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.
53
SLOANE
For a moment after the door bars shut, I can't see much at all. Then my eyes adjust and the barn resolves into shapes — the pigs milling at our feet, the pale rectangles of the two small windows, Maggie an arm's length away, breathing hard. Outside, where there was a blue sky ten minutes ago, there's a brown murk pressing against the glass, and the light coming through it is the color of weak tea. It's the middle of the day and it looks like dusk underwater.
Maggie pulls a cord, and a single bulb comes on overhead. It doesn't do much, just throws a small yellow pool over the pigs, leaving the corners of the barn in shadow.
"Okay," she says, mostly to herself. "Okay, we're in. Everyone's in."
I become aware of the sound. I'd been too busy to hear it, and now it's all I can hear — a low roar against the walls, the wind, rising and dropping and rising again, and underneath it a constant fine hiss, like someone pouring sand against the windows, which is exactly what it is. No rain. I keep waiting for rain because that's what a storm sounds like in LA, and it doesn't come. A bang comes from outside.
"What was that?"
"Gate, probably. Or a bucket." Maggie's wiping grit out of her eyes with the back of her wrist. "Nothing important."
I've been in storms and I've even sat through an earthquake that emptied the wine glasses off the shelves. I once watched a palm tree come down across a friend's pool in Malibu and I'm not someone who panics at weather. But I've never been sealed inside a wooden building in the middle of the afternoon while the day turns brown and a wall of dirt screams at the walls. The strangeness of it is unsettling. The dark at the wrong time of day, and the sense of the whole world being shut.
I look at Maggie and thankfully she looks calm. "How long does it last?" I ask.
"Not long, usually. Ten minutes, twenty. The front passes and then it's just wind for a while." She picks her way through the pigs toward the back wall. "But while we're stuck in here we need to cool off. Feel that?"
I do. With the door shut and the windows shut and fourteen pigs and two people sealed in, the air's gone thick and close.
"Pigs can't sweat," she says, crouching to grab the hose she fed in. "They cool down by getting wet. Shut in here in this heat, they'll overheat if we don't keep them cool. So." She cranks the tap and the hose coughs and produces a thin, unenthusiastic stream. "It's not much but it'll do."
She starts with Dolly, who's pressed against my legs and trembling. The water runs over the old pig's back and Dolly releases a long, shuddering grunt and leans harder into me. I put my hand on her and feel her start to settle.
"She trusts you," Maggie says, moving the hose along Dolly's flank. "Dolly panicked and she trusted you."
She works her way through them, Barbara and Gerald and the rest, the feeble stream wetting them down one by one. The panicked milling slows, and the grunting drops to somethingmore contented. The barn smells filthy, there's grit in my hair and down my back, my white T-shirt is brown and I don't care even slightly.
Maggie straightens up, the hose still running in her hand. Sweat's running down her temple, her shirt's stuck to her, and there's a smear of dirt across her face, but she's grinning.
"You're a mess," she says.
"So are you."
"You want some of this?" She lifts the hose.
"God, yes. Please."
She turns it on me, and the water's cool against the back of my neck. I make a sound that's frankly indecent, tipping my head and letting it run over my shoulders. When I open my eyes she's watching me with an expression that makes my temperature rise all over again.
"My turn," I say, and I take the hose off her.
I run it over her — her neck, her shoulders — and she closes her eyes as the water soaks the front of her shirt through. The cotton goes transparent and clings to her. I'm only human, so I stare at her nipples through the wet cotton, drawn tight, the curve of her breasts shifting as she breathes.
"You'd win a wet T-shirt competition for sure," I say. "I really don't mind this storm at all."
Maggie laughs and wrings out her hair. "Let's see how you feel about that when we get back out. It won't be pretty."
She takes the hose back and gives the pigs one more shower each before we sink down side by side against the wall in the straw. Dolly settles against my other side with a groan and shuts her eyes. The wind howls, the sand hisses, the light bulb sways and the heat presses down.
