Dorothy Garlock - [Tucker Family]

by Keep a Little Secret

  Charlotte knew that Owen wanted her to stay behind so that he would know where she was, know that she was safe. But she couldn’t allow him to take all the risk. Her teaching Sarah had created a bond between the two of them. Charlotte felt a responsibility to the pregnant girl and wanted to go to the cabin to make sure that she hadn’t been hurt.

  “All right,” Owen agreed, “but you get out on my side of the truck and hold on to my hand. I don’t want the wind blowing you away leaving me unable to find you.”

  “All right.”

  “Whatever you do, don’t let go.”

  Charlotte was thankful that Owen insisted she take his hand. The weather had worsened dramatically. Rain pelted her mercilessly with every step, drenching her blouse and plastering her hair to her head. The wind was considerably stronger than it had been back at the ranch. It roared with such ferocity that Charlotte could hardly hear herself think.

  Owen was shaking her hand furiously; at first she thought it was because he was trying to make sure she was close, but it soon dawned on her that he was trying to get her attention. Shielding her eyes, she looked at him. His face was white with terror. With his other hand, he pointed, and when she followed, she too felt as if their world were surely about to end.

  Oh, my God…

  In the distance, over the roof of the Becks’ dilapidated cabin, was the black spiraling cone of a tornado.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  THE TORNADO STRETCHED DOWN from the dark heavens as if it were the finger of God himself. Immensely broad at its top, it narrowed as it reached toward the ground, a churning engine of destruction. Debris of every size and shape roiled in its cylinder, to be jettisoned as more was pulled up to take its place. The tornado looked to be miles across, with an appetite for destruction that could not be sated. Charlotte was awed by the sheer force of the wind; the gusts that buffeted them were nearly enough to lift her from her feet. If she weren’t so frightened, a part of her would have found the tornado beautiful, something to fill her with wonder.

  I don’t want that thing to be the death of me…

  Still holding tight to her hand, Owen half-dragged Charlotte to the door of the cabin and began to pound on it furiously. Over and over he smashed his closed fist against the wood; with the roar of the approaching tornado, Charlotte wondered if the Becks could even hear his effort. She was surprised that the door hadn’t been torn open, but the Becks must have barricaded it shut to keep the wind from ripping it off its hinges.

  “Sarah!” she shouted, scarcely able to hear her own voice.

  Finally, the door opened a crack. Alan Beck’s alcohol-ravaged and wrinkled face peered out at them through the gap. Owen made no effort to identify himself, shouldering open the door and pushing back the table and chairs that had been blocking their entry. Charlotte rushed inside.

  Sarah sat on her bed back in the far corner, cradling her stomach with one hand, her mother’s picture in the other. The poor girl looked scared out of her wits, but brightened at seeing Charlotte. An oil lamp sat on the apple crate, its burning wick the source of the light they had seen from the road.

  “How’d you get out here?” Sarah asked nervously. “It sounds bad, like this cabin is gonna fall down.”

  “Shush now, Sarah,” Charlotte quieted her as she rushed over and began helping her to rise from the bed, mindful of her belly. “There isn’t time to talk about it now! We have to go! Go right this instant!”

  “It’s a twister, ain’t it?” Alan asked, staring out into the storm he had exposed by opening the door.

  “It is,” Owen answered. “I can’t say for certain, but I think it’s heading right for us. If we don’t leave fast, we’re never going to get to safety.”

  “We’ll go in the truck,” Charlotte explained, hoping that her encouragement would calm Sarah’s panic. “We can outrun it and make it back to the ranch.”

  “Ain’t no chance in hell of doin’ that,” Alan disagreed. “I seen my share of these damn things when I was a boy and they’re faster than you’d ever believe ’em to be, I say. Ruthless as killers… like a rabid dog that done got its first taste of blood… ain’t likely to stop till it’s got its fill.”

  “I can drive fast,” Owen insisted.

  “You ain’t faster than nature, boy.” Alan shook his head.

  At the finality of her father’s words, Sarah began to cry, sobbing into Charlotte’s shoulder. Outside the door, the tornado sounded as if it were a locomotive barreling down toward them, its whistle shrill. As if to demonstrate its potential, the tornado’s winds shattered the already broken window. Sarah screamed in terror.

  “We can’t stay here,” Charlotte pleaded, looking at the flimsy walls. “If we do, this cabin will be our coffin!”

  “If it’s too late to take the truck, where can we go?” Owen asked Alan, realizing that the older man was right and there was no chance for them to outrun the storm.

  “Down the back of the hill opposite this here cabin, there’s a small cave. It ain’t much, no more than a couple a feet dug into the side of the hill, but it’s carved outta rock ’stead of earth. Stumbled ’cross it when I was drinkin’ one night ’bout a month back. I can’t say it’ll be safe, but it’s safer than here.”

  “Take us there!” Owen shouted.

  “I’m scared,” Sarah cried.

  “I’ll be with you,” Charlotte said as confidently as she could.

  Alan Beck led the way from the cabin, Charlotte and Sarah behind him, with Owen bringing up the rear. Even in the short time Charlotte and Owen had been inside, the storm’s rampaging intensity had increased; lashing bursts of wind snatched at his legs, trying their best to entangle him. Occasional flashes of lightning exploded before their eyes. Rain drenched them in seconds. But the most unbearable part of the storm was the noise; Owen couldn’t imagine a more ferocious, unstoppable sound. He covered his ears, but even had he packed them with cotton, it would be useless. He never looked back, did not want to know how much closer the funnel had come. The tornado was a rampaging animal, and it was after them.

  Ahead, he saw Charlotte stop, struggling beside Sarah, the poor girl awash in tears and panic on both of their faces. Charlotte screamed, her voice a wandering whisper that barely caught his ear. “Owen! I need you to take Sarah! I can’t… I can’t in this wind… and she—”

  Without speaking his answer, Owen scooped Sarah into his arms as carefully as he could, cradling her close to his chest. He was surprised by how light she was, especially given how far along she was in her pregnancy. Though he could feel her shoulders shivering from either fear or the rain, he could not hear her sobbing.

  “Stay close,” he shouted to Charlotte, “but don’t stop running!”

  Alan rushed past the truck and stopped at the scant shrubs and stunted trees that marked the edge of the hill that led down and away from the cabin. He looked back, waiting, frantically waving his arms for them to follow.

  He yelled something, but no one could hear.

  Even as he passed the truck, Owen had to fight the urge to leap inside and take his chances outrunning the tornado. He knew that Alan was right, that it was a pointless gesture that would only get them all killed.

  “We gots to go down this here hill!” Alan shouted in his ear as another round of lightning lit up the sky. “The cave is near the bottom!” And then he was gone into the darkening afternoon, over the ridge, his footprints in the fresh mud the only sign of his passing.

  “Follow him!” Owen screamed at Charlotte. “We’ll come on just behind!”

  Going down the incline was harder than Owen had expected. From the top, the path would have looked steep and treacherous in the best of conditions, but with all of the furious rain loosening the ground, turning it into mud, he met a constant challenge to stay upright, a task made all the more difficult by his carrying a pregnant girl. Because he could not see his feet, he shuffled them carefully as they awkwardly descended, hoping that he would know when he met an ob
stacle.

  Then suddenly a gust of wind made his wishes worthless, unbalancing him and sweeping his feet out from under him. When he knew that he was falling, Owen leaned backward as far as he could and absorbed the rough collision with his back, protecting Sarah as they half-slid down the embankment. Though his throbbing ribs screamed, still sore from being struck by a stampeding horse, he gritted his teeth and bore his agony silently, worrying more about ensuring Sarah’s safety.

  Mercifully, the descent was short. Once Owen struggled back to his feet, he followed as Alan led them around a stone outcropping, stopping before a low hole cut into the rock wall, half-covered by brush. It wasn’t much, Owen even wondered if he would have noticed the cave if he had not been looking for it, but it would have to do.

  “Put her in there!” Alan shouted.

  Owen ducked down at the cave’s entrance and pushed his way through the dead shrubs, their sharp nettles clinging to his shirt and scratching against his skin. He discovered that they had been shepherded into more of a depression than a cave; the solid rock wall met him mere feet past the opening. Owen’s feet stumbled over empty liquor bottles, undoubtedly left over from one of Alan’s benders.

  How in the hell are we all going to fit in here? Owen thought.

  Blindly, he felt along in the dark, his hand against the smooth, cold stone. Thankfully, he found that there was a small opening that rounded to the left, barely deeper than a closet. He was relieved to find that it offered some protection from the incessant wind. Owen gently set Sarah down on her feet and then hurried Charlotte to join her.

  “Hold Sarah close!” he shouted. “Stay around this corner and don’t move! I’ll be just behind you both!”

  Seconds passed, Owen’s arms wrapped around Charlotte in the darkness, before he became aware that there were only three of them in the cave.

  “Stay here and don’t move!” he bellowed in Charlotte’s ear. He could feel her turn to question him, but he was already too far away to hear.

  Owen found Alan outside the entrance, his face turned up into the rain, watching the calamity breaking all around them. He had no idea what Sarah’s father thought he was doing, but he wasn’t willing to ask.

  Grabbing him by the shirt, Owen made to drag Alan back to the safety of the cave, but he was astonished to have the man shake off his grasp.

  “What in the hell are you doing?” he shouted.

  “There ain’t room for all of us to fit in there!” Alan answered. “I’m stayin’ here!”

  “That’s crazy talk!”

  “You know I’m right!”

  “I won’t let you do this!” Owen yelled, frustrated. When he reached to grab Alan again, the man just moved farther away.

  “You got your whole life ’head of you! Get back in there ’fore it’s too late!”

  “But your daughter…!”

  “I ain’t never done right by that girl a once in her life! Ever since the day her momma died, I expected her to do all the cleanin’, cookin’, and maintainin’ of the house without ever thinkin’ of what was best for her! Well, now I am! I’m doin’ my part to keep her alive! You just tell her that her father loved her!”

  By the end, Owen could barely hear the words coming from Alan Beck’s mouth, so near had the tornado come. Even with his feet planted as hard as he could, the wind grabbed at him, trying to pull him to his death. There was no more time for arguing. Sarah’s father had made up his mind, and there would be no convincing him otherwise. A part of Owen understood his decision; he would have gladly sacrificed his own life so that Charlotte might live.

  Owen nodded once to Alan, then hurried back into the cave.

  “I’m here!” he shouted into Charlotte’s ear.

  “Where’s Alan?” she asked, but he pretended that he hadn’t heard her.

  Huddling as close to Charlotte and Sarah as he could, Owen strained to maintain his position inside the cave. Outside, the roar of the tornado escalated, its winds annihilating everything in its path as it moved ever forward. For the first time since he was a child, Owen gave a silent prayer, a plea that they would survive this encounter with the wrath of nature. He also gave a prayer for Alan, who had undoubtedly already been absorbed by the storm, hopefully already dead so that he might be spared the agony of enduring the tornado’s wrath.

  Heaven help anyone unlucky enough to fall into the tornado’s path…

  Carter Herrick sat behind his desk, sipping whiskey and smoking a cigar. Outside, the storm roared like a wild beast, but inside his home all was silent save for the ticking of a clock. With the advance of the rampaging storm, all the men who worked for him on his ranch had fled for safety, barricading themselves in shelters and holes in the earth, desperately trying to save their own hides. But Carter didn’t share their desire to live; when he saw the tornado outside his window, he decided just to stay and watch.

  Caroline Wallace returned to his thoughts, the memory of her pretty face a stark reminder of all that he had risked and lost throughout his life. There had been no pleasure to take from forcing himself on her all those many years ago. Recalling her horrifying cries had wakened him from his dreams on many a night, but he had refused to let her denial of his advances be the final word, could not allow her to belong to someone like John Grant.

  “Why couldn’t you have accepted me, Caroline?” he asked into the gloom.

  Would he be sitting here now if she had? Carter doubted it. He would never have married that waste of a woman in her place, would never have had to endure whatever sickness it was that finally felled her. Maybe he would have had a son strong enough, man enough, to replace him.

  Instead, he remained alone.

  Even his machinations to ruin John Grant had come to nothing. Whatever he asked Del Grissom and Clyde Drake to do, setting a wildfire, fouling the water supply, even starting a stampede of horses, resulted in little more than a temporary inconvenience. Grant had always been a resilient son of a bitch when they were young, a talent that served him well now. Carter supposed that if he really had wanted to end things between them, he should have gone up to the man and shot him himself.

  Something heavy slammed into Carter’s ranch house. Looking out the window, he could see the tornado begin to pull apart one of his outer buildings. It was fascinating, in a way, to watch the boards being lifted into the sky. He wondered what that force might do to a man.

  Soon, he would be with his son. He’d stopped living when the boy died, a corpse who didn’t have the common sense to know he shouldn’t be drawing breath. Time would rectify that.

  When the windows of his office broke, and the wood was plied from his home by the wind, Carter Herrick sat back… and smiled.

  Everywhere around them was destruction. Remnants of the Becks’ cabin littered the ground, a piece of tin roof here, scattered boards there, and even a bit of bedding lodged in the boughs of a nearby tree. Running to the cave had saved their lives; staying behind would have ended them.

  The truck had been pushed to the lip of the path they had followed and now lay upside down at its base, a spidery web of cracks spread across the windshield.

  How is it possible that we are alive?

  The answer was that they were indebted to Alan Beck. If it hadn’t been for his knowledge of the land, his wouldn’t be the only death. Charlotte couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for the man, first to decide he should remain outside the cave and then to have to wait for the tornado to inevitably end his life. She and he had had their differences when she had begun teaching Sarah, but now she saw him in a new light, as a father who knew his final responsibility was to his child.

  Owen settled Sarah onto a rock just outside the cave entrance. The poor girl appeared traumatized, in shock over what they had experienced. She still had not asked for her father, but Charlotte knew that moment would soon come.

  “Are you all right?” Owen asked as he took her hands in his own.

  “I don’t know,” she murmured, and laug
hed.

  “Me either.”

  For a long moment, they stood surveying the carnage all around them, uncertain of what to say or how to start picking up the pieces.

  “You saved my life,” she said softly, the world suddenly so quiet after the cacophony of the tornado.

  “Alan saved us all… we saved each other…”

  Charlotte loved Owen Wallace; the choice she had made in giving him her heart had been the right one. Even now, in the face of such widespread destruction, she felt hope. They would build a life together, would build a family. She would help him to let go of his sorrow, his need for revenge, until there was no more darkness in his heart, just as the darkened sky above would someday clear. They would laugh, cry, shout, and everything in between. None of it would be easy, but standing together, there was nothing that they couldn’t overcome.

  They had just proven it.

  Epilogue

  Sawyer, Oklahoma—Christmas Eve, 1940

  “… THAT GERMAN PLANES again struck the heart of London last night, sparking fires that raged out of control. Reports are that civilian casualties were limited due to the timely evacuation to subway tunnels. German chancellor Adolf Hitler went on state radio to declare the bombing a success.”

  Charlotte shut off the radio with a frown. They had listened to the war news all day. She had hoped to catch something lighter, perhaps listen to some music, maybe a variety show, but the war in Europe seemed to monopolize the airways. Right now she had to focus on the imminent arrival of her dinner guests.

  For the fourth time in two hours, she reviewed her checklist. Everything seemed to be as she wanted; the table had been set with their nicest dishes and silverware, a turkey was roasting in the oven, Owen was grumbling out back while cutting firewood for the night, and even all of the ornaments on their small Christmas tree were just as she wanted them.

  “May this be the best Christmas of all our lives,” she murmured to herself.

  So much had changed since that first summer she had arrived in Sawyer to become a teacher, far from her home and family in Minnesota. Looking back on those days, she was amazed at all that had happened. So many calamities had struck John Grant’s ranch, culminating in the tornado that had nearly blown them all away, that there had never seemed a moment’s peace.