The Glory Wind Page 11

  “Please!” she cried, “Please help me find my baby!” She stepped forward and took hold of Mr. Guthrie’s shirt. Her face was turned up to him, white and pleading.

  “Of course we’ll help you find her,” he said, taking her hands and gently moving them away. “Luke, you run home and tell your pa to get help and come quick, your ma too. Miz Moor, you go on over to my house and tell Joan to call for everyone hereabouts that has a phone. We’ll cover this farm in no time and find your little one all right. She’s probably just stunned and scared, or she may have a broken bone or two and can’t move. But don’t you worry none—we’ll find her, of that you can be sure.”

  I turned and raced toward my house, scanning the ground as I went. Mr. Guthrie’s words had offered such relief that I felt as though I was scarcely heavier than the air. My feet flew and it seemed that, but for the need to propel myself forward, they may not have touched the ground at all.

  Ma was in the kitchen, her head bent over a small package she was wrapping in a pale gold paper. She glanced up when I rushed in, and her face froze in alarm.

  “What is it?” she asked. Her hand drifted up to her chest and grasped at a button on her blouse.

  I told her, breathless, pushing the words out in a rush, mixing them up and having to go back several times.

  Ma was on her feet before I’d finished. Scissors clattered to the floor.

  “Your father—he’s still in the back field,” she said. “Go! Tell him what’s happened. Be as quick as you can.”

  I ran out the door, barely registering the fact that the rain had all but stopped, and started across our fields as she’d instructed, but something had changed. My legs, lithe and powerful just moments ago, had gone weak and rubbery. They wobbled forward, barely holding me upright. I felt sure I would pitch onto my face any moment and yet they somehow delivered me past the barn and halfway through the first field where I met Pa on his way back to the house.

  “Your ma send you to fetch me?” he asked with a smile. “I knew she thought I’d forget about having to go to Raedine’s wedding, but here I am. You can vouch for me when we get back.”

  I struggled to arrange the words he’d said into something that made sense. The wedding seemed like something from another time and place. I shook my head.

  “The tornado,” I told him. “It took Gracie.”

  He stared hard at me. “What are you saying, son?”

  “She was there—in Guthrie’s field, when it came through. And now we can’t find her.”

  His mouth twisted and the line of his jaw grew taut but he said nothing. Instead, he reached for me, and, a second later, I felt myself slung over his shoulder. I felt the pulsing strength and power of his body underneath me and I was reassured. Even with his bad leg, it felt as though we made it to the house in no time.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  It was amazing how quickly people arrived at Guthrie’s field. A few neighbours came hurrying through the fields but most people came in cars and trucks. They pulled up along the roadside and people spilled out of them and made their way to the centre of the field. Everything revolved around the spot where the tornado had touched down—the last place Gracie had stood.

  By and by Sheriff Latch and Mayor Anstruther came, each of them looking official and solemn. Sheriff Latch said that he would bring the full weight of his office to bear on the situation and Mayor Anstruther said that he would personally see to it that no stone was left unturned until little Stacy was found.

  Raedine marched over and hollered right in his face that her child was called Gracie and how was she supposed to feel good about help that was coming from people who didn’t even know her name?

  The mayor said that he was terribly sorry and it was all so distressing to everyone and they must try to keep clear heads in the face of it, but after he made the same mistake a little while later he just started referring to Gracie as “the precious child.”

  The full weight of Sheriff Latch’s office turned out to be his brother-in-law, Deputy Oscroft, and a couple of cousins that he referred to as his “deputized posse.” They went out to walk the fields just like everyone else was doing while Sheriff Latch wrote things on a clipboard he was carrying. I heard him tell the mayor several times not to worry, that he would be sending in a full report, but the mayor just looked annoyed and barely grunted in reply.

  There was a great feeling of community, of hope and brotherhood there that day. I lost track of how many people told Raedine not to worry, that Gracie would be found before she knew it. Lines of searchers spread out, walking twenty or thirty feet apart, crossing fields in all directions. Gracie’s name was called out over and over until it seemed like some sort of endless echo.

  Roy Hilbert was one of the last to show up, but that was because he’d been out of town. Raedine had sent him on errands to pick up some last minute things for the wedding. He pulled up in Raedine’s driveway and then crossed the road into Guthrie’s field looking as puzzled as you’d expect a man to be who’d come to be married and found his bride in her housecoat in a field with people scattered everywhere around her.

  He asked what was going on and Sheriff Latch took him aside and talked to him in a low voice with his hand resting on Roy’s shoulder.

  “She’s not dead!” Raedine yelled when she saw that. “You don’t need to be acting that way!”

  “No ma’am,” Sheriff Latch said, “I just thought you might not want to go over the whole thing again.”

  Roy shrugged Sheriff Latch off and made his way to Raedine, where he put his arm around her and told her everything was going to be all right. Raedine pressed her face against his chest and began to cry. She started off with tiny choking sobs but they quickly built up to great shuddering wails. Roy kept patting her back and telling her it was going to be all right and once she took a huge breath and looked right up in his face and asked him if he promised.

  He pulled her against him and murmured something and patted her hair, and I got so scared that I thought maybe my legs were going to take over on their own and run me right out of there. But I stayed and kept answering the same questions I’d been answering since it happened. After a while it felt as if someone else was talking and I was watching from nearby.

  The thing that kept me from disgracing myself and crying like Raedine was the optimism in the air. I’d heard plenty of people say that it was just a matter of finding her and no doubt she was banged up but there was every reason to hope it wouldn’t be anything too serious.

  The wind died down early in the afternoon, right around the time that Raedine and Roy were supposed to be getting married. The searchers rejoiced and told each other that the calm was a good thing because it would be easier to hear Gracie if she was lying somewhere injured, calling out for help. I heard it repeated in the crowd, back and forth, and everyone smiled and nodded and said any minute now something was bound to turn up.

  Then, as though saying it had made it happen, a great shout of excitement came racing across the fields, passing from group to group until it reached us. A child’s shoe had been found in a field across the road, near a stand of bur oaks.

  Raedine was like a woman possessed when the news reached her. She pushed herself away from Roy and started running like a maniac, screaming, “Gracie!” over and over. Her housecoat flapped madly behind her, exposing her legs as she ran. I found myself staring at them, bare and white, carrying her toward the shoe and hope.

  Watching those legs slice along through the field, I told myself that they were to blame! If Raedine hadn’t wanted those stupid stockings, Gracie wouldn’t have been in that field at all. She’d have been safe and snug in her house, getting ready for the wedding.

  She wouldn’t have been in my kitchen that morning and she wouldn’t have hugged me and I wouldn’t have shoved her. I worked hard at trying to make myself believe that it was Raedine’s fault, even though I knew the truth.

  I wished I had something to hit, right then. Something
big and solid that I could pound on as long and as hard as I wanted to. Instead, I clenched my teeth and made low growling sounds that I hoped no one nearby could hear.

  I don’t quite know why I didn’t follow the trail of people that was making its way to the shoe; I just didn’t. I stood there in the same earth-torn spot where I’d been most of the day and waited. Sometimes, as crazy as it sounds, I looked straight up, as though Gracie might fall out of the sky any second.

  I saw it in the slump of their shoulders as they started to come back and I knew the shoe hadn’t been Gracie’s. As it turned out, the shoe belonged to Mrs. Guthrie’s granddaughter. It had been carried off by their dog months earlier and no one had been able to find it. I heard Mrs. Guthrie tell Mrs. Peascod that it was a shame they’d finally given up and thrown out its mate, now that the missing one was found.

  Roy was practically carrying Raedine when they came back. She looked like a rag doll, sagging against him, dragging her feet. I felt sorry for hating her a few moments earlier.

  By late afternoon the mood had changed. For one thing, no one was saying anything very encouraging. There wasn’t much conversation at all by then but the faces said plenty, the way they were tight and grim and anxious.

  And scared. I could feel the fear in the air and I knew it was bigger than my own fear.

  Their fear seemed strange to me. I couldn’t grasp why they would suddenly care about Gracie, a little girl who they’d shamed and hated and done out of a desk.

  Still, they kept on, long past the crawling shadows of evening. It wasn’t until the dark made it impossible to continue that they moved off toward their cars and homes. A few tried to tell Raedine not to give up hope but most just said they’d be back at dawn before they faded into the night. I don’t think Raedine heard much by then anyway. She’d gone more and more limp as the hours went by, rousing herself only to rage or howl and then sinking back into some private inner place.

  Ma took hold of my hand when she started for home and when I tried to pull away, she turned fierce eyes on me, and I dropped the silent objection and let her lead me through the field and along the road to our house.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The search went on for nine days. Dry wind and scorching sun watched over the effort, which swelled and spread and then shrank back in on itself when most of the area was combed for a second time.

  I travelled around after the first day, wandering from one search group to another. I listened and watched and it wasn’t much into the second day before I gathered that a lot of folk figured I was mixed up about what I’d seen.

  I’d hear things like, “If that tornado broke up near here, the way the Haliwell kid said it did—why, we’d have found her long before now. Only possible explanation is that she was carried farther off.”

  That notion wasn’t put to rest until several others stepped up and said they’d seen the same thing. Then there were ideas about wells and trees and other places that the tornado might have dropped Gracie—places where she wouldn’t easily be discovered. The problem with that was that everyone hereabouts was looking for Gracie, and everyone knew their own property like the back of their hand, so all of those spots had been carefully explored and ruled out.

  I heard folks say that the long, dry stretch of weather we’d just had was a blessing in disguise, hard as it had been on the crops. Aside from the splash of rain we’d had the day Gracie disappeared, the summer had been drier than a burnt boot. The usual little streams and ponds roundabouts were dried up or close to it, and there’s not a lake or river within four or five miles in any direction. That helped ease the worry that Gracie had landed in water and drowned.

  As the days went by, the searchers talked more and more about other things until Gracie was hardly mentioned much at all. I heard about the crops and livestock and upcoming events and bits of news that had nothing to do with anything that mattered to me.

  If Raedine happened nearby the searchers would stop talking and move forward very quietly, choosing their steps with care and sweeping their eyes back and forth over the fields in guilty silence. Sometimes she would say something about Gracie, or about how she appreciated what they were all doing, and everyone would freeze still, like they were playing Simon Says, and not budge until she’d finished speaking and moved on. Hardly anyone ever said anything back.

  Raedine stopped in front of me one day and looked right in my face for a long minute like she wasn’t quite sure who I was. Then she stepped forward and squatted down and asked me what Gracie looked like the last sight I’d had of her.

  “She had on a blue-and-white dress,” I said.

  “I know what she was wearing,” Raedine said. “I want to know how she looked! Do you think she was...scared?”

  Then, before I could even answer, she stood up quickly and covered her mouth with her hand and walked away. I went and found her later on.

  “I don’t think Gracie was scared,” I told her. “She kind of looked surprised, and maybe curious. And then she turned around and put her arms up like this.” I swung my own up to demonstrate how Gracie had looked, from behind, very much like a tiny conductor.

  It seemed like a long time before Raedine said anything, and then she put her hand on my head and told me I was a good boy and a good friend to Gracie. That made her start to cry again and she went off looking for Roy, although I think that was the day he had to go and take his mother to the doctor.

  There were fewer people coming to help in the search by the fourth day. The farms couldn’t be left to tend themselves, so most of the men went back to what they usually did and the women came to help look for Gracie.

  Sometimes someone would try to send me on an errand. Old Mr. Downey couldn’t search on account of his knees, so he’d been helping out by driving a truck around with water and sandwiches for the searchers. Now and then someone would ask me to go fetch him. That was the thing they wanted most of the time, though there were a few other errands as well.

  I never did what they asked. I’d just wander away like I was going to do it and then I’d go off to another field, or I’d cross over to my own property and make my way to the Circle of Truth and I’d lie there and close my eyes and wonder about things.

  I can’t describe what went on inside me while the search was still happening. Most of the time it felt like there was a pain pushing in on me, and no matter how hard I tried to push back, it kept closing in tighter and tighter.

  I was scared, there’s no doubt about that. But I wasn’t always sure exactly what it was I was scared of. Obviously I was worried about Gracie, and I knew pretty early on that chances were she was hurt bad or worse. I didn’t want anything bad to have happened to her, but I knew what I wanted wasn’t going to make any difference to anything.

  Maybe that was it. Maybe it was the kind of fear you get when you realize that what you want doesn’t matter. You can want something so bad that every cell in your body just aches for it, but it doesn’t change things one lick.

  I couldn’t stop going over and over the last day, and the way I’d acted. I kept trying to remember it differently, and trying to make myself believe that it wasn’t my fault that Gracie had been in that exact spot when the tornado came.

  And I spent a lot of time thinking about Gracie and me and all the things we’d done and talked about. I tried hard not to cry, but sometimes it seemed to happen on its own, and I hated that because it was girly and it made my chest hurt something terrible.

  And then, sometimes my attention would slip onto something that had nothing to do with Gracie. If they’d been big, important things, it might not have seemed so bad, but it wasn’t like that. They were always small things, and meaningless, like an oddly shaped leaf or some unusual bug scurrying along in the sand or a glistening fleck in a stone. It would take me the longest time to pull my attention away once some unimportant object had captured it.

  The hours and days stretched out until all the trudging through fields seemed as if it would
never end. But mostly, the search began to seem pointless. The hope that had been so strong early on had thinned and faded until I couldn’t even find its shadow. I knew that was true of everyone else too—I knew it because I watched them as they moved through the fields, their eyes sweeping back and forth as they went. There’d been a change. They’d gone from searching to just looking, and even that was in an automatic way that said they didn’t expect to find anything.

  Raedine was around less and less. Someone said the doctor had given her “something to help,” and that she was making liberal use of it and sleeping a lot. I didn’t know how it could help for her to sleep when she could have been out looking like everyone else, but no one else seemed to find that odd.

  When she did come to the fields, you could feel the tension right away. It hadn’t been that way the first few days—when hope was still there. Now, Raedine’s presence just made the searchers uncomfortable. I guess they were all thinking that it wouldn’t be long before they were lining up to tell her they were sorry for her loss.

  They talked about calling it off on the seventh day. The searchers had gathered in Guthrie’s field, as they did at the end of each day, as dark was falling. There, they talked about any progress they’d made or anything unusual they’d seen, and they made plans for the next day before they all headed wearily toward their homes.

  “We’ve covered a lot of square miles and done it twice now,” Sheriff Latch said, though he’d personally covered nothing. He just drove around and wrote things on his clipboard. You could usually find him wherever the food and water truck was. “I don’t know if there’s any point in us keeping on.”

  No one agreed with him, but no one disagreed either, which was just about the same thing as agreeing, under the circumstances.

  “Fact is, there’s just nothing else we can do. Much as we’d all like to see this thing resolved, we’re out of options.”