The Wind

The wind had picked up in September. It was usually abhorrent but this season was more unsettling than usual. The farmers in this dusty, remote town were struggling with the weather and the absence of moisture in the air made everything more difficult than even the most fervent veterans were ready to put up with. This was the crop season, and hops and barley were their end-all and be-all, their bread-and-butter. This was their life-blood; the thing that kept this town one step above the other cookie cutter, midwest towns that surrounded them.

Last month, everything had projected in the black. The weather looked good, their soil had been moist, and the nearby creek from which they drew their water had not given one hint of drying up since the Summer.

However, with this inhumane wind came a surprising drying of the creek. Along with this came a dusty wind, and what followed would lead to an indigestible rock that settled in the stomachs of every farmer and their fellow brewer within the area. They knew no good would come of this, but it came with such force and swiftness that there was nothing they could do but watch as it approached them, unapologetically, furiously yet inattentive and uncaring.

The farmers did what they could to secure the crops that they had, although it did not account for much, considering it was so early in the season. They did their best effort to conceal their abundance of hops and barley from the drunken wind, hungry for a gulp. If only they had a Saint Bernard to run their efforts from the field to their bunker and back again, and again, as if they were within a snowy, high-peaked mountain safe house.

A siren rang. Was this what the sailors thought, as they told tales about siren songs? A beckoning? Did this song make its way this far from the coastal regions from where it originated? Or was this some sort of twisted amalgamation of the siren song, flounced by dirt and heat and dusty weaning?

No. This was not a siren song. This was a siren warning from the center of town. A dust storm was blowing in from the North. Most of the farmers knew it was coming, as they were borne of this sort of knowledge. It was passed on to them from their fathers and mothers, and it was their inherent duty to pass it on to their children henceforth. *Honk honk bleep* meant “GET AWAY. SOMETHING BAD IS HAPPENING!”

Dean was among one of these called-upon farmers who knew what was coming. He was ready, thanks to his upbringing, although he was more than unwilling to accept that he had been expected, from birth, to carry on the farm and the lifestyle that came with it. His birthright was set in stone, and that stone carried with it a heavy and burdensome weight against which he had constantly fought. Suddenly though, this training had given him the ability to prepare his family for the worst, and these henceforth unwanted skills were now about to come in handy. As he diligently produced a certain amount of fortitude upon them throughout the years, his wife and children chastised him for his over-protective, paranoid, prepper stylings. Well, he sure showed them wrong, as much as he had hoped they would have been right. He could not relish in this small victory, however, because this was it. He could relish in both disgust and delight once they all survived; their lives were still in the hands of the Fates.

Dean is a good-looking man, but he has maintained an air of insecurity that he has hoped against hope that no one else will catch on to besides him. He dresses the part of a farmer, and he does his best to act for that part as well. He regards his childhood as an inconvenience, though the skills he learned on the farm have helped him to be ready for not only an emergency, but to be able to provide for his family and continue a legacy, however reluctantly that came.

Flora, his youngest daughter, only 8 years-old but with the aggressiveness and confidence of a Saint Bernard raised in the Swiss Alps, came up to offer her help, albeit a bit flustered in her father’s presence.

“Daddy,” Flora asked?

“What’s up?”

He answered casually, hiding his fear. I mean, he was prepared, but there was still some uncertainty. It’s not like he had ever done a “run through” before; especially not where his loved ones were involved.

“Uhm, well…” Flora stuttered.

“Honey. You can ask, or you cannot. But I am here.”

“Okay, uhm… are we going to live here, like, forever now?” Flora shuddered as she forced the words out of her pursed lips. She stood, stoic, however, making herself as big as possible within her small frame.

“Baby girl, you are the most important thing in this world. Until the world doesn’t exist, you be held far up above it. You will exist as long as everything else does. You are the world. Does that make sense?”

Dean pauses.

Flora considers this for a moment and then, “I understand. It’s like how the stars will exist until they don’t. But then they become a part of other things…. Right?”

Dean responds, “That is exactly right, baby girl.”

Flora smiles.

“I have to go back out. Take care of everyone, okay?” He points to his arm muscles as he flexes.

She flexes back. “I got this.”

“Good girl.”

Flora climbs down into the bunker to join the rest of her family, her momentum keeping her ability to put one foot in front of the other. Something inside her tells her that she is now the one who needs to keep everyone together.

Dean heads back out to the now increasingly desolate atmosphere. Everything is happening so fast. He gathers as much as he can as quick as he can. He is close enough to town that he can see the panic happening in the main square. People are looting, people are running over each other and it is nothing of the world he used to know in this small, quaint, polite town just one month ago. He walks as quietly as he can towards the nearest pharmacy. Hopefully everyone has gone for food first and he can get his hands on some emergency supplies just in case.

Suddenly a neighbor happens upon him. He looks crazed. He grabs Dean’s shirt and begs him for help. Dean asks him what he can do, but the neighbor has tears streaming down his face. He is so fraught with pain that Dean can hardly stand to look at him; not out of pity and fear, but because it is something he feels but is unwilling to face. He shoves him away, fearing the emotions that may have come if he had let his neighbor hang on for much longer. After all, he really was here to get something done and get back to his family. He didn’t have time for idle nor existential chitchat. 

He found some basics: antiseptics, band-aids, ace bandages, ibuprofen, and some cough syrup. It was better than nothing, but it was more than he would have probably been able to scramble up an hour from now. He took a bag from the empty checkout line and went back to the bunker.

He knocked heavily on the door. His wife opened the bunker door immediately.

The look in her eyes was nothing if not fearful, yet patient and diligent. How she held that together, she will only know.

They huddled together in the bunker. Food was passed around. They tried a card game and all of them, bless them, tried their hardest to be a good sport about it, but of course that weird, crushing feeling still lived inside their chests. Maybe the kids felt it less, maybe they didn’t. We don’t always know what those precious young things are feeling, but they will probably feel more than we, and definitely more than what we remember feeling at that age.

There is more rumbling from above, and then silence. The wind has died down. Dean heads out first. Everything seems pretty normal. There is a slight wind. Everything is oddly quiet. It seems peaceful. He takes a deep breath.

“How quickly things can change,” Dean says to himself.

Suddenly a gust of wind picks him up.

He is whisked away into the distance.

The End.