HIS FATHER showed him the paper next day, thumbed a picture from the front page of a tree through a house. They fell in the storm, and lines broke, and the wind touched sixty. A man two miles past the city limit stayed out in the wind and pulled clothes from a line, and part of his roof broke off. He kept, but then he took a two-by-four into his head, above the left ear, and it lodged and almost touched his brain, and then a doctor pulled it out and wrapped bandages over the hole.
A few days he thought about her, and his head fumed. He was confused. He scribbled a note, asked her to meet him at a silo he knew. He left it on her front step.
He shut the dog in the house, and walked six miles outside of town.
The silo was bullet gray and rust sealed, at the end of a dirt road, fell corn on both sides. A small white house stood dark against the trees in back of the field, and no cars were out front. He walked inside and saw slits in the domed roof of the silo, light coming through onto the curved walls behind him. He sat in the dirt, and stared at the door panel. He waited for it to open.
He heard her feet soft, and the car door pushed shut, and then she stood in the doorway and looked down on him. The light was strong at her back, and it pinned his eyes.
Would you shut the door, please? he said.
He stood up, and reached behind her and pulled the door closed. He turned and faced her. He couldn’t make out her face so well in the dark. He stared hard, and he tried to see something there in her face. He didn’t know what. He kissed her blind, or she kissed him. He was confused as to who started it.
He’s going to find you, she said.
He shook his head.
I’m sorry
You’ve said that already, he said. Could we just stop, please? You’re like a fucking baby. You and all the rest.
Her face clinched some.
See? he said. Go back to the fucking baby house.
He pointed at the door. She looked at him hard.
What? he said.
He pointed to the door again, took her by one arm and pushed her toward it.
Get out of here, he said.
She stumbled when he pushed her again.
There’s nothing to say, he said. Go the fuck home.
He sat down against the wall at his back and put his eyes on the dirt. She stepped over the bottom of the doorframe.
Shut the goddamn door, he said.
She did. It was late afternoon, the light had moved up the front wall of the silo, back toward the bent roof. It was almost gone.