Tending Roses (39 page)

A piece of paper fell lightly on the screen and hung there, fluttering against the window like a bird trying to break free.

I remember thinking,
Why not us? Why not our house? Why is everything the same as it was yesterday, last week, last month, last year, ten minutes ago? Why wasn’t anything destroyed, or changed, or carried away. . . .

I had the strangest sense of wishing that it had been. Then I realized how crazy that was. I should have been thanking God I was alive.

Turning around, I gazed at the wall of rain, now moving away toward the east, revealing the footprint of the beast—an enormous path of stripped earth and strewn debris, ending in a narrow swath of twisted trees just past Daddy’s wheat field. From there, it carved a jagged scar toward the horizon, toward Poetry. Where farms had been, there was nothing.

I wondered how God could let something so terrible happen at all.

A mile down the valley, the pecan orchard that had hidden old lady Gibson’s farmhouse stood splintered, the limbs hanging like broken bones. Near the road, a geyser of water sprayed into the air, mixing with the falling ran.

I realized the tornado had passed across the Gibson farm. Gasping the gritty air, I ran down the porch steps and across the yard. At the sound of the yard gate opening, Daddy’s bird dog rushed from under the house and slammed against my legs, sending me sprawling into the litter on the grass.

“Get away, Bo!” I hollered, grabbing his collar as he tried to bulldoze his way through the gate. “Get back in the yard, you big, stupid dog!” Daddy’s dogs were always big and stupid, and always trying to escape.

I held on as Bo plowed a furrow into the long, scrappy grass outside the gate and pounced on a bit of paper blowing by. Scrambling to my feet, I dragged him into the yard and struggled to hook him to his chain while he cavorted with the paper, grabbing it, then dropping it and pouncing on it again. I caught a quick glimpse of a face. A photograph. A baby. A birth announcement.

Securing the chain, I snatched the photograph away, dried it on my jeans, then looked at it with the same horrible fascination that had forced me to stare at the tornado.

Somebody’s baby. Just newborn. A girl. Seven pounds six ounces. The space where the name would have been was torn away.