“Steadily worsening. What’s the latest weather report?”
“The hurricane is still on the same path, which means y’all need to get below deck and stay there.”
“What about New Orleans and the surrounding area?”
“They’re predicting severe thunderstorms.”
“Did they say anything about the area around Baton Rouge?” he asked, thinking of Bobby and Katie.
“It’s pretty much the same all over the state. Severe thunderstorms, strong winds, possibility of tornadoes and hail. The usual.”
“Okay, thanks. Keep me posted. As soon as the weather clears, give me a call.”
“Will do,” Brent said.
J.R. disconnected, then headed for the stairs leading below deck. The remaining crew wasn’t going to be happy about the news, but then, neither was he.
The kitchen area of the Bordelaise Methodist Church was buzzing like a hive of bees. Some were cleaning up after the dinner and boxing up food to be taken to some of the congregation’s shut-ins, while others were sweeping the floors and putting up folding chairs.
The children, accompanied by their Sunday school teacher, Penny Bates, were outside on the playground. Every so often the sound of their laughter could be heard inside the kitchen, where they were barely aware that the wind had begun to rise.
Katie was drying the last of the coffee cups when a high-pitched shriek came from outside and the pastor came rushing into the kitchen with a panicked expression on his face.
“They’re blowing the tornado siren!” he shouted. “Everyone get to the inside hallway!”
“The children!” Katie gasped, and headed for the door, only to meet them spilling into the hallway. The siren’s steady scream of warning only added to their panic.
Katie was scanning the faces, looking for Bobby, when his little friend, Holly Maxwell, suddenly tripped and fell right in front of her. Before Katie could get to her, another child accidentally stepped on Holly’s hand.
The pain of squashed fingers, coupled with fear of the impending storm, drove Holly to let out a scream that made every mother in the church come running. Katie snatched Holly up just as her mother, Frances, arrived, then quickly handed her over.
“Holly fell, then someone stepped on her fingers,” Katie said.
“Oh, poor baby,” Frances soothed, then gave the little fingers a quick glance before lifting them to her lips. “There, Mama kissed them all better,” she murmured, and hurried away, anxious to get to the inside hallway, which was the only accessible place of safety.
Once again Katie’s attention shifted. She still needed to find Bobby, but when she turned back toward the door, the last of the children had already run past and were flying down the hallway.
Penny Bates was just coming inside.
“Bobby! Where’s Bobby?” Katie cried.
“The children are all inside,” Penny said, and hurried after them.
Katie turned and ran, flying through the dining area, then through the church foyer toward the wide inner hallway where everyone was gathering. Families had already reconnected and were crouching down together against the walls.
Children were crying, adults were praying, while white-faced parents sheltered the littlest ones with their own bodies.
Katie paused, scanning the long length of the hall, expecting at any moment to spy Bobby’s dark head, or his red-and-blue-striped shirt.
Only he was nowhere in sight.
Nervously, she began going from group to group, calling Bobby’s name. By the time she’d reached the end of the hall, she was in a panic.
“Bobby! Bobby Earle!” she screamed, then spun and started running back up the hall, praying she’d overlooked him the first time around, or that he’d been in the bathroom.
“I can’t find Bobby! Please! Has anyone seen Bobby? Has anyone seen my son?”
Parents started searching within the crowd, but no stray child emerged.
Katie’s heart skipped a beat. He must still be outside! Without hesitation, she bolted.
The pastor realized her intent and tried to grab her as she ran past.
“No! Wait! Mrs. Earle…stop! Stop!” he cried, but Katie wasn’t stopping for anyone.
She was all the way through the foyer and into the dining area when the glass began shattering in all the windows.
Before she could react, the pastor tackled her from behind and pushed her to the floor. Suddenly the roof was gone, the air was full of spinning debris and the roar above was like the sound of a freight train bearing down on them.
“Let me go!” she shouted. “Bobby!
Bobby!
”
She screamed his name until her voice became lost in the roar of wind above their heads.
Three
A
fter the chaos, the silence that followed was shocking. The fact that Katie wasn’t screaming anymore seemed at odds with her earlier panic. When the pastor helped her to her feet and began asking her if she was hurt, the blank look on her face made his heart skip a beat.
“Katie…Katie, dear…?”
Katie was shaking so hard she could hardly stand, but she had to keep moving. There was blood on her face and glass in her hair, but she didn’t know it. Her mind had gone into lockdown. Her only thought was getting to her son. She pushed the pastor away and began climbing through the debris.
“Wait! Katie! Katie! Come back!” he cried, but she kept on going.
He was torn between the need to see to the rest of his congregation and the urge to follow her. Then Penny Bates came running into the room and took the decision out of his hands.
“Pastor William! Oh, thank God, you’re all right! Where’s Katie Earle? Did you find Bobby?”
“No, we didn’t. Katie went that way. I couldn’t stop her,” he said, pointing to where a wall had once stood, then looked over his shoulder. “Is anyone hurt?”
“Not severely…maybe a few cuts from flying glass,” she said, then started weeping. “Oh, oh, I just don’t understand how this happened. I looked behind me before I came in the church. There was no one there. I swear. I was sure he’d come inside with the others.”
Her face filled with guilt and panic, she hurried after Katie, leaving him to deal with the congregation.
The quiet within which Katie was moving was at odds with what she was feeling. Inside, she was still screaming. There was a knot in her stomach, and her heart was pounding so hard she thought she would faint. All she could think was to get outside. Then she would surely find Bobby. He had to be all right. She wouldn’t let herself believe that God would take her mother and father in such a brutal manner, then take her little boy, too.
A slim figure in pink and white, she moved quickly through the rubble, stumbling past upended furniture, stepping on broken crockery that had been so carefully washed and dried only minutes earlier. She didn’t feel pain from the cuts on her face, didn’t notice that her fingernails were broken and bleeding from clawing the floor as she’d tried to crawl out from under the man who’d been holding her down.
With her gaze fixed on a gaping hole in what had once been the east wall, she ducked under part of the collapsed ceiling, then crawled over shattered lumber, making her way out of the church.
She kept telling herself that she would surely find Bobby hiding in the long red tunnel at one end of the play gym. He’d hidden there once before, when he’d accidentally torn his shirt and thought she would be angry. When the tornado siren had begun to blow, he must have panicked. He could have crawled inside the tunnel rather than run into the church, thinking he would be safe. That was why Penny Bates hadn’t seen him. He had to be okay.
Moments later she emerged from what was left of the church, then stopped as if she’d hit a brick wall. There was so much debris outside, she was completely disoriented. Three cars from the church parking lot were right in front of her, but upside down. Broken pieces of wood from demolished houses had been driven into the ground like stakes. Power lines and the poles between which they’d been strung lay scattered on the ground like a giant’s version of pickup sticks. A portion of someone’s roof was just to her right, and the ground was littered with everything from people’s clothing to dishes, toys and lamp shades.
Sparks from the hot wires had already started a fire near a pile of debris, sending a thin spiral of smoke up into the air. But no matter how hard she looked, she couldn’t find a trace of any play gym, or the long red metal tunnel. There were no swings or ladders, no big yellow slide, anywhere in sight.
Then a quick thought occurred to her and brought a huge sense of relief.
“I’ve come out on the wrong side of the church,” she muttered, and began circling the building, but there were no visible landmarks left by which she could orient herself.
Suddenly someone shouted from across the street. She spun too quickly toward the sound, which made her stumble and fall to her knees. That was when she saw the founders’ plaque.
“Sweet Jesus,” she whispered, as her stomach rolled.
The plaque had been embedded in the wall of the church, just to the right of the front door, more than one hundred years ago, which meant this was the front of the building.
In a panic, she pushed herself up from the ground and shoved the hair from her eyes as a new wave of horror swept through her. If this was the front of the church, then where she’d come out had been the back of the church, which meant all the playground equipment that should have been there was gone.
Too shocked to cry, she started running, but when she rounded the church again, there was no denying the stark and horrifying reality.
The play gym was gone. No yellow slide. No red tunnel. No swings or ladders.
“No, no, no,” she moaned, and then put both hands over her mouth to keep from screaming. Then she took a deep breath and began calling his name.
“Bobbeee! Bobbeee! Bobbeee Earle!”
In the distance, the squeal of a siren was the only answer to her call.
Overhead, the faint rumble of passing thunder rolled across the sky.
All she could think was,
This can’t be happening!
Then something fell behind her with a loud, abrupt crash. She spun, just as a car fell off of the chain-link fence where it had landed and into a neighboring yard.
“Oh, Lord, Lord…help me,” she whispered, staring in disbelief at the chaos as she began turning in a slow, steady circle.
The houses that had stood across the street were gone, and the houses behind the church were nothing but huge piles of debris. In the next block, she saw something yellow wrapped around a telephone pole, and she gasped.
The slide!
Her belly rolled. Please, God. Please, God…no.
She began running down the street toward the slide, calling her son’s name aloud.
“Bobbeee…Bobbeee…Bobbeee!”
That was where Penny Bates found her.
Penny’s salt-and-pepper hair was wet and matted, and her clothes were stained with a mixture of dirt and blood. When she spotted Katie stumbling down the block, she started running. When she finally caught up with her, she grabbed her by the arm and turned her around.
“Katie! I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” she said, but Katie didn’t seem to know Penny was even there. She just kept muttering beneath her breath and began walking in circles.
Penny wanted to weep. Instead, she grabbed Katie by the shoulders.
“Katie! Look at me!”
Katie’s eyes didn’t focus. In fact, it was as if she just looked right through her.
Penny shivered. “Oh, Katie…Katie, talk to me, honey.”
“Bobby’s gone,” Katie whispered, and then clapped her hands over her mouth as if she’d said a vile thing.
Penny moaned, then pulled Katie into her arms. “Honey…I don’t know what happened, but I swear to God I didn’t run off and leave him. When I looked behind me, there was no one there.”
Katie was shaking so hard, she thought she might come undone. She didn’t know what to do next. There had to be an answer. He couldn’t be dead. The moment the word went through her mind, her system revolted. She turned around and threw up.
She didn’t even notice Penny holding her upright, or realize that the older woman was sobbing hysterically.
When the spasm finally passed, Katie staggered backward, then covered her face with both hands.
That was when another thought occurred. What if, when the siren began blowing, Bobby had gotten scared and run home?
“Oh, my God,” Katie muttered, as she turned to face Penny. “Home…home…maybe he went home.”
The expression on Katie’s face was frightening. Penny put her arm around Katie’s shoulders.
“Katie, sweetheart…I don’t think—”
Penny didn’t have time to finish.
Once again Katie’s reaction was frantic as she pulled out of Penny’s grasp and started running back up the street, dodging downed power lines, crushed cars and uprooted trees.
The thunder of her heartbeat was so loud in her ears she didn’t hear the growing number of sirens, as police cars, fire trucks and ambulances were dispatched all over town.
She was oblivious to the people emerging from storm cellars or climbing over debris to get out of their shattered houses. All she knew was that Bobby was lost and she had to find him.
But when she got to the block where their house should have been, she stopped short.
“No, no, no. This isn’t right. This can’t be right.” Every house on the block had been leveled.
She ran to the spot where the house had once stood, and began climbing over wreckage and calling Bobby’s name. A mattress was overturned and leaning against what was left of a tree. She could see something brown that looked like hair sticking out from beneath it. Her heart stopped.
“No. No. Please, God, no,” she whispered, as she started toward it.
It wasn’t until she got closer that she realized it wasn’t Bobby’s hair she was seeing. It was Oliver, the teddy bear he slept with each night.
She shoved the mattress aside, then picked up the bear. It was wet and matted with dirt, but she didn’t care. It was a link to Bobby. Clutching it to her chest, she looked up, then started calling his name again.
“Bobbeee! Bobbeee! Bobbeee Earle!”