When the Wind Blows (2 page)

Esperanza Rodriguez, her dark eyes set deep in her lined face, watched silently as the body of Elliot Lyons was brought up from the depths of the mine. All her life she had been expecting something like this to happen. Over and over her mother had told her the story of what had happened when she was only a few days old, and the
gringos
, in their stupidity, had disturbed the cave of the lost children. They had died that day—many of them—and the mine had been closed. For fifty years it had remained undisturbed, its depths flooded with water, until a month ago, when Señor Lyons had come from Chicago and begun poking around. And now he, too, was dead. Dead like Amos Amber, who had owned the mine and died in the flood; dead like her own father, who had also been in the mine that day.

Esperanza had no memory of the flood, but in the half-century since, as she had grown up near the mine, her mother had been careful to warn her of what would happen if the mine were ever reopened. It was part of the sacred cave now, the cave of the lost children. Though the
gringos
claimed the cave was only a legend, what the
gringos
thought didn’t matter to Esperanza, for she knew the cave was real, as did all her friends. It was real, and it had to be left alone.

Elliot Lyons had not left it alone, and now he was dead.

Esperanza waited until they’d taken the body away,
nodded briefly when the doctor whispered in her ear, then wrapped her shawl around her shoulders, told her son to stay at home, and started walking toward town, where, before obeying the doctor’s instructions, she would go to church and pray.

Amberton had never been much of a town—not like the other Mineral Belt settlements, which had boomed for years with gold and silver. Amberton had prospered only mildly, its coal providing a fortune only for the Ambers, who owned the mine and most of the land as well.

And then, in 1910, the mine had flooded, and the people of Amberton wondered what had happened.

Esperanza Rodriguez knew what had happened.

As she paused in the little park at the center of town, she looked up at the bronze statue of Amos Amber that kept watch over the village. Her own father, whom she had never known, had tried to warn Amos Amber of what could happen to the mine. But Amos had never been one to listen to the superstitious mumblings of a Mexican married to a Ute.

And because Amos Amber had not listened to Esperanza Rodriguez’s father, Amberton had suffered.

It didn’t show on the surface. The village was a pretty place, nestled in a valley low in the Rockies, its Victorian houses neatly painted in the bright colors that had been fashionable a century ago. Its streets, though never paved, were well-kept, and shaded by aspens that had long ago replaced the firs that once thrived there. It seemed, at a glance, to be prospering. Its shops were busy, selling memorabilia of days long gone when the town had been a center of commerce, and its old railroad depot, restored and turned into a restaurant, was, during the summer months, constantly filled with tourists who paused on their way to Aspen or Denver, spent a few minutes absorbing the quaint atmosphere of the village, then moved on to the next stop on their Triple A tourist maps.

The tourists never went where Esperanza was going, for the tiny Catholic Church was near the edge of town, in the midst of the shacks that were occupied by Esperanza’s friends, the few mixed-breed Indians whose Mexican, Indian, and white blood left them fitting into no easily identifiable group. They existed in poverty, scratching out a living as best they could by doing the menial jobs that the shop owners tossed to them. Esperanza herself did not live in Shacktown—she still lived in the caretaker’s cabin near the entrance to the mine, where she’d lived most of her life—but every week she came to the church to pray for the children who, though their graves were marked in the tiny churchyard, were buried somewhere else.

Today, she didn’t stay long.

Today, she wasn’t praying for the dead children.

Today, she was praying for the one who was still alive.

   Christie Lyons stared straight ahead, her eyes unseeing, her tiny white hand lost in Esperanza Rodriguez’s large brown one. Tears flowed down her cheeks, and her chin quivered as she struggled not to sob out loud.

She hadn’t believed it at first. Her father was all she had, and she was sure that what was happening was all a bad dream, that any minute now her father would wake her up and tell her it was only a nightmare.

Dimly, she wondered if they were going to send her to an orphanage. She supposed they probably were. If you didn’t have any family, where else could you go?

Though she was only nine years old, Christie knew exactly what had happened. Her father had gone to the mine by himself, and he’d fallen down the shaft. Many times, when she’d gone to mines with him, he’d told her what could happen if you weren’t careful. Now it had happened to him.

And now she was alone and going somewhere with people she hardly knew at all.

She looked out the window of the car and realized they were driving toward the mine. Was she going to have to look at her father? Were they going to show him to her? She hoped not. Knowing he was dead was bad enough—she didn’t want to have to look at him, too.

She stared up into the face of Esperanza Rodriguez, who had held her in her lap while they told her her father was dead. Now Esperanza was smiling at her, the way her mother used to smile at her when she was very little.

Christie didn’t remember her mother very well, but right now, with her father dead, she desperately wished that her mother would come back to her.

For some reason, she remembered how her mother used to wash her hair, making her blond curls light and fluffy. Now they clung damply to her forehead, and she wished her mother were there to wash them for her. But that, too, would never happen again, for her mother had died five years ago.

She felt the man who was driving the car squeeze her leg and looked up at him. He was Dr. Henry, and even though she didn’t know him very well, she knew he was a friend of her father’s.

She touched his hand, and he squeezed her reassuringly before putting his hand back on the steering wheel of the car. Feeling hopeless, Christie Lyons stared out the window, not really seeing the house they were approaching.

At fifty-two, Bill Henry was still lean and ruggedly handsome. His brown hair was shot through with gray, and his skin, darkened by the Colorado sun, was the color of saddle leather. He wished he knew how to comfort the little girl beside him, but she seemed to have drifted away somewhere, and he hadn’t the least idea what to say to her. Unmarried, he had never
really learned the trick of talking to children. And never had he had to deal with one who had just lost her only parent.

Rather than risk saying the wrong thing, Bill Henry kept his eyes on the road and, as he turned the car into the driveway of Edna Amber’s mansion, examined the details of the house. The comforting of the child he would leave to Esperanza, or, in a few more minutes, to Diana Amber.

The house, the largest in Amberton, stood brooding on a rise that let it overlook the village like a sentinel. In contrast to the houses of the village, the Amber place had not been painted in years, and it had taken on the look of a derelict, its paint peeling, its shingles loosening. A few aspens and one or two firs dotted the scraggly lawn that surrounded the living quarters, and the outbuildings—a barn and a chicken coop, along with a carriage house that had been converted to a garage many years earlier—looked as forlorn as the house itself. Though Edna Amber still regarded the town as her personal fiefdom, she had never taken part in its restoration. Indeed, she had objected to the restoration every step of the way. Bill Henry supposed that, to her, turning Amberton into a tourist attraction meant admitting that the mine would never again produce—and that was one of the many things that Edna Amber would not admit.

“We’re here,” Bill said. Christie, seeming to come out of her daze, gazed up at him.

“Where?” she asked.

“At the Ambers’. They’re going to take care of you.”

“You mean they’re going to adopt me?” Christie asked.

“Well, I don’t know.” Bill wondered how to explain to the little girl that it was not at all certain how long she was going to be staying with the Ambers, and that almost surely she was not going to be adopted by them.

Christie fidgeted, her fingers twisting at the hem of her dress. She could only vaguely remember her father introducing her to the Ambers. Then she thought of the statue in the square.

“Isn’t Mr. Amber the man in the park?”

“That’s right. But the ones you’re going to stay with are his wife and his daughter.”

Christie tried to make sense out of it all, but too much had happened. All she knew was that her father was dead and that she was going to live with strangers. She began to cry.

As Bill looked helplessly on, Esperanza gathered the child into her arms and cradled her against her ample bosom.

“Pobrecita,”
she murmured. “Is all right, baby.” She looked up at Bill Henry. “I tell them,” she said suddenly. “I tell them, but they don’t listen to me.”

“Told them what?” Bill asked. He glanced at Esperanza, but the woman was staring into the distance, toward the mine.

“The children,” Esperanza said. “I tell them not to bother the children, but they don’t listen. See what happened.”

Dimly, Bill remembered a story he’d heard when he was a boy. He looked across Christie, then reached out to touch Esperanza. “What are you talking about?” he asked. “What children?”

She jerked away from his fingers as if she’d been burned. “The lost children,” Esperanza replied, her voice low. “You can hear them when the wind blows. When the wind blows, they cry. And it was blowing today.”

It didn’t make any sense to Bill. So what if the wind had been blowing? In this part of the country it wasn’t that unusual. On many days the wind came sweeping down out of the mountains, whispering among the aspens and caressing the tall grasses that grew on the floor of the valley.

“I don’t understand, Esperanza,” he said. “What children are you talking about?”

Esperanza looked at him pityingly. “The ones who are waiting,” she said. “The ones who are waiting to be born again.” Then she opened the car door and got out. Christie, who seemed not to have heard the conversation, slid reluctantly out after her.

She looked up at the house and wished she could go somewhere else. It was too big, and too frightening. She slipped her hand into Esperanza’a. As though she had read her thoughts, Esperanza leaned down to whisper in Christie’s ear.

“Is all right, little one. I will look out for you. You see? Up there?” She pointed off into the distance, where Christie could just make out the shape of a cabin crouching on the side of the mountain. “I live there. You need me, you come up there. Okay?”

Christie nodded, then let go of Esperanza’s hand and followed Bill as he led her up the steps toward the front door of the Amber house.

Diana Amber opened the door and, seeing who was there, immediately dropped to her knees. She took Christie in her arms and hugged her close.

At fifty, Diana wore the remnants of her prettiness well. Her blue eyes were soft, and there was a sadness in them that touched nearly everyone who had ever met her. As she gazed at Christie Lyons she smiled gently. Looking on, Bill realized that, in a way, Diana reminded him of a rabbit—warm and soft, easily startled. She held Christie for a moment, then stood up and led the little girl into the house. Bill Henry and Esperanza Rodriguez followed.

Diana took them to the parlor, where Edna Amber sat working on a piece of needlepoint. Unlike her daughter, Edna had bright hard eyes that sparkled with determination, and her body, though she was nearing eighty and getting stiff, was still strong. She didn’t stand to greet her visitors; she was one of those
women who expects others to rise while she remains seated.

Christie, unsure of what she was expected to do, stood quietly staring at the floor. Suddenly her nostrils filled with a strange odor and she sneezed.

“God bless you,” Diana said. “Do you have a cold?”

Christie shook her head. “I smelled something, and it made me sneeze.”

Diana sniffed at the air, then smiled. “That’s lavender,” she said. “Don’t you like it?”

“I don’t know,” Christie said. “What’s it for?”

“It’s just to make things smell good.”

Christie stared up at her. “Why?”

“Why—why because—” Diana floundered, unable to find an answer for the little girl’s question.

For the first time, Edna Amber spoke. “It’s to cover up sour smells,” she said. “Like houses that haven’t been properly cleaned, and old people, and children.” She got to her feet and, leaning stiffly on her cane, walked out of the room. There was a long silence until she was gone, and then Christie, comprehending only that the old woman didn’t like her, began to cry. Once again Diana gathered the little girl into her arms.

“It’s all right,” she whispered. “Everything’s going to be fine. I’m going to be your mother now, and you’ll be my little girl.”

The words struck a chord in Christie. Her crying abated, and she looked deep into Diana’s eyes.

“My mama died a long time ago,” she said, her voice quivering.

“I know,” Diana told her. “But now I’ll be your mama.”

Christie’s expression was uncertain as she searched Diana’s face. “Promise?” she said at last, her voice shaking.

“I promise,” Diana breathed.

Suddenly the little girl dissolved into tears once more, but this time she slid her arms around Diana’s
neck and clung to her. Lifting her up, Diana laid Christie gently on the sofa, then sat and cradled the child’s head in her lap. As Diana and Bill talked Christie’s sobbing eased until she lay still.

“Is she all right?” Diana asked. Christie seemed to have fallen asleep.

“She will be,” Bill assured her. “She’s still a little bit in shock, but I’d rather not give her anything—it seems as though every time something happens, we try to take something for it. But children are resilient.” He paused, then met Diana’s eyes. “Diana, are you sure this is wise?”