“I didn’t say that,” lied Rose breathlessly.
“Certainly not. I just mention it to show how careful I’ve got to be.” He moved down the steps. “Well, my advice is to see Behrer again, or, failing that, get somebody from the city. Good night.”
But before he had reached the gate, Rose came tearing after him, her eyes white with fury.
“I did say you were a drunkard!” she cried. “When you said Mary Decker died of starvation, you made it out as if it was Pinky’s fault—you, swilling yourself full of corn all day! How can anybody tell whether you know what you’re doing or not? Why did you think so much about Mary Decker, anyhow—a girl half your age? Everybody saw how she used to come in your drug store and talk to you—”
Gene, who had followed, seized her arms. “Shut up now, Rose… Drive along, Forrest.”
Forrest drove along, stopping at the next bend to drink from his flask.
Across the fallow cotton fields he could see the house where Mary Decker had lived, and had it been six months before, he might have detoured to ask her why she hadn’t come into the store that day for her free soda, or to delight her with a sample cosmetic left by a salesman that morning. He had not told Mary Decker how he felt about her; never intended to—she was seventeen, he was forty-five, and he no longer dealt in futures—but only after she ran away to Birmingham with Pinky Janney, did he realize how much his love for her had counted in his lonely life.
His thoughts went back to his brother’s house.
“Now, if I were a gentleman,” he thought, “I wouldn’t have done like that. And another person might have been sacrificed to that dirty dog, because if he died afterward Rose would say I killed him.”
Yet he felt pretty bad as he put his car away; not that he could have acted differently, but just that it was all so ugly.
He had been home scarcely ten minutes when a car creaked to rest outside and Butch Janney came in. His mouth was set tight and his eyes were narrowed as though to permit of no escape to the temper that possessed him until it should be unleashed upon its proper objective.
“Hi, Butch.”
“I want to tell you, Uncle Forrest, you can’t talk to my mother thataway. I’ll kill you, you talk to my mother like that!”
“Now shut up, Butch, and sit down,” said the doctor sharply.
“She’s already ’bout sick on account of Pinky, and you come over and talk to her like that.“
“Your mother did all the insulting that was done, Butch. I just took it.”
“She doesn’t know what she’s saying and you ought to understand that.”
The doctor thought a minute. “Butch, what do you think of Pinky?.”
Butch hesitated uncomfortably. “Well, I can’t say I ever thought so much of him”—his tone changed defiantly—“but after all, he’s my own brother—”
“Wait a minute, Butch. What do you think of the way he treated Mary Decker?”
But Butch had shaken himself free, and now he let go the artillery of his rage:
“That ain’t the point; the point is anybody that doesn’t do right to my mother has me to answer to. It’s only fair when you got all the education—”
“I got my education myself, Butch.”
“I don’t care. We’re going to try again to get Doc Behrer to operate or get us some fellow from the city. But if we can’t, I’m coming and get you, and you’re going to take that bullet out if I have to hold a gun to you while you do it.” He nodded, panting a little; then he turned and went out and drove away.
“Something tells me,” said the doctor to himself, “that there’s no more peace for me in Chilton County.” He called to his colored boy to put supper on the table. Then he rolled himself a cigarette and went out on the back stoop.
The weather had changed. The sky was now overcast and the grass stirred restlessly and there was a sudden flurry of drops without a sequel. A minute ago it had been warm, but now the moisture on his forehead was suddenly cool, and he wiped it away with his handkerchief. There was a buzzing in his ears and he swallowed and shook his head. For a moment he thought he must be sick; then suddenly the buzzing detached itself from him, grew into a swelling sound, louder and ever nearer, that might have been the roar of an approaching train.
II
Butch Janney was halfway home when he saw it—a huge, black approaching cloud whose lower edge bumped the ground. Even as he stared at it vaguely, it seemed to spread until it included the whole southern sky, and he saw pale electric fire in it and heard an increasing roar. He was in a strong wind now; blown debris, bits of broken branches, splinters, larger objects unidentifiable in the growing darkness, flew by him. Instinctively he got out of his car and, by now hardly able to stand against the wind, ran for a bank, or rather found himself thrown and pinned against a bank. Then for a minute, two minutes, he was in the black center of pandemonium.
First there was the sound, and he was part of the sound, so engulfed in it and possessed by it that he had no existence apart from it. It was not a collection of sounds, it was just Sound itself; a great screeching bow drawn across the chords of the universe. The sound and force were inseparable. The sound as well as the force held him to what he felt was the bank like a man crucified. Somewhere in this first moment his face, pinned sideways, saw his automobile make a little jump, spin halfway around and then go bobbing off over a field in a series of great helpless leaps. Then began the bombardment, the sound dividing its sustained cannon note into the cracks of a gigantic machine gun. He was only half-conscious as he felt himself become part of one of those cracks, felt himself lifted away from the bank to tear through space, through a blinding, lacerating mass of twigs and branches, and then, for an incalculable time, he knew nothing at all.
His body hurt him. He was lying between two branches in the top of a tree; the air was full of dust and rain, and he could hear nothing; it was a long time before he realized that the tree he was in had been blown down and that his involuntary perch among the pine needles was only five feet from the ground.
“Say, man!” he cried, aloud, outraged. “Say, man! Say, what a wind! Say, man!”
Made acute by pain and fear, he guessed that he had been standing on the tree’s root and had been catapulted by the terrific wrench as the big pine was torn from the earth. Feeling over himself, he found that his left ear was caked full of dirt, as if someone had wanted to take an impression of the inside. His clothes were in rags, his coat had torn on the back seam, and he could feel where, as some stray gust tried to undress him, it had cut into him under the arms.
Reaching the ground, he set off in the direction of his father’s house, but it was a new and unfamiliar landscape he traversed. The Thing—he did not know it was a tornado—had cut a path a quarter of a mile wide, and he was confused, as the dust slowly settled, by vistas had never seen before. It was unreal that Bending church tower should be visible from here; there had been groves of trees between.
But where was here? For he should be close to the Baldwin house; only as he tripped over great piles of boards, like a carelessly kept lumberyard, did Butch realize that there was no more Baldwin house, and then, looking around wildly, that there was no Necrawney house on the hill, no Peltzer house below it. There was not a light, not a sound, save the rain falling on the fallen trees.
He broke into a run. When he saw the bulk of his father’s house in the distance, he gave a “Hey!” of relief, but coming closer, he realized that something was missing. There were no outhouses and the built-on wing that held Pinky’s room had been sheared completely away.
“Mother!” he called. “Dad!” There was no answer; a dog bounded out of the yard and licked his hand…
…It was full dark twenty minutes later when Doc Janney stopped his car in front of his own drug store in Bending. The electric lights had gone out, but there were men with lanterns in the street, and in a minute a small crowd had collected around him. He unlocked the door hurriedly.
“Somebody break open the old Wiggins Hospital.” He pointed across the street. “I’ve got six badly injured in my car. I want some fellows to carry em in. Is Doc Behrer here?”
“Here he is,” offered eager voices out of the darkness as the doctor, case in hand, came through the crowd. The two men stood face to face by lantern light, forgetting that they disliked each other.
“God knows how many more there’s going to be,” said Doc Janney. “I’m getting dressing and disinfectant.
