Changes of Heart (15 page)

“... up to sixty miles per hour, which is one heck of a lot of wind, even for around here,” the announcer said. “But the good news is that the storm is going to miss the Coldwater area, at least for now. The travel advisory is still in effect—all unnecessary travel should be avoided till the advisory is cleared. The National Weather Bureau tells us there’s a real good chance the whole mess will veer off and give ol’ North Dakota some grief. The wind should taper way down after midnight, and so far, Thanksgiving in our part of the Big Sky State is lookin’ just delicious!” He
paused for a brief moment, during which his voice took on a cloying semblance of a man-to-man tone. “Ya know gents, lots of us in our thirties, forties, and fifties are losing more hair than we want to—and more than we have to! That’s right—you heard me. You don’t have to lose your hair, and you can grow back what you’ve already lost. How? Just listen up an’ let me tell you about a new product developed in the scientific laboratories of—”

Maggie snapped off the radio, mumbling, “Idiot,” under her breath.

That night something tugged Maggie from a sound sleep. She listened carefully, her eyes finding the clock on her bedside table. The square, liquid green digits read 4:12.

Everything was quiet in the house—just as it should be. Then it struck her: she wasn’t reacting to a sound but to the lack of sound. The wind had stopped.

Maggie leaned from her bed and pushed the window curtain aside. Her land, her fences, all of the outdoors slept peacefully under the soft light of a cloudless sky from which a pure white half-moon stood guard. She turned away from the window, adjusted her pillow, snuggled up under her covers, and returned to sleep.

The horses that morning were oddly subdued. Turnip, the most vocal of the four, rarely failed to greet Maggie with a whinny and a snort through his nostrils. Dusty invariably
rushed to the front of her stall, awaiting her morning scratch and a few words from Maggie. Dakota, a chowhound who ordinarily followed Maggie’s every move with his eyes and grumbled at her as she scooped grain and broke flakes of hay from bales, stood back from his stall gate, showing no interest in his coming meal. Dancer, obviously nervous, his ears moving about too rapidly, his eyes darting just as quickly, was in the far corner of his stall, crouched slightly. As Maggie watched, a slight tremble showed in the colt’s neck and shoulders.

Cringing—my most curious and intelligent horse is cringing like a mouse cornered by a cat
.

She went into the stall and approached Dancer slowly, her hand extended. When she was in front of him, he moved forward a step and shoved his muzzle into her unzipped coat. She felt him tremble once again. Her practiced hands moved over Dancer, feeling the tension in his muscles, the slightly elevated rate of his heartbeat, the unusual jerkiness of his motions. She murmured to the colt for several minutes, stroking him, still examining him for any indication of sickness. When she backed away from Dancer he moved again to the far corner of his stall.

After Maggie had filled the grain bins and tossed fresh hay into the stalls, Dakota was the first to begin eating. His grunting and crunching apparently activated the appetites of the others, and soon all five were busy with their hay and grain. Maggie examined each of the horses as carefully as she had Dancer. She found no sign of illness or pain. Perplexed and worried, she ran from the barn to her house.
She dialed Danny Pulver’s number, and when he answered she breathed a prayer of thanks. It took only moments for her to describe the symptoms of the animals.

“You’re the third caller this morning about the same thing, Maggie,” the vet said. “What’s going on is that the horses are simply reacting to the change in the weather. That wind yesterday afternoon and last night had every animal around here as skittish as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.”

“But the wind stopped hours ago. Why are they still reacting to it?”

“Because the barometric pressure has been all over the place and they feel the changes—and it scares them. Look, you know how some dogs get hinky long before thunderstorms, hiding under beds, panting, all that? The thing with the horses amounts to the same thing. Their instincts tell them something is wrong, but they don’t quite know what it is. I’ll bet Dusty and Dancer and the whole bunch of them came to the barn early yesterday, right?”

“Yeah—yeah they did. It was about midday.”

“See? Every horse for miles around was seeking out shelter yesterday. Instinct again, Maggie. I’d suggest you leave them in the barn today and tonight and then turn them out tomorrow morning, just like always. You don’t have a thing to worry about. There’s nothing wrong with the horses.”

Maggie’s voice was a bit tentative. “You’re... you’re sure?”

Danny chuckled. “As sure as I am that I’ll be real pleased to see you in a few hours at the Morrison’s place. OK?”

“OK, Danny. And thanks.”

If Danny had been standing there, Maggie would have hugged him. She decided to allow herself the luxury of another cup of coffee, and as she stood at the sink rinsing the pot, she glanced out the window at the rope she’d strung between the barn and the house the night before. She grinned; it looked like a foolishly low clothesline. As Maggie watched, a few fat snowflakes drifted downward lazily, as if they were ambling to the ground rather than actually falling. Soon, her coffee was perking.

Sarah had said noon, and folks in and around Coldwater didn’t play the “fashionably late” game. Maggie, after another visit to the horses, was on the road by twenty to twelve, her white box of cannoli in the passenger seat next to her. All of the horses had accepted the apples she’d given them, but they—particularly Dusty—had been needy, wanting more words and more stroking. Maggie topped off their water, tossed extra flakes of hay into their stalls, and left the barn, feeling much like an uncaring and negligent mother.

She turned on the radio as soon as she’d left her driveway. The tiny gospel station from Coldwater was a raucous buzz of static, and she punched in CLTR, the most powerful station.

“... hate to say this, but it’s more’n a little possible, folks. We here at CLTR know lots of our listeners have places to go for the holiday—but I’m askin’ you personally—don’t do it. The people at the National Weather Bureau have upped
their advisory to a warning. It looks like the reprieve from yestiddy has pulled kind of an ugly U-turn and is heading right back at us. ’Member ’89 when our cattle...” There were no more words.

Maggie turned up the volume, but the screeching, power-saw attack of static hit her like a slap, and she jabbed the off button. She turned into Sarah Morrison’s long, serpentine driveway and followed the gentle curves to the house. Ian’s silly compact was parked in front, Danny’s GMC right behind it. Sarah’s Rolls-Royce watched over the lesser vehicles from its garage, its shiplike prow pointing outward down the driveway.

Maggie nudged her truck behind Danny’s truck and turned off the engine.
This might be very good. And I need these people
.

She sat for a moment and then tugged upward on the door release. She watched, stunned, as the door slammed forward and crashed against the fender, and then hung twisted from its lower hinge.

The howl of the wind was horrendous—a tidal wave of sound that she felt as much as heard—and assaulted Maggie with battering-ram strength. Her entire body began trembling immediately, and her teeth clattered together with enough force to send shards of pain radiating through her face. It had been cold earlier, but the temperature in the cab of Maggie’s truck was now something completely different, unworldly, a frigidity that could snuff life as easily as water kills the flame of a candle.

Maggie could see nothing. There was no definition to
anything around her or beyond her. Everything, including the interior of her truck, was a rapidly swirling, featureless mass of white. Her sense of sight—the most used and relied-upon physical sense humans possess—had, in the tiniest part of a second, abandoned her. She huddled behind the steering wheel of her truck, hands pressed ineffectually against her ears. Her shoulder harness dug into her body as she cringed forward against the restraint, disoriented, in full panic. She may have screamed, but there was no way her voice could register over the wrath of the storm.

It hit like a hunger-crazed, marauding grizzly in a pioneer cabin. The storm struck in all directions at once, tore down trees that had stood through a half century or more of Montana winters, ripped TV antennas from roofs, and scattered satellite dishes from their allegedly impervious foundations. Outbuildings—sheds, freestanding garages, cattle shelters—whirled off, some intact as they stood, others in pieces, never to be seen again.

The sole telephone booth on Main Street leaned with the wind, hesitated, and then wrenched away from the bolts that held it to the cement and flipped over itself three times before it careened off the top of a parked FedEx truck and ultimately shattered against the stone façade of the Coldwater Bank & Trust.

Cattle instinctively huddled tightly together. Three- and four-hundred-pound calves were blown from their feet by
the strongest gusts as they hustled to the clusters of the heavier animals, white-eyed and bawling with fear.

The six feet by four feet metal-edged sign in front of Coldwater Church listing times of services was ripped away from the ground and flung two hundred yards into town, where it sheared the top several feet off a mercury vapor light stanchion in the parking lot of Coldwater Power and Gas.