Читать книгу Twister - Genanne Walsh - Страница 9

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Leaves flutter and upturn. Branches gather toward their trunks. Trees reach further into the ground seeking anchor, their roots giving off a slow knell, a frequency felt by the earthworms—not a warning, an acknowledgement: something is coming.

Stalwart birches planted as windbreaks around farmhouses stand like pale soldiers. Wildflowers clasp their thin petals shut. The well-kept kitchen gardens of farmers’ wives pause their fecund celebration: Early Girl tomatoes, sweet peas, and spinach shoots curl their heads toward the earth.

Prairie grasses, where they’re left, undulate, though there is not yet wind to move them. The settlers had scrabbled life out of the land in bad years and walked through seas of golden wheat in the plum years. But they never truly claimed it—and sensing this, they cleared and plowed more vigorously, wore themselves out and died young. Before the great-great-grandparents came, before stakes went into the ground and lines were drawn and feuds begun and forgotten, this land and the people on it were all apiece. So vast it terrified the new ones in their tiny wagons, clutching colicky babies and leather-bound Bibles. Some descendants feel it underfoot like a breathing thing, roads and borders mere scars crisscrossing thick hide.

Abutting Rose’s place, Perry Brown’s house stands proud on its hill. His rocky untilled acre is solid and unmoved, and he feels the weight of one stone more than any other. Two limbs of the Infamous Elm rub together, giving off an imperceptible sigh, and corn prepares itself to lie flat in great waves.