Nathaniel

PROLOGUE

The night closed in like something alive, its warm dampness imbuing the house with an oppressive atmosphere that seemed somehow threatening to the child who sat in the small front parlor. There was something in the air she could almost touch, and as she sat waiting, she began to feel her skin crawl with the peculiar itching that always came over her late in the summer. She squirmed on the mohair sofa, but it did no good-her cotton dress still clung to her like wet cellophane.

Outside the wind began to rise, and for a moment the girl felt relief. For the first time in hours, the angry sound of her father's voice was muted, covered by the wind, so that if she concentrated hard, she could almost pretend that that sound was a part of the rising storm, rather than a proof of her father's fury and her mother's terror.

Then her father was looming in the doorway, his eyes hard, his anger suddenly directed toward her. She cringed on the sofa-perhaps if she made herself smaller he wouldn't see her.

"The cellar," her father said, the softness of his making it no less threatening. "I told you to go to the cellar."

"Father-"

"Storm's coming. You'll be safe in the cellar. Now go on."

Hesitantly, the child stood up and began edging toward the kitchen door, her eyes flickering once, leaving her father's angry face to focus on the door behind him, the door beyond which her mother lay struggling with the pains of labor. "She'll be all right," he said.

Not reassured, but knowing argument would only increase her father's wrath, the girl pulled a jacket from a hook and struggled to force her arms through its tangled sleeves. Then, shielding her eyes from the driving wind with her right arm, she left the house and scuttled across the yard to the cyclone cellar that had been carved out of the unyielding prairie earth so many years ago. Once she glanced up, squinting her eyes against the stinging dust. In the distance, almost invisible in the roiling clouds, she could barely make out the beginnings of the storm's angry funnel.

More terrified now of the storm than of her father's anger, she grasped the heavy wooden door of the cellar and hauled it partway open, just far enough to slip her body through the gap. She scrambled down the steep steps, letting the door drop into place behind her.

For what seemed like an eternity, she sat in the near-total darkness of the storm cellar, her ears filled with the sounds of the raging winds.

But sometimes, when the howlings of the storm momentarily abated, she thought she could hear something else. Her mother, calling out to her, begging her to come and help her.

The girl tried to ignore those sounds-it was impossible for her mother's voice to carry over the storm. Besides, she knew what was happening to her mother and knew there was nothing for her to do.

When the baby came, and the storm had passed, someone-her father or her brother-would come for her. Until then, she would stay where she was and try to pretend she wasn't frightened.

She curled herself up in a corner of the cellar and squeezed her eyes tight against the darkness and the fear.

She didn't know how much time had passed, knew only that she couldn't stay by herself any longer, couldn't stay alone in the cellar. She listened to the wind, tried to gauge its danger, but in the end she wrapped the jacket close around her thin body, and forced the cellar door open. The wind caught it, jerked it out of her grasp, then tore it loose from its hinges and sent it tumbling across the yard. It caught on the barbed wire fence for a moment; then the wire gave way and the wooden door hurtled on, flipping end over end across the plains, quickly disappearing into the gathering dusk. The girl huddled at the top of the steps for a few moments. There was a light on in the house now, not the bright lights she was used to, but the glow of a lantern, and she knew the power had gone out. The flickering lamplight drew her like a moth, and she braced herself against the driving wind, leaning into it as she began making her way back across the yard. She was disobeying, she knew, but even facing Pa's anger was better than staying alone any longer.

Still, when she reached the house, she couldn't bring herself to go in, for even over the howling wind she could hear her father's voice. His words were unintelligible but his anger was terrifying. The girl crept around the corner of the house, crouched low, until she was beneath the window of the room in which her mother lay.

Slowly, she straightened up, until she could see into the room. On the nightstand stood an oil lantern, its wick turned low, its yellowish light casting odd shadows. Her mother looked almost lifeless, resting against a pillow, damp hair clinging to sallow skin, her eyes wide, staring balefully at the towering figure of her father. And now she could hear the words. "You killed him."

"No," her father replied. "He was born dead."

The little girl watched as her mother's head moved, shaking slowly from side to side as her eyes closed tight. "No. My baby was alive. I felt it moving. Right up until the end, I felt it moving. It was alive, and you killed it."

A movement distracted the girl, and her eyes left her mother's tortured face. Someone else stood in the corner of the room, but until he turned, the girl didn't recognize him.

It was the doctor, and in his arms he cradled a tiny bundle wrapped in a blanket. A fold of the blanket dropped away; the girl saw the baby's face, its eyes closed, its wizened features barely visible in the flickering lantern light.

By its stillness, she knew it was dead.

"Give it to me!" she heard her mother demand. Then her voice became pleading. "Please, give it to me…"

But the doctor said nothing, only refolding the blanket around the baby's face, then turning away once more. Her mother's screams filled the night then, and a moment later, when the girl looked for the doctor again, he had retreated from the room. Now that they were left alone, her father was regarding her mother with smoldering eyes.

"I warned you," he said. "I warned you God would punish you, and He has."

"It was you," her mother protested, her voice weakened by pain and despair. "It wasn't God punishing me, it was you." Her voice broke, and she began sobbing, making no attempt to wipe her tears away from her streaming eyes. "It was alive, and you killed it. You had no right- you had no right…"

Suddenly the girl saw the door open, and her brother appeared. He stood still for a moment, staring at their mother. He started to speak, but before he could utter a word, their father turned on him.

"Get out!" Then, as the girl watched, her father's fist rose into the air, then swung forward, catching the side of her brother's head, slamming him against the wall. Her brother crumpled to the floor. For a time that seemed endless to the watching girl, he lay still. No one spoke. Then, slowly, he rose to face their father.

He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. His eyes glowed with hatred as he stared at his father; then he turned away and stumbled out of the little room.

The girl backed away from the window, unconscious now of the wind that still battered at her, her mind filled only with the sights and sounds she instinctively knew she should not have witnessed. She should have obeyed her father and stayed in the storm cellar, waiting for someone to come for her.

She started back toward the storm cellar. Perhaps, if she tried very hard, she could blot all of it out of her mind, pretend that she had seen and heard none of it, convince herself that she had never left the cellar, never witnessed her mother's pain and her father's fury. And then, ahead of her, a few feet away, she saw her brother and cried out to him.

He turned to face her, but she knew he didn't see her. His eyes were blank, and he seemed to be looking past her, looking out into the storm and the night.

"Please," the girl whispered. "Help me. Please help me…"

But if her brother heard her, he gave no sign. Instead, he turned away, and as if he was following the call of some other voice the girl couldn't hear, he left the house and the yard, disappearing into the prairie. A moment later he was gone, swallowed up by the storm and the night. Alone, the girl made her way back to the cyclone cellar.

She crept down the steps through the gaping hole where the door had been, and went back to her corner. She drew the jacket tightly around herself, but neither the jacket nor the doorless cellar could protect her.

Through the long night she huddled there, the storm and the scene she had witnessed lashing at her, torturing her, boring deep within her soul.

After that night she never spoke of what she'd seen or what she'd heard. She never spoke of it, but she never quite forgot.