The Wind Comes Sweeping by Marcia Preston

Author:Marcia Preston
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MIRA Books
Published: 2009-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

She should have put Benadryl in the coffee, too. Because that night after she had dressed for bed and slipped into the respite of cool sheets, Burt pounded on her locked bedroom door.

“Open up, Lena, before I knock this door off its hinges.”

She sat still in the bed, crushing a pillow against the burn in her stomach.

“You’re my wife, goddammit!”

When she mustered the courage to speak, her voice sounded like a child’s. “I’m having my period,” she said.

“Don’t lie to me. Open the damn door!”

She counted five seconds before his boot slammed into the door. Her body jerked. She bit down on the corner of the pillow.

When he kicked the door again, the wood around the hinges splintered. The third time, the hinges gave way and the door fell sideways in slow motion. It swung recklessly by the twisted padlock, still fastened.

She wondered if he would hit her, but he contented himself with a different kind of violence. While he rutted on top of her like a wild pig, Lena gripped the bedding in her fists and watched a shadow bloom on the bedroom ceiling. The shadow was shaped like a dog’s head. She wondered if he really had stolen a puppy from the Youngblood ranch, and if so, what he’d done with it. Her head bumped against the headboard, and on the ceiling she saw a vision of Burt bashing the poisoned eagle, crushing the bones in its dark, graceful wing. She hoped it was dead before the bashing, and quickly behind that thought she pictured the baby bones she’d read about in the Pacheeta newspaper, uncovered by the big machines on Killdeer Ridge. She closed her eyes but the image of the bones remained and tears ran down her temples.

Coward. Coward. Coward.

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