Wind

ALL IT HAD TAKEN WAS ONE PARALYZING LOOK OUT THE REAR window of Henry’s sedan to realize their sojourn had ended. As soon as the train passed and the State Patrol cruiser diverted onto a side street, Edgar jumped into the back seat, and for the rest of the drive he’d held Tinder and Baboo in down-stays, ducking and hoping that Essay, up front with Henry, would look unremarkable. He should never have agreed to a joyride in broad daylight. If the State Patrol officer had looked at them a little longer, been a little less distracted, or had been reminded that morning of the curious bulletin outstanding for a runaway with three dogs, then the flashers atop his cruiser would have started to spin and that would have been the end of it.

By the time they pulled into the driveway, Edgar had resolved to leave at once. Henry stalled him and dug out a map and calculated the distance from Lute to Thunder Bay. It turned out to be over two hundred miles. Henry pointed out the impossibility of Tinder walking that far with a half-healed foot. “And that’s if you go straight through Superior. How did you plan to do that if you’re so worried about being spotted?”

I don’t know, Edgar wrote. We’ll figure out something.

“Look,” Henry said. “If you’re dead set on this, let me drive you as far as the border. I know the back roads around here. We can stay off the main highways. I can even get us around Superior. Then it’s a straight shot up the North Shore Highway.”

Let me see that map, Edgar signed.

He traced out the route for himself, but there was no real choice. Henry could jump them ahead by weeks in a single day. Once near the border they could choose a likely spot and continue on foot. After that, they both guessed five more days walking to Thunder Bay, ten if he babied Tinder. In truth, accepting Henry’s offer looked like the only way Starchild was reachable.

Okay, Edgar signed. But we leave tomorrow.

HE WAITED UNTIL HENRY was asleep that night and walked to the shed and opened the doors. He squeezed his way along the fender of the Skyliner and hiked himself over the door and sat in the driver’s seat and rested his palms on the fluted ring of the steering wheel. In the dark, he could barely see his hands.

Are you there? he signed.

He waited. A long silence followed. After a time he decided it was no use and he started to go back to the house. Then he told himself it wouldn’t hurt to try anyway. He lifted his hands in the dark.

Did you see that thing in me? he signed. That rare thing?

IN THE MORNING EDGAR calmed the dogs by running exercises in the yard-fetches, come-fors, heels. They had stayed so long with Henry the dogs were lax about sticking near him, and now that they were heading out again they would need those skills. Henry called in sick to work, coughing weakly into the telephone receiver and grinning at Edgar. They left just after ten o’clock, when Henry guessed traffic would be lightest. Tinder sat up front, but Edgar stayed in back with Essay and Baboo and a set of blankets, trying to shake off his jitters. He downed the dogs and drew the blankets over them whenever a car came into view. Henry was quiet. He lay his arm across the front seat and rested a hand on Tinder’s shoulder.

After an hour they were west of Brule. Henry cut across Highway 2. He had a spot in mind, he said, where they could stop, give the dogs a break-a little cove he and Belva had discovered while exploring the coastline.

Keep going, Edgar signed. They don’t need it.

“Are you kidding?” Henry said. “These dogs are pee machines. I don’t want to find out what it’s like to wipe that out of the nooks and crannies of my fine vinyl seats.”

Essay seemed to sense an opportunity. She peered into Edgar’s face and breathed anxiously.

Stop it, he signed. You’re going to get us in trouble.

When they’d left Henry’s little valley, the sun was shining between sparse white clouds, but as they approached Lake Superior the clouds merged into the solid blue mass of a storm front. By the time Henry arrived at the turnout and killed the engine, the sun had been eclipsed by the advancing storm.

Henry climbed out of the car. Edgar sat in the back seat, looking up and down the road for traffic.

“Relax,” Henry said, knocking on the side window. “Don’t you want to see the lake? Look around. No one’s here.”

Henry was right, but the thought of standing in the open with all three dogs made him edgy. He’d spent whatever luck he had. On the other hand, the weather was turning ugly, so there was little chance they’d linger. And it would be harder to let the dogs out in the rain.

“See,” Henry said. “Nobody for miles. You’ll like this. Follow me.”

He led them through stands of scrub pine and maple on a faint trail. The trees were slick with green moss and the ground slippery, and made all the more treacherous by the storm gusts that had begun lashing the underbrush. The air was filled with the scent of the lake. Even before Edgar glimpsed water he heard the smashing of waves against the shore.

They emerged near a secluded cove, not much bigger than Henry’s yard. At the back stood a sheer rock wall, twenty or thirty feet high, forming an irregular curve covered with gray ledges and pocked with erosion holes, some so big they looked like caves. A colony of water birds squawked and flapped near the top, where a shag of turf and tree roots overhung the rock.

Edgar saw at once why Henry liked the spot. On a sunny day, it would have felt cozy and secluded-a place where Edgar could have relaxed and watched the flat, watery horizon without fear of being spotted. Up and down the coastline all he could see were trees on rocky cliffs. No houses, no roads, not even boats on the water.

As Edgar and Henry picked their way down the last few feet of trail the dogs bounded onto the driftwood-strewn beach. Out on the lake, the water beneath the storm had turned black and choppy. A thread of lightning flickered between the sky and the water.

When Tinder paused to lift his leg against one of the larger chunks of driftwood, Henry gave Edgar one of his significant looks. The dog was only scent marking, but Henry took it as vindication that the dogs indeed needed a break.

“I told you. Don’t feel bad. You just have to know how to read them,” he said, modestly. “If you were staying around longer, I could teach you how I know these things. People think it takes some special talent, but I tell them-”

Then his mouth dropped open and he lifted his hand to point. Something was happening out on the lake. In the time it had taken them to walk onto the beach, the storm front had lowered, blackened, begun to roll over itself. What looked like a puff of steam jumped off the water, disappeared, then formed again.

“Tornado,” Henry said. “Waterspout, I mean. Oh, Jesus Christ, look at that.”

Edgar turned and was instantly riveted at the sight. As the funnel drew water up from the lake, it resolved, bottom to top, translucent at first, then white, then gray. Two more funnels appeared behind the first, wooly tubes dropping from the clouds. A chest-rattling thrum reached them. The dogs looked up, hackles raised.

“This is not good,” Henry said. “I don’t like this.”

Somehow the three funnels gave the impression of standing still and hurtling forward at the same time. Edgar felt no impulse to run or hide or do anything but watch. The most distant of the three was nothing more than a sinuous thread coiling over the water. The one nearest to shore, maybe a mile away, had thickened into a sturdy vortex that narrowed to a point at the water’s surface. All three were heading east, across the lake; if they kept going, they would pass in front of the cove, though not by much. He stood wondering if the storm that had corkscrewed the boards on their barn roof had birthed funnels like these.