Chapter 52
MAGGIE
The sky's still blue over the farm when I come out with my coffee, but the windsock by the feed store is standing straight out, and the oak is moving in a way I don't love.
So it's coming after all. I was hoping it would track north like these sometimes do — a dirty horizon and a forecast that overpromised. But the gusts are coming harder now, kicking little spirals of dust up off the drive. This one means it.
Sloane comes out to stand beside me. She's wearing one of my T-shirts and holding a mug of the terrible coffee she made for us. We didn't sleep much and what sleep we got was tangled and too warm and I'd take it again tonight without thinking twice.
"Maybe twenty minutes," I say. "Then we'll get everyone locked up."
She follows my eyes to the horizon. "Why not now?"
"Because it's a hundred and two and a shut barn is warm. If I pen the pigs up early they'll be very uncomfortable in there for no reason." I take a sip. "So we wait — keep them out in the air and the shade as long as we can, then bring them in at the last minute and hope it passes quick."
"And if it doesn't pass quick?"
"Then they're hot and miserable for a while and we deal with it." I tip the last of the coffee into the dirt and she does the same with a humorous grin.
"Sorry," she says sheepishly. "I wasn't sure about your coffee maker so I improvised. It's so weak you could read a newspaper through it."
I laugh. "I'll show you how to make it properly. But first, let's make a start on the chickens. They don't mind being inside, so that's a job we can do early either way."
We set the mugs down on the porch and head across the yard. The wind shoves at us the whole way, flattening Sloane's T-shirt against her and throwing her hair across her face, and by the time we reach the feed store she's holding it back with one hand.
"Here." I hand Sloane the scoop and point at the feed bin. "Put a tiny trail down inside, right to the back, then put a lot more food there. Don't chase them — you'll never win. When they're all in, shut the door and latch it."
"Got it."
Sloane walks a line of feed into the henhouse, talking to the broody one — Margaret — telling her there's a good girl, no need to be dramatic. I leave her to it and go for the hose.
I run it out from the tap behind the barn and feed it in through the pig barn door, coiling the slack so nobody trips. Once they're shut in there it'll heat up fast, so the pigs need to be kept wet. I'm straightening up from the tap when I feel it change.
The wind drops — that strange, held breath you get — and then it comes back from a different quarter, harder. Grit, fine and dry, stings the side of my face. I look up and the northern horizon isn't blue anymore. It's gone a dirty tan, low and wide, and it's moving.
It's not going to track north. It's coming straight for us, and it's coming early.
"Sloane!" I yell. "Are the chickens in?"
"Just shutting them now—"
"Latch it and come on. We're out of time."
She gets the latch and runs over, and I see her clock the horizon. "Is that—"
"Dust. Big one. Listen to me." I'm pulling the goat feed off the shelf as I talk.
"Goats and emus go in now. Put feed down in there, the goats will follow it straight in, and hopefully the emus will follow the goats — they hate being left out.
Get them in, shut them. I'll take Hank and help with the emus if they won't cooperate. Horses are already in. Go."
She goes while I grab a lead rope off the hook and head for the oak where Hank's standing with his ears swivelling.
Hank is easy. He follows a rope like a dog with the promise of an apple.
I clip him on and he leans back against it once, on principle, then gives in and lets me walk him toward the barn.
The emus are another matter.
By the time I've got Hank in and turned around, Sloane's at the shed doorway doing battle.
The goats have gone in like lambs while Thelma and Louise are pacing the fence line in a state of total avian outrage, necks up, drumming that deep underground thud.
Every time Sloane gets near them they peel off in opposite directions like they've rehearsed it.
"They won't go in!" she calls. The wind's loud now and she has to shout it. "I tried the food, they don't care about the food!"
I jog over. "They don't follow food, they follow the flock. We make ourselves big and we walk them in. Arms out and pretend you're a big bird. Don't corner them or they'll bolt."
So that's what we do — two grown women, arms spread like scarecrows, herding six feet of furious prehistoric bird across a paddock in a rising wind.
Louise drums at me. Thelma feints left, sees Sloane's outstretched arms, thinks better of it, and finally — finally — sees that her goats have all disappeared into the shed and panics in the right direction for once.
Louise gives me one last affronted look, decides she's not staying out here alone, and follows her sister in.
"Shut it!" I'm laughing despite everything, and Sloane laughs too as she slams the shed door and drops the bar.
The grit's coming steady now, the light going strange and yellow-brown, and the tan wall on the horizon isn't on the horizon anymore. It's close, rolling — you can see it turning over itself as it comes, a front of dust maybe a few hundred feet high, eating the fields as it advances.
"Pigs," I say. "Now. Run."
We run.
Fourteen pigs in an open yard with a dust storm bearing down, and pigs do not run from weather the way sensible animals do — they mill, they investigate, they pick the worst possible moment to lie down. But they have one weakness and it has never once failed me.
"Bucket!" I shove it into Sloane's hands and tip feed into it, then fill one for myself. "Shake it and walk backwards into the barn. They'll follow the sound. Don't stop, don't turn your back on Dolly — she's slow and she can't see, she'll get left. I'll push her from behind."
Sloane shakes the bucket and the effect is instant. Fourteen pigs abandon whatever they were doing and converge on the sound like it's the last food on earth. They pour in after her, grunting, shoving.
Dolly's last. She's caught the panic in the air and frozen halfway across the yard, head up, not knowing which way is safe.
The wind's screaming now and the first of the heavy dust is here, and I'm about to go back for her when Sloane drops the bucket inside the door, comes straight back out into it, and goes to her.
"It's me," I hear her say, low, right at Dolly's ear, one hand flat on the old pig's flank. "It's me, come on, this way, I've got you." And Dolly leans into Sloane and lets herself be steered, step by step, into the dark of the barn.
The wall hits as I'm pulling the door shut. There's a roar of wind and a faceful of grit and then the whole world goes brown at once, the daylight snuffed out like a hand over a lamp. I bar the door and it's just us and fourteen pigs with the storm howling against the barn.