“She didn’t.”
“What did she do?”
“She meowed.”
“Oh.”
“She wanted to get away, but I hanged on to her and she scratched me—see?”
He glanced at the Red Cross tent.
“Who’s taking care of you?”
“The lady from the Red Cross and Mrs. Wells,” she answered. “My father got hurt. He stood over me so it wouldn’t fall on me, and I stood over kitty. He’s in the hospital in Birmingham. When he comes back, I guess he’ll build our house again.”
The doctor winced. He knew that her father would build no more houses; he had died that morning. She was alone, and she did not know she was alone. Around her stretched the dark universe, impersonal, inconscient. Her lovely little face looked up at him confidently as he asked: “You got any kin anywhere, Helen?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’ve got kitty, anyhow, haven’t you?”
“It’s just a cat,” she admitted calmly, but anguished by her own betrayal of her love, she hugged it closer.
“Taking care of a cat must be pretty hard.”
“Oh, no,” she said hurriedly. “It isn’t any trouble at all. It doesn’t eat hardly anything.”
He put his hand in his pocket, and then changed his mind suddenly.
“Dear, I’m coming back and see you later—later today. You take good care of kitty now, won’t you?”
“Oh, yes,” she answered lightly.
The doctor drove on. He stopped next at a house that had escaped damage. Walt Cupps, the owner, was cleaning a shotgun on his front porch.
“What’s that, Walt? Going to shoot up the next tornado?”
“Ain’t going to be a next tornado.”
“You can’t tell. Just take a look at that sky now. It’s getting mighty dark.”
Walt laughed and slapped his gun. “Not for a hundred years, anyhow. This here is for looters. There’s a lot of ’em around, and not all black either. Wish when you go to town that you’d tell ’em to scatter some militia out here.”
“I’ll tell ’em now. You come out all right?”
“I did, thank God. With six of us in the house. It took off one hen and probably it’s still carrying it around somewhere.”
The doctor drove on toward town, overcome by a feeling of uneasiness he could not define.
“It’s the weather,” he thought. “It’s the same kind of feel in the air there was last Saturday.”
For a month the doctor had felt an urge to go away permanently. Once this countryside had seemed to promise peace. When the impetus that had lifted him temporarily out of tired old stock was exhausted, he had come back here to rest, to watch the earth put forth, and live on simple, pleasant terms with his neighbors. Peace! He knew that the present family quarrel would never heal, nothing would ever be the same; it would all be bitter forever. And he had seen the placid countryside turned into a land of mourning. There was no peace here. Move on!
On the road he overtook Butch Janney walking to town.
“I was coming to see you,” said Butch, frowning. “You operated on Pinky after all, didn’t you?”
“Jump in… Yes, I did. How did you know?”
“Doc Behrer told us.” He shot a quick look at the doctor, who did not miss the quality of suspicion in it. “They don’t think he’ll last out the day.”
“I’m sorry for your mother.”
Butch laughed unpleasantly. “Yes, you are.”
“I said I’m sorry for your mother,” said the doctor sharply.
“I heard you.”
They drove for a moment in silence.
“Did you find your automobile?”
“Did I?” Butch laughed ruefully. “I found something—I don’t know whether you’d call it a car any more. And, you know, I could of had tornado insurance for twenty-five cents.” His voice trembled indignantly: “Twenty-five cents—but who would ever of thought of getting tornado insurance?”
It was growing darker; there was a thin crackle of thunder far to the southward.
“Well, all I hope,” said Butch with narrowed glance, “is that you hadn’t been drinking anything when you operated on Pinky.”
“You know, Butch,” the doctor said slowly, “that was a pretty dirty trick of mine to bring that tornado here.”
He had not expected the sarcasm to hit home, but he expected a retort—when suddenly he caught sight of Butch’s face. It was fish-white, the mouth was open, the eyes fixed and staring, and from the throat came a mewling sound. Limply he raised one hand before him, and then the doctor saw.
Less than a mile away, an enormous, top-shaped black cloud filled the sky and bore toward them, dipping and swirling, and in front of it sailed already a heavy, singing wind.
“It’s come back!” the doctor yelled.
Fifty yards ahead of them was the old iron bridge spanning Bilby Creek. He stepped hard on the accelerator and drove for it. The fields were full of running figures headed in the same direction. Reaching the bridge, he jumped out and yanked Butch’s arm.
“Get out, you fool! Get out!”
A nerveless mass stumbled from the car; in a moment they were in a group of half a dozen, huddled in the triangular space that the bridge made with the shore.
“Is it coming here?”
“No, it’s turning!”
“We had to leave grandpa!”
“Oh, save me, save me! Jesus save me! Help me!”
“Jesus save my soul!”
There was a quick rush of wind outside, sending little tentacles under the bridge with a curious tension in them that made the doctor’s skin crawl. Then immediately there was a vacuum, with no more wind, but a sudden thresh of rain. The doctor crawled to the edge of the bridge and put his head up cautiously.
“It’s passed,” he said. “We only felt the edge; the center went way to the right of us.”
He could see it plainly; for a second he could even distinguish objects in it—shrubbery and small trees, planks and loose earth. Crawling farther out, he produced his watch and tried to time it, but the thick curtain of rain blotted it from sight.
Soaked to the skin, he crawled back underneath. Butch lay shivering in the farthest corner, and the doctor shook him.
“It went in the direction of your house!” the doctor cried. “Pull yourself together! Who’s there?”
“No one,” Butch groaned. “They’re all down with Pinky.”
The rain had changed to hail now; first small pellets, then larger ones, and larger, until the sound of the fall upon the iron bridge was an ear-splitting tattoo.
The spared wretches under the bridge were slowly recovering and in the relief there were titters of hysterical laughter. After a certain point of strain, the nervous system makes its transitions without dignity or reason. Even the doctor felt the contagion.
“This is worse than a calamity,” he said dryly. “It’s getting to be a nuisance.”
IV
There were to be no more tornadoes in Alabama that spring. The second one—it was popularly thought to be the first one come back; for to the people of Chilton County it had become a personified force, definite as a pagan god—took a dozen houses, Gene Janney’s among them, and injured about thirty people. But this time—perhaps because everyone had developed some scheme of self-protection—there were no fatalities. It made its last dramatic bow by sailing down the main street of Bending, prostrating the telephone poles and crushing in the fronts of three shops, including Doc Janney’s drug store.
At the end of a week, houses were going up again, made of the old boards; and before the end of the long, lush Alabama summer the grass would be green again on all the graves. But it will be years before the people of the country cease to reckon events as happening “before the tornado” or “after the tornado,”— and for many families things will never be the same.
Doctor Janney decided that this was as good a time to leave as any. He sold the remains of his drug store, gutted alike by charity and catastrophe, and turned over his house to his brother until Gene could rebuild his own. He was going up to the city by train, for his car had been rammed against a tree and couldn’t be counted on for much more than the trip to the station.
Several times on the way in he stopped by the roadside to say good-by—once it was to Walter Cupps.
“So it hit you, after all,” he said, looking at the melancholy back house which alone marked the site.
“It’s pretty bad,” Walter answered. “But just think; they was six of us in or about the house and not one was injured. I’m content to give thanks to God for that.”
“You were lucky there, Walt,” the doctor agreed. “Do you happen to have heard whether the Red Cross took little Helen Kilrain to Montgomery or to Birmingham?”
“To Montgomery. Say, I was there when she came into town with that cat, tryin’ to get somebody to bandage up its paw. She must of walked miles through that rain and hail, but all that mattered to her was her kitty. Bad as I felt, I couldn’t help laughin’ at how spunky she was.”
The doctor was silent for a moment. “Do you happen to recollect if she has any people left?”
“I don’t, suh,” Walter replied, “but I think as not.”
At his brother’s place, the doctor made his last stop. They were all there, even the youngest, working among the ruins; already Butch had a shed erected to house the salvage of their goods. Save for this the most orderly thing surviving was the pattern of round white stone which was to have inclosed the garden.
The doctor took a hundred dollars in bills from his pocket and handed it to Gene.
“You can pay it back sometime, but don’t strain yourself,” he said. “It’s money I got from the store.” He
