Hell With the Lid Blown Off (16 page)

“Oh, Miz Beckie, now I have to scold you!” Ruth said. “It was foolish of you to come all that way by yourself, even if there hadn't been a tornado. Didn't your son offer to drive you home?”

“He did. But as I told Junior, I may be naught but a silly little old woman but I'm still capable of driving a buggy. I knew it was a bad storm but I had no idea that there had been a twister. Oh, Ruth dear, when I neared Boynton, it looked as though the end of the world had come. Why, some of the farms that were just northeast of town don't exist anymore! The road was hardly there, either. I dodged many a roadblock between here and Crecola, let me tell you!”

“All's well that ends well, I suppose. What about Wallace and Randal? Have they resumed their trip to Colorado or are they still at your son's house?”

Beckie paled and her blue eyes filled with tears. Concerned, Ruth placed her hand on Beckie's knee. “I know you miss him.”

It was some moments before Beckie was able to answer. “They were still at Junior's when I left. Wallace seems to be making a great effort to get along with his father.”

“Perhaps his time at Vanderbilt has matured him,” Ruth offered, though she hadn't noticed much of a change in his maturity level herself.

“Perhaps,” Beckie agreed. “But now, Ruth dear, I must take myself off to bed before I succumb to sleep right in this chair. We can talk more in the morning.”

John Lee Day

Shaw set John Lee's leg and splinted it with one of Mary's broom handles. Kurt and Charlie lifted John Lee off of the kitchen table and got him propped upright in a chair, where Phoebe tenderly brushed out her husband's snarled hair, careful to avoid the raw, bare patches where it had been jerked out by the roots. Gravel and splinters fell out onto the floor, so much that when Mary swept it up, she had nearly enough to fill a half-pint jar. John Lee managed a smile for Phoebe's sake. “You ought to save them rocks and wood for me to rebuild the house with,” he mumbled through his smashed jaw.

Alafair would have laughed if she had any laughter left in her.

“Listen,” Shaw said. “Someone's calling the house!”

The two of them went to the door to see Doctor Ann in front of the house, dismounting a horse so black he was hard to see in the night. “Gee Dub must have got through.” Alafair was breathless with relief.

Doctor Ann pronounced the bone-setting job well done, for the moment at least, until an actual doctor could make his way out and do a more thorough evaluation. Alafair steadied John Lee's head as Doctor Ann carefully unwrapped the linen strips holding his broken jaw in place. “Can you open your mouth and let me see?”

He managed a finger-width, enough for Doctor Ann to see the bloody gaps where several teeth had been. She looked at Alafair.

“He's already spat out the teeth,” Alafair assured her. “I counted to make sure he didn't swallow any.”

Ann rummaged around in her carpetbag and withdrew a small glass jar containing what appeared to be a single amber stone. She tipped the stone into her palm and began kneading it between her hands until it started to soften. “This here is mostly pine resin with a few herbs in it to stave off infection. Here, let me work this in between your teeth. Clamp down. Gently, now. That'll set hard as cement in a bit and hold everything together real good.”

The pain of the procedure caused gritty tears to run down John Lee's cheeks, but he did not make a sound. Ann bent down for a closer inspection. His normally luminous black eyes were red and swollen. “Looks like you have gravel in this eye, son. Can you see out of it?”

“Some,” John Lee croaked from between clenched jaws. “It's cloudy-like.”

“Well, all those little pieces will have to work themselves out over time. I'll give your wife some eye medicine to help ease things along. I expect your eye will get better directly.”

However, it was to Alafair that Ann handed a stoppered vial from her bag. “Put ten drops of this wine of opium in two tablespoonfuls of cool, well-boiled water. Put two or three drops of the solution in that eye several times a day. It'll help the pain considerably.”

“I'll make it up for him,” Alafair promised.

Ann was satisfied. “Then I'll leave the patient to you and Mary, but before I leave I want to look over the expectant mother.”

“I can't leave John Lee's side now.” Phoebe didn't look up from her husband's face. His eyes narrowed and he pushed her away as her mother took her by the arm.

“John Lee won't thank you for your concern if after all this shock and upset you miscarry of your child.” Alafair was firm.

Phoebe was convinced. She let Doctor Ann lead her back into the spare bedroom but she could barely hold still for the exam, so anxious was she to get back to her wounded darling. Her lacerated feet and hands had been cleaned and wrapped, her clothing changed and hair toweled dry. Her chilled arms and legs had been well chaffed to bring the blood to the surface. A quart of hot tea had been poured down her throat. All in all, Phoebe was in good hands. The baby's heartbeat was strong and its little feet kicked when Doctor Ann prodded its mother's belly. Satisfied that all was well enough for the moment, Ann didn't linger, but headed back to town in case she was needed elsewhere.

Gee Dub showed up shortly thereafter with a report on the welfare of his sisters in town and the story of the dead man in the field. “Scott had me take the body over to the hall. They're making a field hospital and morgue out of it,” he told them. “Doc Perry was already there. Looks like several people out northwest of town were killed or hurt.” Then he curled himself up on the settee in the parlor and dropped off.

Mary turned her bed over to the invalid couple, who were both wrapped in warmed quilts and left to their exhausted sleep. Kurt and Mary made a pallet for themselves on the parlor floor, leaving the bed in the second bedroom for her parents.

But Alafair and Shaw never went to bed at all. They sat out the last hours of darkness at the kitchen table with bleary eyes, and fortified themselves with coffee so strong it nearly ate through their cups. Charlie prowled up and down the floor, impatient to get on with it, whatever
it
may be. He didn't need coffee to combat sleep. His youth coupled with adrenaline worked quite nicely.

Trenton Calder

This time when we set out for the Tucker place, me and Streeter went better prepared. When I met him out in front of the hotel before dawn, he showed me that he had brought a compass and an electric flashlight, which helped a lot. We managed to make our way out to the farm just as the sky began to show a little light. I'd just as soon it stayed dark. The ruination north of town was unbelievable. It was like hell with the lid blown off. I seen things that I never did before and hope to never see again. A two-by-four rammed right through an iron gatepost like a cross. Fifty-foot trees pulled out by the roots. Saplings with every inch of bark and leaf stripped right off them. I seen a three-hundred pound pig completely rolled up in barbed wire like he was wrapped for Christmas. I seen naked chickens running around with all their feathers gone. A hunk of board full of nails had nailed itself right onto a horse's neck. We stopped long enough to shoot the poor critter and put it out of its misery.

“I don't know how anybody could have survived this.” Streeter sounded spooked. “I pray to God that they all made it to shelter.”

So did I.

We finally reached the Tuckers' front gate, a long, barbed wire thing that was standing just like nothing had happened. The fence it had been attached to was nowhere to be seen. I opened the gate for us to ride through, though now that I think back on it, we could just as easily have ridden right around the side.

The early morning light was still dim enough that we had to get pretty close before we could tell that the house looked to be in pretty good shape. The roof was still on and I could see that the barn and the outhouses were where they were supposed to be. The trees had been stripped of most of their leaves and there were a lot of big branches down. We got right up to what was left of the picket fence around the house before we saw that the porch had been lifted and smashed up against the front door. The brick pillars that had held the porch up were still right where they ought to be.

We had both started hollering at the house as soon as we turned up the drive, and when we saw the damage, we just hollered louder. But nobody answered. We dismounted and started hunting around, but all we found were several mighty bedraggled chickens, Mr. Tucker's two filthy, spooked, hunting dogs, and little Grace's puppy Bacon, who came crawling out from under the house covered with mud and his whole hindquarters wagging with joy at the sight of us.

I picked up the pup just as Streeter came back around to the front of the house. “Looks like they're not here,” he said. “There're a couple broken windows and some wind damage in the bedrooms, but they missed the worst of it.”

“They're probably still at Kurt's.” It was hard for me to talk what with little old Bacon trying to lick my face off.

Streeter was about to agree with me when we heard a gunshot and fell to listening. About a minute later there was another. I looked down at my feet so Streeter wouldn't see my expression. I didn't wonder what the shooting was about. I'd lived through bad storms before and knew what they could do to animals in the field. We'd just had to do our duty to a couple of suffering beasts ourselves.

“Can you tell where it's coming from?” I said to my feet.

“Sounds like over toward the creek. Toward the Day farm.”

I stuffed Bacon into my saddle bag and we took off toward John Lee's place with the hounds trotting behind us, but we didn't get very far before we met Mr. Tucker and his sons coming up the path with their old yellow dog by their side. Charlie was overjoyed to see the puppy's head sticking out of my saddlebag and fetched him out. The hounds near to knocked Mr. Tucker over, they were so glad of the reunion.

Mr. Tucker looked relieved to see us. “Glad you made it out, boys,” he said. “I reckon you heard what happened to Phoebe and John Lee. We've just been over there trying to round up his calves.”

“Yes, sir, we heard the shooting.” Streeter sounded grim when he said it.

Mr. Tucker smiled but there wasn't any humor behind it. “We managed to save most of them. Lost a few of my mules, but the horses are all right. Can't see well enough yet to go out to inspect the cattle in the back pasture. Right now we're on our way to the house to see what we can do there. You saw the porch? We could use a hand.”

Alafair Tucker

The sun was well up by the time Alafair and her two younger girls finally made their way back to their house to assess the damage. She had left Chase and three-year-old Grace with Mary, fearful that dangerous debris lurked in the muddy yard. The overcast sky and murky light made it eerily difficult to see detail. But at eleven and ten years of age, Blanche and Sophronia were old enough to be cautious. Alafair was relieved and happy to see Trent and Streeter and exchange updates.

Shaw didn't allow much time for visiting. He shooed the females off to the side and deployed his work crew with ropes, crowbars, hammers, and nails to pull down and secure the porch. When the men eased the intact floorboards down from vertical to horizontal again, the porch looked like nothing had happened.

Shaw wasn't going to let anyone climb onto it until he had made very sure it was safe, so Alafair and the girls went around to enter the house through the back door. One of the parlor windows was broken, but the fact that the porch had closed like a lid on the front of the house had kept the parlor and kitchen from being damaged at all. Everything stood neat and untouched, as though the rest of the world had not just been visited by disaster. The back of the house was a different story. All the east windows had been shattered, and the furniture in both bedrooms was piled into corners as though some recalcitrant child giant had tossed everything awry.

The chifforobe and the clothes press in the girls' room were lying in a splintered heap against the north wall, doors and drawers open, their contents nowhere to be seen, sucked by the winds into the night. “Oh, Ma!” Blanche moaned. “All our clothes!”

Alafair gave the children the once-over. Both were still dressed in the summertime clothing they had on when the storm struck, as were the boys, and Alafair herself. They were all grimy, wrinkled, and slept-in—the girls wrapped in a couple of Mary's old blankets in lieu of jackets. Grace had been wearing nothing more than her cotton nightgown and shoes. Alafair hugged Blanche briefly to her side. “Never mind, shug. Now you'll be getting all new clothes.”

Sophronia was intrigued by the notion. “Can Alice make our new dresses for us?” Alice was a particularly talented seamstress.

“Alice is going to be busy with her new baby for a quite a spell,” Alafair told her. “We'll have to make them ourselves.” She sighed as she eyed the cabinet of her pedal sewing machine, lying on its side in two pieces. “Maybe Alice will let us borrow her machine, though.”

Trenton Calder

As soon as there was enough daylight, Mr. Tucker put Streeter McCoy in charge of shoring up the porch, since he had studied engineering back in Ohio. He detailed Charlie Boy to be Streeter's assistant and sent Gee Dub to the field to inventory the cattle and have a look at the damage to the feed crops and the cotton. I started to follow Gee Dub, but Mr. Tucker put out his hand to stop me.

“I aim to go see how the Eichelbergers have fared,” he said to me. “Gee Dub met the old man on the road last night, and from what he told me I fear the worst. I don't want to take the young'uns, but I'd appreciate it if you'd come with me.”

I said I would be proud to, but I was halfway between pleased that he had so much confidence in me and dread of what we were like to find. As we rode up the road to the entrance to his neighbor's farm, Mr. Tucker told me all about how Gee had run into Mr. Eichelberger and found the body in the field.