Random Winds Read Free Page A

in protest or alarm.
    Mrs. Fairbanks shook her head. “No,” she repeated.
    “He can’t live. That’s sure.”
    Something welled up in Enoch, and he shook a furious fist at the universe.
    “No!” he cried fiercely. “No! Look at those eyes! Look at the life in those eyes! He will live, and he’ll be strong, too. So help me God, he will.”

Book One
THE
ASCENT

Chapter 1
    At the top of the long rise, Pa guided the horse toward the shade and drew in the reins. He pulled off his woolen jacket and laid it on the seat next to Martin.
    “Professional dignity be darned!” he said. “The next patient will have to look at me in my shirt-sleeves whether he likes it or not.”
    The sun was ahead of the season, Ma had remarked that morning. Shadbush was still in bloom, and barn swallows were barely back from the south in time for Decoration Day.
    “We’ll just wait a minute here,” Pa said, “and give the mare a rest.”
    The sweating animal stamped, slapping her tail. She had been making a strange sound for the last half hour, more like a plaint than a whinny.
    “Something’s bothering her, Martin.”
    “Black flies, do you think?”
    “Don’t see any, do you?” Pa climbed down to examine the mare. He pulled the harness aside and swore. “Damn! Damn, look at this!”
    The flesh along the horse’s back was rubbed bloody raw in a line as long as three fingers put end to end.
    “Laid open with a whip,” Martin said.
    “No doubt, and left to suppurate.”
    Martin nodded, feeling a twinge deep inside at sight of the wound, feeling also a certain pride at being the only boy in the fourth grade who knew the meaning of words like “suppurate” or who, for that matter, had a father like his.
    “Poor little livery stable hack!” Pa cried. “At the mercy of every drunken lout who has the money for its hire. Reach in my bag for the salve, will you?”
    The little mare quivered, her muscular back rippling and twitching.
    “Now a wad of gauze, a thick one.”
    When he was finished, Pa got the water bucket. The mare drank gratefully. Martin gave her an apple. Then the two stood watching, pleased with themselves, while the mare chewed, salivating in a long, thick rope.
    “She’s a nice little thing,” Pa said. “Wish I had the money to buy her and give her a decent home.”
    “But we’ve got Star, and she’ll be ready to take out again as soon as her foal’s a month old, won’t she?”
    “You’re right. I daresay the man would want thirty dollars for her.” Pa sighed. “Well, might as well start. One more call at Bechtold’s and then home in time for the parade.”
    They moved on again. “Just look up there, Martin, at the side of that far mountain! You can gauge the height by the kind of trees you see. At the bottom there’s oak, but oak won’t grow more than twelve or thirteen hundred feet up. After that, you get balsam. Way up top there’s spruce, all that bluish-green stuff.” He leaned over Martin, pointing with outthrust finger. “Those are the oldest mountains in the United States, you know that? See how the tops are rounded? Worn away, that’s why. And I’ll tell you something else.” He pointed to the left. “Down there, all that level land was once buried underwater. Can you believe that?”
    “You mean the ocean was here once?”
    “Yes sir, that’s just what I do mean.”
    “When the ocean came, what happened to the people? Did they all drown?”
    “No, no. That was millions of years before there were any people here.”
    At the foot of the hill, making a wide S-curve, lay the river.
    “Pa, is that the river that overflowed and drowned Enoch Junior and Susan and May?” Martin knew quite well that it was, yet he always asked.
    His father answered patiently, “That’s it.”
    “Then I was born, and you had me instead of EnochJunior as your boy. Do I look like him?” To that too, he knew the answer.
    “No, he was small and sandy, like me. You’re going to be tall, I think,