Promises of Home (2 page)

“Y’all shut up,” Davis snapped. “KBAV’s back on.”

Intermingled with the static (which was sounding more like wind to me, the longer I listened to it—or
perhaps
every noise now sounded like wind) were a few words we could make out:
Heavy rains reported near Bavary and east Bonaparte County
…
do not travel unless absolutely
…
winds gusting to 55 mph with threat of tornadoes forming
… a
man reported missing in La Grange due to flash-flooding
…

“Hmmph.” Junebug frowned at Trey, “This wasn’t so clever of us to do this, now was it? We ought to get on home.”

“You can go out in that if you want, Stinkbug,” Trey said. “I think it’s probably safest for us to stay right here.” He leaned against the trembling wall of the tree house and propped his boots up on the crates we used for a table.

“No, what’s safest is for us all to hike back to my mama’s house and stay there.” Davis Foradory stood and stretched. “I think we’ve proved enough, Trey. Come on, let’s go on back to my mamaw’s. We can have chocolate milk and cookies.”

“Chocolate milk and cookies,” Trey mocked in the overly nasal tone a lounging prince might use. “That just sounds
divine,
Four Door. I’m sure you and the other ladies will enjoy yourselves.”

“Better than getting our asses blown over to Fayette County,” Davis shot back, He wasn’t easily gulled by Trey. He pulled open the rattly door. The torrent outside roared, wind and rain gusting in over us. Davis gingerly set a foot out on the ladder and paused.

“Jesus, shut the door!” Clevey hollered.

Davis turned back, his eyeglasses already coated with raindrops. “Do you hear that? Sounds like the train’s running.”

Trains. No trains would be running as a hurricane’s totters
tore across the Texas coastal plains. I peered out through the window, squinting into the darkness.

Darkness squinted back at me. It was almost as though night had settled on Mirabeau as Althea passed over like some shadowy wraith, eclipsing sun and summer sky. I saw trees bending hard in the wind, and grass in the Foradorys’ pasturelands rippling like waves on the ocean. Then I saw it: a dark, jagged line moving toward the woods. Except this line was spinning, its point in the earth, its top arcing back and forth in a short pendulum swing.

“Tornado!” I screamed. The other boys froze with shock.

“Yeah, right, Jordan—” Trey began, but then he caught sight of my eyes. His face blanched like an old man’s.

“I’m not kidding! Tornado coming! Get out! Get down the ladder!” I hollered.

There was a mad scrabble as boys leaped for the rope ladder we had pulled up behind us, pushing it out into the darkness. It unfurled like a cracking whip.

I yelled at Clevey. “Go down first and hold it steady for the others.”

He nodded, fear in his freckled face. As he moved down each rung his weight brought the ladder back toward earth. I saw Clevey reach the bottom, practically sitting on the last rung to steady it. Gusts tore at his hair like a madwoman, and looking down at him, I saw him staring toward the funnel, eyes wide in shock.

I turned to Little Ed, pushing him out next, followed by Davis. I gestured at Trey. “Go!” I hollered.

“I’m sorry, Jordy,” he said in a whisper that somehow cut through the screams of the storm. He descended into the slashing wind and darkness. Junebug turned from the window, his eyes intense.

“We gotta go now, Jordy,
now!
” he ordered, shoving me down the ladder, climbing down practically on top of me. Clevey still crouched on the bottom rung; the others were gone, running God knows where. I fell to the ground, the storm shoving me with the force of nature’s worst bully.

“Where are they?” Junebug shouted at Clevey.

“House!” Clevey yelled back. “Four Door’s house!”

Nearly a half mile away. I stumbled, Junebug’s hand gripping my wrist as he pulled me along. He was bigger than me and I didn’t resist. I could hear a roar, like a growl of God. I tried to cry out, but the gale tore my voice from my throat, sending it spinning far above into the dark, rot-colored clouds.

Junebug and I ran across pastureland, toward the Old River Road that snakes along the shores of the Colorado. I risked a glance back and, through a sheet of rain, saw the frees churning in the circular wind. Our boyhood hideout and second home cartwheeled crazily apart like a match-stick house.

“It’s heading this way,” I screamed into Junebug’s ear. “Run! Run!”

We didn’t get much farther. Halfway through the pastureland we fell into a ditch, with water already swirling in it. I tumbled head over heels, Junebug sliding down more gracefully. I landed in muddy, grass-topped water. I froze in terror, thinking a flash flood would sweep us away, but the rain was collecting placidly and was only up to our ankles—for the moment. We were alone.

“Lie down! Cover your head!” Junebug ordered me.

“Where’s Clevey? And Trey and the others?” I hollered, but he shoved me down, forcing me to obey. I went face-first into the cold rainwater, sheltering my head with my thin arms. Junebug pressed down beside me and we waited, listening as the roaring twister approached.

I thought of Daddy and Mama finding my body—and my sister asking if she could have my catcher’s glove. (She fancied herself a better ballplayer than me, which was ridiculous—she couldn’t hit to save her life.) I thought of our friends talking about how stupid we were in braving Althea’s wrath. And I thought of my whole life, left unlived. In heaven, would I forever be a boy, or would I get to grow up?

A noise like God’s own tantrum roared in our ears. I shoved my face into water and mud and grass, trying to burrow into the ground.

I didn’t know how much later it was when I felt Junebug’s weight ease up beside me. I first became conscious of the quiet. It was as penetrating as the noise had been. An eerie stillness settled on the land, and the sky, rather than being dark, shifted to a bilious green—a gigantic dead eye, staring sightlessly down at us.

Junebug and I were coated in mud and twigs. We shook with dampness and shock, our clothes completely soaked. The tornado had passed near us, disintegrating in the storm’s competing winds or as it hit the trees that crowded in on the river.

“Holy God,” I heard myself say in something that didn’t sound like a child’s voice.

“It’s the eye. It’ll be calm for a little while, then it’ll be much worse.” Junebug started crawling out of the ditch. I followed him, my breath catching in my throat when I looked at the land. Trees lay shattered in a swath. A dirty smell hung in the air, even though we’d just been battered with rain. Where the tree house stood not even the tree remained—only a gaping maw where the old roots had vainly clutched. The land lay like a dead thing.

“Clevey!” Junebug brayed at the top of his voice. “Davis! Trey! Where are y’all?”

“Oh, God, don’t let ’em be dead,” I coughed. “We got to find them before the eye passes. Then we got to get to Mrs. Foradory’s. We can’t stay out here again.”

Junebug ran toward the woods, calling for Little Ed and Clevey, his voice slicing through the ominous quiet. I followed him, avoiding even the trees that had survived, seeing too many branches barely hanging on their moorings.

“Here!” I heard Trey’s voice call back hoarsely. “Over here, hurry! Hurry!” His voice broke; shock and fear had replaced coolness and swagger.

Junebug and I didn’t see the others right off; they had fled into a dense copse of loblolly pines that the tornado spared. I finally saw them, in a small clearing: a stone-faced Trey, his arm around a sobbing Little Ed, Clevey shaking, Davis staring at the ground gape-mouthed.

We ran up to them and Junebug saw her before I did, crying out, “Jesus Christ!”

The six of us stood there, silent for once as a group, our eyes riveted on the body of a teenage black girl. I’d thought the sky looked like a dead staring orb, but that girl’s open eyes were the true thing. Blank. Empty. Without a hint of life, staring unflinchingly at the storm. Her skin was brown as rich earth and her face was the kind that just gets prettier with time. But she had no more time left.

She was drenched, her yellow blouse molding to her soft, motionless breasts. I made my eyes look at her face again. I couldn’t see any blood on her, but there was a dent in the side of her long, dark hair, as though someone had dropped her, like a doll, from a great and unforgiving height. Her mouth was open and delicately small white teeth stood in perfect formation. A lank of her straightened hair lay across her throat. She was wearing a navy wind-breaker, torn open by the storm, old jeans, and muddied cowboy boots. She was beautiful.

And we six boys stood, paralyzed, as the giant wheel of the hurricane moved its calm canopy of eye away from us to thunder down more destruction.