exactly in the way they would choose.”
After her first try and the resulting whirlwind in the raspberry patch, Grandpa had gotten Sally to practice whenever they had a chance, to reach out and tug at the wind, drag out the tide, pull rain down from the sky in little patches, just to see what she could do. Most times she had pulled too hard, drowned her mother’s tomato patch or blown the chickens all across the yard, but he’d never seemed disappointed or frustrated with her.
After Mitch’s broken foot had healed, Sally had triumphantly shown him how she could raise a wind; he’d tried to outdo her and sent one of the hens straight through the toolshed window. Crying, he had brought what remained of the chicken to Grandpa and, after the funeral, lessons had involved both of them. They had always spent a lot of time together, just the three of them, but after that Mitch spent more time at Grandpa’s heels and less time sitting in the corner by the oven under maternal instruction to think about what he’d done wrong this time. Perhaps it was because, after the parachute incident, he was wary of taking Pierce’s advice on any matter.
They’d raised baby whirlwinds, and made pillow-sized rain clouds, but nothing big, nothing serious. Grandpa had made it plain from the start that playing small was a good thing, and would give them practice, but anything bigger than their pocket storms would throw the entire Shore out of whack. If you were going to mess with the weather, you had to be able to control it, keep an eye on it at all times, calm it down or rile it up as people needed, not just pull and tug when you felt like it and forget about it the rest of the time.
They go to see him again the next day; the drawing pad is still on the bedside table. He’s staring out the window, and doesn’t move when they come in. The machines beep quietly, regularly, like breath. Sally goes up and touches his arm—his skin is cold—and he turns his head toward her. His eyes are unfocused, searching, but after a few moments they lock on her, and he smiles. It’s a dialysis day: he’s always worse on dialysis days.
“Hey, little bit,” he says.
“How you feeling?” she asks.
“I been better.”
Mitch pulls out the pack of cards, but Grandpa shakes his head.
“I was thinking,” he begins, “about when your mother was a little girl.” His breath is a wheeze, and comes in bursts. “I tried to teach her, I really did. But she didn’t want anything to do with the wind and the rain and the snow. She was like your grandmother, always with her hands in the dirt.”
They think there is a point to this story, but they aren’t certain what it is. So they pull the stiff-backed chairs up to his bed, and tell his own stories back to him all afternoon.
—
He has always told them stories. Family stories, about his childhood and their mother’s childhood and how they all came to be, and more private, half-mythic stories that they know instinctively are not to be shared; people knew vaguely what they could do, but it didn’t help anyone to strew reminders about.
The story of his grandmother Medora was of both types,and they did not know how much of it was strictly true. She was a come-here, he said, and a wise woman, the mixed-race daughter of a Shawnee Indian and a white landowner, who knew native herbs as well as she knew medicine. They got their gift not from her, but from her second husband Thomas, who passed it down to his son Michael, who Mitch was named after, and Michael’s son who was their Grandpa Tom.
Her first husband built with her inheritance the house in which they still lived, with its broad, sagging porch and thick peeling pillars, but he despised her for the color of her skin and soon took up with another woman. She avenged herself—she hadn’t killed her husband, but their grandfather always skipped over the details of that part, saying they were too grisly—and then ran out to the marshes to take
After her first try and the resulting whirlwind in the raspberry patch, Grandpa had gotten Sally to practice whenever they had a chance, to reach out and tug at the wind, drag out the tide, pull rain down from the sky in little patches, just to see what she could do. Most times she had pulled too hard, drowned her mother’s tomato patch or blown the chickens all across the yard, but he’d never seemed disappointed or frustrated with her.
After Mitch’s broken foot had healed, Sally had triumphantly shown him how she could raise a wind; he’d tried to outdo her and sent one of the hens straight through the toolshed window. Crying, he had brought what remained of the chicken to Grandpa and, after the funeral, lessons had involved both of them. They had always spent a lot of time together, just the three of them, but after that Mitch spent more time at Grandpa’s heels and less time sitting in the corner by the oven under maternal instruction to think about what he’d done wrong this time. Perhaps it was because, after the parachute incident, he was wary of taking Pierce’s advice on any matter.
They’d raised baby whirlwinds, and made pillow-sized rain clouds, but nothing big, nothing serious. Grandpa had made it plain from the start that playing small was a good thing, and would give them practice, but anything bigger than their pocket storms would throw the entire Shore out of whack. If you were going to mess with the weather, you had to be able to control it, keep an eye on it at all times, calm it down or rile it up as people needed, not just pull and tug when you felt like it and forget about it the rest of the time.
They go to see him again the next day; the drawing pad is still on the bedside table. He’s staring out the window, and doesn’t move when they come in. The machines beep quietly, regularly, like breath. Sally goes up and touches his arm—his skin is cold—and he turns his head toward her. His eyes are unfocused, searching, but after a few moments they lock on her, and he smiles. It’s a dialysis day: he’s always worse on dialysis days.
“Hey, little bit,” he says.
“How you feeling?” she asks.
“I been better.”
Mitch pulls out the pack of cards, but Grandpa shakes his head.
“I was thinking,” he begins, “about when your mother was a little girl.” His breath is a wheeze, and comes in bursts. “I tried to teach her, I really did. But she didn’t want anything to do with the wind and the rain and the snow. She was like your grandmother, always with her hands in the dirt.”
They think there is a point to this story, but they aren’t certain what it is. So they pull the stiff-backed chairs up to his bed, and tell his own stories back to him all afternoon.
—
He has always told them stories. Family stories, about his childhood and their mother’s childhood and how they all came to be, and more private, half-mythic stories that they know instinctively are not to be shared; people knew vaguely what they could do, but it didn’t help anyone to strew reminders about.
The story of his grandmother Medora was of both types,and they did not know how much of it was strictly true. She was a come-here, he said, and a wise woman, the mixed-race daughter of a Shawnee Indian and a white landowner, who knew native herbs as well as she knew medicine. They got their gift not from her, but from her second husband Thomas, who passed it down to his son Michael, who Mitch was named after, and Michael’s son who was their Grandpa Tom.
Her first husband built with her inheritance the house in which they still lived, with its broad, sagging porch and thick peeling pillars, but he despised her for the color of her skin and soon took up with another woman. She avenged herself—she hadn’t killed her husband, but their grandfather always skipped over the details of that part, saying they were too grisly—and then ran out to the marshes to take
Similar Books
