Readings from Home and Childhood

The Wind

I was ten. So it must have been 1971 that the only hurricane to hit Cobequid Bay, Nova Scotia, during my life there, was coming.

It was September. My brother David and I were bored.
"Come on Marie. What kind of sister are you? Just try it!"
She agreed.

We placed her into an old steamer trunk and locked it. David and I hauled it into the yard.

We went into the house and looked out at the trunk. The wind came up. The trunk hit a tree, spun around, hit the tree again and smashed into the house.

David laughed. The wind died.
We raced for the trunk, now beaten and torn. We unlocked it.

Marie was crying. Her tooth had gone through her lip. We pulled her out. We helped her into the house. The wind blew hard. We watched from inside as the trunk blew into the woods.

Marie looked at the spinning trunk, looked at the blood on her dress, looked at us, ran and yelled for our mother.

David and I looked at each other.

- Gordon Scott

From No More Masterpieces: Short Prose by New Writers edited by Guy Allen et al. Reproduced by permission of Canadian Scholars' Press Inc.