The Rogue Breeze

She should’ve known, she told herself later.

The afternoon air bore that same vague stillness it always did, whenever thick gray clouds would start moving in and filling up the sky. The stout farmer, headed out to his tractor in the open field, had his eye on the threatening mass above his head. But something then brought him to a standstill. He turned back to his pregnant wife who was stooped over a loaded laundry basket she’d set down under a large oak beside the implement shed. He called to her, saying how he thought he’d heard someone hollering from the woods. He then said he was sure he’d heard it and needed to go over and take a look for whoever it was that might’ve needed help, before the weather set in.

The young woman stood up and squinted at him, wondering what he had meant by “someone hollering.” It should’ve registered with her then. But his thick arms were already swinging and leather boots marching across the broad field littered with square bales of hay that still needed to be taken to the barn. That bulky figure of a man kept getting smaller and smaller the further away he moved from her, till it seemed he’d almost merged with the trees and brush at the woods’ edge. She just shook her head and turned back with the bed sheet she’d pulled from the basket, preparing to drape it over the nearby clothes-line.

Within an instant, those eerily-shaped clouds above her had let loose a gush of air which then descended and accosted the unwary wife, snatching one upper corner of the sheet from her hand. She gripped the other and held it firm till she could get the pin in place, then slid along the sheet’s edge and retrieved the absconded corner, all the while cursing her sly attacker. To further its indulgences, the reckless breeze next took hold of the lower corners and yanked these away from her, as well, adding the extra touch of lifting the hem of her dress while playing with the loose strands of her long red hair. With hair shook loose from her freckled face and the wayward hem subdued, the woman then wrestled with her spirited menace till she’d gotten the billowing sheet secured to the line.

“That devil of a wind has some nerve,” she grumbled, “daring to come ‘round and flirt with an expectant woman while her husband gets to go trotting off somewhere. I swear!”

Shortly after dark, she again discovered her persistent suitor now toying with the curtains of an open window while seeking entry through her sewing room.

“Go on!” she told it. “Go on now!” she said, waving it away and slamming the window shut. “I’ll have no more of that, you hear me?”

The ticking clock in the hallway showed the hour as getting past eight. She lifted the farmer’s plate of food from the kitchen table and placed it in the refrigerator, still wondering if she should call someone—still wondered even later, if she should’ve. After standing for a while on the back steps in the light from the doorway and staring out into the windy darkness, she went upstairs, got undressed, and lay in bed listening for his footsteps. Nothing came to her ears except the sound of the big oak’s branches being scraped against the tin roof of the shed.

Throughout the night, the breeze grew bolder with its enticements and sought to lull her to sleep with its sweet moaning around the corners of the house. When she finally did succumb, it filled her dreams with hundreds of bed sheets hung from a hundred clothes-lines, all flapping and wrapping themselves around her whenever she tried to turn and get away.

At the end of the week, the farmer’s brother drove up. She came out to him on the front porch. He stood there, looking down at something in his hands and took a deep breath before saying her name.

“It was him alright,” he told her, lifting his head and staring straight into her eyes.

“Are they sure?” she asked.

“They said that fallen tree had him pinned down pretty deep in the mud back there,” he said. “But it was him. Wouldn’t have found him, if they hadn’t come back after that weather to finish their logging. That must’ve been what he heard that day, one of them hollering to another. It was when they started clearing the debris after that wind storm that they ….” He held out to her a stained leather wallet.

She opened it. A foggy layer of moisture coated the clear plastic over the license’s picture, but the impression of that wide bearded face of his could not be mistaken.

The brother assured her, “It was none they’d been cutting though, just some big dead pine that got blowed over by the weather, seems. So no one’s fault then.”

“No one?” she repeated. “No one, you say?”

“Just sheer accident, gal, that’s all,” he replied. “No one’s to blame, not even him. Now, if you’d gone and called that first night, he might’ve had a chance. But that don’t mean nothing now. For all we know, he was a goner the instant that thing landed on him.”

She closed the wallet and with her thumb rubbed away some of the caked dirt from its smooth leather surface, her mind starting to open up to the clever ways of that troublesome breeze which had come down that cloudy afternoon he’d gone over to the woods.

The brother turned away, pocketing his hands. “Well, I’d best be getting back. I’ve made the arrangements, so nothing more for you to do. As for the farm …”

“It’ll be mine now, won’t it?” she said.

“You sure about that?” He looked back at her and stared down at how much bigger she'd gotten since last time he'd seen her. “I mean, it’s a lot of work, even for a man. I could hire you someone, so you wouldn’t need to, you know, …”

“Don’t bother yourself on my account,” she replied. “I can manage on my own just fine. Have to. I know what all needs doing anyway.” She turned and reentered the house.

Leaning on a chair in the kitchen, she huffed and sniffled and stared down at his wallet lying on the table top. The young farmer, even with a hefty mortgage and timber prices fluctuating the way they did, still managed somehow to pay for whatever they needed. She had never even thought to ask.

Having wiped her eyes, she picked up the wallet and headed out the back door. The day had been hot and still. In the shadow of the oak, she stared off across the broad field still full of those bales needing to be taken up, looking toward that line of trees into which he’d disappeared and from which her former careless heart would never again emerge to convict her.

The machinery of the loggers could be heard again, keeping up their ceaseless humming and buzzing further down in the woods.

She should’ve known, it grated her so. “That cursed breeze!” she muttered to herself—admonishing herself, more than anything. She then opened the wallet and took from it his credit card.

Taking his pickup into town, she made a stop at the beauty shop before heading over to the hardware store. By late afternoon, she’d returned and was backing up to the house’s back door step. A large cardboard box sat in the truck’s bed. After managing to slide it across the kitchen floor and into the utility room, she measured by sight the open spot next to the washer and, running a hand over the now shortened ends of her hair, reckoned there room enough for the dryer she felt lucky to have found on sale.

By late afternoon, the machinery in the woods had gone silent. Wearing a new pair of overalls, a ball cap, and a pair of leather gloves, she headed out into the field and boarded the tractor left parked with a long trailer attached. While she worked, thin clouds appeared in the sky and drifted westward, dowsed with the last light of the lowering sun. She was certain that, once the sun disappeared beyond the woods and the first stars showed through the clouds, the same unrelenting breeze would make its way down and come stirring around among the bales left on the ground—only this time she’d made sure to leave nothing for herself to be blamed for.

With a third of the lot having been loaded and stacked, she stood beside to the trailer, wiped sweat from her cheeks and arched her stiffened back. A hand rested on the bulging front of her overalls, as she stared up into the deepening air above.

“Come on!” she called to the cowardly breeze. “Come on then! Hiding out up there, thinking you could sneak down and take advantage of a silly woman’s heart. Come on then, make yourself useful for once by cooling me down at least, till I can get the last of these bales put away.”