The Glory of Green (4 page)

"Pull things together inside," Chris said. "Start a list. We're going to need your organizational skills." He gave me a quick hug and walked out into the dark night. I could only see the branches of an unfamiliar tree near the steps.

Molly ran up to me, tears in her eyes. "Miss Lois, I've got to get home. My brothers and sisters were alone while my mother was at work. The oldest is only twelve. I've got to get to them."

"Not yet," I said. "Be patient."

"Anna Grace is almost certainly having a heart attack," Kevin said, striding in from the other room. "We must get her to the hospital. Her pulse is erratic, and she's not in good shape. I think Mama's wrist is broken. Other injuries?"

"Minor," the fire chief said. "I'll drive you and Anna Grace, and you can monitor her. Bring Miss Pearl."

"I'll take your father home to check on Asa and Levi," Terrence said. Kevin's lovely face was tormented, and I knew she wanted to make sure her son was all right.

"Kiss him for me," she said. "Let me know as soon as you know, even if you have to come to the hospital."

"I'll take good care of him," Terrence said.

"Take Molly with you, Terrence, and help her out," I said."She needs to find her mom. Be careful."

"Mayor, I'll meet you and Doug at the emergency center at the courthouse," Hank said. "Stan, you and Chris take over out here for the time being. Make sure all residents are accounted for."

"Do visual assessments as you travel," Eva said, turning into an emergency leader before my very eyes. "Watch for fallen trees and power lines and do your best to get messages to the courthouse. Don't take unnecessary risks. We need everyone safe."

Chris and my brothers walked in at that moment, their faces grim.

"It's bad, Mayor," Chris said in the most somber voice I'd ever heard. "The road is covered with uprooted trees; utility poles have snapped. It's still raining. I hope we got the worst of it out here."

Tammy grabbed the skirt of my stained wedding gown and pulled me to the side. "What do you want us to do?"

I looked up to see my newspaper staff flanking me, looking like castaways from a TV reality show, their nice clothes on, dirty and torn.

"We've got to get coverage of this online," I said. "People need to know what's going on. We'll need lots of photos, but those will be tough since it's so dark."

"Everyone will be worried sick about their relatives in Green," Linda said. "How can we get word out that people are safe? We need an online site of some sort."

"What about building damage?" Katy asked. "We need a list of that, too."

"An inventory," Alex said. "Emergency contact numbers.Shelter information, insurance adjusters. But we don't have landlines, cell service, or electricity."

"The first thing is to find out how severe the storm was and post a notice online," I said. "Alex, that's your job. Get to the courthouse, and post it quick, but don't take any more chances than you have to."

"I'll drive Tammy around town to get pictures," Walt said quietly. "If necessary, we can go to my office in Shreveport to post them."

"Thanks, Walt. Linda, take a statement from Eva, Hank, and Doug before they get out of here," I said. "Don't be pushy, but tell them we're trying to help."

"Katy, get quotes from people who were here. Tammy, let's hope you have shots of those they interview. We'll match them up later."

"If there's no Internet downtown," Tammy said, "call Walt and dictate the info. I'll go by Tom's and see what he knows.Even if he doesn't feel good, he'll pull through for us."

"Cells will be iffy," I said, "but post as you can. Remember, lives are at stake, so make sure you're accurate. But be fast."

Suddenly, I wanted to pull them back to me.

"This is important work," I said, "but it's not worth risking your lives."

"You either," Iris Jo said.

"I'll head to the newspaper," I said. "Everyone except Iris meet me there as soon as you have information. Communication will be key."

"Except me? What does that mean?"

Stan walked up and put his arm around her. "Iris, you don't want to overdo it. You can check in tomorrow. Don't forget, you had chemo this week."

"I hardly think I'd forget that," she said.

"Check on your house," I said, "then decide what to do."

"We'll get through this, Lois," Iris Jo said.

"I know," I said, although I wasn't that certain.

"I'm sorry about your wedding," Katy said. Tears rolled down her cheeks, and she brushed them back as though embarrassed.

The others nodded. Iris, Linda, and Tammy hugged me.Alex touched my arm.

My staff raced off in every direction. My husband was nowhere in sight. I supposed the honeymoon was off.

Florence and Elmo Barnhill invite everyone to a comeand-go elk chili supper at their house. "We'll be using the fish cooker, since our power's still off. We don't want to waste all that good meat in the freezer," Miss Flo said. "If you've got something you want to add to the pot, bring it along."

—The Green News-Item

F
lashlight in one hand and my arm in his other, Chris guided me down the steps of Grace Chapel, not exactly the exit I had planned.

The tornado had come with a sharp drop in temperature, and the beautiful spring day seemed like it belonged to someone else. Chris put his suit coat around my shoulders, and we set out for a quick check of our house before heading our separate ways. On our wedding night.

"We should check on Maria and the boys first," I said. "If they were in that trailer, they must have been terrified. We'll have to make it fast, though. There's so much to do."

The mobile home where Chris had lived until a week ago looked unharmed, except for a tree down on the chain link fence. A faint light glowed through the window.

We walked across the road, past the church sign, turned on its side, with letters blown off. It now read, "RATS, Lois and Chris." A hysterical laugh caught in my throat, and I pushed it down. Chris knocked on the door, and I called out. Maria appeared, the children quiet in the background. A tiny batterypowered light, a gift at the house-warming party we had thrown for the family, sat on the carpet nearby.

"Are you all OK?" Chris asked.

"
Si,"
she said. "It was very loud. But we have light, and we make up stories. Thanks to you, we were safe."

"Thanks to us? We put you in a trailer in the path of a tornado." I said. She didn't understand, the same way I didn't understand how the day had turned out.

"This house very strong. Not like our old house," she said."I'm sad about your wedding. You look beautiful." I had forgotten I was in my wedding dress.

"Thank you, Maria. Be safe."

"I'll take care of that fence when things settle down," Chris said.

"If that trailer didn't blow away, everything else must be okay," I said to Chris as we walked on down the road. "Maybe the church was the only casualty. Like Bud said, tornadoes are weird. Thank goodness those children did not lose their new home."

"Or their lives."

Fallen trees partially blocked the road, and we sloshed in and out of the muddy ditch by the road, the water halfway up to my knees.

"We'll get Holly Beth, make sure everything's safe, and go from there," Chris said. "I know you want to get to the paper as soon as possible. I need to get Mom and Dad home, make sure your family's back at the hotel."

Everything was eerily dark with the power out and not a star in the sky.

"Who knows?" Chris asked, false cheer in his voice. "We might even make our flight to Montana tomorrow."

"I wish we had bought the trip insurance."

Stan's pickup was in Iris Jo's driveway, and the couple stood staring at the house, split in two by an enormous tree, my friend's head nestled in the curve of Stan's arm.

"How bad is it?" I asked, cutting through the yard.

"The big oak took out half of the house," she said, "but Stan says he'll help me rebuild."

I rushed to comfort her. "I know the house meant a lot to you. You and Matt had special memories here."

"It's only a house. It could have been so much worse. We weren't hurt or killed. I'm sorry your wedding day turned out like this. Whose idea was it to have a spring wedding anyway?"

"If you hadn't suggested it, I probably would have come up with it on my own. You know I wanted to beat Tammy down the aisle."

"Well, you're married, and it was a beautiful service."

"The reception left something to be desired," I said. "I knew I should have gotten the fondue pots." The small talk seemed to make things more normal, as though we weren't standing outside her broken home in wedding clothes, a ball of fear in our guts about the rest of Green.

"Are you headed to the paper?" Iris asked.

"After we pick up Holly Beth." I peered down the dark road."Chris says we probably have roof damage, since the church got hit so hard, but he's got a tarp. Do you want to stay with us?"

"Heavens, no." She laughed. "You're newlyweds. I'm staying at the Lakeside Motel until I figure out what to do. Pearl and Marcus said they have plenty of room."

"Lois," Chris called, "why don't you let Stan and me take a look at our place? You stay here with Iris."

"No way. I've got to check on Holly Beth. She's probably peed all over her crate by now."

"I doubt that I'll make it to the paper tonight," Iris said."But I'll send Stan as soon as he drops me off. He can get the generator going if the power's off downtown."

"I'll be there in thirty minutes, and everyone has assignments.Hopefully it won't be too bad."

Chris and I walked on, adrenaline fueling our pace as we rounded the small corner and looked over at our house.

It was gone!

My eyes simply could not believe what I saw—or rather what I did not see.

Chris didn't say a word, just stood with his head cocked at an angle as though the house might magically appear. A moment of pure insanity washed over me.

"Where is it?" I asked.

"Lois. . . ." Chris said in a voice meant to comfort me, a husband's voice.

A treasured giant pecan tree was uprooted, and trash was spread everywhere in tiny bits and pieces.

Nothing was recognizable, not sofa or table or refrigerator or . . . Holly Beth. I started screaming her name, running into my yard, afraid of what I would see.

Chris caught up with me in an instant and put both arms around me, pulling me close. "Sweetheart, catch your breath.We'll find her. Everything's going to be okay." He sounded as though he doubted the words himself.

"We have to find her," I said, sobbing. "She was trapped in her crate. It's so cold and so dark and—" I was being ridiculous.The chilly night was the least of Holly Beth's problems.Had the house smashed her? Had she been blown away and killed by the impact?

My mind raced as my legs tried to do likewise. I lifted the skirt of my dress and tore around where the house had sat, no crate in sight.
Nothing here,
I thought, and had a crazed mental picture of Chris's giant catfish pillow flying through the air.

Was this what shock felt like?

"I've never seen anything like it," Chris said, refusing to leave my side when I suggested we split up to search. "It's completely gone." I could almost see him shifting mental gears."The stuff has to be somewhere."

"Unless it was blown to bits."

Together we walked the boundaries of the yard, calling to the puppy. "I didn't even want a dog anyway, and now she's lost. And you gave your house away, and we don't have a place to live."

I knew the fear and anger in my voice were unfair. But this was not the way I had intended to spend my wedding night.

Instead of lashing back at me, as I would have done to him, Chris grabbed my hand and pulled it to his cheek. "Let's keep looking."

Suddenly he started running. "Lois, there." He pointed up, and I thought perhaps he had lost his mind.

Holly Beth's crate sat in the top of an old crape myrtle.

"Shhh," Chris said. "Don't say anything. If she's alive, we don't want her to jump around and fall. I'll get the ladder." As quickly as the words left his mouth, he seemed to realize there was no ladder.

"I used to be quite good at this when I was a boy," he whispered.My husband of less than two hours climbed the gnarly tree as though he did it every day. I heard him murmuring as he lifted the crate.

"She's alive," he yelled. "I can't tell if she's hurt, but she's glad to see me."

As he slid down, I stood at the trunk of the tree and took the heavy crate from him, my shoulders groaning with the strain. I set it on the ground, opened the gate and gently spoke to Holly. "Are you okay, baby girl?"

She leapt out of the cage and jumped around me, running over to Chris. She looked as though nothing had ever happened, licking both of us and barking what I thought of as her happy bark.

"Oh, Chris, she's all right," I squeezed my dog close. "She's OK."

"I would not have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes."

Holly Beth ran over to where the house had stood and looked back at us, barking louder now. Then she raced around the edges of where it had been, as though surveying the land.

"It's truly gone, isn't it?" I asked.

"Lois, I'm so sorry. I know how much this house meant to you."

"It's only a house."

Chris insisted on taking me to the paper after we made a quick stop at Grace. No one, not even Pastor Jean, was around, my car the only one in the parking lot. Even in the dark, it was obvious the church listed to the side and the parsonage looked weather-beaten.

I got my suitcase out of my car and shoved it next to Chris's, behind the front seat of his truck.

"At least I have clothes to wear," I said.

As we drove into town, the capriciousness of the storm stunned us. Cars were thrown everywhere like toys. A fourwheeler was perched on a wooden fence. Several buildings in a row would be demolished, while the house next door would look unscathed. Utility poles were thrown everywhere, and the occasional electrical transformer sizzled and sparked.

"Look, over there," I would say, and Chris would follow with, "Can you believe that?" and point to more devastation.Cotton trailers were turned over and strewn across a field, barely visible by headlights. A little tin utility shed sat in the middle of the road, and a tractor was upside down in a ditch.

"Surely it can't be this bad all over town," I said and punched the numbers on my phone for what seemed like the thousandth time with the same result. "All circuits are busy."

Chris drove slowly, dodging limbs and an assortment of unidentifiable debris. My worry grew with each sign of damage.

"I'm worried sick about little Asa and Molly's family. What if your parents' house is torn up? And we need to check on your dogs," I said.

Chris laid his hand on my knee. "One thing at a time. We have to have faith that everything is going to be OK."

"Faith?" My nerves erupted. "I gained a husband today but lost a house. Anna Grace may be dead, and we don't know if the paper is standing. I had planned to be on my way to a honeymoon suite, but I'm going to try to cover a big story with the journalistic equivalent of a kindergarten class. My faith is in short supply at the moment."

"We'll deal with this together," he said. "No matter what else happened today, we got married."

"I knew it was going to be one for the history books," I said, "but this took it a little too far."

"Lois, are you prepared for what you may find at the
Item?"

"No" I said, hugging Holly Beth. "I'm not sure of anything. I have to cover this story. I don't even know where to begin."

"You'll figure it out," he said and then hesitated, an odd husky sound in his voice. "The paper and the church seem indestructible."

"They are more than buildings," I said, pulling myself together. "They don't need a building to make them real." My words worked up a new layer of energy within me, what I suspected Chris was trying to do.

"I'm going to have lots of busy days ahead of me," I said, attempting again to get my cell phone to work. By the time we reached downtown, the police and sheriff's departments had barricaded off most of the streets, standing guard against potential looters and unknown hazards. The flashing blue lights illuminated damage a moment at a time.

The young deputy who had so annoyed me during many of the fires stood near the turn we would have to make to get to the building.

"Sorry, " he said, leaning in as Chris rolled his truck window down. "Can't let civilians downtown tonight. Not safe."

"Son," Chris said, "If you think you're going to keep my wife from her newspaper, you obviously don't know who you're dealing with."

"Oh, I know Miss Barker, all right," he said.

"That's Mrs. Craig to you," Chris said. While they spoke, I slipped out of the truck with Holly Beth.

As I started running, both the deputy and Chris called after me. I stopped and turned.

"Are you wearing a wedding dress?" the deputy asked.

"Unfortunately, I am."

"Go on through," he said, moving the barricade so Chris could drive past. I hopped back in the truck and we drove down Main Street. Most of the buildings, including Mayor Eva's department store and Rose and Linda's antique mall, looked fine, but in the dark it was hard to tell.

As we turned into the parking lot of the
News-Item,
I covered my eyes with my hands.

"I can't look," I said. "You tell me."

"She seems to be all in one piece."

We walked through the littered parking lot, and with shaking hands, I unlocked the front door. Chris, Holly Beth, and I stepped into the newspaper.

"Tom? Tammy?" I called, but no one answered.

"Now what do I do?" I said to Chris. "For all the big stories I've ever covered, I've never been in a situation like this."