When the Wind Blows (6 page)

“I’m sure it can’t always be easy, Miss Diana,” he said quickly. Her eyes met his, and for the first time he saw the vulnerability that Bill Henry had told him was there.

“I don’t have many friends,” Diana said softly. “You know, in some ways, I think Elliot Lyons was about the only friend I had. I used to go up to the mine sometimes and talk to him. Just talk to him.”

“You have lots of friends.…” Dan protested.

“No, I don’t, Dan,” Diana said, her voice suddenly free of the pathos that had been in it a moment before. “I’m an Amber, and in Amberton the Ambers have no friends.” She stood up suddenly and smiled. “Well, now maybe it will be different,” she said. “You know, they say it’s an ill wind that blows nobody good? Well, this may sound like a terrible thing to say, but even though what’s happened is tragic, it may prove to be good for me.” Her voice dropped, and when she spoke again, Dan attributed what she was saying to the strain of the day. Surely she couldn’t be serious. “I’ve decided I want to adopt Christie. I’ve always wanted to have a child, and adopting her seems like the least I can do for Elliot. After all, it was my idea that he come here.”

“Your idea?” Dan asked. “How did you know him?”

“I didn’t. But when mother began making inquiries about hiring a mining engineer, I looked at all the material we were sent. Mother wanted to hire one of the men from Boston—she’s one of those people who thinks civilization begins and ends in Boston—but I liked what Elliot had to say.” Diana’s fingers fluttered nervously at her throat. “I suppose I wanted him be
cause he was young. It seemed to me that if the mine were really going to be opened again, it should be by someone young, who knew all the most modern techniques. So I begged mother to hire Elliot, and she gave in. And now he’s dead. I just can’t help but feel responsible.”

Bill Henry had appeared at the door in time to hear the last. He crossed the room and placed his hand on Diana’s shoulder. “You didn’t kill him, Diana. Whatever happened, it wasn’t your fault. You weren’t even there.”

Diana looked up at him, her eyes beseeching. “Does that matter?” she asked. “Does that really matter?”

Feeling suddenly uncomfortable, Dan Gurley stood up and cleared his throat. “I—if you’ll excuse me, I’d better get on up and talk to Esperanza and Juan. Bill …?”

“Unless you need me, I’ll stick around here for a while. Why don’t you stop back after you’ve talked to them?”

“Sure,” Gurley replied. He put his hat on his head, then impulsively leaned over and kissed Diana Amber’s cheek. “I’m sorry, Miss Diana,” he murmured. “I really am.”

Diana patted his hand and nodded. “I know, Dan,” she replied. Then she smiled weakly. “I’m sorry Mother was so awful to you.”

Dan shrugged and managed a faint grin. “It’s nothing unusual. As long as us peons stay in our place, she’s not too bad.”

Diana laughed brittlely. “Thanks for putting up with her. I know it isn’t always easy.” Then: “If anybody knows, I do.” She walked to the front door with Dan, then waited until he was gone before she closed the door and returned to the parlor. She sat down and for a moment studied the fire.

“Did you look at Christie?” she asked at last, though her mind seemed to be on something else.

“She’s fine, all things considered,” Bill assured her.

Once more silence fell over them, and then Diana shifted in the chair and met Bill’s eyes.

“I’m going to need some help,” she said.

“Anything. You know that.”

“Elliot Lyons had no family. His parents died years ago.”

“What about brothers and sisters?”

Diana shook her head. “I don’t think he or his wife had any. From what he said, I gathered he and Christie were alone.”

“Then what happens to Christie?” Bill asked.

“I’m thinking of adopting her.” She held up a hand to prevent Bill from saying anything, and plunged on. “Bill, I’ve been thinking about it all afternoon, and it just seems to me like the right thing to do. I just—”

She broke off as she realized that Edna was standing at the parlor door. “Mother. I didn’t hear you come down.”

“No, I don’t suppose you did,” Edna said. “But I heard you. I heard you saying that you’re going to adopt that child.”

“I—I’m just thinking about it, Mother,” Diana said nervously. “I mean, she doesn’t have any place to go.…”

“Is that any of our concern, Diana?” Edna asked. Diana’s eyes widened in dismay.

“Mother, he was my friend. It’s the least I can do to take his daughter in!”

“Is it,” Edna remarked. “Well, we’ll talk about it later, between ourselves.” She turned to Bill Henry. “I suppose you have several things to attend to, don’t you, Doctor.” It was a dismissal, and Bill decided not to challenge it. Diana had had enough for one day, without having to referee a battle between her mother and himself. He got hastily to his feet and picked up his bag.

“You know how to reach me,” he told Diana as she
walked him to the door. “If you need me, call. For anything.”

“I will,” Diana promised him. They were both on the porch, and at the same time both of them remembered. Bill had no car. “Do you want to come back in?” Diana asked. Bill glanced back at the front door, then shook his head.

“It’s a nice night, and I can use the walk,” he said. He gave Diana a quick kiss, then hurried down the steps and started along the driveway toward the road. Diana watched him go, then turned back to the house to face her mother.

Edna wasted no time in coming to the point.

“You will not adopt that child, Diana,” she said.

“I’ll do what I have to do, Mother,” Diana replied, her tone as cold as Edna’s.

Edna stood up,
so
her
eyes
were level with her daughter’s. “Are you defying me, Diana?” she asked.

Diana met the old woman’s gaze steadily. “Yes,” she said at last. “For once I’m defying you.” Then she turned and walked from the room. Edna stood rigidly in front of the fire as Diana went to the living room, woke Christie up, then led her upstairs. A few minutes later when the old woman, her bones weary with age, climbed the stairs herself, Diana’s door was closed.

Edna paused for a moment and considered knocking on her daughter’s door. Then she changed her mind and went on to her own room.

As she carefully lowered herself into bed she thought of the nursery upstairs.

The nursery that had been empty so long.

She had made a mistake. It should have stayed empty.

4

It was almost eleven when Jeff Crowley slipped out of bed, pulled on his clothes, and opened the window of his room. He scrambled over the sill, suspended himself from the ledge for a second, then dropped to the ground. He waited, listening, then crept around to the side of the house, got his bicycle, and, pedaling as hard as he could, rode the half-mile out to Shacktown. Steve Penrose and Eddie Whitefawn were waiting for him.

“Where you been?” Steve asked him. Steve was a year older than Jeff, and it had been his idea to wait until their parents had gone to bed before sneaking out to the mine. That way, Steve explained, they weren’t so likely to get caught. Now, not waiting for Jeff to answer his question, Steve mounted his bike, with Eddie riding double, and the three of them started out of town.

As they passed the Ambers’ they looked up at the house and saw that one light was still glowing on the second floor.

“I bet it’s Miss Edna,” Steve whispered in the darkness. “Someone told me she never goes to sleep.”

They went on by, neither of the other boys questioning Steve’s words, pedaling hard as they climbed the grade that led toward the mine.

“We better leave our bikes here,” Steve told them. The three boys dismounted and pushed the bicycles under a patch of scrub juniper, then began walking
up the road. Soon they were at the foot of the mine tailings, and they left the road to scramble up the slag heap.

As they climbed, the wind began to blow.

Suddenly Jeff stopped.

“Do you hear something?” he asked. The other two boys listened intently. From above them a sound was barely audible, like faraway voices muttering softly.

“It’s the water babies,” Eddie Whitefawn whispered. “Let’s get out of here.” He started to turn around, but a movement at the foot of the tailings stopped him. “There’s something down there.” He pointed, and Jeff and Steve peered into the darkness.

Below them, silhouetted in the moonlight, a shape was moving up the slag heap toward them.

Jeff’s heart began to pound and he suddenly wished he’d stayed home. With the other two boys he shrank to the ground. “What’ll we do?” he asked, his voice quavering.

“Stay still,” Steve whispered. Though he was as frightened as the other two, he was determined not to show it.

The wind picked up, and the strange noises grew louder.

“They’re coming,” Eddie whimpered. “I want to go home.”

The dark shadow beneath them, coming steadily closer, advanced through the blackness.

“Let’s run for it,” Steve said.

“Run where?”

Steve pointed off to the left. “That way. Back to the road, then down to our bikes.”

They huddled together, wishing there was something else to do. But as the wind blew ever stronger the moaning noises seemed louder, and the shadow, still moving toward them, seemed to grow.

“Let’s go!” Steve yelled. The three of them bolted, slipping and skidding across the loose rubble that
made up the slag heap. The wind snatched at them, and down the slope they could see the shape veering off, moving parallel to them. Then they were on the road and pounding down the hill. They dashed by the hulking object just as it, too, reached the road.

An arm reached out, and a hand closed around Jeff Crowley’s arm.

He squealed in fright and tried to wriggle loose, but couldn’t. Then he heard a voice, close to his ear.

“You guys playing?”

Jeff stopped struggling and yelled to Steve and Eddie, who had paused a few yards down the road, unsure what to do.

“It’s Juan,” Jeff called. “It’s only old Juan.”

Sheepishly Eddie and Steve came back up the road and stood staring at Juan Rodriguez. His face, smiling happily in the moonlight, beamed at them. “You guys playing?” he repeated.

The three boys looked at each other, and it was finally Steve who spoke. “We came out to look for the water babies,” he said. Juan nodded, though his expression didn’t change. “Now, you listen, Juan,” Steve went on. “Don’t you tell anyone you saw us, you understand?” Again Juan nodded, and Steve, followed by Jeff and Eddie, began backing away. “Now, don’t forget,” Steve said. “Don’t tell anybody!” He glanced at his friends, then back to Juan Rodriguez. “If you do, we’ll come back and kill you!” Then he turned and once more began running down the road, his friends at his heels.

As he watched them go Juan Rodriguez’s smile faded from his face. He hated it when the other children teased him.

Hated it a lot.

Unhappily he turned and started back toward the cabin, listening to the voices of the children as he
walked. Not the voices of the children he had just talked to, but the other children, the children his mother told him about.

The dead children. It was the sound of their voices that had lured him into the night while his mother slept.

The dead children, it seemed to Juan, liked him better than the live ones. The dead ones talked to him and never ran away from him.

Sometimes he wished all the children were dead.

   Diana Amber awoke and glanced at the clock by her bedside. It was three in the morning, and she lay still for a moment, listening to the wind.

It had come up sometime while she slept, and now it moaned in the night air, its dry, tingling heat stifling her. Close by, Diana felt Christie Lyons stir in her sleep, then roll over.

She slipped an arm around the child and drew her closer, cradling the child’s head against her breast. She drew comfort from the presence of the little girl; Christie’s body, in contact with her own, somehow made her feel complete.

She closed her eyes and tried to go back to sleep, but the wind forbade it. And in the back of her mind, something was nagging at her.

Her mother.

Her mother wouldn’t approve of Christie’s sleeping with her. She had promised Edna that even tonight Christie would be in the nursery. She had made up the bed in the nursery that afternoon, but when she had led the sleepy child upstairs, she hadn’t been able to leave her alone.

Not on her first night in the house.

Instead she had brought her to her own room and slipped the little girl into her own bed. But what if her mother awoke in the night, and began prowling
through the house? Reluctantly Diana got out of bed, slipped into a robe, then leaned down to pick up the sleeping child.

As she was lifted from the bed Christie’s arms curled instinctively around Diana’s neck, and she murmured something into Diana’s ear.

Mama? Had she called her
Mama
?

“I’m here, sweetheart,” Diana whispered. “Mama’s here.” She left her bedroom and silently moved down the hall to the back stairs, then up to the third floor. In the nursery, the bed, already turned back, lay bathed in moonlight, but to Diana it looked far too large for Christie. She hesitated, then carried Christie across the room and lowered her into the crib. Christie, only vaguely aware of what was happening, curled herself up within the confines of the small space. Then Diana went to the bed, stripped the top sheet from it, and tucked it around Christie’s small form. She studied Christie’s face for a time, envying the peace she saw in it, then left the nursery, quietly locking the door behind her.