The wind did not stop. It howled endlessly through a cloudless sky and the earth dried out and exhausted summer leaves were torn from the trees and stray dogs drank antifreeze in desperation and died in agony in back allies.
The volunteers at the fire station feared the wind. A hundred years ago the community had burned when the same wind fanned the fire on Dog Mountain and sent it searing through the tree tops and on to the shake roofs of the town.
Hat's great grandfather had written a prayer then: ``Oh God, who has seen fit to deprive us of home and belongings and the means to make a living, we praise you for your goodness and we hope to understand your works.'' A copy of this prayer was in a cabinet at the Grange Hall. Hat used to wonder about it when he was a kid.
For himself he liked the wind. It blew his garbage into other people's yards. It blew the garbage out of his mind too, though he didn't know if his mind garbage ended up in someone else's brain. He hoped not.
He stood out in the hay field and let the wind blow through him. Then he noticed the shingle tabs leaving the roof and sailing to the ground.
``Damn,'' he muttered. It was a thirty year roof and this was its thirty third year. Time to leave, the tabs must be thinking. He remembered what his dad said. ``Next time you put on a roof you're going to have to take off all the old layers. There's four layers up there. That's too many.''
Hat got up on the roof and tried to anchor down a blue tarp. It took a lot of tires, but the tarp lasted out the winter.
In the spring he was set to do the roof job. He hauled in the plywood and had the shingles delivered. He started pulling off the old shingles and tossing them in a rented drop box. When he reached the rafters he got a surprise. The tops of the rafters were all charred.
``Great Grandfather's house didn't burn down,'' he thought.
``No,'' said old Mrs Krum, ``your house didn't burn. He stayed home and saved his house when the others were on the mountain trying to stop the fire. That's what they said when I was a girl. A lot of folks thought he should have saved the church or the school but no, he was up on his own roof with the kids handing up buckets of water and the fire never really caught that house. He was ashamed though, afterwards, or so my mother said.''
``They must have hated him,'' he thought. ``That poem. They must have hated the whole family.''
``Saved his seed grain too - and his seed potatoes. Set them in the middle of the plowed field with the twins - your grandfather was one of them.''
``But no one died.''
``A boy died on the mountain. The women and kids went down into the canyon and the fire blew itself out on the canyon rim.''
``And now its all forgotten,'' said Hat.
``And now its all forgotten,'' said Mrs Krum.