by Tina Mikals
Chapter 25
The Tornado
May stepped out of the farmhouse into the overcast sunshine. The air outside was still cold, but it had lost its bitter edge now that her clothes were warm and dry.
Carlisle came out last. Glimpsing the clapboards as he closed the door, he said, "Your paint is peeling." He pulled off a long scrap of curling brown paint from the house. "There's red underneath!" he said with a grunt of surprise.
"It stuck out like a sore thumb, so I repainted it," she said.
"This isn't the same color as the bark on all those trees over there, is it?" he asked, looking at the dried strip of paint in his hand.
"Yeah. I don't know what it's called."
"Called? Don't tell me you used it straight from the tube?"
"Yeah," she said. "Why? Is that wrong?"
"It's okay once in a while. But keep in mind no two colors in real life are exactly alike." He threw the paint chip aside and descended the steps. "Even the same exact object can change color on you depending on the time of day and the light. Take the farmhouse for instance. It can be one shade of brown at sunrise and then an almost completely different shade at dusk."
May kept walking, running her gaze along the grass. A hazy orange sun shined feebly through the sheer curtain of gray above.
He continued: "The things around it will affect the color as well. When the leaves change, the house will take on a warm hue. In the snow it'll be bluish. You can't really get that out of a tube. If you really look next time, you'll see what I mean." He went around and opened the gate for them.
"How about if I just don't bother at all. What's the use anyway?"
"Look here, I never did anything I was good at overnight and certainly, not painting." He was last through the gate, almost closed it, then decided to leave it open. "In fact, I don't even really know if I'm any good at that. It's just—well, once I got started, I couldn't seem to stop myself. It felt like what I should be doing somehow; what I should have been doing all along. Maybe you just haven't found what you should be doing, yet. You'll know. It'll just fit. But you won't find it if you're trying to be like somebody else."
"Like my brother, you mean?"
"Like anyone."
"What's the use, anyway? I'll never be good at anything."
"May, that isn't true," said Sheila.
"Come now," Carlisle said with a snap of impatience. "This isn't like you, May. You're usually such a level headed girl. You aren't still stewing about that book you found? You're being completely silly."
"Silly?"
"Yes, silly. The truth of it is, you're being ridiculous. You're sulking about like a miserable puppy."
"A—?"
"And about being clever of all things, when it doesn't even do for a girl to be too smart anyway."
"Excuse me?"
"It's simply unnatural, if you want the truth of it."
"And what is 'the truth of it'? All a woman really needs to know is how to cook and knit and scrub and sew?"
"And what's wrong with that? Believe me, a man isn't interested in debating art or medicine or politics with his wife."
"It was 'philosophy' not 'politics' and I'm going to just ignore you said that. I keep forgetting I have to make allowances for you."
"And what exactly is that supposed to mean?"
"Women didn't even have the vote back then."
Carlisle came to a standstill. "Women got the vote?"
She turned around and faced him. "Yes."
His eyes darted back and forth. The wheels were turning, and she didn't like the looks of the direction they were headed.
"See," she said. "What did I tell you? Allowances."
"Well, honestly May, it's just that women are more—"
"Oh this should be good. Please do enlighten me."
"Emotional," he cried, gesturing with both hands in her direction as if to prove his point.
The dry grasses around them rustled, buffeted by a quick, sharp wind.
"And, let's face it, women just aren't as—"
Sheila interrupted suddenly, "Can't we all just get along? The only silly thing here is this argument."
"Fine," said Carlisle, with a quick nod, stuffing his hands in his pockets.
"No," said May, "I want to hear what he has to say. Women aren't as what? Spit it out. Strong? You were going to say 'strong', weren't you?"
"I didn't say that."
"But you were going to, weren't you?"
"Don't tell me what I was going to say. If you'd let a man finish a thought for a change—"
"You were going to say that women are weaker. I knew it."
"I never said 'weaker', you did. But now that you said it, you can't deny it, can you?"
"I knew it."
"And they're not as—well, let's just say they don't think like a man."
She fixed him with an icy glare. "Honestly, I don't know why I should have expected anything else from such a stupid man from such a backward time period!"
"I see," he said. He put his head down, made an arc around her and kept walking.
May closed her eyes in a vain attempt to wish her last words away. When she opened them, Sheila was standing in front of her, hugging herself against the cold gusts that animated the once rigid landscape around them. Her normally full lips formed a thin straight line. "Why didn't you just slap him instead? It would have been kinder. You couldn't have thought of anything else to say besides that?"
With May's conscience somewhere around the level of her toes, she crossed her arms and defended herself vehemently. "He insulted us, Sheila."
"Then don't ask his opinion if you don't want to hear it." Sheila's eyes left May's face as her attention was drawn to something behind May. "What is that?"
Grateful for the interruption, May turned around. "What is what?"
Massive gray clouds had gathered in the distance. From one of them, a swirling shape dropped down like the inverted peak of a whipped egg white. Around them, the wind swirled the grasses into pointed standing clumps and pressed them flat again in the next instant.
She saw Carlisle about ten yards ahead of them, watching the horizon with his body tensed.
May pursed her lips. "I can't be sure, but I think it might be a tornado."
"Make it stop," said Sheila.
"Make it stop? How can—"
"It's your picture. Make it stop. Don't let it reach the ground."
"I don't know how to do that!"
"Well, it's headed straight for us, so you better figure it out fast."
"You seem to be the expert, what am I supposed to do?"
"I don't know. Maybe—maybe you should cry."
"Cry? That's your suggestion? That's not going to help. That's like your solution to everything. It'll probably start raining, and we'll all just get wet again."
The cyclone stretched down from the cloud and touched the land. Brown plumes of dirt and debris spun around in a violent twirl of confusion and spiraled upwards, darkening the body of the funnel.
Carlisle ran back to them with his arms out like he was trying to corral them. He pointed to an enormous granite boulder erupting out of the tall grass about twenty feet away.
As they started running, the twister began tracing a winding, zig-zag path toward them through the landscape, tearing up everything in its way. It uprooted the deformed trees and chewed them into splinters. It tore a wide swath in the earth, ripping up the dry matted grasses and leaving gashes of dark fertile soil in its wake.
The air around them whirled with shredded blades of yellow grass and small clumps of thatch and bramble that velcroed itself to their hair and clothes.
They reached the giant boulder and crouched down behind it. May pictured the whirling wind picking them up like dolls and smashing them against the jagged surface of the stone. If they dug in here, they might be able to wedge themselves into a depression at the base of the enormous rock.
She began scooping at the hard earth, not caring about the dirt
caking under her nails. Her hair kept whipping into her eyes and she dug it back behind her ears, her fingers leaving behind dirt-streaked stains on her cheeks.
Sheila gripped her arm suddenly and pointed at a narrow hole at the base of the rock, left by some animal seeking shelter. The hole was longer than it was wide, no more than two feet along the length of the rock and one foot in width. It hardly seemed large enough for either of them to squeeze into, let alone Carlisle. May and Sheila began to wrench at the hardened sod around the rim of the hole, widening it.
When it finally seemed large enough, Sheila twisted the satchel she was carrying around to her back and slipped into the hole first, as smoothly as a snake. May took a deep breath and followed in after her. Carlisle came in last, creeping in on his elbows.
The narrow entrance opened out into a small cavelike hollow, just large enough to sit sideways and crunch their knees up to their chests. A tight squeeze even for May and Sheila, Carlisle looked like a spider nestled in the tail end of a garden hose.
The tornado sounded like a locomotive rumbling over the land above them, getting rapidly closer. Sand and pebbles began to shoot through the open hole, stinging the exposed skin on their hands and faces. Carlisle covered the entryway with his arm and shoulder. The earthen walls around them shook, vibrating down loose dirt and small stones onto their heads.
A sharp root prickled into May's back. She tried to blot out the image of them all being buried alive. She closed her eyes and pressed her forehead into her knees, hoping the pain would drive the image away, but the storm raging overhead was deafening, and try as she might, she couldn't escape the noise and the fear. She covered her ears with her hands. She had an overwhelming desire to scream.
All at once, an immense blast of dirt and air from the direction of the cave entrance threw Carlisle sideways, slamming his hard shoulder into hers. The blow knocked the wind out of her, and sent her careening into Sheila. They all fell in a line like dominoes.
The ground over and around them jumped with one massive shock wave as something dense slammed the surface of the earth above them with a thunderous impact.
May heard the locomotive sound of the tornado traveling away as dirt rained down on their heads. Carlisle waited until the patter of dirt stopped before he moved to get off of her.
She blinked several times to make sure her eyes were actually open. An unbelievably pure velvet blackness enveloped her. She heard Carlisle say, "No one got hurt, did they?"
"I'm fine," she muttered, the pain in her shoulder forgotten.
"I'm okay," said Sheila in shaky singsong.
May wasn't sure she wanted to know what had just happened. She heard Carlisle breathing shallowly next to her and half expected him to mumble something entirely appropriate to the situation under his breath. But in the closeness of this now pitch black hole they were in, he must have judged it unwise.
But she had no doubt he was thinking of a swear, and if he wasn't, she certainly was.
They were completely trapped underground.