I Will Send Rain Read Online Free PDF Page B

was a good thing he liked this kid. “I was thinking more along the lines of a manufacturing plant.”
    Styron winced a little, chafed by his boss’s lack of vision. He would keep thinking. Great men had ambition, optimism, and opportunity. Styron believed big ideas were the way to redemption. He likened the strategy to football. A rushing game was tedious—he’d take the risk and rapture of the long pass any day.
    â€œWhat about some kind of event? Like a yearly festival. Or a carnival?” Styron drew a circle in the air with his finger. “An enormous Ferris wheel lighting up the plains.”
    Jack stood and ruffled Styron’s hair, a gesture both avuncular and condescending. Everyone had either come here looking for something, or, like him, was running from something else.
    Styron scowled and dragged his finger through the dust on his desk.
    â€œCome on,” Jack said. “Coffee at Ruth’s. Didn’t you want to talk about the rabbits?”
    *   *   *
    A FEW MERCIFUL clouds took the edge off the heat as Birdie walked along the edge of the east field, through the gulch and over the rise to the Woodrow place. She wanted to see if it was true. Birdie had ridden the school bus—a truck outfitted with crude plank seats—with Maggie Woodrow, thirteen, redheaded and shy, one leg slightly shorter than the other. Her father had fastened a piece of tire rubber to the bottom of her shoe to lessen the hitch of her gait. Maybe they would be happier somewhere west. Maybe Maggie Woodrow had finally gotten herself some luck.
    The house appeared to slant, or maybe it was just that the dune of windblown dirt under the parlor window made it look off kilter. Up close, the paint was scratched away, and broken clapboards were roughly patched with aluminum scraps and tarpaper. The multiple sets of tire grooves in the dusty driveway would soon be smoothed away by the wind. Birdie knocked, just to be sure, before testing the door with her fingertips. It gave with little resistance, one of its hinges loose. Inside, it was surprisingly bright, as if, freed of its burden, the house was giving itself back to the elements. The kitchen window was broken out, a corona of glass on the floor below. Birdie leapt as a crow landed on the sharded sill, its black beak open and expectant, before it took off again with a papery swoosh. The Woodrows had left their kitchen table but they’d taken all the chairs.
    She repositioned a bobby pin to hold back the wisps around her face. Cy had found her green ribbon, but he now kept it pressed in his Bible and that was even better. Birdie opened a cupboard. A patchwork towel. A rose-colored teacup missing its handle. An empty coffee tin. She felt as if she was snooping on ghosts. By now, maybe poor, short-legged Maggie had seen the sea.
    A thump upstairs. Birdie was not alone. She stepped lightly through the empty sitting room toward the stairs.
    â€œHello?” she called. “Someone up there?”
    Footsteps tumbled across the floor above her. She climbed slowly, her curiosity trumping her nerves.
    Fred appeared at the top of the steps, with his scabbed knees and chipped-tooth grin.
    â€œDang it, Freddie,” she said, stomping the rest of the way up. “I thought you were catching bugs or whatever you do.” She pushed past him. “Find anything good?”
    Fred ran ahead into a bedroom and came back beaming, a doll’s head in one hand and a Coca-Cola bottle in the other.
    â€œI mean like money or a diary or something,” she said.
    Fred was such a kid. He didn’t understand a thing.
    She had had a sister once. Eleanor was born when Birdie was five. She didn’t remember much about her, but she did remember the hushed murmurs after the birth. She knew that something was wrong with the shriveled little body, her sister’s breath wet and whistling. Three months later she was buried in the small cemetery