by Jana Zinser
“Why should I, you whoremonger?”
Uncle Tommy shook his head. “To get back at me, Barbara talked Robert into marrying her. I tried to avoid her after that, but she came to me on the night of the accident and threatened to tell Hattie if I didn’t run away with her.”
“I found out anyway,” Hattie said.
“Barbara said she was in trouble and had to leave. Guess Conrad had something to do with that. I shouldn’t have gone.” He sighed and looked away. “Robert saw us get on the bus. I think he was madder at me than her.”
“He idolized you, don’t know why,” Uncle Walter said. “And you betrayed him.”
“Shut up. I know what I did.”
Uncle Walter looked at Ivy. “Robert chased after them in his car.” He pointed to Uncle Tommy. “He was on the bus with your mother when Robert crashed into the semi.”
His words echoed in Ivy’s mind. Her hands shook and she covered her mouth for a moment. “So my father’s not my father, is he?”
Uncle Walter slowly shook his head. “No. Robert knew you weren’t his biological child, but he didn’t care. He loved you. You were his world.”
Uncle Tommy pushed his glasses up and tucked his yellowed dress shirt into his polyester pants. He took a deep breath. “I’m your father.”
Ivy shuddered, and her heart quaked as lightning flashed, thunder roared, and torrential rains poured inside her mind. “No, that’s not true. It can’t be true.”
Uncle Tommy stepped toward Ivy with his hands extended. “Ivy, listen to me.”
She took a step back. “No. Stay away from me. I don’t have to listen to you.”
If Uncle Tommy hadn’t been running away with her mother, her father wouldn’t have been driving so fast on the icy roads that night to stop her, and the tractor-trailer wouldn’t have run into him. The shock of Uncle Tommy’s horrifying revelation filled her with rage. She could never forgive him.
Uncle Tommy shook his head. “I didn’t want Robert to die. I loved my brother.”
“That’s why you ran away with his wife?” Ivy looked at the man who had destroyed her family. “Why didn’t you go on to Des Moines with her? Why did you come back?”
“He was my brother. This is my family. I got off the bus and stayed for Robert’s funeral.” His body went limp. “After that, it all seemed pointless. Barbara was gone. Hattie found out. Too much damage had been done.”
Ivy’s family, shrouded by secrets for so long, stood stunned by the revelations.
“If you knew you were my father, why didn’t you want me?” Ivy asked in anguish.
Uncle Tommy’s lip trembled. He glanced at Aunt Hattie and then back at Ivy. “After Robert’s funeral, I tried to take you home with me, but Hattie wouldn’t let me and mother thought it was best if you lived with her. I was just outnumbered. I had no fight left in me. And Mom was right.” His tired eyes filled with tears. “But I’ve lived in hell because of it.” Tears ran down Uncle Tommy face.
Aunt Hattie shook her finger at him. “A hell of your own making.”
Uncle Tommy’s hands quivered. “Never knew how to make it right. Just seemed like the best thing to do was to let you live with your grandmother.”
Ivy looked at the man whose foolish love for her mother had altered her life forever. Sometimes, a single night can change a generation.
Throughout the years, Ivy had been disgusted by Uncle Tommy. She often disliked him, and sometimes felt indifferent to him, but now she didn’t know what to feel. Uncle Tommy, the family traitor and agitator, was her father.
Grandma knew more about the sandwich war than she ever admitted. She should have told her, but Grandma came from a generation that believed some things were best left unsaid.
Uncle Tommy held out his shaking arms to Ivy. Ivy didn’t move. She looked at Uncle Tommy and slowly shook her head. “Uncle Tommy, despite the truth, you’ll always be my uncle. It’s too late for you to be my father. You’ve already had a lifetime of chances. Besides, I thought I grew up without a father, but now I see I’ve always had one.” Turning away from Uncle Tommy, Ivy walked into Uncle Walter’s embrace, the man who had loved and protected her like a father all of her life.
That night, after everyone went home, Ivy and Carly paid a quick visit to Otis to tell him about the funeral and complain about Thelma keeping him captive. Then they hurried home so Carly could go to bed. Exhausted, she fell asleep as soon as her eyes closed.
Ivy cleaned up the kitchen and made a fire. The house settled too quiet without the constant sounds of Grandma. The night’s silence stretched endlessly. Ivy could not endure the stillness that death brought. The stress of the day and the intensity of her emotions were exhausting. She stretched out on the couch in front of the fire, enjoying the warmth of the leaping flames.
After the death of Grandma, there was little strength left for life. Rosie, the old hermit lady, must have felt this way after her mother died. Only her wild dogs and cats kept her connected to this world.
But Ivy had Carly, Uncle Walter, and Otis to tie her to this life. Still, the emptiness swallowed her until she felt she would be lost in the hollow hole that Grandma’s soul left behind.
Chapter 40
THE BENCHES
All through winter, Ivy and Carly put birdseed in the feeders for Grandma’s winged friends. But only Grandma’s old nemeses, the squirrels, feasted on the seeds. The birds in their bereavement, left the woods empty. Their nests abandoned. The echoing bird songs stilled. The only tune left in the woods was the breeze blowing through the bare branches—nature’s song of anguish. The earth itself seemed to grieve the passing of the great Violet Taylor.
The loss of Grandma consumed Ivy as well, but she still needed to go to work, she had a little girl to raise, and her responsibilities to Uncle Walter and Otis prevented her from sinking too far under.
She picked up Carly from Patty’s after work and often went to visit Otis. They tried to keep his spirits up, but living at Rose Hill pulled him even deeper into his despair. Ivy understood his sadness. Death and the feeling of overwhelming loss weighed heavily.
Spring came late and the snow lingered on the hard ground, unwilling to give up its reign to the resurrection of spring. But despite winter’s reluctance to recede, the snow melted, and spring found its way. The little green buds on the trees sprouted. The daffodils and tulips raised their shy heads. The sun warmed the earth. The strong spring prairie winds blew in with the assurance that life goes on.
The warm spring wind brought the renewal of hope and the earth breathed with new beginnings. But the usually plentiful spring rains didn’t come. The plants soon began to wither. The promise of the new growth shriveled and dried up, stunted from the drought. But like all things, that too changed.
Late one April afternoon, four months after Grandma died, the drenching rains finally came. The storm blew in from the south. The winds howled across the prairie, gathering an unstoppable force and speed. The dark clouds made the late afternoon look like the shadowy curtain of evening. Ivy sent everyone home early from the college alumni office. Uncle Walter was taking care of Carly that day, so Ivy got in the Monstrosity and drove home through the blinding rain. The windshield wipers ticked like the nervous beat of a metronome.
The heavens shook with thunder and lightning. The storm hovered, choking the atmosphere. It took all of Ivy’s strength to keep the Monstrosity on the road. Sudden gusts sent it rocking to one side, close to the road’s edge. She tightly gripped the steering wheel and drove on.
Ivy finally pulled into the long driveway of her house, relieved to have made it home safely. When she opened the truck door, the wind jerked it shut on its hinges. She pushed it back open and trudged slowly against the wind to the house.
As she opened the door, she heard the town’s tornado siren faintly wailing against the roaring wind, meaning a tornado had been sighted near Coffey. She rushed in and struggled to pull the door shut behind her. “Carly! Uncle Walter! It’s the tor
nado siren. We’ve got to get to the canning room,” she shouted.
No one answered. The tormenting gusts rattled the windows. The chimney made a ghostly sound as the wind found its way down the old, brick shaft.
She ran into the kitchen. A note stuck under the bluebird magnet on the refrigerator read: “Carly and I are going to my place. Be back soon. Love, Uncle Walter.” Ivy’s heartbeat amplified in her ears. Uncle Walter’s trailer. With a tornado coming, they’d have no chance. Trailers were always the first to go.
Ivy opened the front door. The wind threw the lid of a trash can against the porch wall. The menacing dark clouds changed shape, twisting and elongating as if some immeasurable force was pulling them down from the sky in a long funnel.
A trailer could be a death trap during a tornado. Uncle Walter didn’t have a car and they would never get back home in time to escape the twister. She would have to drive to the trailer to get them. It was only a few blocks away.
Ivy fought against the rain and wind, and jumped back into the Monstrosity, pulling hard with both hands to get the door closed. The old truck sputtered but wouldn’t turn over. “Come on! Start. Please.”
She kissed her fingers and touched the dashboard like Nick used to do. She turned the key again. It churned and kicked over. She put it in reverse and backed out of the driveway. The drenching rain obscured her vision. The left wheel went off the driveway and spun in the ditch. She put it in forward and gunned the gas pedal. “Don’t fail me now, you wily beast.”
The tire slipped and then took hold. She rolled down the window and stuck her head out to see as she edged down the driveway. Rain pelted her face. She drove slowly through the streets, trying to avoid the streams of water pouring down the middle of the roads.
The windshield wipers pumped, pushing the torrential water away. For a few seconds, she could see clearly. The tornado funnel eased back up, disappearing into the mass of churning wind and clouds. Maybe she would have enough time to get to the trailer and back home.
The rain, a sheet of blurry liquid, prevented her from seeing the turn into the Prairie Hills Trailer Park. Ivy cut across the newly planted flowerbed and across the common lawn. She honked the horn. The trailers looked deserted and no lights were on. Maybe Carly and Uncle Walter sought safety elsewhere. Then Ivy looked at the street lights. They were off, too. The town’s electricity must have gone out, so, Carly and Uncle Walter might still be in there.
She left the engine running, opened the door, and jumped out into the storm. Trash blew across the trailer park. She protected her face with her hands and glanced up at the sky. The funnel sprung down again from the clouds, this time bigger and more defined. The tornado headed her way at a tremendous speed. She ran up to Uncle Walter’s trailer but the door remained locked, like always. She pounded on the door. “Uncle Walter! Carly! You’ve got to come with me. The tornado’s here.” No one answered.
She turned around to check the advancement of the twisting clouds. The curtain in Bertha’s trailer opened. Bertha, with her nose pressed to the window, frantically motioned to her. Ivy ran across the small strip of lawn, dodging Uncle Walter’s lawn ornaments. She opened Bertha’s trailer door. Bertha, Uncle Walter, and Carly huddled under the kitchen table. The trailer began to sway. It creaked like an old wooden bridge about to give way. Ivy motioned to them. “Come on, you guys. We can’t stay here. We’ve got to get home to the basement.”
Uncle Walter and Carly got up and hurried toward Ivy. Bertha remained under the table.
“You, too, Bertha.”
Bertha scrambled out from the table and they all ran for the Monstrosity. Ivy opened the camper’s back door and they piled in. “Crawl under the benches along the walls. They’re bolted to the floor. It’s the safest place.”
Then Ivy fought her way to the driver’s door. As she got in the truck, a panel of Bertha’s trailer tore off and hit the open truck door. Ivy gunned the gas pedal and the truck took off with the door open. She needed to get out of there, fast. The tornado, only a short distance away, swirled debris in the air. The strong wind slammed Ivy’s door shut. Her foot fell off the gas for a second. Then she pushed the pedal to the floor. The Monstrosity jerked and drove smoking in front of the dark wall of the tornado with no other way out.
The camper windows weaved in and out as if they were made of liquid. The twisting mass of destruction chased them down the street with the tornado sounding like the trains roaring behind Mulberry Street, amplified.
Ivy looked back through the rearview mirror at the advancing black corkscrew of wind. Bertha’s trailer roof tore off and its flimsy sides caved in. Then the tornado passed over Uncle Walter’s trailer, picking up his home like a child’s dollhouse, and sending its contents spiraling into the air.
Ivy was glad Uncle Walter and Bertha couldn’t see the destruction of their homes as they cowered under the sturdy benches bolted to the floor in the back. The old haphazardly-constructed camper rattled and shook violently as the tornado’s coiling edge got closer. The crooked nails holding the camper together groaned like a crowbar prying metal from a board. Precariously held together at the best of times, the camper vibrated wildly.
Ivy turned around and glanced through the open cab window into the back. “Hold on tight to the bench legs. It’s coming.”
All she could hear in response over the wind was Carly’s screams.
“Hold on Carly,” Ivy yelled. “Hold on.”
With a mighty jerk, the top of the camper pulled loose from its tentative grip on the old truck and was sucked away into the twisting cloud of the tornado hovering beside them. Ivy yelled as she made a sharp turn into 4120 and gunned it out of the path of the tornado.
What remained of the Monstrosity shuddered onto the driveway, as the black tornado shrank back up into the clouds as quickly as it came down. Ivy jumped out of the truck. She pushed her wet hair out of her face and ran to the back.
Bertha rolled out from under the left bench. She looked like a drenched cat, no longer proper, confident, lipsticked, and fluffy. Then Uncle Walter inched his way out from under the right bench. He slowly pulled himself up, grimacing in pain. His dark hair sprinkled with gray, still thick for an older man, stood on end, either from the power of the wind or pure fright. Ivy jumped into the ripped-open back. “Where’s Carly?”
Carly’s small hands still gripped the legs of the front bench, nearest to the cab. “I can’t let go. My hands won’t move. I think they’re stuck.”
Ivy crawled over, gently pried her little fingers from around the legs of the bench, and pulled her out. Uncle Walter and Bertha threw their arms around Ivy and Carly as the rain fell with a battering force. The storm was over and they had survived another of life’s tornados.
However, the twisting winds of the tornado had destroyed all of Uncle Walter’s years of meticulous collecting. The most careful life planning, disrupted again.
“Someone else will have to manage the trailer park now. I can’t bear to live in a new trailer without any cookie jars,” Uncle Walter told Ivy the next morning.
“You’ll move in here. This has always been your home,” Ivy said.
Bertha sat on the porch, wearing one of Grandma’s old robes and drinking coffee. Carly sat beside her. The sky hung dark and wet with moisture. Ivy caught a quick movement out of the corner of her eye. Was it a bird? With summer approaching, the birds still had not returned. But no, it was just a leaf swirling to the ground. The woods stood silent, except for the constant rain.
After breakfast, they crammed into the front seat of the Monstrosity and Ivy drove Bertha to Edna Jean’s house. When Edna Jean heard about the total destruction of the trailer, she invited Bertha to live with her. Now neither of them would be alone.
After making sure Otis was safe, hiding from the storm in the cellar at Rose Hill Nursing Home, they went to Uncle Walter’s trailer park to look at the rubble and see if anything had survived the tornado. Uncle Walter’s hands sank deep in his pockets as he ex
amined the crushed remains. Only the trailer’s base of cinder blocks remained. Uncle Walter kicked the debris beneath his shoes and stepped on a broken shard of a ceramic cookie jar.
Carly ran over to the mushroom-riding gnome. “Look, one of your lawn creatures is alive!”
Uncle Walter examined his lawn art. “Well, sure enough, it looks a little wind-blown, but there it is, by golly.”
They carefully transported it in the back of what remained of the Monstrosity and left the destroyed rubble of Uncle Walter’s life behind. Then they ceremoniously placed it in the front yard of Grandma’s grand Victorian house and the evil pixie continued to ride the mushroom.
Ivy put her arm through Uncle Walter’s arm. “You lived in that trailer a long time. Did you ever want to get married?”
“It wasn’t an option for me.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“A small town isn’t the best place for a man who likes men to find love.”
“I love you.”
“And that has been one of my only comforts.”
Chapter 41
THE VANISHING OF THE GHOSTS
Spring, usually sunny and bright and blooming with new colors, remained drab and dreary. For a few days after the tornado, rain fell in full torrential force. The earthworms wiggled in the streets and on the sidewalks, forced from their comfort of the soil by the flood of water.
The saturated ground created puddles in every dip of Reuben’s yard. The farmhouse gutters poured a steady waterfall of rain and the trees and plants drank until they choked. The ditches clogged with debris floating in the runoff. There was too much water, with nowhere to go. Reuben’s fields filled with the endless spring rain. Great pools of water formed across his fertile land. The farm acreage could not absorb the non-stop rain.
One night in late May after spending the afternoon with Otis, Ivy and Carly went to Reuben and Patty’s house to eat pizza and watch a movie. Uncle Walter wanted to stay home and sleep. After the frightening ordeal of the tornado, Uncle Walter missed his trailer, but he told Ivy he enjoyed the safety of living in a house with a foundation.