by Dolly Dennis
Disobedient children with umbrellas venture outside in the heavy downpour, gathering hailstones and storing them in their freezers. Chunks collide and grow as they descend and smash through windshields and rooftops. The boom box with its battery-operated radio keeps everyone in tune to the wild storm seething outside the Complex Arms.
Adeen shushes everyone. “Listen, listen,” she says.
Tossed around like toys … signs of devastation … people trapped in collapsed buildings. The tornado claimed most of its victims northeast of Edmonton in the Evergreen Mobile Home Park, with fifteen people killed and almost two hundred homes destroyed or damaged. Flooding on major freeways making it impossible for emergency crews to get through.
At the mention of the Evergreen Mobile Home Park, Adeen remembers Mona and Irene. Where are they? She tries to phone Mona but the line is dead. The lines are still down. Tenants and neighbours whine and moan, appeal to a higher power to keep them safe. Even the atheists plead for salvation.
“Where’s Payton?” a female voice calls out over the crush, now gathered into a crowded corner of fear.
“He went up to his place,” Adeen says.
The heavy rain continues its rampage, rattling windows and doors like a ghost determined to enter. If they were going to die, they would all go down together. Adeen suddenly bolts toward the building’s entrance. The violent storm is so fierce that a tug of war ensues between her and the wind as she attempts to shut the door. Tenants come to her aid. No sooner have they returned to the lobby when the raging wind retaliates, uprooting a young dogwood and hurling the tree through the just-latched glass door with a thunderous crash.
“That was a close call,” someone mumbles. There is another crash, followed by a chorus of wails and Oh Gods.
“Everyone, downstairs into the basement. Quick,” Adeen commands like a colonel in the throes of battle against an insane enemy.
The room, dim and dingy, with its wall-to-wall insulation of people, feels like a tomb, smells like a barrel of herring in urine. Some begin to pray; others remain stoic, silent. One mother, a neighbour, shrieks that she panicked when she saw the tornado and threw her five-year-old son into a closet. She heard windows breaking and fled outside into the hailstones. Jack discovered her wandering near the Complex Arms and accompanied her into the basement.
“Reminds me of Holland,” a voice stabs into the gloomy room. Only a line of light from the one narrow window filters through.
“I left my son. How could I forget?” The woman heads to the exit calling out the boy’s name until Adeen catches up and guides her back into the familiarity of her private hellish hideout.
“If he’s in a closet, he’s in a safe place,” Adeen says.
“But he is only five years old. He’ll be traumatized.” A mother’s guilt. Thinking of herself again, leaving a small child behind.
Adeen notices Mrs. Lapinberg hiding in the room’s shadows, grabs her arm and leads her to assemble with the other tenants. “You’ll be fine until Barney gets here,” she says.
“But how will he find me?” Mrs. Lapinberg is on the verge of tears. “Are we being rounded up for the train?”
“Oh, no, Mrs. Lapinberg, no train. Just want to keep everyone together until the storm passes.”
Jack is now comforting Mrs. Lapinberg, and Rosemary is crying out: “We’re all going to die.”
Adeen can’t take it anymore and tells her to shut up. “Here,” she says, “take a humour pill and see me in the morning.” She hands Rosemary a Smartie.
Nobody laughs. Zita, protective arms around her son, still crushed against his mother’s heart. Howard, his father, is unreachable. Everyone accounted for except Velvet and Frosty. The group stays huddled in the basement; the hail seems to smack throughout the four floors of the Complex Arms like a series of grenades exploding.
Payton considers the spectacle before him from his balcony as though he is viewing a movie on IMAX. The rotating column of air suddenly takes an unexpected sharp turn, changes direction, swerves to the northeast, and disappears. The rain and hail seem to have abated, fooling him into a false sense of safety. Then, within seconds, the spinning top reappears carrying the storm. Payton, at this point, is unaware of a pending tornado. He thinks it is a mere thunderstorm, unaware this tempest is likely the closest thing to Armageddon he will ever see.
Johanna, his wife, sits by his side in the sleek wooden box on the patio table. He warned her to be prepared for the imminent gusts, the vulgar green vomit surfacing like an exorcism of evil.
“You should see this, Johanna. But you probably can already. Unbelievable!”
The storm transforms the sky; the noise of thunder almost disappears in the screaming winds of the vortex; hailstones like a thousand projectiles rip shingles from rooftops and ding the hoods of parked cars.
Payton remains rooted on the balcony, enthralled by the drama unfurling before him. He continues to tinkle his little bell, but its tiny note of warning is overwhelmed by the deafening symphony of the elements. He increases the speed of his ringing only to find the storm has snapped off the clapper, leaving the bell silent.
At last Payton understands that the heavens are about to wreak havoc on the land. “Prepare thyselves for salvation. Sinners you are doomed. Armageddon is upon us,” he shouts, his voice lost in the turbulence. A capricious gust of wind whips around the balcony. Payton, disoriented, knocks the box from its perch and sends it airborne over the railing. It plunges, smashing to the cement walk below. Johanna melds into a frenzy of sooty dust and debris floating toward the tornado, and he is now wailing, “Johanna! Wait for me.” Her ashes blow back at him, sifting through his clothes, into his face, but he keeps sputtering, “Johanna, Johanna!” He reaches out with both arms to catch the flying particles, ignoring the danger of leaning out into the overpowering force swirling around him. He stands on the balcony, arms outstretched into the storm, looking like a prophet in holy ecstasy.
“Johanna! I’m coming.” He repeats his mantra like an inconsolable widow whose family has gone missing. As Payton leans over, he loses his footing and, like Johanna’s ashes, becomes airborne. There follows the heavy thud to the sidewalk, like a horse tripping in a gopher hole.
Adeen follows the storm through the narrow basement window, held spellbound by its crazy actions. Suddenly, she hears a thump. Pressing her nose against the windowpane for a closer investigation, she recognizes Payton’s body; an installment of bones and skin and blood spilling onto the lawn not three feet away from her observation post, his silenced bell by his side. Taken by surprise, Adeen, a human android, detaches herself from the sight of another death. The sole basement fixture flickers; the radio, tuned down to a messy garble of gibberish racked by more static, pierces the air in a duet with the wind outside.
Across Mill Woods on Calgary Trail, Frosty and Velvet are oblivious of the tragedy developing outside. They have abandoned efforts to search for Ryan. A month was enough time to find the man who didn’t want to be found, so they have spent the afternoon at Black Jack’s, sitting at the bar, sharing warmth along with the whisky. The power goes out momentarily then returns.
Black Jack’s is deserted except for the two. Scottie, the barman, compulsively wipes the counter to a polish as there is nothing else to do. The TV screen is tuned to the game show The Price is Right. Frosty asks Scottie to lower the volume and change the TV to a sports channel.
The bartender turns the dial to find something more interesting than a game show, but it is daytime, so other than the soaps and talk shows, there aren’t many choices.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Velvet says. “Stop there.”
“Looks like there’s a tornado somewhere,” Frosty says, “Must be Nebraska. They have lots there. Turn up the sound.”
But Scottie continues to rotate the channels with the speed of impatience as the TV screen flickers, showing the occasional image of a funnel cloud, now growing into an all-out tornado. Suddenly, everything goes black again. Th
e freezer and ceiling fan stop humming. A death of silence.
It isn’t until Frosty and Velvet leave the premises that they notice the sky is a ceiling of various shades of green and turquoise. They switch on the car radio but no music plays; there are only the frantic reports from across the city of the tornado and its devastation.
“Wow!” Velvet says. “We missed it.”
And Frosty laughs. “Must be a joke. Someone doin’ a movie here.” And then he thinks of Adeen and Irene and Mona and the Evergreen Mobile Home Park and races the car toward Mill Woods like an Indy driver. Just in case it wasn’t a movie.
ADEEN
The lights flickered briefly and the power returned an hour later. We all hugged each other as though a touch would confirm we were alive. I went outside to assess the damage to the Complex Arms. The building was mostly okay, but the rest of the neighbourhood was a disaster. Missing shingles and rooftops unhinged, cars on their sides, an upheaval of pavement, trash cans and garbage strewn in the parking stalls in back, trees ripped from their roots, a collage of damage created by an angry tornado, which missed us by a hair; and Payton lying there mangled in rubble like a toppled mannequin in a store window display. I couldn’t look death in the eye anymore. I removed my jacket and covered him as best I could, hustled back inside to call emergency, and then tried Mona again. Nothing. A dead line. I called the number for inquiries about family and friends but it was busy.
Everyone returned to their respective apartments carrying their food. Nobody felt like celebrating and nobody had much of an appetite. We watched the news for updates.
One journalist interviewed a woman who lived in the Evergreen Mobile Home Park. I hoped to see Mona and Irene standing amid the group behind her, but there was only a background of noise and destruction: homes flattened like an unstable house of cards. She said her husband looked out the window and said, “Have you ever been in a tornado?” and she replied, “No,” and he said, “Well, now you are.” And they ran to the bedroom and pulled the mattress on top of them and their two kids and she said she felt the trailer lift as though she were on a flying carpet and then drop back down hard, their home off its foundation. They looked around and everything was levelled; their trailer was the only one in the compound escaping any damage. They were lucky, but years later on one of those Black Friday anniversary dates, reporters would provide an update on the family. The children had nightmares for years after and didn’t want to sleep alone, only with their parents’ assuring arms around them.
Anyhow, I still couldn’t reach Mona or anyone at the number provided for inquiries. I tried not to worry. Mona was smart and resourceful, so I knew she would find a place of safety for both her and Irene. And where was Frosty? If I knew where Velvet was, I would surely find Frosty. But at that point, I had no idea and didn’t care.
As it happened, Frosty and Velvet reached the Complex Arms when everything had calmed down. There they stood with Frosty stuttering and muttering, “I’m sorry, sorry, Adeen, I wasn’t here for you.”
“Hell with you a hundred times over!”
I ignored them, locked the apartment behind me, and just bawled my eyes out. I couldn’t help myself. He kept kicking at the door until I got tired of the racket and let him in, fearing some of the tenants might complain to the Swanks. Everyone was on edge, stressed out. I let him in, but I slammed the door in Velvet’s face. Who invited you?
I withdrew to the balcony and felt my spirit levitate outside my body as though I were dying. I was on the patio looking down at the damage across the road from the Complex Arms, and Frosty kept saying, “I’m sorry, sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t count.” I whacked him hard in the face.
The barn and rusted truck in the distance had disappeared, landing in another field or county perhaps; the vegetation hunched over as though in pain from the punch of the hail. The sky in its film of blue seemed to mock me, seemed to say, What do you mean a tornado passed by?
I called the inquiry number again and finally got through. They were still conducting their search and rescue.
“I’ll be right there,” I said, but they ordered me to stay back. There was no point going out there. To see the destruction would be unbearable, they warned me; it looked like a war zone, as though someone had dropped an atomic bomb. Besides, I would only get in their way. They said they would let me know when they found Irene and Mona.
“I’m sorry, Adeen. I’m sorry,” Frosty, the asshole, kept mumbling. “Maybe they went for a drive and weren’t anywhere near the park when it happened. They’ll show up. You’ll see.”
I kept hitting the idiot; I was getting good at beating him up. Such fury unleashed! Get the heck out of my way, my life, each blow seemed to say, and all he could muster was “Adeen, Adeen, I’m sorry.” I was tired of sorry. Sorry excuse for a man. He was out there with that bitch and not a thought about me or Irene or Mona.
Frosty had tossed the car keys onto the kitchen table when he returned from his outing with Velvet. I grabbed them and made a dash for the door.
“Where you goin’?” Frosty bleated like a goat.
I silently thanked Shylene for bequeathing me her car, and I flew out of there with Frosty’s words tagging behind: “You haven’t driven in years.”
I was overwhelmed with grief at the thought that I — me, Adeen — was responsible for the loss of my best friend and my daughter. I jumped into the car with Frosty scampering behind. He kept shouting, “I’ll come with you,” but I just sped away, propelled by the idea that perhaps I’d lost two important people in my life.
Shylene’s car was a gem, a Toyota Tercel, only a year old. I drove it with an initial clumsiness until I got the hang of it and was finally buzzing along on the open highway. The summer sun hogged the day; the night snatched its light sometime around 10 p.m. I accelerated and thought about the size of that tornado: almost one mile wide at times, the newspapers would later report. Who could survive its wrath? I had never seen anything like it. The idea that it would take my baby and best friend was unthinkable.
I followed its path toward Sherwood Park and Baseline Road. I saw more of the same destruction: overturned oil tankers, the landscape thick with levelled industrial buildings, silos lying face down. The wind had swept the debris into scattered piles in and around the industrial park; power poles were pitched in midair; there were trees snapped in half, derailed train cars.
I was going ninety miles per hour now.
Evergreen Mobile Home Park, nestled in a beautiful, naturally wooded ravine, was normally a twenty-six-minute ride from the Complex Arms. I made it in ten minutes flat — irrational driving all the way. I ignored the radio announcements’ warning of flooding in low-lying areas and underpasses caused by the excessive rainwater. I took the main new multi-lane highway, and as I neared Evergreen, I could see the old scenic road beside it, now overflowing with sludge, water spreading like thick lava. Downed trees and power lines created a barrier to traffic; vehicles partially submerged under the tide floated like recreational boats. I kept to the high ground and wept all the way.
I cry easy, one of my weaknesses, I know, I have to let it all out. Can you imagine how I felt? Yet somewhere in the back of my murmuring heart where my spirit slept, there was a skip in its beat, that maybe it was a good thing. Everything happens for a reason, or as Payton told me after Cody’s death, It is God the Jehovah’s will. I dismissed that notion immediately. What kind of God causes such damage? And how could a mother even consider such evil thoughts, especially for a daughter who needed more love and attention than the average child?
I veered the car past the Market Gardens at 167th Avenue. The sweet breeze from the open window whipped my face as I sped down the road tailgating all the cars in the space between me and the Evergreen Mobile Home Park. I was almost there.
I stopped for water and gas, delaying my entry into the park. I don’t know if I did it on purpose because of a fear of what I’d discover. I shielded my eyes using my hands
like a visor, the sun a brilliant gold, blinding my view. There was a garden centre behind a small grocery store, but nothing was flourishing there. A dog barked behind the gas station, and a van pulled up to refuel. The air was charged with a hushed reverence, the end of the world as we knew it. Perhaps Payton was right: Armageddon or some semblance of it was closing in.
Irene. I thought maybe she’d be sitting there on Mona’s deck licking a soft ice cream cone when I got there; or maybe the emergency crew had discovered them both relaxing on a mound near the marsh having a picnic. Maybe I’d find Mona waving at me and yelling, “Time you got here, Adeen.” And Irene. Oh, poor Irene. I was trying to remember the good things.
That day, en route to the Evergreen, I gave the skies a onceover and inhaled deeply as though I was fixing to die. We always remember pain because it leaves scars, and scars can open up at any time. Joy, on the other hand, is a fleeting three-letter word and leaves no scars, so it is easily forgotten. Right there I felt such sadness. The scars exposed themselves. I psyched myself to enter the “war zone.”
After I filled the gas tank, I closed my eyes briefly and drove like a car chase into the trailer park, a flat slice of landscape, only to halt at the entry. Stuck in muck, a barrier of felled trees prevented me from moving farther.