This is a story. It never happened and never will. The General Disclaimer is incorporated herein by reference.

BR&T date: Thursday, 13 March 1997

"Cindy?" A nudge against her shoulder accompanied the voice. "Cindy, wake up. The storm is over, and we can go back inside the house now."

Cindy raised her head up from the rough wooden shelf she had been using as a pillow, opened her eyes, and took in her surroundings. Rows of jars on shelves lined the small cave her mother used for storing food, and, as they had last night, for emergency shelter from wind storms. Her cheek felt sore from pressing on the wood all night as she sat sleeping in a small chair. She hadn't slept well, because of the cold and the constant small breezes blowing in through the ill-fitting door of the cellar. All night long it had felt like little touches all over her legs and up underneath her light lavender nightie. Cindy's bright red raincoat was not long enough to keep out the unwelcome breezes. But the wind had at last departed unsatisfied, and the morning light peeked in lecherously at the little girl through the cracks around the doorway.

"Oh!" she gasped, seeing the light. "I better get ready for school!" Cindy attended second grade in Chenoa, along with her friend Marie and several other children from around the countryside. Both she and Marie were eight years old, though she was three months younger, having just turned eight a couple of weeks before.

"The radio announcer said there won't be school today," her mother reported, "because the power is still out almost everywhere. He said this was the worst March windstorm in fifty years."

Cindy didn't mind school; she liked it, mostly. Other than church, it was almost the only time she could be with Marie, her best friend. Her only friend, to be truthful. The children who lived close to her were all boys, or babies, or teenagers, mostly, or resented that her great-granddaddy, Ezekiel Graymont, had founded the town and she had the same name. Marie didn't mind, and played with her anyway, but she lived three miles south, in Meadows, which had been named for Marie's great-granddaddy, too.

Cindy wished school wasn't cancelled, but there was no use in wishing. She stood, stretched, and followed her mother out of the cellar. They looked around at tattered branches, pieces of fencing, shingles from the barn, and other oddities, scattered everywhere and littering the farm. Power poles across the gravel road lay broken, snapped by the powerful wind. Most bizarrely, an umbrella frame, its fabric stripped away, protruded from the side of the barn, out of reach from the ground. A section of the fence for the livestock pens had blown over, and all of the livestock were missing. Her mother groaned upon seeing that. It would probably take most of the day to find them back and pen them up.

"There's the screen door!" Cindy pointed. It had crumpled against the side of the silo, fractured almost beyond recognition, after blowing out of Cindy's hand hours ago.

They rounded the corner of the barn and approached the house. The sight before them left them both speechless. They stopped. Ten seconds or two minutes later, they finally started toward the house, in shock. The familiar elm tree that had stood outside Cindy's bedroom window the night before no longer stood. It lay, shattered, across the house, and the house underneath it gave it little support, merely a resting place, as it was just as shattered as the tree.

The wall of Cindy's bedroom had fallen in, and the roof with it.

Dreading what she would find, Cindy followed her mother into the house and ran to her bedroom. It had rained torrential rain for hours after the roof had collapsed, and powerful winds ensured that the rain had soaked everything in the entire room. She couldn't even enter more than a few paces, because of the beams of the roof, but it was obvious her canopy bed had been smashed beyond repair. She stood there crying. "Where am I going to sleep?" she wailed.

"Don't worry, Cindy, we'll figure something out," her mother said, but her tone of voice belied her confidence.

Just then there came a knock on the front door. Cindy ran to answer it, and found her neighbors, Dallas and Austin, and their uncle. They were brothers, five and six years older than Cindy. She didn't know their uncle very well, as he had just moved in with them recently. All she knew was that he wasn't married.

He looked at her, rather than her mother. "We were driving by and saw that tree laying on your house," the man explained, "so we stopped to see if there was anything we could do to help." He knelt down and took Cindy's hands in his. "Are you okay?" he asked her, strong concern for her showing clearly on his face. "You've been crying," he noted, and reached out to offer a hug.

Cindy held back. She didn't know him. But he seemed to care about her.

"It landed on her bedroom," her mother began, gesturing them to come in, "and smashed her bed. Thank God she wasn't there at the time!"

Cindy hadn't even considered that, although she thought she should thank her mother, instead, as the one responsible for getting her out of bed. Couldn't God have kept the tree from falling in the first place, or at least blown it away from the house? Her mother had saved her life, and only her mother, as far as Cindy could see. God had smashed her bedroom, or had sat back and watched it happen. But she didn't argue about that subject. She never did.

"Now she doesn't have any place to sleep, until this gets repaired," her mother continued, when they reached the door to Cindy's room. "My own room is too small for two, and we have no other bedrooms in the house."

"How about our guest room?" Austin suggested, asking his uncle. "She could stay there, at least for a few days, couldn't she?"

"But-" the man began.

"Oh! Could she!?" Cindy's mother interrupted. "We'd be so grateful!"

Cindy looked up, silent, her eyes steady on him, watching him decide, as he looked back down at her.

"I suppose that would be fine. We'll have to ask my brother first, of course. He'll probably allow it for a few days, maybe a week, but then what?" he asked. "You won't have this fixed up and ready to live in again for weeks, maybe months," he gestured at the horrific mess before them as he stood at the door to the bedroom, "and that's a long time to expect us to keep a guest." He moved beside Cindy and stroked her hair.

"I have an idea," Dallas said.

"Maybe we could send her to stay with her aunt in Cleveland," her mother suggested, ignoring Dallas.

"No!!" Cindy objected. "I'd miss school here, and Aunt Ruth, well, she just isn't nice! Besides that, Cleveland stinks!!"

"I have an idea," Dallas repeated, tugging at his uncle's arm.

"How about Uncle Joe in Idaho?"

"Uncle Joe? Idaho? I don't even know him!" Cindy pouted. She took the hand that had been stroking her hair, and held it, stroking the strong fingers in return, absent-mindedly. Then the fingers stroked hers, and she looked up at him and smiled. She saw him smiling back at her.

"Well, how about what's-his-name in Montana? Your father's umm... second cousin, I think. He works at that ranch, the Barren Hole or something, the one that's a boarding school. Would that work?" her mother asked.

"Aaaackkk!" Cindy responded, being perfectly clear in a single word.

"Come to think of it, never mind," her mother relented. "It's an all-boys school anyway, I'm pretty sure."

"I have an idea!!" Dallas insisted, pushing his way forward and waving his hands in front of four faces.

"Well? What is it? And stop that!" his uncle frowned.

"Her playhouse! Out back, you know, behind the barn. If it isn't down from the wind, you could move her stuff in there, and she could move in just like it was her real bedroom, and stay there until this one is all fixed up again. It would only take a few days to make it good enough to live in, so she wouldn't have to stay with us very long at all," he laid out his plan. "Not that I'd mind," he reassured Cindy on the side, with a smile.

"I like it!" Cindy piped up. The toolshed she'd taken as a playhouse when the new toolshed was built would make a great bedroom, she thought.

"That's awfully far from the house," her mother objected, "but if you don't mind walking that far, it does have a good roof and walls, and it's as big as this room was. At least, if it's still standing, I don't see any reason why you couldn't stay there for awhile." 'Zoning laws be damned,' she added to herself, hoping her neighbor wouldn't bring it up.

"Let's take a look at it," the man proposed, and turned to leave, the rest of them following. Cindy took his hand after they left the house. He glanced around, and saw her mother behind them, and put his hand in his pocket. Confused, Cindy looked up at him, but he didn't look at her. The five of them crossed the littered farmyard, gazing at all the debris again. "Looks a lot like ours," he commented. "It'll just take some time to clean it up, that's all. But first we have to take care of what's important, getting her some place to stay, before we worry about the small stuff."

Cindy warmed inside, liking this man she hadn't known much about before. 'He thinks I'm important. More important than cleaning up messes!' she realised. She walked slowly, letting her mother pass her by. He walked slowly, and her mother passed him, also. He took her hand again, and she smiled up at him. He kept his attention ahead of him, but he also kept his thumb rubbing her gently, and occasionally gave her a little squeeze. When they finally came within sight of the metal toolshed on a concrete base that Cindy used as a playhouse, her mother turned, and he dropped Cindy's hand again. Was she important to him, or not? She felt sad, and confused, by the way he acted toward her.

"Not even bent!" he admired, stepping closer to examine it. "It's well designed, built strong, and bolted down to the cement on all four walls. It's a safe building, at least. But is it livable? It probably gets cold, without insulation, but at least it has a window on each end for a little light."

The two adults inspected it, and declared it fit for temporary use, with a few additions. "We can stay around and help move her things into it today, but it won't be ready for her to live in until it has heat and electricity. I can take care of that for you, getting the parts I need and hooking it up, electricity tomorrow and heat the day after that. I'm sure you'll have your hands full dealing with other problems. Such as that," he gestured toward the fallen livestock fence.

"Ohh," the woman groaned again. "Could you help me round up the stock?" she pleaded.

He glanced at Cindy. He looked distressed, and frustrated, for some reason. He sighed. "Sure, I guess I should help with that, and leave the boys here to help her salvage what she can from her bedroom." He sighed again, then brightened a little. "I can use my truck, and you drive yours, that way we'll get them rounded up faster, and be back here sooner. Boys, you stay here and help out, okay?"

The boys grinned. They looked pleased to stay and help Cindy, rather than slog through mud, chasing down stray cows.

Cindy's mother looked distressed, and frustrated, possibly because of all the problems the storm had caused. "Yes, I guess that would be faster," she said, not sounding happy about it.

"Oh, what's your name?" he asked.

"Bertha," she said. "Don't you remember? We met at the school program at her school, just last week."

"Cindy, Mister," she answered, at the same time as her mother, meeting his gaze and giving him a shy smile while tucking her long black hair behind an ear.

"Daniel," he told her, taking her hand in a gentle but warm handshake. "And don't you dare ever think of calling me 'Mister' again, Cindy!" He straightened. "And yes, I do remember." He turned back to Cindy. "You were the coyote who tried to scare the rancher, weren't you?"

"Yes!" Cindy brightened, surprised but pleased that he remembered her. She had only been on the stage for about a minute out of a half hour play. All the popular kids got the best parts. The only reason she wasn't the skunk was because Marie had stood up for her.

"You were a great coyote," he smiled, making Cindy smile even brighter.

"Thank you," she answered shyly.

He turned to the boys and said, "We'll be back when we're done, or else for dinner, whichever happens first. I expect it'll take us hours to find them all. You be nice to Cindy, I mean it."

The boys looked a little nervous, but they nodded. The adults departed in separate pickup trucks. Cindy and the boys returned to the scene of the disaster and looked at her water-logged belongings, wondering where to begin.

"Let's get what you'll need for tonight, first," Austin suggested, and carefully stepped into the mess, ducking under a fallen beam. "You stay there and just tell me what to get, Cindy."

"Oh, Cindy?" Dallas asked. "You won't mind sharing the guest room with Uncle Danny, will you? We forgot to mention that he's already staying in it. But it's plenty big, and there is a second bed we'll unfold and set up for you."

Cindy stood there in the doorway of her bedroom, looking at the ruin of everything she owned, and smiled. Maybe she could make a second friend.