“I’ve known Auggie for years, and he’s not always right,” said Glenn Hanson, the town’s postmaster, as he paid for a sack of nails and a bag of charcoal. “The whole thing could blow past us. Me, I’m grilling out tonight, after I put in some more work on my deck. Besides, we’re close enough to the river. Twisters won’t cross rivers.”
The woman in line behind him rolled her eyes. “That’s an old wives’ tale, Glenn, that stuff about rivers.”
“I’m telling you, my grandpa swore by it,” Glenn was indignant now. “He always said …”
Melinda quickly reached for the woman’s purchases and began to ring them up. “Let’s just hope Auggie is wrong.” She gave each of them a soothing smile. “Stay safe tonight, OK?”
Esther was puffing and sweaty when she arrived just before three. Business had been so slow the past week that Miriam had told Esther she needn’t come in at noon. “The light’s starting to change. Melinda, I don’t have to ask if Auggie predicted a storm today, he’d be a fool not to. When’s it supposed to hit?”
“He just said maybe by sunset. Is he really that good? I can’t tell you how many people have asked.”
“I’ll say this,” Esther tucked her purse under the counter next to Melinda’s. “He’s just as accurate as those TV weather people. It might start to blow before you get home. Everything secure out at the farm?”
Melinda thought for a moment. “Horace and Wilbur don’t have patio furniture, just that old picnic table, but it would take a tornado to blow that heavy thing over. Hobo can get into the barn, as can the sheep and the cats. The chickens, too, can get inside. I didn’t leave any windows open on the house. It’s been way too hot for that.”
Half an hour later, the sunlight began to fade. Bill came through from the back just as the weather radio began to blast warning tones for a tornado watch.
“I’ll take Miriam’s flower baskets down, just in case.” He reached for the ladder that was still propped in the front corner of the store. “Auggie might be a bit off on the timing, but my prediction is he’ll get his storm.”
Melinda followed Bill to the front door. A dark mass of clouds loomed behind the co-op, approaching from the southwest. Nancy Delaney was folding the flags she’d just removed from the pole in front of City Hall. She waved to Bill and Melinda and hurried across the street, a sudden gust of wind whipping her skirt.
“There’s been a tornado over north of Fort Dodge,” Nancy said, shaking her head. “Pretty bad, I think. The whole cluster is coming this way.”
“I’ll check it out on my phone once we’re done out here,” Bill said. “I’m guessing Tony knows about this?” Nancy nodded. Tony Bevins was the town’s fire chief; although he lived in Prosper, he worked at a bank over in Swanton.
“I just spoke to him,” Nancy said. “Jerry’s still out of town, of course. I know Glenn is already gone for the day. I’ll take the post office’s flags down, too.”
The light changed again, dimming to a sickly greenish shade, as Bill passed the last flower basket to Melinda. Another gust rolled down the street, but this time the air within it was icy cold. Melinda shuddered, her pulse racing and goosebumps rising on her arms. She’d seen enough severe weather growing up to know any quick temperature change could mean damaging hail, or worse.
“I don’t like this, Bill. There’s two customers in the store right now.”
“I’ll tell them to stay with us until this blows over.” He snapped the ladder closed. “Let’s get inside and get them away from those plate-glass windows.”
Esther looked up, worried, as they came in. “Weather radio’s gone off again. Tornado warnings west of here.” One of the customers, an elderly man, hurried to the front windows to look out as Esther shook her head at Melinda. The young woman standing at the counter started to wring her hands.
“My parents live over in Swanton,” she said as she wiped tears from her eyes.
Melinda squeezed her arm. “Mine, too. I’m sure they’re heading for the basement.”
Bill opened the front storm door for one last look before latching it securely and cranking the deadbolt on the oak interior door. His face was grim. “Wind’s blowing from the west, then from the north. The clouds are starting to rotate. Everybody, let’s get to the basement.”
An inky blackness fell over the town, and rain suddenly began to slide down the front windows. Bill reached behind the counter for two flashlights and handed one to Melinda, then the group started for the stairs. The lights flickered and the store went dark. The young woman whimpered and reached for Melinda’s hand. Melinda felt a fluttering in her stomach and pressure building in her eardrums.
The weather radio’s tones made everyone jump. “This is a tornado warning for Hartland County. Spotters have indicated a large funnel west of Swanton, moving northeast, with winds estimated at more than 120 miles per hour. Hail the size of golf balls has been reported with this storm …”
“See, it’s going to miss Swanton,” Melinda said to the woman, who could only nod.
“But we’re next in line,” Esther muttered.
They fumbled their way down the stairs, the flashlights’ beams bobbing along the stone walls. The slightly moldy smell of the basement was strangely comforting. It was a reminder that they were below ground, with a sturdy two-story brick building between them and the storm.
Bill gestured for everyone to crouch along a wall. There was a deep rumble of thunder, then a wailing screech in the escalating wind. Melinda felt the hairs on her arms and the back of her neck stand up. Eerie, menacing noises filtered down the stairwell, along with a series of rattles and vibrations that stopped as suddenly as they had started. The group waited in the silence, unsure what might happen next.
After a few minutes, Bill stood up. “Might as well go back upstairs, sounds like the worst is over.”
Melinda was amazed to see everything was where it had been just minutes before. A spider-web crack created by a hail stone now ran across the front storm door, but the store’s plate glass windows were unharmed.
“Thank the Lord,” Esther pushed her palms together. “We’ve been spared. Oh, what a relief. Frank and Miriam have been through enough as it is.”
Bill slid back the deadbolt and the group stepped cautiously out of the store. Small twigs littered the sidewalks and lawns along Main Street. A few larger tree limbs were scattered in the road. The young woman surprised Melinda with a hug and then ran for her car. The elderly man, however, seemed more interested in surveying the scene.
There wasn’t much else to see. But the hanging baskets across and down the street had been tossed from their light poles and smashed on the sidewalk, and were now only sad lumps of black soil and bedraggled stems.
“I’m glad you took our flowers down, Bill,” Esther sighed. “Miriam worked so hard on those. But if that’s all that’s been destroyed, I’d say we all are pretty lucky.”
A few people stepped out of the Watering Hole and began gathering up downed tree limbs in front of the bar. Nancy appeared in the front door of City Hall and ran the flags back up the pole. The grinding squeal of a chain saw echoed down Main Street as Bill peered toward the co-op.
“It does look like there might be more limbs down over that way,” he said. “I think there’s even a tree down by the corner of Main and First, hard to tell from here. I hope that next round of rain holds off or bypasses us so people can clean up.”
While the sky wasn’t as black as before, it seemed closer to twilight than four-thirty and more threatening clouds were bubbling up to the west. Melinda helped Bill gather and stack broken branches while Esther swept the last of the sidewalk’s debris away with a broom. Then Bill’s phone rang.
“Hey, Tony. Well, it’s not too bad here, really, it could be much worse.” He was reaching for another tree branch, then froze. “So, one did touch down. Where?” He looked at Melinda, his expression turning grim. “Anyone hurt? Wow. Yeah, I’m on my way.”
Melinda’s
heart began to race. She could feel her pulse pounding in her neck. Bill laid a hand on her shoulder. “Tony says there was a tornado west of here, tore things up pretty bad. Several farms were hit hard, there’s serious structural damage at several places and somebody’s trapped inside a collapsed house.”
“Oh, my God,” Melinda breathed. “Where is the worst of the damage? I have to get home. I have to go right away!”
She barged through the front door of the still-darkened store and lunged over the counter for her purse, Bill and Esther right behind.
“Tony didn’t say for sure, just that it’s a few miles west of Prosper,” Bill tried to sound reassuring. “Twisters can hopscotch around, touch down here but not there.”
Melinda could only nod, tears burning under her eyelids. What if Horace’s had been hit? The house could be damaged. And the animals …
A horn honked out front and Doc pulled up. Bill ran out and leaned in the truck’s window, then Doc drove away. “Doc says every first responder in the county’s been called out. I need to go, now. Esther, can you close up?”
“Absolutely, don’t worry about the store. I’ll call Frank and Miriam and let them know everything’s OK here, the power’s out, is all. You go, both of you.”
Melinda frantically dialed Angie’s cell. “She’s not answering.” She tried Ed and Mabel’s house; the line beeped and beeped but didn’t ring through. “I can’t get Ed and Mabel, either.”
“Their phone is probably just out.” Esther gave her a hug. “Watch out for downed power lines on the roads, there’ll be wind damage even away from the tornado’s path. You be careful, now.”
Melinda pushed through the back door, which hadn’t yet snapped closed from when Bill ran out just a minute before. Her hands shook as she cranked the ignition and turned onto Main Street.
All through town, children gathered up twigs as adults worked in teams to lift and drag larger limbs out of the way. An ancient tree had tumbled over and now blocked First Street, leaving a sad void in the yard of one of the town’s historic homes. But the Prosper co-op looked the same as always, its tower unscathed and stretching to the heavy clouds lowering overhead. Melinda tried to calm her nerves.
“It could have been much worse, just like Bill said,” she whispered as she bumped over the railroad tracks. “Word spreads fast after something like this. It’s possible that the damage isn’t as bad as what we heard.”
She had traveled nearly two miles before she spotted a power pole snapped off at its base, the black electrical cable snaking through the weeds at the edge of the field. The next few poles were leaning this way and that, the power lines snapped and drooping dangerously close to the county highway. The nearby acreage appeared to be intact, only a few soggy shingles resting on the front lawn.
But Melinda gasped when she passed the next farm, its silo crumpled as if smashed by a large hand. Part of the house’s roof had peeled away and the pasture fence was splayed into the grass. She slowed her car to a crawl, sliding over the center line to skirt a mangled hunk of metal siding in the road.
Two agitated pigs and a yapping dog circled in the ditch, followed by an exhausted-looking woman. The dog darted out on the blacktop and Melinda stopped, powered down her passenger-side window.
“Is everyone OK here?” she called to the woman, who caught the dog by the collar and made an apologetic gesture.
“We’re all right, thanks.” The woman came up to the car. “Some building damage but that’s all. What a nightmare, the sound was something I’ll never forget. But we’ve got lots of help here and more coming.” Melinda noticed several pickups and a car in the driveway. Large plastic tarps were being unloaded out of the back of one of the trucks.
“I wish I could stay to help, but I haven’t been home yet.”
“Where’s that?”
“West of here about two miles, then south. I heard there’s a collapsed house somewhere, have you heard anything about that?”
The woman shook her head, then put her hand to her cheek. “No, oh no, I hadn’t heard that. We’ve been outside since it happened. Saw some fire trucks and an ambulance go by here about ten minutes ago, though. I hope you make it home OK.”
Melinda powered up the window, her heart pounding in her ears. She’d seen the fear on the woman’s face when she said where she lived. Tears began to spill down her cheeks. “I have to get home. Please God, I just have to get home.”
Her car crept over the small hill just before the next intersection. She gasped, unable to believe what she was seeing.
The cornfield to the left, which has been leafy and vigorous just that morning, was completely flat, its downed stalks all pointing northeast. On the other side of the road, the soybean plants were no longer in orderly rows but twisted and tossed about in the churned-up black earth. There were flashing lights down past the crossroads, a vehicle blocking the road. In the gathering gloom, she could just make out the county sheriff’s logo on the side of an SUV, and a man wearing a neon-yellow vest bunched over a rain poncho.
She slowed to a stop and lowered her window. The officer leaned in, his face scrunched against a sudden spray of rain. “Ma’am, I’m sorry, but we’ve got the road closed up ahead. You’ll need to turn around, head back to the state highway.”
“But I live here!” She could barely get the words out, alarm rising in her voice. “I, I have to get home, I’ve got animals out there. They …”
The deputy gave her a sympathetic look then glanced over his shoulder. There was a hazy black cloud about a half mile down the blacktop, an angry scrawl of red and orange flames at its base and the spark of flashing emergency lights nearby. Melinda heard agitated voices coming from the radio clipped to the officer’s vest but couldn’t make out the words.
“We’ve got a situation over there that’s got this highway shut down.” The deputy was nearly shouting now, pressing his cap down over his face as he tried to block the wind. “Tornado came right through, the house was nearly wiped away but some of it collapsed into the basement. They’re trying to get those people out. The barn caught fire when the power lines snapped.” He paused to wave through another county vehicle, sirens blaring, that had come up behind Melinda.
“Emergency vehicles only, sorry.” The officer shook his head. “You could head back to the last intersection, try the long way around. Was anyone at your place when the storm hit? Is everyone accounted for?”
Melinda’s chest tightened, remembering Doc’s eerie visit to the Emmersons’ that morning. Hadn’t Mabel once said their place was on the county highway? She closed her eyes, tried to steady herself.
“No people were at home, no. But I’ve got animals and …”
A blare of sirens and flashing lights approached from the west and the deputy stepped aside as an ambulance flew past, racing for the junction with the state highway.
Godspeed to them,” the deputy called to Melinda. “And good luck to you.”
CHAPTER 19
Melinda turned into the eastbound lane of the county highway and drove back to the last intersection, the hum of her tires on the wet pavement accompanied by the “splat, splat” of enormous raindrops hitting her windshield. As she headed south from the blacktop, she tried to gather her emotions and her courage.
In one moment, she told herself the storm may have missed Horace’s farm. The house would be unharmed, the barn and sheds intact. The sheep were inside, safe from the stinging downpour, and Hobo and the cats were napping in the grain room. Melinda tried for a smile as she imagined Pansy sulking by one of the chicken coop’s windows, her afternoon of pecking for grubs ruined by the rain.
In the next, she feared finding the farmhouse smashed, rafters and siding tossed into the road, and the barn reduced to a jumble of debris. The garden might be nothing but a tangle of shredded stalks, the remains of the front maple tree pinning the broken lilac bushes into the ditch. And the animals …
“Oh God, no,” she prayed. “They all have to be OK. T
hey have to!” A wave of guilt came over her, but didn’t pass. She hit the steering wheel with her hand. “Why couldn’t this have happened when I was home? I might have been able to do something.”
She drove slowly, cautiously, as she wasn’t familiar with this gravel road and random bits of tree limbs littered the ditches and shoulders. The first crossroads finally appeared and she turned west, through a mile where the two farms had only minor damage. The crops looked tired and hail-beaten but were still upright. At the next intersection she’d continue west, cross a bridge and pass Angie and Nathan’s farm, which was up on a hill.
Melinda braked hard at the crossroads and stopped, not sure what to do. The creek crossing was still more than a quarter of a mile away, but a heavy tree that once hugged the waterway’s bank had been ripped free and thrown across her approach to the bridge. The willows lining the creek bed were ripped from their roots, tossed about like abandoned toys, and the wooden post for the yellow “one lane bridge” sign was sheared off a few feet up from the ditch. Beyond and up the hill, the decades-old windbreak on Angie and Nathan’s farm was now just a jagged line on the horizon. She took a steadying breath and went left, her only option to drive around the mile section and reach Horace’s farm from the south.
There seemed to be fewer twigs down from the shrubs and trees along these fence lines, but her hands became icy as she turned at the final crossroads. It had seemed like she would never get home, but now she was almost too afraid to drive that last half mile.
“I have to face it,” she said to herself, gripping the steering wheel tighter. “Whatever it is, I need to know, I need to see it. Please, God …”
The tears returned as she recalled her first cautious drive on this gravel road nearly two months ago. She’d not only come from the other direction, but from a completely different point of view. Her motive had been simple curiosity, to pass the time on a lazy, sunny afternoon. And now, she was overwhelmed by how much this farm, these animals, meant to her. Hobo’s face flashed through her mind, and Horace’s too. This place had helped her start her life over, and she couldn’t bear to see it destroyed.
Growing Season Page 19