime did we have a phone to call him in case of an emergency. And when he found out we didn’t, he wrote down his address for her to send him a note if there was anything urgent, and she told him again she was proud to know him, and then he stopped squeezing his hat and put it back on his head and left.”

  I laughed along with Gracie but I couldn’t help thinking that what she’d just described—how poor Roy had gotten all flustered and all—sounded an awful lot like the exact way I felt around her sometimes.

  It didn’t matter that I was a whole eight months older than Gracie and a year ahead in school; there were lots of times when I felt really small and dumb beside her. I started to ask Pa about that one time, but I only got half of the words out when he had to go check on something that had fallen over in the barn and when he came back the urge had left me.

  Well, Roy started to come around Raedine’s place pretty much every Saturday afternoon and sometimes one of her boyfriends would be around. Gracie always gave me all the details. One time that was the end of the boyfriend right then and there. He put his jacket on and said something strange about someone else cutting his grass and huffed out the door.

  We kept expecting Roy to give up and stop coming around, but he never did. He’d fix anything Raedine asked him to and then sit down and have a cup of tea while the boyfriend of the moment glowered or put on a big show of not caring, or did whatever it was he was going to do. And when Roy had finished his tea he’d leave, but not before he made a point of telling Raedine he’d be back soon.

  And by and by, Raedine stopped inviting boyfriends over and she started inviting Roy to stay and eat dinner with them on Saturday night.

  Gracie seemed happy about it all.

  “I think Roy is going to be my new daddy,” she told me one day, and it wasn’t two weeks later that Raedine came into my house to pick up Gracie after work and told us all that she was engaged to be married to Roy Hilbert.

  “Well, congratulations. That’s real nice,” Ma said, polite but cool, as she’d been ever since learning that Raedine had lied about her past.

  “I’d be honoured if you’d stand up with me,” Raedine said. “I don’t know many people around here, and you and your husband have been very kind to me.”

  Ma pressed her lips together. Then she tried to put her polite smile back on but her face wasn’t cooperating. She couldn’t seem to squeeze any words out.

  “Well, you just think it over and let me know,” Raedine said. If she noticed that Ma was acting a bit odd, she didn’t let on. She told Gracie to come on and they headed home.

  The date for Raedine’s wedding was set for August 14.

  That night when I was supposed to be in bed, but was really listening at the top of the stairs, Ma talked it over with Pa and decided to reconcile herself to doing her Christian duty, even though she didn’t have to like it.

  Ma said at least she had the comfort of knowing that it was going to be a quiet affair, since Raedine had planned a private ceremony at her house. Besides Raedine and Roy, there would be Pastor Lockhart and his wife, Roy’s mother, plus his sister and her husband, who was his best man, Ma and Pa, and Gracie and me.

  For a while, it looked like there might be a problem. Roy’s mother came to see Raedine and told her she wasn’t going to miss her only son’s wedding, but she wished she hadn’t lived to see the day that he married someone like Raedine. Then Raedine told her maybe she would miss her only son’s wedding because maybe she wouldn’t be welcome, which led to a big fight with Raedine and Roy. Gracie said it was awful the way they yelled at each other, with Raedine telling Roy he had better think hard about who he was going to be married to, and Roy telling Raedine that a man might have more than one wife in his lifetime but he only had one mother.

  In the end, Roy brought his mother to see Raedine again, and his mother said she was willing to let bygones be bygones for her son’s sake and Raedine said she hoped they could be on good terms someday, and things were smoothed over for the time being.

  Gracie brought over the dress my ma had made for her when she was the flower girl at Miss Prutko’s wedding. She asked if Ma could let the hem down to allow for the growth spurt she’d had since she’d last worn it. Ma said she most certainly could, and of course Gracie squealed and hugged her.

  Gracie was always hugging someone. Of course she hugged her mother a lot, but she also hugged my mother and Carmella and Miss Prutko/Mrs. Knowling. Sometimes Raedine told her to give Roy a hug, and she would, but there was a shyness about him that kept it from being a real hug. And then there was me. Everybody knows that boys don’t go around hugging people, but there’d been a few times when I’d had no choice. Gracie could get really, really excited about a thing, and when she did she’d come flying at you and just throw herself around you. I never quite got to the place where I felt enthused about it, but after the shock of the first few times I found I didn’t mind it too much, providing there was no one else around.

  And that was the problem on the morning of the wedding. Gracie had come to our house to ask did my mother have any silk stockings because Raedine had dropped one of hers on the stove while she was rushing about, and of course she had to have silk stockings for her wedding!

  Ma had none, but she remembered that Mrs. Guthrie had told her she’d received three pairs from her son on her birthday just a few months ago, and maybe she’d be willing to let Raedine have one.

  Gracie thanked her and started toward the door, but she turned just before she reached it. Her face was shiny and flushed and her eyes were lit up.

  She said, “Can you believe it, Luke?”

  And then she came at me, crossing the room like a charging ram, nearly knocking me backwards, and she threw her arms around me.

  “Can you believe I’m getting a new daddy today?”

  My reaction wasn’t deliberate. It was automatic—the reaction of a nearly-thirteen-year-old boy who has just had a girl hug him in front of his mother.

  I shoved her away. And I said, “DON’T!”

  Gracie stepped back, all the joy draining from her face. I saw her lip quiver. I saw tears start to fill her eyes. She turned and ran out the door.

  It all happened so fast that by the time I fully realized what I’d done, she was already racing across the field and away from our house.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I started out the door, meaning to call Gracie back, to tell her I was sorry and that I hadn’t meant it when I’d yelled “don’t” and pushed her away. Ma stopped me.

  “Let her go for now, Luke,” she said. “You’ll see her at the wedding and she’ll have had time to cool off by then.”

  I should have gone right then and there anyway, but part of me wasn’t eager to face up to what I’d just done. If I’d been braver or stronger, then the day may have ended differently. I talked myself into thinking Ma was right, even though my gut told me that she was dead wrong.

  As it was, the longest I could manage to sit still and do nothing was about half an hour. My heart was ripping at me at the thought of Gracie’s eyes filling up that way and I couldn’t shake the image of her face—full of joy and excitement one second and crumbling the next. I couldn’t stand the thought that I had brought about that change, especially on a day when she was so happy.

  I said nothing to Ma about w
here I was going in case she tried to talk me out of it again, and slipped out the door, unobserved, the first chance I got. I figured Gracie would have had time to get to Guthrie’s house by then, and I was hoping to intercept her on her way back home. I sure didn’t want to have to go to her house and face her in front of her mother.

  Scanning the horizon, I saw that the dark clouds that had been gathering earlier seemed to be breaking up and floating off in the strong breeze. The sun peeked through here and there and it looked as though it might, after all, be a nice day.

  I hit the road running, my stomach tight with the feeling you get when you’re about to try to fix something you’ve done wrong. As my feet pounded along through the dust, all I could think was that I had to make her listen, no matter how stubborn she wanted to be—this time I wasn’t going to shrug and stomp off, the way I might if we’d squabbled under normal circumstances.

  The only thing I wanted to do was give Gracie back her day. And so, when I saw her, walking through the field, heading back toward her house, I felt my heart lift with the feeling that it was going to be all right.

  Gracie would forgive me. Of course she would. There was no other possibility on a day like this.

  I scrambled through the ditch and up onto the fence that ran the length of the road and called, “Gracie!” as loud and long as I could. Her little figure stiffened the way you do when you’ve heard something and are straining to make it out.

  “Gracie!” I called again, this time forming a cone around my mouth with my hands. Then I raised my right arm in a slow wave to draw her attention.

  She rotated toward me, stopping when she saw my arm. For a moment she stood completely still.

  “Gracie!” I yelled again, “I have to tell you something.”

  I could see, by the way she tilted her head, that she hadn’t caught the words. It was hopeless, with the wind so brisk. I stretched up as tall as I could and beckoned her toward me.

  She began to move and I felt my insides relax in relief when I saw that she was coming in my direction.

  Gracie was wearing a blue and white gingham dress—one I’d seen many times before. I know her hair was tied in pigtails but I can’t remember whether the ribbons were blue or white. They would have been one or the other—her hair ribbons always matched her clothes.

  I watched her moving through the field, not hurrying, just coming steadily along. She was still almost the full width of the field away when I saw it, a cone shape forming, reaching down from the clouds.

  My brain struggled to take it in while the cone swirled and twirled, narrowing more and more at the bottom and sliding down and forward as it spun with ever-increasing speed. Within a moment or two it was as though a cloud snake had slithered from the centre of the cone and begun to reach closer and closer to earth.

  Horror gripped me as I realized I had just watched a tornado form. My heart thumped in mad alarm as I watched it head right toward Guthrie’s field.

  I yelled like a maniac, waving my arms, screaming for Gracie to run to the ditch and get down. There was nowhere she could find shelter in the open field, and no other possible place she might have time to get to. I remembered my pa drilling it into me that the ditch was the best place to go if you were out in the open.

  I can’t say what she heard or understood of my frantic yells and gestures. All I know is that she stopped coming toward me, turned to look behind her and then froze in place.

  I leapt from the fence and tried to run toward her but my movements were slow and difficult as I battled the terrible power of the wind. The air was filling with twigs and leaves but I held my head up so as not to lose sight of Gracie.

  I saw her head tilt upward. Oddly, I saw her arms rise, as though she was about to conduct an orchestra. The skirt of her dress lifted and flapped madly around her.

  I screamed again, this time calling for her to lie down but it was too late. The spiralling cloud was descending those last few feet, touching the earth only yards away from where Gracie stood. And then it was on her and I could see nothing but the grey of spinning debris and cloud tearing round and round, spitting out plant and earth as it moved.

  I fell to my knees, shocked and trembling as the horror began to penetrate. My eyes were fixed on the tornado, straining for a glimpse of blue and white gingham. I had no idea how long it would take to pass over the spot where Gracie had been standing, and I was terrified that she would be badly hurt when it was gone.

  I can’t recall being afraid for myself, even though the whirling cloud was moving steadily toward me. It seemed to bend and sway in a dance-like motion for a few moments and then several things happened at once. The whole sky darkened and rain began to pour down in torrents, drenching the ground and pelting hard against my skin. And, at the same time, the tornado seemed to stand still, as though it was pausing, deciding what to do next. Suddenly, it darted to the right, tore a bush from the ground, whipping it off to one side, and then it began to lift.

  It hovered in the air, bits of foliage and dirt still flying into the air around it. I watched as it began to spread, its edges becoming less and less distinct. Spellbound, I saw it break up and dissipate until nothing was left but a vaguely v-shaped protrusion from the clouds and even this was barely visible through the pounding rain.

  I made my way through the downpour, calling Gracie’s name over and over. I stumbled to where I had last seen her and then turned around and around, searching desperately.

  There was no sign of Gracie Moor.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I don’t know how long Raedine had been there when I caught sight of her. She was soaked, except for her hair, over which she was clutching a plastic rain bonnet.

  I watched as she crossed the road and came through the ditch and past the line of trees that ran along the edge of Guthrie’s field. I forced my feet to move in her direction. The strangest feeling came over me, as though I was moving in slow motion. Even so, it seemed I was getting close to her far faster than I wanted to.

  “Luke?” Her face was very white. I knew she must have seen the tornado but the trees would have prevented her from seeing where it touched down.

  I opened my mouth to tell her, but all that came out was, “Yes’m?”

  “Luke, did Gracie come to your house a while ago?” There was an edge to her voice, like it was stretched thin and about to snap.

  “Yes’m. But my ma didn’t have any silk stockings.” I could hardly believe my ears. It was as though I had no control over my mouth, and instead of saying the words that were screaming around inside my head, a robot was answering Raedine’s questions.

  “Where did Gracie go when she left your house?”

  “She went to Guthrie’s place, to ask about the stockings,” I said. The fact that Raedine was dressed in a long pink housecoat registered irrelevantly in my brain.

  She sagged with visible relief. “She’s there now?” she asked.

  “No, ma’am,” I said. “She was on her way home when it happened.”

  “When the…tornado came?” she said weakly.

  “Yes’m. And now I can’t find her.”

  Raedine trembled, reached forward into the air, and collapsed. You’d have thought she was made of paper, the way she folded and crumbled to her knees. A horrible cry tore from somewhere deep inside of her.

  Whatever force had pressed her down, an opposing one seemed to take hold of her just as suddenly. Her head jerked up and she jolted back to her feet, looking at me with wild eyes.

  “Exactly where was she the last time you saw her?”

  I pointed toward the spot where Gracie had been standing when the tornado swept over her. I didn’t tell her I had checked that exact spot just a moment before.

  Raedine grabbed my arm and yanked me along as she began to run in the direction I’d pointed. It was all I could do to keep up with her. My feet barely touched the ground as I was pulled along. The wet flaps of her housecoat billowed in the air just ahead of me, all but
blocking my vision.

  “Here!” I cried as we reached the place where the tornado had touched down.

  “Here?” she asked as she reached the spot. She twirled around, looking about frantically. “Are you sure?”

  I nodded. It was quite obvious from the tornado’s path along the ground, where it had begun.

  “Then she’s here somewhere.” Raedine said wildly. “We just have to find her.”

  She began scurrying about, her housecoat snagging on the weeds and shrubs in the field. There was no design to her movements; she ran about in all directions, darting crazily, like a chased rabbit. At the same time, she called Gracie’s name, drawing it out in a terrible, lonesome sound. It rose into the wind and rain and was swept off in a ghostly trail.

  I suppose I should have been looking and calling too, but I found myself rooted to the spot, replaying the moment the tornado had touched down, trying to find a gap in the scene my brain had captured. I knew I hadn’t taken my eyes off the tornado from the time it touched down to the time it wore itself out and broke up, but I hadn’t had so much as a glimpse of Gracie after it had reached her.

  I strained to remember if something had blown across my field of vision, obscuring the tornado for the tiniest fraction of time, but there was nothing. Even the rain hadn’t blocked my vision enough to have prevented me from seeing Gracie being thrown out of the whirling column. And yet, I had seen nothing.

  I was still examining these thoughts and images when a movement to the west caught my attention. Shielding my eyes, I saw Mr. Guthrie crossing the field toward us, moving at a country sprint. An enormous sense of relief came over me that I was no longer alone with Raedine—her only source of help.

  “Is someone hurt?” he called as soon as he was close enough to be heard.

  “My Gracie!” Raedine gasped out. Her hands clenched into white balls as she gulped for air. “She’s missing.”

  Mr. Guthrie said nothing more until he reached us. “Was she here when the tornado came through?” he asked. Raedine’s face gave him his answer.