Helen went to the kitchen and brought back more beers. “You might need these when I tell you the rest of the story.” She placed her sun-browned hands in her lap and looked at them. “When Sean would bring his daughter out here, we’d get one of the girls to watch her so he and I could wander off somewhere alone. He’d tell her he was just going for a ride on Chief, the star horse. He’d get Chief saddled up and ride to where his daughter could see him, then ride around to the back of the house and sneak in to be with me.”
She looked at the men and took a deep breath. “One time, while we were being frisky in a back room, it looked like it waHelen went to the kitchen and brought back more beers. “You might need these when I tell you the rest of the story.” She placed her sun-browned hands in her lap and looked at them. “When Sean would bring his daughter out here, we’d get one of the girls to watch her so he and I could wander off somewhere alone. He’d tell her he was just going for a ride on Chief, the star horse. He’d get Chief saddled up and ride to where his daughter could see him, then ride around to the back of the house and sneak in to be with me.”
She looked at the men and took a deep breath. “One time, while we were being frisky in a back room, it looked like it was going to storm, so we got out of bed and went to find the whore who was babysitting for us, and found her on the front porch with a customer’s hand up her skirt. I screamed at her, ‘Where’s the girl?’ and she laughed and said, ‘She’s all right, she’s just out there in the field trying to catch a butterfly.’
“We looked out over the prairie and saw a little dot of yellow, far away from the house. We weren’t even sure that was her until we made out the butterfly net she was waving in the air.”
James spoke up and said, “I hope you fired that whore!”
“they could get to her. We saw her yellow dress in flashes of lightning flying higher and higher until it disappeared up in the tornado.” Helen was sobbing, and James squeezed her hand even tighter.
Published 9/2024
We saw her yellow dress in flashes of lightning flying higher and higher until it disappeared up in the tornado.” Helen was sobbing, and James squeezed her hand even tighter.The twister moved off into the distance, then shrank to nothing and disappeared. We ran further into the field screaming her name, ‘Annabelle, Annabelle’ but of course, there was no answer. We never found her, not the butterfly net or her body.” She looked up, across the room, and out of the windows. “She was just gone. A few weeks later, somebody in the next county found her little yellow dress in a tree, with not even a tear in it.
“Chief wasn’t the same after that. He just seemed sad and kind of broken, like the rest of us. He wanted to save that little girl, but even he couldn’t outrun a tornado.”
The room became silent; they heard a train’s horn blowing somewhere miles away on the prairie.
“You named the ranch after her?” Blake said.
“No, just the opposite. Sean talked his wife into naming her Annabelle after the ranch. I’ll never understand why she agreed.” Helen stubbed out her cigarette and took a long drink of her beer. “My father just liked the name Annabelle, so that’s what he called the ranch. There wasn’t any reason that I knew of.
“Sean never came out here again; it hurt him too much to remember. A reporter showed up and talked to the whore, who paid her for her story. It was unbelievable that the bitch took the money. She told him everything except what she was up to when the storm came. That’s why Sean’s wife divorced him. Not because of me, but because she blamed him for Annabelle’s death.”
Helen looked up from her hands and said, “Sean’s wife never got over it. She blamed herself, too, for letting Annabelle come here with Sean that day. A few years later, she killed herself. People said her heart just couldn’t take that much pain.”
Maisy wondered if anyone else saw it. She awoke to the sound of her bedroom window tapping in its frame from the wind, then climbed out of bed and crossed the room. Her bare feet tip-toed on the cold wooden floor, clean and smooth from her mother’s work. She opened the window and looked at the sky before pulling the frame tightly into its proper fit. It would be quiet now and warmer in the room.
The night seemed to call her back; something had stirred in her mind. Something was not right. Her little hand turned the latch on the window and swung the glass open to the sky. Her eyes searched for what had alarmed her.
A few moments of looking into the dark didn’t change the scene; her eyes should have adjusted. There was no mistake; the stars had dimmed. The moon was only half-bright, and no clouds could be seen anywhere.
There was nothing to block her view of the sky. Her bedroom was on the second floor of the old farmhouse, above the elm tree in the yard, and she could see for miles across the fields of corn and pasture to the hills in the distance.
There was movement below the window. A man stood alone, looking upward. He pulled his coat tighter around him, turned, and waved.
“You’re up late, Maisy. Can’t sleep?”
She waved back at the man. It was Dr. Steve, and she wondered why he was in front of her place and not his own, then the truth came to her.
“Looking at the stars? Me too,” he said, and she knew he saw how strange they appeared. He looked at her momentarily, and Maisy felt something pass between them: a secret or perhaps a whiff of things to come.
“Don’t tell Mama, okay? I don’t want her worrying about me not sleeping. One more thing to bother her.”
“Don’t worry, but you’d better get back under the covers. It’s cold. Not good for your asthma.”
In Progress
Clausie barked and looked back at her. She ran faster then and knew that the dog was afraid, too.
They reached the house at the same moment Cora’s car turned into the drive. Maisy and Clausie ran for the open car door, and Cora yelled, “Get in!” Cora had been on the way to the school, hoping to find Maisy on the road. There’d been enough light to see the figure running toward her.
Cora reversed out of the drive and sped away from the house just as the light from the sun dimmed to almost nothing as if there were a total eclipse.
“Is it the end of the world, Mom?”
“No, honey. Probably just a freak weather thing. We’ll be fine.” Maisy knew her mother was lying. She didn’t know what was happening, either. And, by the hard look on her face, she was as afraid as Maisy.
Cora turned on the headlights. She slowed the car to a crawl and stared into the darkness. The lights were no help; the dark was so complete they could only penetrate a few feet. The gray snow swirled in their glow and fell on the windshield like the contents of a dirty ashtray.
“Oh, my god,” Cora said. “It’s not melting. It’s not snowing, it’s ashes.”
A figure stepped into the beams of light. It was covered in gray powder, and only its eyes were visible in the slot between its scarf and cap, and shined like a cat’s.
Maisy screamed, and Clausie barked. The figure moved toward the car.
Steve walked to the driver’s side and looked in at Cora. She exhaled loudly and opened the window. Ashes swirled into the car, and the acrid odor of smoke followed them.
“Move over and I’ll drive if you want me to,” he said. Maisy climbed between the front seats into the back and put her arms around Clausie. Cora managed to clear the console and take the other seat. She didn’t want to step outside.
There was one boy he had never touched who was, to him, the most beautiful in the school. He was two years his senior, and when Justin saw him in the showers for the first time, he thought his heart would stop. His hair was black, and he had the white, untouched skin of an English boy, yet his secret parts had become those of a man. He was circumcised like Justin, too, which was unusual in Britain. Someone said it was because he was Jewish, and all the Jews did that, and all the Americans. His name was Blair, and sometimes Justin would think of him and get an erection. Lying in his bed at night and picturing Blair’s blue eyes and long eyelashes would make him so hard he’d go to the toilets and relieve himself, then sleep and sometimes dream of Blair.
It was the middle of February, in Justin’s sixth year in England. There had been snow that morning, and the afternoon wind was damp, and he ached with the cold as he rode his bicycle into the village. At thirteen years old, Justin was considered trustworthy enough to go into town alone. That day, he rode his bicycle to the post office for stamps and then to the druggist to buy aspirin, soap, and a bottle of Coke. He entered the shop and saw Blair paying the shopkeeper, and Blair turned and smiled at him. “Are you walking? Too bloody cold for that.”
“No, I have my bike. Too cold for that, too, though.”
“Well, I’m walking. Mind if I hitch a ride back?”
“Please do.” Justin’s smile was too broad, and he knew it. Blair mounted the bike and said, “Why don’t you sit behind me, and I’ll peddle? Makes more sense.”
Justin said, “Okay,” and climbed onto the bike and zipped his jacket tight against the cold. He reached around Blair’s waist and held on.
“Sure,” Justin said. They turned off the road onto a little lane and went down the hill. The pond hadn’t frozen, so they skipped a few stones across the surface, and after a dozen throws, Blair said, “It’s too cold. There’s an old caretaker’s hut over there. Want to go in and try to warm up? It’s empty now.”
In Progress
Blair trembled. Justin touched his arm, and he pulled away. “Do you think he’ll tell?” Justin whispered.
“I don’t know. He’s queer as a goose himself. But there’s no telling what he’ll do. He’s such a tight ass. He was my math teacher last year, and I hated him, and he hated me. I’m sure he wanted me. I’ve caught him staring at my crotch, but I pretended not to notice and hoped it might help my grades.”
The next few days were like waiting for a hurricane. The long gray hours that passed brought no news of impending destruction or hope of salvation. They ignored each other in the showers and glanced the other way in the halls. They thought there were whispers when they entered a room.
Then, on Friday, he saw Michael, a boy a year his junior, a sweet, honest kid who knew nothing of pain or love or lust. “Oh, it’s awful what’s happened… did you hear about your friend?”
Justin’s ears pounded with his heartbeat. He couldn’t speak and only looked at the boy.
“Yesterday, his parents came up to school and took him away, and now they say he’s killed himself, just like that. I heard he hanged himself in the back garden the hour he got home. They’re having a special assembly this afternoon to tell everyone. It’s so sad. He was such a lovely guy.”
Justin went to his room and sat for a long time, then went to his bed and slept soundly. In a dream, the beautiful man from Justin’s private world—the young man he’d seen—visited him, held his hand, kissed him, and whispered, “We will always be together.”
The next day, a group of boys passed him in the hallway, and one of them said “faggot”. That night, the same boy came to him in the garden shed and Justin let him do what Blair had done, but this time, he felt nothing, not even the pain.
He never cried for Blair and told no one, not even his sister, the story of the end of his childhood.