The World Ends In Hickory Hollow (19 page)

At the gate Zack lifted the horn and blew, once, twice, three times, shocking the birds to silence. Then we waited. After a little, we could hear, faintly but clearly, the trumpeted reply. A communal sigh told me that all of us had held our breaths, waiting.

Lantana turned her lined face up to the sky. "Good thing we went now," she mused. "Weather
comin
'. Tomorrow, next day, weather
comin
' for sure."

Which meant that we rose the next morning and hastily saw to the security of our haystacks, our corn bins, and our stills.
Suzi
and I turned under the dried bean vines in the garden and planted fresh greens, beans, and squash, while the others scattered to their own tasks. When the lunch call was beaten out on the old plowshare that hung from the chinaberry tree, clouds were already beginning to darken the northwest horizon. We hurriedly covered our last row of seeds, then headed for the cabin, where Nellie and Mom Allie presided over the cooking.

By the time we were all washed and seated, a riffle of cool breeze was interrupting the sultry heat of the morning. We ate with one eye turned skyward, expecting to be forced inside at any moment, but as it happened the storm didn't arrive until later. Yet all the time those blue-black clouds approached from the northwest, Lantana was uneasy as a fox in a box. She kept prowling onto the back porch and gazing first to the northwest, then to the southwest, then returning to her tasks in the cabin.

Skinny finally suggested that all those who lived at the house had better make tracks, while they could make it. Lantana shook her head, and to my surprise Mom Allie and Lucas agreed with her.

"Don't like the color of that sky," Lucas explained. "I think we'd better stick close to the Burrow, all of us. I feel a tornado, off there someplace."

"But it's not the season!" I stared at him in surprise. "We always have our tornadoes in the late fall and winter around here. Not in the dead of summer."

"Mostly," he agreed. "But not always, not even before the bombs fell and did whatever they've done to the jet stream and the lay of the land, and maybe even the ocean currents.. There's so much that we don't know now about how things are over the horizon. Anyway, my bones have lived with East Texas weather for a lot of years, and you can hardly fool '
em
."

By now all of us were beginning to feel the electric prickle of the coming turbulence. A spatter of big, fat raindrops was followed by a gust of wind that laid the whole forest that we could see into a deep bow. It hit the cabin like a blow from a plank, and we all looked at one another, gathered up the children, handwork, and current books and retired to the cramped confines of the Burrow.

You haven't lived until you have crammed ten adults and nine children into a mobile home, however large and comfortable it might seem to be. Aside from lack of room, the young ones were wild with the excitement that accompanies an electrical storm. We finally had to let them out into the warm rain that now came down in opaque sheets. A little of that calmed them down, and we had them dried and drowsy when Lantana cocked her head, her old-fashioned cornrow braids standing out stiffly.

"Here she comes," she whispered.

It sounded like a train or a flight of jets. The rumble wasn't
placeable
, as to direction, but we knew it must be coming up the track from southwest to northeast, for that was the almost invariable road the twisters took.

"God, let it bounce high off the last line of hills," murmured Mom Allie, and I added my silent amen to that. The painfully scrounged array of equipment and foodstuffs, books and clothing and tools we had labored to assemble could go, leaving no trace of anything that might be suspected of being a habitation. I'd seen it many times.

We had the windows open, for existence inside the Burrow with so many confined there was intolerable otherwise. Suddenly, there was a feeling of disorientation. The Burrow filled with green leaves, ripped from their moorings, then with hay. Our ears popped.

There seemed to be too little air, for a moment, but Zack staggered up and opened the door. A terrible cloud was moving over us, we could tell, but now rain to make the first seem a simple shower came bucketing down.

"Don't go out, son," Mom Allie said firmly. "You can't see anything yet. And any tree that was unbalanced by the wind may just decide to fall on down under the rain. You just sit here and sweat it out with the rest of us. But I'd guess that it came over about treetop high, right here. Though it may have touched down in one of the hayfields. Let's just pray that it missed the cabin and the house."

Outside, early though it was, it was dark as Egypt, as my father used to say. Then, gradually, the cloud lightened to a purplish-gray, and visibility returned, to some extent, though curtained by the pouring rain. Lightning was flashing and booming away to the north of us, and we knew that it followed the track of the twister.

The children were totally subdued. Even Jim, who had been feeling himself to be quite grown up and competent, seemed content to be a little boy again, leaving the worrying to us. Every adult lap was occupied more than once, during our wait, and the warm weight of the children comforted me, at least, as much as it reassured them to be near.

It wasn't as long as it seemed–it couldn't have been that long –until the rain eased to a lighter pattering, and the sky lightened even more. We straggled out into the wet and the mud and looked about.

A section of wood to the west had its top sheared as neatly as if a lawnmower had run over it, just below the tops of the trees. Hay was everywhere, and we knew that some, at least, of our haystacks had gone, literally, with the wind. A big
whiteoak
had toppled over the embankment into which we had dug the Burrow, though farther along. Its shattered top lay lower than its pitifully bare roots.

We picked our way around it and looked toward the cabin. It still stood, hunched low within its dirt bastions, though we could see that some of the sheets of tin had been ripped off the roof. That, however, might not have done so much damage, for we had put it on over the old shingle roof. As I hurried in and up the ladder to the loft, I found that there was not very much damp, even after the downpour we had had. And the books were safe.

As we muddled about, moving things from under drips and covering things too big to move, there came the blast of a shotgun from the rear of the house.
Suzi
, who had elected to help me in the cramped area under the roof, looked at me with terror in her eyes.

"They couldn't – they wouldn't–not on the heels of such a terrible storm–would they?"

I shook my head. Even the
Ungers
, I felt sure, had been driven to shelter by the wind and rain. No, whatever had brought about that blast from one of our own
menfolk
was something else. I felt it in my bones.

Nonetheless, we both
scuttered
down the ladder and through the cabin in record time. Zack met us at the back door, gun in hand.

"Came a shot from over
Fanchers
' way. Then three more, spaced out like signals. You and Lucas come with me. The horses are spooked off into the woods, so we'd better run. He turned to
Suzi
. "Get some first-aid stuff together, spare bedding, whatever anybody might need, and send the kids out to find Maud. Then follow with Josh and
Elmond
. " She nodded and turned back into the house, while I slipped off my sandals and donned my heavy shoes, then shouldered the lighter rifle and sighed, "Ready!"

We started off at a trot. It was only a bit over a half mile to
Fanchers
' by our new route, but the grass and weeds were heavy with wet, and the spaces between were slippery with mud. Only after we reached the beaten-down grasses of the fields could we really make time. Even as we ran I could see, before us and to our right, that the ragged line of trees that marked the edge of the river wood had become much more ragged. There were big gaps, and I knew that we would find, when we had time to look, that windrows of trees would mark out the path where the tornado had dipped.

One of Annie's younger children waited for us beside the pathway.

"Over to
Londowns
'," she cried, taking off in front of Zack.

Without slowing, we followed her as she led us off the trail, up a cow path, and to the edge of the
Londowns
' garden before we realized we were near.

The place was chaos compounded. Confetti-like debris covered the area where the house had been, as well as the yard, garden, and even the fields around. Part of the orchard was gone. As we came to a halt I gripped Zack's hand tightly. I didn't want to know what we were about to learn.

A stifled shriek moved us to action. We pushed our way through the foliage of a downed elm and found Annie lying full-length on top of Cheri
Londown
, who was struggling and heaving to shake her off. The woman's eyes were blank, and one arm hopped as she squirmed.

"Knock her out, Zack," Annie panted.. "She's hurt pretty bad, but she doesn't feel it. All she can do is worry about her husband. Bill's looking for him, right now, and the children."

Zack dropped to his knees, found an opportunity, and struck a solid blow beneath the woman's chin. She went out instantly, and I helped Annie to straighten her limbs, very carefully, feeling for the grating of bone.

Annie laughed hysterically. "One thing–I don't think there's a thing wrong with her spine. The way she fought and wiggled, it's got to be all right."

It was, but her left arm, her left leg, and several ribs were broken. What might have been simple fractures had been compounded by her desperate efforts to rise and look for her family, and we looked with dismay at the protruding bone poking through the arm. Then we pulled the limb straight, returning the bone as nearly as we could to its normal position, and Zack strapped it tightly to her side with his belt, my shirttail, and Annie's big red bandanna. Then we set out to find the others, though we did it with dreadful misgivings.

Someone must have had some warning. We found the three children crying silently and shivering in a drain ditch that ran through the orchard. They were frightened out of their wits, but we could find nothing but scratches and bruises on them, and we thought those came from their scramble into the ditch. Not one of them could talk coherently, so we carried them, even Carl, who was as big as his mother or bigger, back to her side and left them there with stern orders to watch her and not to let her move.

Then we heard a hail from the scrub oak patch just north of the house-place. We ran through the drizzle, wet bushes slapping into our faces and wet brambles catching our legs as we went toward Bill's call.

The little wood was of recent growth. There wasn't a tree more than fifteen or twenty feet tall. It was a good thing, for something that looked more like a scarecrow than a man was entangled in the top branches where three of the trees had interlocked their limbs. As I was lightest, Zack hoisted me into the lower branches, and I scrambled upward, cursing the maze of twisty growth that impeded my way.

I had hoped that the tangle that held Curt
Londown
would he flexible enough so that my added weight would bend it down. It was rigid as welded iron. With a sigh, I crawled out into the mess. One red-streaked arm came within my grasp, and I put my fingers on the pulse.. There was one, very faint.

"He's alive," I yelled. "I'm going to have to have a saw or an axe, though, for I can't get to him, with all this junk wrapped around like it is."

I felt the tree shake, and I wiggled backward out of the way as Zack cut his way toward me with a hatchet that Bill must have produced. I watched anxiously as he began carefully cutting away the meshing branches that held
Londown
captive. It was entirely possible that any joggling, much less a fall from the treetop, would prove fatal to a man who had been thrown into a treetop by a tornado.

Below us, Bill, too, was worrying. I could see his wet face, turned upward. To ease us both, I asked, "Did you see the cloud coming? We just crawled into the Burrow and waited it out."

"Sure did," he answered. "We'd been
eatin
' when we heard the noise. Annie took the children and put '
em
in the basement –mighty nice to have one, too. I never saw a house with one, in this country, until
this'n
. Anyway, I stood at the door and watched '
er
come. Three tails, she had. Just
dippin
' and
slashin
' down with
lightnin
' and thunder fit to drive you out of your mind. I took one look and went down with the others. I'm not brave when it comes to twisters."

"I wonder why the
Londowns
didn't all get in the ditch together?" I mused.

"Dumb bastard didn't think even a tornado would dare mess with him," grunted Zack over his shoulder. "Can you come around the other side of the trunk and get hold of his other arm? It's hanging down about my knee level."

Once I had a grip on the other arm, we eased the limp bulk of the man, branch by branch, down the tree, cutting away anything that held up the process. Bill was waiting to hold him steady while we let him down the last of the way, and I prayed we hadn't punctured a lung with a broken rib or anything even worse.

When we had him flat on the leaf mold of the wood, we caught our breaths in