The Wind in the Wheat [antikvár]

Chapter ONE 'I I I i I . The morning after his vision, with the sunlight streaming in through his window, Andrew Thomas Miracle awakened. He opened his eyes cautiously, half expecting to see some kind of vapor hanging in the air, some physical manifestation left over from the night before. But to his relief, everything was normal. His room was filled with the same familiar things, ,, each in its proper place. There was a comfort in the room, in the heavy I, t wood furniture, the blue jeans hung loosely over the back of a chair, his battered work boots standing in a corner. But he knew absolutely that he ; ' had not been dreaming. His vision had come to him while he was fully !,V awake. j' What had happened that night proved to be the axle around which so many unforeseen stories have turned. It isn't logical. It is inexplicable because of the many cracks in which sin hides, and there is no graceful way to tell it. It went untold for a long time because even as it happened, it seemed that it was intended to be a private thing, not to be shared. He had been sleeping upstairs in the farmhouse when the Spirit came, and there had been no warning. There was no mighty wind. There was no flapping of curtains and no rusding of leaves. No window crept open, drawn upward by unseen power. The Spirit came from the silence, and it did not ease into the room. It entered the room like a whip, snapping. Andrew had been praying a dangerous prayer: the prayer to serve the |f j . I,I. 1 I ' II ; 11 I ' I living God. For months he had hurled it out into space like a lifeline, at other i;, V. times releasing it like a caged animal. Sometimes, at work in the fields, he j had just chanted it until it seemed like the words were blown away in the fe'V' wind, rising into the sky with the scraps and dust off" the bales of hay. He Z; !