The Sacred Acre

by Mark Tabb

  Now Aaron could not even find the place where the house had once been. Everything he had used as a landmark to find his way around the south side of town as a boy had been rendered unrecognizable.

  Police cruisers and fire trucks from surrounding towns filled the high school parking lot as Ed and Todd walked up to the school. Ed headed straight to the football field. The school had named it after him a few years earlier. He never called it Ed Thomas Field, just as he never called it the Sacred Acre. From his house he could tell the school had been hit by the tornado, but he wasn’t prepared for what he saw as he looked down on the field where his team played ball. Portions of the home grandstands were upended and mangled. The press box lay shattered on the ground. The goalpost in the west end zone looked like a pretzel.

  As for the field itself, it looked like a pincushion. Debris from the storm didn’t just cover the grass. Two-by-fours and sheets of plywood and glass and lawn mower decks and anything else the EF5 tornado could rip from the houses south of town appeared to have been driven down into the turf with a jackhammer. Tears welled up in Ed’s eyes. Todd put his arm around his father, fighting back tears of his own. “It’ll be OK, Dad.”

  Ed took a deep breath. “I know.” He stood there for a moment, staring out at the place where he had invested so much of himself. Letting out a long sigh, he said, “I need to get to my classroom.”

  They turned toward the building. “Dad, we can’t go in there. It looks worse than the field,” Todd said.*

  “I have to at least try,” Ed said. Todd didn’t try to talk him out of it. If there was one thing he had learned about his father, it was that he never let any obstacle, large or small, get in his way. Once he set his mind to something, he found a way to get it done.

  The two of them pushed through a door near what remained of the gym and walked down the main hallway. Portions of the hall itself were clear, but the wall on the left-hand side had collapsed into a classroom. “That room was one of our safe rooms,” Ed said, “the place where the kids were supposed to go when the tornado sirens go off.”

  “Whoa,” Todd said. The roof and walls had caved down onto the desks below. “I hate to think what might have happened if the storm had hit when school was in session.”

  Ed and Todd picked their way through the rubble. They finally made it to the hallway near Ed’s classroom. Steel girders that had once supported the roof hung down, blocking their path.

  “Hey,” a voice called out to them, “it’s not safe in there. You need to get out.” Ed turned and saw a sheriff’s deputy pointing at them.

  “Come on, Dad, let’s get out of here,” Todd said. “You can’t do anything in here right now anyway.”

  Ed sighed and wiped his eyes. “OK, pal. Let’s go.”

  Ed and Todd arrived back at what remained of the Thomases’ home. Aaron was wandering around, trying to get his bearings. After hugs and stories of what had just happened, Ed said to his sons, “I really need to go back and try to get into my classroom.”

  “Dad, we already tried once. That place isn’t safe. What’s so important that it can’t wait?” Todd asked.

  “All the booster club money is locked up in my office, along with money for the summer football T-shirts the boys ordered, ticket money, and the cash I set aside for the football program through the year from my speaking engagements,” Ed said.

  “So are we talking about a thousand dollars?” Todd asked. “That’s not worth taking a chance of having a wall fall on you.”

  Ed lowered his voice. “Closer to forty thousand.”

  Aaron jumped in. “Why on earth would you have that kind of money in your classroom, Dad?”

  Ed just smiled. “That’s how I’ve always done it. I can keep an eye on it that way. Never seemed to present a problem until now.”

  Aaron and Todd looked at one another and shook their heads. “Yeah, all right, I’ll go with you,” Aaron said.

  The number of emergency vehicles in the school parking lot had increased exponentially since Ed’s first foray there an hour or so earlier. He and Aaron walked up to the same entrance he had gone into with Todd. An emergency management official in a bright yellow shirt with an ID badge dangling off the front stepped in front of them. “I’m sorry. This site is restricted. No one is allowed inside,” he said.

  “Sure, I understand,” Ed said, “but I just need to get inside for a minute. I’m Ed Thomas, the football coach …”

  “Yes, sir, I know who you are, but you still aren’t going inside the school building. A couple of the walls could collapse at any moment. I cannot allow you to go inside.”

  “I don’t plan on moving in. I have a few things in my room that I absolutely must get out of there,” Ed said.

  “If anything is left in your room, I can assure you that nobody else will be allowed to get in there and take it. Your things that survived the storm will be fine.”

  “You don’t understand. I have to get in there.”

  “No, you don’t understand, Coach Thomas. No one, and I mean no one, can enter this school building. No exceptions. The last thing I’m going to do is let you or anyone else go waltzing in there and have a wall come down on top of you. Case closed.”

  Ed opened his mouth to say something else, but Aaron cut him off. “Come on, Dad. You’re not going to win this argument.”

  Reluctantly, Ed gave in. He allowed Aaron to pull him by the arm away from the gym entrance. The two of them walked just out of earshot of the emergency management official. “OK, follow me,” Ed said. “I think we can get in back by the shop.” They rounded a corner, and Ed stopped. “Well, will you look at that.” He was right about being able to get in through the shop. The shop, along with the entire back side of the school building, was completely gone.

  Once inside, they crawled around, under and over rubble, until they reached Ed’s classroom. Desks were upended. Steel girders hung down, twisted. Ceiling tiles and roofing material covered the floor.

  Ed walked over to a pile that sat where his desk was supposed to be. “Can you give me a hand?” he said. Aaron helped his father lift a board of broken Sheetrock off the side of the desk so they could get to the drawers. He had never seen his father so shaken, so in shock.

  Ed dug around through a couple of the drawers. “This is unbelievable, you know it? Just unbelievable.” He let out a long sigh. “OK, here they are,” he said, pulling out the money boxes.

  “OK, Dad, can we get out of here?” Aaron said.

  “Yeah. I’m done,” Ed said. On the way out he also grabbed his playbooks, along with some of the framed photographs of former players that still hung on the walls.

  “Dad,” Aaron said.

  “OK, really, I’m done now.”

  *Watch raw, unedited footage at www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLx7Xe6_cxo.

  *For glimpses of the damage to the high school and the surrounding area, go to www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9VPPBa1bY0.

  CHAPTER 3

  A STORM OF DOUBT

  Adversity is the test of character.

  ED THOMAS

  JAN LOST ALL SENSE OF TIME IN THE IMMEDIATE AFTERMATH of the tornado. From the moment she found her shoes under a pile of rubble and took off running in the general direction of the fire station, she had been locked on task. Other EMTs and firefighters arrived at the station shortly after she did. Jan took charge. While Ed was digging through the rubble of his classroom, she helped move debris from the ambulance station so that they could put the ambulances into service. She then turned the station garage into a staging area for the injured. Since all of the roads on the south side of town were impassable, those who were injured had to make their way to the station for help. Most walked. Many were transported on the back of four-wheelers. One young mother came rushing up, carrying her two-year-old daughter. “You’ve got to help my little girl,” she demanded. Jan thought the mother might hyperventilate at any moment.

  “Where is she hurt?” Jan asked.

  “How should I
know?” the woman shrieked. “That’s why I brought her here. Our house just blew away from around us!”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Jan said. She took the girl by the hand. “OK, let me take a look.” The mother bounced from foot to foot, crying, moaning. Jan focused on the two-year-old. Dirt streaked the girl’s skin, along with a few minor cuts and bruises. Jan ran her hands up each arm. “Does this hurt, sweetie?” she asked. The girl shook her head no. Pulling a penlight out of her EMT bag, Jan checked the girl’s pupils for signs of a concussion. She asked a few basic questions, and the girl answered every one. After a few minutes of tests, Jan patted the girl on the head and said to her mother, “Her injuries appear to be minor.”

  “No!” the mother yelled. “You put her in an ambulance and take her to the hospital where she can be checked out by a DOCTOR! DO YOU HEAR ME!”

  “I’m sorry, but with so many injured people and only two ambulances, we can only transport those with the most critical injuries.”

  That was not the response the mother wanted. She launched into a profanity-laced tirade, calling Jan every name in the book. Jan calmly took it. “I understand your wanting to have your daughter checked by a doctor. I believe you probably should, but we cannot take an ambulance out of service for an extended period of time for a non-life-threatening injury. There are people around here with cars that are still drivable who will happily take you to the hospital in Cedar Falls if you ask,” Jan said, still calm, no matter how angry the panicked mom became.

  “WHAT IF THIS WAS YOUR CHILD?”

  “I would say the same thing.”

  Finally, the child’s grandmother pulled the mother away. They did not return. Aaron saw his mother for the first time the night of the tornado around 9:30. He thought he was looking at his father on game night. She had the same tunnel-vision focus that his dad had while trying to shut down an opponent’s offense. A second tornado could have dropped down next to her and it wouldn’t have rattled her. He walked over to his friend Chris Luhring. Chris was the chief of police. “Whoa, I’ve never seen my mom like that,” Aaron said.

  “Yep, she has been amazing.”

  “So who’s in charge here?” Aaron asked.

  Chris laughed. “Officially? Me. In reality? You’re looking at her.”

  “Can we do anything?”

  “You and your dad might stay close by in case I have to go look at somebody”—that is, if he had to go identify a body found by a rescuer combing through the wreckage, house by house. Chris had practically grown up in the Thomases’ home. He and Aaron attended school together from preschool on up. In high school, Aaron played quarterback, and Chris was a split end —although in Ed Thomas’s offense, that meant Aaron handed the ball off to a running back and Chris blocked. Even so, the two had been friends forever. If Chris had to go identify any bodies in the night, he wanted someone he could trust nearby. He especially wanted Coach close by. Chris loved Ed like a father.

  After a while it became clear that almost everyone was accounted for. The state police evacuated the town. Everyone except for emergency personnel was supposed to be out of Parkersburg by 9:00 p.m. Aaron and Ed were two of the last to leave. After checking on Jan at the ambulance station, they headed toward Aaron’s in-laws’ house, five miles north of town.

  Sometime around 10:30, Ed collapsed into a chair at the dining room table in the home of Ellie’s parents, Jerry and Janet Junker. He let out a long sigh. “You know,” he said looking up at Ellie, “I think this is the first time I’ve sat down since before five o’clock this afternoon, except for riding in Aaron’s truck on the way over here.”

  “You have to be exhausted,” Ellie said.

  “I am. I didn’t realize how tired I was until I sat down. Whew, what a day,” he said. Ellie walked over and gave him a hug. As she did, tears welled up in Ed’s eyes. “You know, it’s weird,” he said. “At the end of the day, I usually end up dozing off in my recliner in front of a ball game in my living room. And now all that is gone.” Ed dropped his head, his shoulders slumped down. “I can’t believe I don’t have a place to call home.” He began to weep. “I can’t believe I don’t have a place to call home.”

  Ellie opened her mouth as if to say something, but the words stuck in the back of her throat. Instead of talking, she hugged her father-in-law tighter. One thing she admired about Ed, something she had admired about him since she was a student at A-P, was his willingness to show his emotions. A dozen years earlier in the championship game, when she and Aaron were seniors, A-P came within a bad second half of finishing the year as undefeated state champions. At a pep rally filled with students and parents after the game, tears streamed down Ed’s cheeks as he told the crowd how he thanked God for the privilege of coaching that group of young people. The entire crowd choked up when he said, “There’s always going to be a winner, and there’s always going to be a loser, but only on the scoreboard. You can tell the true champions by how they handle themselves in adversity. And these young people today handled themselves like champions after we lost to a very good football team.” That pep rally never seemed further away.

  Not much else was said that night. Ed took a shower and went off to bed not long after arriving at the Junkers’ home. Jan spent the night at the ambulance station. It would be another day before she would get any real sleep.

  Sometime around eight o’clock the following morning, Chris Luhring drove his four-wheel-drive Ford Explorer squad car to the Thomases’ house. Like Jan, Chris had worked through the night, and so had his Explorer. Given the way he had abused it over the past fifteen hours, he was more than a little surprised it was still running and that all four tires weren’t flat. When the tornado hit, he was at his in-laws’ farm a few miles north of Parkersburg. For the first time in a long time, he had taken the day off completely. He didn’t have his police radio or pager or even his cell phone with him. Instead, he wanted to clear his mind as he worked in the garden, thinking about anything but his job. Even when the rain started to fall, he stayed outside, listening to the rolls of thunder off in the distance. He had needed a day like that for a very long time.

  News reports on the radio of the approaching tornado ended his day off. He arrived in Parkersburg just after the storm had passed. Approaching from the north, he saw the water tower in the distance, which was a good sign. The north side of town looked fairly normal as well. A few trees had damage, but all in all, the town appeared to have come through unscathed. Then he turned a corner and saw his uncle’s house lying in the middle of the street. Immediately, he took off toward his sister and brother-in-law’s house. From what he could see, it appeared their house lay right in the path of the worst of the tornado. Dropping his Explorer into four-wheel drive, he drove over trees, toppled roofs, telephone poles, anything that lay in his path. He came up to a relative’s house, or what had been their house, and saw that they were OK. However, they started yelling at Chris and waving their arms. Finally he stopped the Explorer and hollered, “What?”

  “You’re dragging a tree behind you,” someone said.

  “So?” Chris said, “I’ve got people I have to get to! I’ll deal with the tree later.” He then took off, climbing over utility poles and shattered walls, a tree in tow.

  Those first few moments immediately after the storm defined the rest of his day and night. Fifteen hours later, he was still at it, although rather than running in search-and-rescue gear, he was now trying to manage the flow of rescuers and family members of storm victims inside and outside of town, along with overseeing salvage operations and stopping looters. With the latter, out-of-towners, not locals, were the problem. Any time a disaster hits, a few people look at it as a chance to go on a free shopping spree. Even though the state police had every road in and out of town blocked, rumor had it that a set of looters came into town on a raft up the river. Chris always tried to see the best in people, but in this case he had trouble believing anyone could be so callous.

  He pulled up to the Thomases’ h
ouse on official business. Ed,

  Aaron, Ellie, Todd, and a few other people were busy digging through debris. Jan was still at the fire station, although she would join the family a little later that morning. Chris pulled up and rolled down his window. “Hey, Coach,” he said.

  Ed walked over to Chris’s Explorer. The sight of Chris allowed Ed to drop his guard. Tears began rolling down his face. That broke the dam Chris had held back for the past fifteen hours. He began to weep as well. Ed stuck his head inside the passenger side window of the vehicle. The first words out of his mouth were, “I don’t know if I can do this.”

  The sound of those words surprised Chris as much as the news that an EF5 tornado had plowed through Parkersburg. “What, Coach? I mean, you have to …”

  “I know, Chris, but I don’t know if I can.”

  “All my life, Coach, you’ve told me that adversity is the true test of character. You’ve shown me how to never let the storms define who I am. You’ve always done that, always, Coach.” Chris’s voice began to crack. He could barely force words out of his mouth. “This can’t be a question of whether or not you can; it is a question of when you will start. You have to show us the way, Coach, just like you always have.”

  “But …,” Ed could barely speak, “we’ve never been through anything like this before. I just heard that six people died. My neighbor Chuck didn’t make it. He has lived behind me for years, and now he’s gone.” Ed looked down at the ground, tears flowing faster than before. “I never thought something like this was possible here. Never.”

  Chris shook his head. “I know, Coach; I know.” He paused, searching for the right words. “I could spend a million dollars a day here to rebuild everything, but it won’t mean a thing unless you lead us.”

  Ed didn’t say anything. He looked over at the rubble of his house. Aaron and Ellie were down on their knees, picking through a pile of boards, Sheetrock, and insulation. Ellie’s parents each had a rake, combing through materials near what appeared to be the garage. After a few moments, Ed said, “Can you give me a lift over to the high school?”