The Glory Wind Read online

  Gracie and I laughed at that, but we backed off a bit. I guess we were kind of crowding her, but it’s hard waiting on a surprise.

  Chapter Nine

  We didn’t have to wait any longer because Carmella reached into the big purse she carried everywhere she went, and came out with two pencil boxes, one for each of us. I could see right off that she’d made them herself, and when she passed me mine I said, “Oh!” right out loud. The wooden sliding piece that opened the case had my name and an eagle’s likeness carved and painted on it. It was the nicest pencil box I’d ever seen.

  Gracie seemed just as thrilled with hers. She was holding it at arm’s length, staring at it, but when she saw me looking over she turned it around so I could see it too. Her name was there, of course, and beside that was a cluster of prairie crocus in full bloom.

  “Oh, Carmella, it’s so beautiful! And how did you know that this is my favourite flower ever?” she asked, her voice trembling.

  “It might seem like I never pay much mind to anything, but the truth is, I take things in,” Carmella said. “Remember how much you admired my lavender apron? And you told me once that you like springtime best of all the seasons. Made sense to me then, that you’d be partial to a lavender-coloured flower that blooms in spring.”

  “Oh, I am,” Gracie said, hugging the pencil box.

  The movement made her aware that something had jiggled inside, so she slid the cover open. Inside were three regular pencils, one red one, and a pink eraser.

  I opened mine and found the same. When I looked up again, I found Carmella’s eyes on me. “Thanks a lot, Carmella,” I said. “This is really cool, and I really like the eagle.”

  “I suppose you’re wondering why I picked an eagle,” Carmella said. She was right, and I nodded, which prompted her to go on. “School is a blessing, to be sure, but it can also be hard by times, no doubt about it. This is to remind you that I’m lifting up your name to the Good Lord every night before I close my eyes, asking Him to watch and guide and care for you. And Gracie too, of course.”

  I was wondering what that had to do with an eagle when Carmella went on. “I picked an eagle for you from one of my favourite passages in the Good Book. From Isaiah, chapter 40, verse 31: ‘But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.’”

  “That’s lovely, isn’t it Luke?” Ma said.

  Lovely isn’t a word I would personally use to describe anything. “It’s great, Carmella,” I said. “And thanks for the stuff inside too.”

  “I had to leave school after grade five, myself,” Carmella said. “It just warms my heart to see you children learning. And it’s your first time at a new school, Gracie—you must be excited about that. And it’s a great place to make new friends too.”

  “I’ll have lots of friends,” Gracie agreed, “but Luke will be my best friend, right Luke?”

  If Gracie had looked at me square on right at that moment, she’d have seen that something was wrong. But she was caught up with the pencil box and Carmella’s visit, so she barely glanced in my direction.

  I stood there without opening my mouth while my last chance slipped away. And then Carmella spoke.

  “My, my! Then things sure have changed since I went to school.”

  “What do you mean?” Gracie asked. She stopped fiddling with the pencil box.

  “Why, just that I never knew of any school where the girls and boys play much together, not at your age.”

  Gracie seemed to be thinking about that. Her face got a kind of pinched look that I’d seen whenever she was pondering hard on something.

  “Maybe it’s different here, is it Luke?” Carmella asked.

  “No, that’s how it is all right,” I said. I was trying to sound unhappy about it, but inside I was doing handstands and whooping.

  “Well, I think that’s stupid,” Gracie declared.

  “Sure it is, but it could be fun too,” Carmella said.

  “Fun? How?” Gracie demanded.

  “Like, if you made a game of it—keeping your friendship a secret when you’re around other kids,” Carmella said.

  “That might be okay,” I said. “If it was a game, I mean.”

  “We could have secret words and signals,” Gracie squealed. Her eyes had lit up and were snapping with excitement at the idea.

  My relief was so great that I almost missed the small, satisfied smile on Carmella’s face. That was when I realized she’d known, somehow, just what was bothering me and had found a way to fix it. I gave her the hint of a nod and her left eye flashed a wink in reply.

  Later that day, Gracie did her best to make me memorize a long and complicated list of words that we were to use in our secret communications. The flaw, which she somehow missed, was that there would be few opportunities to use her code. It hardly mattered anyway, because by the next morning when the school bus arrived, I’d forgotten most of them altogether, and was only half sure about the few that lingered in my brain.

  Chapter Ten

  It turned out that I really didn’t have much to worry about at all. As soon as we got off the bus at school, the girls swept in and claimed Gracie, dragging her off and swarming around her like locusts on a green field. I was a bit alarmed, the way they were crowded in on her, giggling and squealing and hollering to be heard over each other. It looked almost scary as they tugged and competed for her attention. I could hardly see her there in the middle of the cluster, but the few glimpses I got told me Gracie was actually enjoying the attention. She was smiling, her eyes shining and her cheeks as pink as if she’d been running on a cold, windy day.

  I was trying to keep an eye on Gracie—just to make sure everything was going all right—and still pay attention to what Pete and Brandon were saying. The three of us had gathered together as automatically as if we’d been at school together the day before, although we’d barely seen each other all summer. Brandon was telling us about a new hired man who’d nearly set fire to their barn one morning.

  “It would’ve burned too, sure as shootin’ if it wasn’t for me,” Brandon said. “The men were gone out to the fields when I went to get a piece of rope and spotted a curl of smoke rising up from some damp hay.”

  “Were there flames?” Pete wanted to know.

  “No, but there’d a-been some in a few more minutes,” Brandon told us. “It was just gettin’ ready to spark when I happened along and stomped it out. Poured water on it too, to make sure.”

  It wasn’t much of a story, especially for Brandon. He does heroic things pretty regular—you never saw a guy who could run into so many dangerous situations just in the nick of time the way he does. Then I realized he was watching what was going on with the girls too.

  “They sure know how to make spectacles of themselves,” he said, nodding toward the tittering cluster. “All this fuss over a new girl. Just look at ’em!”

  We looked, shaking our heads scornfully and turning disgusted faces to each other. I’d never really paid attention to girls and their goings-on before but this was different. Gracie was at the middle of it and that made me curious.

  “I have eighty-seven marbles,” Sharon Goldrick announced loudly. “You can come over to my house sometime and play with them, Gracie.”

  This started a strange sort of competition where the other girls shouted out what kind of toys they had too. Paper dolls and dominos and games like Snakes and Ladders and Finance were offered as lures to get Gracie to visit.

  Gracie just kept smiling and saying things like, “That would be nice,” until they’d all run out of enticements. That was when they switched from bribery to flattery.

  “I just love your hair, Gracie!” Evelyn Hamm gushed. “Are those natural curls?”

  “They certainly are,” Gracie said. “My daddy just adored them. He was a war hero, but before that he loved to buy me hair ribbons. He bought me every colour he could find. My m
other says I have ribbons in every shade of the rainbow!”

  An admiring “ooh” rose from the group. A couple of the girls even clapped their hands, which caused Brandon to elbow me in the ribs and snicker.

  “You’re so lucky to have natural curls,” Millie Vangard said, fluffing her own hair with one hand. “I have to get mine from a Toni Home Perm.”

  Millie’s dry, frizzy hair was nothing to brag about, but she had looked pleased when she made this announcement.

  “I hate home perms,” Dorothy Fleming declared with a huff. “They stink!”

  “And they hurt,” Sharon said. “Least, they do when my Aunt Bernice gives them. She near yanks the hair right out of a person when she’s putting in the curling rods. My head was sore for a week last time she gave me one.”

  “I guess I am lucky to have natural curly hair, then,” Gracie said, looking down modestly. This drew the girls’ attention back to her and brought out a fresh batch of compliments.

  Just like that, Gracie stepped into the girls’ world as easily as she had walked into mine that day in the field. They took her into their circle, and by all appearances, they were awfully fond of her. For her part, Gracie was every bit as friendly and nice to them as they were to her.

  I wondered, by times, how it was that she could be so much like the others, skipping rope and playing hopscotch and tag and such, and yet be so completely different too.

  I was glad for her, glad that she had lots of new friends. Gracie shone in the middle of them and, unlike me, she clearly loved being the centre of attention. Why, the first day, when Miss Prutko asked her if she’d like to introduce herself to the class, she marched up to the front and took up half of the first period telling everyone about her daddy being a war hero and her collection of hair ribbons and the long way she and her mom had travelled to move to Junction and all kinds of other things. Then, when she went back to her seat and Miss Prutko told us all to make her feel welcome, everyone clapped like they really meant it.

  Everything had worked out perfectly. At school we each had our own friends and paid no mind to each other. But after school and on Saturdays, there were just the two of us, and we were happy with that.

  And that’s how it all went along—for a very short while.

  PART THREE

  The Darkening

  Not all tornados have funnel clouds. Under certain weather conditions, there’s no telltale column whirling through the air, looking for just the right place to touch down. And, of course, when you can’t see something coming, it’s hard to prepare for it.

  Chapter Eleven

  Kevin Sarrazin was a nice guy. I suppose a person would have to be, to make a living as a travelling salesman, which is what Kevin did. He travelled from town to town in a ’36 Chevy Town Sedan, peddling a wide assortment of wares out of the big black case that he kept stocked from boxes in the car’s trunk. If you saw Kevin, you knew that case was somewhere nearby.

  Kevin had never been to Junction before that October. It had always been a tall, thin, cigar-puffing man named George Renner. George had been visiting the town with his household products for years, but that summer he’d taken ill with consumption and Kevin was assigned to his territory.

  As I said, he was a nice guy. He was young and friendly, with a way about him that folks took to right off. Maybe it was the smooth way he talked, or the fact that his blue eyes were always smiling, but everybody warmed up to Kevin fast. People liked him, plain and simple.

  And of course, when you like someone, you don’t just look over their wares and buy a useful-looking gadget or two and then send them on their way. You put out tea and lay out a plate of corn bread, and talk about the crops and the weather and, most of all, your neighbours.

  And that’s exactly what happened at Miss Laird’s place. Miss Laird is an old maid who fills her days gathering up what she can of other people’s business. It’s probably what she has to do to keep herself from being too bored. And I wouldn’t care, except that when Kevin Sarrazin called on her with his big black case, she saw a chance to help fill the long day stretching out in front of her. Miss Laird put some pork hocks on to boil, and when she’d finished looking over his fine products, she told him dinner was almost ready—and of course he had to be polite and stay.

  That was when the talk swung to Raedine Moor and how she’d come to Junction not long ago. And wouldn’t you know it, Kevin knew Raedine from her old town.

  I can tell you what he said because I heard it quoted more than once over the next few weeks. The ladies’ social ladder rearranged itself the way it does when anyone has big news, and Miss Laird became the most visited woman in Junction. Everyone who’d been there repeated the story.

  “He said that he knew the Moors very well, that they had actually lived a few doors away from his family when Raedine was young. Miss Laird said that those were his exact words!”

  The end of the story always came with a head nod and a properly shocked expression, although a few couldn’t quite hide their pleasure at the telling.

  I was puzzled at first. I couldn’t find the scandal in the remark. Then Patty Dempsey, Keane’s fifteen-year-old sister, made a point of coming up to me in the playground at school and clearing it up.

  “You might just as well know, Luke Haliwell, that you won’t be welcome at our house anymore so long as you’re prancing about the fields with that horrid Moor girl,” she told me. “Her mother is a liar and a harlot.”

  I was nowhere near sure what a harlot was, so I focused on the other half of her statement and asked, “What did she lie about?”

  “Why, about being a widow, of course. She was born and raised Raedine Moor. She never had a husband at all—which means Gracie never had a father. No decent person will want to be around them ever again. My mother even said so.”

  As she talked, my thoughts moved from what she was saying, to her face, which had gotten closer and closer to mine as she spoke. Red blotches lit up her cheeks and spittle formed at the corners of her mouth.

  I wanted to punch her—to knock her teeth right down her throat. At the very least, I wanted to call her names that would mean a strapping when she told, and she would tell. But something inside me was frozen in fascination at the ugliness in her face, the way it was twisted with a sort of gloating hate, and the sound of her words—the meanness in them, and the spite.

  I managed to move at last, but it wasn’t to strike anyone. My body followed my head in a slow turn as my eyes searched the faces on the playground, looking for Gracie.

  She was standing not ten feet away. She was very still, her eyes fixed on Patty, her face expressionless. There was no doubt that she’d heard everything.

  The playground’s natural sounds were dying off as a widening circle of students sensed something happening and turned their attention toward it. Gracie took a step toward Patty and then another. Her hands were tiny balls at her side.

  “My daddy was a war hero,” she said softly.

  “You don’t even have a daddy, you liar,” Patty said with a sneer.

  “My daddy died fighting for his country,” Gracie said, a little louder.

  “I said you don’t have a daddy!”

  The colour was coming back to Gracie’s face, which had been ghostly a moment before. She crossed her arms in what seemed a brave and defiant act to me at the time.

  “I do so have a daddy!” she shouted. Her eyes shifted and found me. “Tell her Luke!”

  I was fighting my way past the dryness of my throat, trying to find the words and the courage to say them, when Patty spoke again.

  “What does Luke know?” she asked scornfully. “Luke’s own daddy…”

  “SHUT UP!” I screamed. “Just shut up, shut up, shut up! You don’t know anything, Patty Dempsey. You’re the liar! A big, stupid liar.”

  My outburst brought Miss Prutko, her arms waving as she called, “Stop! Stop this right now! What is going on here?”

  “Luke yelled and called me names,” P
atty reported at once. “I wasn’t doing anything.”

  “Luke?” Miss Prutko’s eyes found me. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

  I couldn’t defend myself, not without repeating what Patty had said about Gracie. I shrugged and said nothing, even though I really liked Miss Prutko and I hated the idea of her having a low opinion of me.

  She told me to go inside and wait at my desk, where she joined me moments later.

  Standing beside the desk I shared with John Younger, she asked me for a second time if I had anything to say.

  “No, ma’am.”

  “I can’t see you behaving this way for no reason,” she prodded.

  I remained silent, staring ahead. An odd pain throbbed in my chest and I had the uncomfortable feeling that if I looked at Miss Prutko I was going to disgrace myself and cry.

  She stood there, waiting. I suppose she imagined that I’d crack if she let a few moments pass, but in fact the effect on me was quite the opposite. As seconds went by, the urge to shout out my defence passed, and in no time my mind was made up that nothing would induce me to speak.

  “Then I have no choice but to punish you, Luke,” Miss Prutko said at last. “Come with me.”

  I followed her to the front of the classroom and stood, teeth clenched, while she lifted down the strap. It felt as though my heart might pound its way right out of my chest as I stood there, waiting.

  “Hold out your right hand.”

  I made a confused false start with my left, realized my mistake, and thrust the correct hand forward. Miss Prutko lifted the strap up and brought it down, and it really didn’t hurt very much. But the crack of the leather against my hand startled me and I made a sort of “unh!” sound while she gave me two more cracks. The ache in my chest had grown but it had nothing to do with the strap hurting.

  Miss Prutko hesitated before saying softly, “Now the other one.”