Black Hills

chattering on the rooftops. Well-versed in spring weather, Lil ordered all vehicles that could fit under cover. She maneuvered her own truck through the mud as the golf balls began to ping.
    The animals had enough sense to take shelter, but she watched some of the interns racing around, laughing, scooping up handfuls of hail to toss. As if it were a party, she thought, and the slashes of lightning cracking the black sky were just an elaborate light show.
    She shook her head as she caught sight of Eric juggling three balls of hail, like a street performer while the cannon fire of thunder boomed.
    Someone, she thought, was going to get beaned.
    She cursed as a clump the size of a healthy peach slammed into the hood of her truck. Even as she squeezed the truck under the overhang on the storage shed she snarled at the new dent.
    Not laughing now, she noted, as interns scrambled for the nearest shelter. There would be more dents and dings, she knew. Shredded plantings and an unholy mess of ice to scrape and shovel. But for now, she was warm and dry and opted to wait it out in the truck.
    Until she saw a softball of ice wing into the back of one of the running interns, and pitch her forward into the mud.
    “Crap.”
    Lil was out and sprinting even as a couple of her other kids rushed to pick up the fallen.
    “Get her inside. Inside!” It was like being pelted by an angry baseball team.
    She grabbed the girl, half dragged, half carried her to the porch of her own cabin. They arrived wet and filthy, with the girl pale as the ice that battered the compound.
    “Are you hurt?”
    The girl shook her head, and wheezing, braced her hands on her knees. “Knocked the wind out of me.”
    “I bet.” Lil flipped through the jumbled data in her brain to find names for the two of the new crop of interns while thunder roared over the hills like stalking lions. “Just relax. Reed, go in and get Lena some water. Wipe your feet,” she added. For all the good it would do.
    “It happened so fast.” Lena shivered, and her eyes stared out of a face smeared with mud. “It was just like little ice chips, then ping-pong balls. And then . . .”
    “Welcome to South Dakota. We’ll have Matt take a look at you. Are you sure you’re not hurt?”
    “Um. No. Just sort of . . . wowed. Thanks, Reed.” She took the water bottle, drank deep. “Scared me. And still.” She looked past Lil to where the ice balls hammered the ground, and a vicious pitchfork of lightning hurled out of the clouds. “Weirdly cool.”
    “Remember that when we’re cleaning up. The hail won’t last long.” Already slowing, Lil judged. “Storm’s tracking west now.”
    “Really?” Lena blinked at her. “You can tell?”
    “The wind’s carrying it. You can use my shower. I’ll lend you some clothes. When it’s over, the rest of you report to the cabin. There’ll be plenty to do. Come on, Lena.”
    She took the girl upstairs, gestured toward the bathroom. “You can toss out your clothes. I’ll throw them in the wash.”
    “I’m sorry to be so much trouble. Taking a header in a hailstorm wasn’t the way I wanted you to notice me.”
    “Sorry?” Lil turned from where she dug fresh jeans and a sweatshirt out of her dresser.
    “I just mean we’ve been working mostly with Tansy and Matt since I got here. There hasn’t been a lot of opportunity to work with you directly with everything that’s going on.”
    “There will be.”
    “It’s just that you’re the reason I’m here. The reason I’m studying wildlife biology and conservation.”
    “Really?”
    “God, that sounds geeky.” Lena sat on the john to drag off her boots. “I saw that documentary on your work here. It was that three-part deal. I was home sick from school and really bored. Channel surfing, you know? And I hit the part about you and the refuge. I missed the other two parts, because—you know—back to school. But I got the DVD, the same one we sell at the gift shop. I got really into what you were doing, and what you said and what you were building here. I thought, That’s what I want to be when I grow up. My mother thought it was great, and that I’d change my mind a dozen times before college. But I didn’t.”
    Intrigued, Lil set the jeans, the sweatshirt, and a pair of warm socks on the bathroom counter. “That’s a lot from one documentary.”
    “You were so passionate,” Lena continued, rising to unzip her mud-died hoodie. “And so articulate and involved.