Hell With the Lid Blown Off (11 page)

DURING

Alafair Tucker

Monday may have dawned sunny and bright, but as the morning progressed, the wind picked up and drizzly rain clouds began to float over. Charlie Dog kept nosing the box of newly hatched chicks Alafair had placed in the kitchen next to the stove, as if he was counting them, and she had to push his head out of the way before she could lay an empty burlap sack over the top of the box for extra warmth. She could have sworn he was worried about the welfare of the infant birds.

Charlie Dog was behaving oddly altogether. He hadn't followed Charlie Boy on his round of chores, as he usually did, but had stayed indoors all morning. In fact, he pretty much stayed under Alafair's feet, so close that she nearly fell over him once or twice. She shooed him out the back door but he didn't go very far, and fifteen minutes later she noticed that he had snuck back inside. He knew he was testing her good nature, so he lurked in a corner by the kitchen door, afraid of attracting her attention and yet still wanting to be within sight of her.

At least he wasn't under her feet anymore, so she took pity and let him stay indoors. The other dogs, Crook, Buttercup, and Bacon, were nowhere to be seen.

It was nearly midday when the sky became overcast and it began to rain in earnest. Mary took in the still-damp laundry and hung it over lines strung across the back porch before rounding up Chase and heading home to feed Kurt. The humidity was heavy and cloying. Shaw and the boys came in for dinner at noon, and the mood around the table was cheerless as the weather. Everyone was foul-tempered and snappish.

“I thought John Lee was going to come over and help you out today,” Alafair noted to Shaw as she passed the cornbread. “Did he decide he don't need to eat?”

Shaw snorted. “Fool son-in-law of yours decided he had been away from Phoebe long enough and left me up to my elbows in muck a couple of hours ago.” He vehemently spooned mashed potatoes onto his plate. “I declare, Alafair, that fellow is a prime worker when he's of a mind to be, but once he gets it into his head to go gallivanting off to who knows where, he won't be stopped for nothing.”

His vitriol shocked Alafair. “No need to bite my head off about it, Shaw. I expect you know why John Lee is chary.”

His eyes widened and he gave her a rueful smile. “Sorry, honey. It's this weather, I reckon. Puts my teeth on edge. If it don't storm this evening, I'll eat my hat.”

He finished dinner and went back outside, but the boys were slow to follow him. Gee Dub's expression was wry. “I'm glad to hear it's the weather making Daddy short. Up at the stable this morning you'd have thought me and Charlie were the most incompetent two fellows who ever dragged their sorry selves out of bed.”

“He acted like we never put an oat in a nosebag before,” Charlie agreed. “That's why John Lee decided to go elsewhere, I expect. Daddy's bad temper.”

Alafair laughed but didn't commiserate with the boys. It was their duty to put up with their father's peculiarities and not the other way around. “Y'all better get cracking back out there, then, if you don't want him crawling up one side of you and down the other.”

After the boys left, she cleared the table and pondered as she drew the dishwater. She was feeling irritable herself, she had to admit. The hot, windy weather of the past several days had tested everyone's patience, but this was different. Something strange was in the air, something oppressive. The afternoon wore on and the wind came up again, whipping dirt about and making it hard to breathe.

Sophronia teased Grace and made her cry, and Grace kicked Sophronia in the shin. Alafair angrily made both of them sit in separate corners and face the wall for half an hour. When she finally let them get up, Grace reported that Charlie Dog had crawled under her bed and wouldn't come out.

Late in the afternoon Alafair went out on the porch to look at the sky. She was watching dark ribbons of cloud sailing northwards overhead when she caught sight of Shaw walking up the path from the barn.

She stepped into the yard to meet him. He removed his hat and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “I swear I'm about to crawl out of my skin, Alafair,” he said without preamble. “Don't have a reason one to be that way either, except for this awful weather. I passed by the chicken coop just now and the chickens have already gone to roost. I'm afraid we're about to get us a right old toad-strangler this evening. Do you see that big black cloud that's coming up in the southwest?”

She peered around the corner of the porch and caught her breath. The advancing wall of thunderstorm loomed huge and black to the southwest. Lightning strobed within the cloud with such frequency that it hurt her eyes. “That's an ugly storm coming, all right.”

“Are all the children inside?” Shaw asked her.

“All but the boys. Martha is still with Alice and the baby, and Ruth's staying with Miz Beckie in town tonight.”

Shaw nodded. “Probably just as well. Miz Beckie's got her a good sturdy house. I've put the boys to bringing in as much stock as they can and settling the rest in the north pasture. Besides the lean-tos, there are some trees and good low places for shelter out there if they need it.”

“My trick knee that got broken is acting up, and Charlie Dog has been hiding under Grace's bed all afternoon.”

“That's not a good sign. I haven't seen the other dogs in hours. The stock has been nervous, too.”

“Well, we've lived through some bad storms before. I reckon we'll weather this one as well.”

Shaw crossed his arms and leaned against the porch rail. “I'll see that the outbuildings are closed up tight. Maybe if we get a good storm, it'll clear the air.”

“I hope you're right, honey.”

“I was just thinking you'd better not stray far from home today, Alafair. I'm sure Martha's taking good care of Alice, and Alice and the baby will most likely sleep all day anyway.” He smiled at the disappointed look on Alafair's face. “I'd just as soon you not be on the road until this weather passes.”

999

After supper, Alafair couldn't get Grace to go to bed. She was frightened of the lightning and rising wind and clung to her mother's skirt, begging not to be left alone. Grace was not usually disobedient, and Alafair took a moment to figure out how to handle the child's fear.

“Don't be afraid of storms, baby. They have a purpose on God's green earth, just like everything that happens. Here, sugar, let's kneel down beside the bed and pray together tonight. You just tell Jesus how you feel, and he'll see that everything is as it should be.”

Grace took to the idea with alacrity and plopped herself down on the floor next to her mother. “Dear Jesus,” she prayed aloud, “I'm scared. Please take care of Mama and Daddy and my sisters and brothers, and all the little babies in the world. Amen.”

“Amen,” Alafair seconded.

Phoebe Day

Phoebe looked up, surprised, when John Lee came in through back door. He had left only minutes earlier to take care of the final chores of the day. Phoebe stopped drying dishes and walked across the kitchen to meet him.

“John Lee?” The way she said his name encompassed her question.

He took off his hat and hung it on the peg by the door. “There's a storm coming, shug. Looks like a bad one. The sky is green and I just saw ball lightning rolling across the barn roof.”

“But I just put Zeltha in her crib and I'm in the middle of cleaning up after supper.” The instant she said it Phoebe felt ridiculous about voicing her petty concerns, but John Lee was too preoccupied to tease her.

He seized her arm. “Come look.”

They stood together at the open door for some minutes and watched as shreds of clouds scudded across the sky, headed north. A smear of molten gold lay low across the horizon. Phoebe would have thought it beautiful if it had not been for the long cloud above, coming up fast, black and roiling, stained with a sickening green. Lightning forked through the black as it rolled toward them, pushing a wall of dirt.

“Mercy!” she managed.

The leaves of the trees in the yard were frothing in the wind. A moment ago, the limbs had been straining to the northeast, but now they were rushing straight up into the sky. Hail began to pound down on the tin roof as loud as artillery fire, and John Lee pulled Phoebe back into the kitchen, alarmed. The rain began pouring down in buckets, obscuring their view through the window. John Lee looked back over his shoulder at Phoebe, whose eyes were wide with fear.

“Fetch the baby and get to the root cellar!” John Lee ordered. “I'm headin' out to the barn to get the mule in.”

When Phoebe got to the bedroom, Zeltha was already sitting up on her little cot, roused by the rattle of hail. “Mama!” She held up her arms and Phoebe scooped her up. She ran through the house with the baby on her hip, slamming down the windows on the north side. She was back in the bedroom when the strong wind blowing in from the south shifted to the east. The rain and hail that had been drumming down stopped suddenly and an unnatural calm descended, a moment of dead silence before the end of the world.

The roar came on them like a demon, and the house started to creak. The bedroom window crashed in and the door slammed shut. Zeltha was screaming but Phoebe could hardly hear her over the howl of the wind. Phoebe tried to pull the door open but the pressure of the wind held it closed.

“John Lee, we're trapped!” she called, knowing very well that he couldn't hear her.

Suddenly the wall began heaving and the ceiling was crashing down around her.

Alafair Tucker

When the wind began to roar and the rain to fall sideways, Grace ran into the parlor in her nightdress and grabbed her mother around the knees. Alafair hoisted the terrified child into her arms and gathered Sophronia and Blanche to her with the other arm. “Come on, girls, let's head for the root cellar.” She tried to keep her voice as calm as possible as they ran for the door.

“Where's Daddy?” Blanche's voice was shaking.

“I see him coming up the path. Him and the boys will be right behind us.”

“Where's the puppy?” Sophronia cried.

“He's with his mama, sugar. She'll take care of him.”

“Charlie Dog!” Sophronia called, as Alafair pushed them out the front door. Much to Alafair's surprise the old yellow shepherd came scrabbling out from the girls' bedroom and followed them onto the porch.

The wind hit them like a locomotive. Alafair and the girls barely managed to keep their feet as they strained across the yard toward the root cellar. Charlie Dog wasn't so lucky. The wind caught the dog broadside and swept him off the porch.

Shaw met them in the yard and hustled them down into the cellar as Alafair yelled over the wind. “Where are the boys?”

“They're coming up from the barn now,” he hollered, and went back up the cellar steps as soon as his wife and girls were ensconced. The figures of the boys emerged from the wall of rain, heading toward the house at a dead run and clutching their hats to their heads.

Shaw could hardly see through the driving rain. He heard a crack and a crash, but there was no way to tell what had given way. Gee Dub reached him first, and Shaw unceremoniously dumped his son into the cellar.

He was stretching an arm to grab Charlie as Charlie Dog appeared through the blowing dirt, whining pitifully and crawling toward them on his stomach.

Shaw's heart lurched when the boy turned back to get the dog.

“Forget the dog,” he screamed. “Forget the dog, son!”

Suddenly the wind exploded, pushing a wall of debris that blew Charlie off his feet. Shaw was yelling at him to let the dog go, to get to the shelter, and Charlie was heartily trying to obey. He was being pelted with shrapnel, and for the first time in this different and exciting day, Charlie felt seriously alarmed. He couldn't stand up. The wind was so strong that he couldn't even close his wide-open eyes and mouth. A straw or pebble could blind him, and if he got in the way of a flying brick or pitchfork, there was not a thing he would be able to do to keep himself from being crushed or impaled.

Charlie wallowed around on the ground and managed to turn himself back toward the shelter, but the wind caught him again and he rolled away, clawing the scoured earth, unable to catch a breath in the gale. He could hear his father's panicked voice, but he was unable to make any sense out of it. He felt strong hands grab him and he was pulled into the cellar like a sack of potatoes, tumbling down the steps and into his mother's arms. He gasped a few times and lay there, momentarily stunned, watching Shaw and Gee Dub struggle to pull the cellar doors closed. Charlie Dog was crouched at Sophronia's feet.

The doors to the root cellar began to rattle and bounce as though something malevolent, a monster, was trying to get to them. The force of the suction was so great that Shaw realized that the two-by-four plank he had used to bar the doors was not going to hold. He grabbed the handles and felt his body being pulled up off the ground. “Boys,” he yelled, “help me hold 'er down or we're goners!”

Charlie struggled and broke out of his mother's grasp to help Shaw and Gee Dub hold the doors down, and none too soon. Sophronia grabbed Gee Dub's waist to lend her weight to his. He didn't seem to notice. Alafair was struck by the sudden knowledge that if the doors were pulled off and the men were sucked out into the storm, the girls would go too. “Shaw!” she screamed, but he could not hear her.

She sat down on a potato sack and pulled Grace into her lap as a weeping Blanche snuggled up under her arm. Grace had not cried or said a word since Alafair had scooped her up and run with her across the yard to the root cellar.

Shaw, Charlie, and Gee Dub, Sophronia still clinging to his waist, crowded together in a heap as each seized his piece of the iron door handles. Even in the dim, flickering light from the lantern, Alafair could see them strain to stay on the ground. Charlie's eyes widened and he shot his mother an awestruck glance. The boys both yelped involuntary as they were alternately lifted off their feet and dropped.