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She saw the pain in his eyes, the muddy mucus in his nostrils as she stroked his damp neck “I love you, boy,” she said Tears blinded her, blurred his beloved face “You gave us everything you had I should have spent more time with you I’m sorry”

“Loreda, no,” Grandpa said “That ain’t—”

Loreda put the ger The gunshot cracked loudly

Blood splattered Loreda’s face

After that, silence

Tears streaked down Loreda’s cheeks She wiped theovernment will pay us sixteen dollars for him Dead or alive,” she said

“Sixteen dollars,” Grandpa said “For our Milo”

Loreda knehat the grown-ups were thinking They’d have sixteen dollars, but no means of transportation And no crops No food

“How long before we all start falling to our knees and can’t get up? How long?”

She thren the gun and ran out of the barn She , all the way to California, but before she even reached the house, she felt the wind pick up She looked out and saw it: dust stor down from the north

Co fast

THAT WEEK, THE WIND beca monster that shook the house and rattled the s and pounded at the doors Wind blew at over forty miles an hour, day after day, no reprieve, just an endless, terrifying assault Dust rained down fro constantly All of thehed it up Birds were disoriented by the dust and slammed into walls and telephone poles Trains stopped on the tracks; drifts of sand moved like waves across the flat land

They woke to find outlines of their bodies in dust on the sheets They put Vaseline in their noses and covered their faces with bandannas The adults went out into thefro hand over hand, blinded by dust The chickens ith panic and breathing in dirt day after day, and the children stayed in the house, wearing gas ave hih the dust bothered him more than it did the rest of them

Elsa worried about hi as best she could in her scratchy voice Stories were the one thing that calmed him down

Now, on this fifth day of the storas h cracks in the rafters and fell on everything