"What is it?" Annie asked again, turning instinctively to the big man for a reassurance and protection she had no reason to expect.
Bradman straightened and moved away from her, looking at the black giant growing up from the earth in the distance and moving straight toward them.
"It's a sandstorm," he said. "It'll be here in ten minutes."
Annie let out the breath she had been holding. "Oh. That doesn't sound so bad. I don't know what I thought it was. I was just frightened." She smiled shyly and apologetically at Bradman.
Bradman grimaced at her, his agate eyes frozen in a pallid face that should have gone with red hair. The sand-blown lines in his face were cruel. "Sister, you've got a smile like a slab of concrete. Don't try it again."
"You didn't have to say that," Annie said quietly, closing her eyes against the winds of her anger.
"You didn't have to come here," he replied. "Goodbye."
"I'm not leaving," she said, still holding tight the doors of her anger.
"I am." He paced heavily over the sand floor and pulled back the flap of the door.
"Where are you going?" Annie glanced back at the towering giant, now glowing red in the sunlight, like some huge, grotesque devil.