It was the wind. It’s that wind you get out on a plain or desert and almost nowhere else, the kind of wind that builds up miles away and comes at you and keeps on going right through you and on into the next county. Clothes don’t help. If you’re in the desert the sand goes right through your clothes, and if you put a wet handkerchief over your face the wind blows the sand right through the handkerchief.
When you’re up north you freeze. The wind ices you right through.
And when you’re in Kansas there’s just the wind coming at you like a sword through a piece of silk, just the wind and nothing else. It’s a sweeping wind, not the twister that blew Dorothy to Oz and knocks over a house now and then. The sky clouds up and the sun disappears and the damned wind is all over the place. Then it rains water by the pound and when it clears up the air is still and quiet.
That’s how it usually happens, and that’s why I couldn’t have figured it out on the first day, not even with my eyes wide open. But the second day I should have known. On the second day there was still no rain, no storm at all, and the wind was blowing all over and harder than before.
It happens that way once in a while. It happens, with the wind holding up forever like it’s never going to stop, and in Kansas they call it the bad wind. It blows forever, and it blows your tendons so tight you think they’re going to snap on you.
And something happens. Something like a man dying or a house burning, something bad.
That’s why I should have known—if I had my eyes open.
The afternoon of the second day we were out hunting jacks in the north field. The wind was coming from the west, bending the long grasses all the way over and holding them there. We were hunting into the wind; it didn’t make too much sense that way, but it was late and we were headed back home, and back home meant walking into the wind.
“Bet she’s been here,” Brad was saying. “Not hunting—”
Lady let out a burst of good baying, sounding the way a good beagle sounds, and she cut off the rest of his sentence.
“You hear me, John?”
I nodded at him but he wasn’t looking at me. He was about twenty yards ahead of me and it was no use talking into the wind. It just shoves the words right back into your mouth. You can shout at it, but I didn’t much feel like shouting. I didn’t feel like answering, when you come right down to it.
“You hear me? She’s been out here plenty of times.”
My cap was down over my ears but I could still hear him good and clear. We could have gone home right then. The bag was full of jacks, nice husky ones that Lady ran down like a champion, more rabbit than we could eat in the next year and a half. But going home wouldn’t do any good. Brad was a tough guy to shut up.
“Nice soft grass out here. Her nice little body would fit real cozy in it, you know?”
I looked down at the grass without meaning to and my head started to ache.
“Know what we used to call a woman like that? Called them ‘sweethearts of the fleet.’ There’s lots like her, Brother John. She’s not the only little tramp in the—”
“Shut up.”
“World. But you wouldn’t know, would you? Old John stays on the farm through thick and thin. Doesn’t let the glitter of the outside world knock his life apart. Sober Old John. You ever fixing to see the world, brother?”
“Maybe.”
“Sure. I hear you went to Omaha once. Like it?”
“It was all right.” I didn’t want to answer him. I never wanted to answer him, but that didn’t make much difference. It was always like that—him needling and pushing and prodding and me taking it and answering when I was supposed to.
When he was in the Navy it was nice. Pa and I made the farm run, coming out ahead in a good year and squeezing by in a bad one. Hunting with Lady and catching a movie in town now and then, and a long sleep at night and good food and plenty of it.
But with Brad around you don’t sleep much. Ma died giving birth to