At first she watched the familiar landscape go by as the bus picked up speed and headed for the Interstate. It would take a while as there were several small towns such as hers that it would have to stop in. Sometimes, someone would get on, but not always. Sometimes it was a total waste of time. They had to stop though apparently, from what she could see. The landscape gradually began to change, and once they were on the Interstate it went by rapidly and she gulped, she had never been this far from home and she knew she had to be brave. A lot would change now, there was no going back. The hands of fate had been turning for weeks now and she would be brave. She was going on; Ellie would have wanted her to, for both of them.
That was the day Avril began to go by her middle name Ellen. To honor her mother who had also been named Ellen, and it was close enough to Ellie, that it was to honor her as well. She gulped, remembering Ellie’s sweet face and the plans they had made, together. They had just been waiting for her to graduate high school and turn eighteen. They had so many plans. Ellie had saved up enough for both of them, by working at the gas station, to start over somewhere else. The two of them against the world. They had been ready; they were just waiting for the right time.
Her father must have sensed she was getting ready to leave. His drinking had never been worse. His abuse had only increased. He felt he owned her. She was his child and she had to do what he said, his sense of ownership was truly distorted. Her turning eighteen though must have bothered him as it came closer and closer, and he started getting meaner, if that were possible. He didn’t approve of Ellie May Fredericks, those ‘white trash’ Fredericks that lived in the mobile home trailer park. They were better than anyone living in a trailer park. He had told Avril often enough to stay away from her. The rumors about that girl were positively unnatural. He had laughed when he heard that the tornado had ripped through the trailer park where the Fredericks had lived and killed not only Ellie, but many other ‘white trash.’ He thought he was better than anyone living in a tornado magnet as he called mobile homes. He owned a home, he had a farm, he was better than anyone in that part of their small town.
Avril had been the one to identify Ellie, when the body was found along with her truck. Only her short yet beautiful honey blonde hair identified her with its shaved sides and the designs scored in them. Avril had run her fingers through it just the night before Ellie had been caught in the tornado, pulling into the park just as the storm hit. She had never had a chance to run to the bunker that was in the center of the park for the residents. The terror that she must have felt when the twister sucked up her Chevy must have been horrifying, her face, now at peace, still had remnants of the dirt and debris that had embedded under her skin. The rescue workers that had found her hadn’t bothered to clean her up, and Avril had been hard pressed not to throw up at the sight of her beloved best friend and what nature had done to her. She left the ‘temporary’ morgue after identifying Ellie, and headed right for the mobile home park. The mobile home that Ellie had lived in was off its blocks and on its side, but she crawled in anyway with one look around to see if anyone had seen her. She knew scavengers would be arrested, but they would be through if she didn’t get to Ellie’s things first.
She crawled through the debris to find the ‘safe place’ that Ellie used to hide her money and most treasured things. She found the box after a long search through all the jumble. She was relieved to find the rolls of bills and the various trinkets in the box. She cried when she found the engagement ring she had known Ellie wanted to give her, but was waiting until she was ‘legal.’ She looked around the room and took a sweatshirt she found, but other than that she left everything as it was and crawled out of the trailer. She was just in time as she took off from the other scavengers coming into the park who would be looking for anything they could find and sell. Supposedly ‘looking’ for bodies, any money or jewelry ‘found’ would disappear. She hid the box among her own things, hoping to keep it from being discovered by her father.
Owen Christenson didn’t care about anything, but what he could find in the bottom of a gin bottle. If his friends distilled something a little more than one hundred percent proof, well that was fine by him too. When he saw her after the death of her best friend, he laughed and told her she was ‘better off’ without that ‘trailer trash’ and now she could go find a ‘real man.’ He even offered to find her one. She shuddered in distaste, but knew better than to answer. Around her father she was shy, she was quiet and respectful, she was non-visible as much as possible to the man. She kept his house as much as she could and waited for the day when she could leave. She had promised her mother that she would graduate high school, something she herself hadn’t had the advantage of, and regretted her whole life. She wanted to keep from his notice, and the idea of his ‘friends,’ who looked at her with barely disguised lust, made her disgusted. Lecherous hands had reached out to her as she fetched beer for his ‘friends’ for years. He never stopped them, never defended her. She had learned to avoid them, for if she ever complained or spilled the beer, her father would berate her. Words were almost worse than the physical beatings, as he harangued her for ‘fun’ in front of those friends, much to their mutual amusement. Egged on by their silent appreciation of his abuse and his particular style of child rearing.
She watched the telephone poles loop up and down as the sun went down and she headed into it. She was heading west. Far, far away from the devastation of the two tornadoes that had hit this section of Oklahoma in one week’s time. Ellen couldn’t help but wonder if her father would still be alive if she had woken him when she heard the tornado sirens go off. She had heard them loud and clear across the prairie miles from her bedroom and headed for the stairs to head for shelter. He had been asleep on the couch wearing his ‘wife beater’ t-shirt, appropriately named since he had always worn such disgusting shirts to beat not only his wife, but his daughter as well. He was snoring loudly, and she debated briefly about waking him, knowing she would be backhanded for ‘bothering’ him, but also knowing that the sirens were going loud and clear and that they should head for the shelter her grandparents had built to protect the humans from this very thing. He drooled in his sleep as his hand came up to rub his crotch and then up to rub his nose. She shuddered in disgust at the sight. The sirens must be spinning around as they came louder and then fainter, it was the next circuit that decided it for her, and she headed to the shelter, alone.
It was hard for her small frame to open the door; it was a heavy steel door. The wind was blowing so hard she nearly lost her footing as she struggled with it. She could see the vent spinning around on top of the storm shelter to let in some air to the close quarters. It was built tough, but she managed to pry it open, the wind catching it, before she was pulling it shut behind her and bolting it. She was in absolute darkness and she reached for a flashlight she knew they kept on the shelf. Something soft brushed against her hand, she didn’t know if was a spider web, a mouse, or what, and she squealed at the sensation, but determinedly felt for the flashlight against the eternal blackness that was before her. She wouldn’t go down the steps without seeing where she was going. It was a black pit, a void, an absence of any light, and she was frightened. She had heard the roar of the wind, the steel door had shut that out, but in the absence of sound the dark frightened her further. There, there was the flashlight. She quickly pulled it to herself and flicked it on. The beam was feeble, the batteries old and unused. She cursed in her mind, not aloud, just in case someone could hear her and berate her for her naughty mouth. She shone the flickering beam around and saw another flashlight on the shelf. This one too was weak and unused, but between the two weak beams she felt better and could see further. She saw a lantern further down and headed carefully down the stairs. The noises outside as things hit the door scared her, she wondered how long she would have to stay down here, she wondered if she should go back up and get her father. Remembering how he had laughed at Ellie’s death, seeming to take pleasure in the
devastation on his young daughters face, she firmly decided that he was on his own. He would make her pay in countless ways later, but she knew it was a price she had to pay.
She got the lantern lit and it provided much more light than the weak flashlights that she turned off. The wind could be heard around the steel door and a little gray through the small window in the door, but nothing she could see beyond an absence of black through it. She looked around the storm cellar. Her grandparents and even her mother had stored things in here, but her father never did, he didn’t even use it, only swore that he had to cut around it in the backyard with the lawn mower. Occasionally she jumped as something fell against the door or window; she could sense the power of the wind.
Oh no! She remembered the box she had taken from Ellie’s home; she had forgotten it in her hiding place in her room. It was all she had to start over! She got up for a moment with the intention of heading back to the house, but a loud crash outside the storm door had her halting in her tracks.
CHAPTER THREE
THE AFTER-AFFECTS
She must have fallen asleep at some point. The anxiety of hearing the storm, worrying about its outcome, and the noises coming from outside had kept her up for hours. Sleep crept in, exhaustion really, and wrapped her in its blanket of ignorance…for a few hours anyway.
She awoke to the sound of…silence. The absolute silence. Nothing came from beyond the sturdy door of the storm cellar. She was disoriented for a moment as she looked around, wondering where she was. Then it all came back to her in a moment. She looked up at the door and through the small square of the window she saw daylight, a blue sky beyond it. She got up and looked around for the lantern, which must have burned out at some point while she slept. Carefully she put it back where she found it, along with the flashlights, making a mental note to replace the batteries and fill the lantern at some point, she knew if her father found out she had known about these things and not done them the punishment would be worse. It would be bad anyway; apparently she must anticipate things like running out of lantern oil or batteries losing their power.
Walking up the stairs she unbolted the door and pushed on it. It didn’t budge. For a panicked moment she thought she might be buried alive under debris blown by the storm. She wondered if her father had even bothered to look for her this morning. She glanced through the square of light coming through the window and wondered what time it was. He’d be angry if she had his breakfast late on the table for him so he could go to work in the fields. He always insisted on hot meals for breakfast and supper. She pushed against the door again with all her might. She wasn’t able to raise it but a mere few inches, but that encouraged her. She pushed again and could feel the weight of something against the door, holding it down. She kept pushing and resting, pushing and resting, until it got wide enough that she could slip an arm out, then a shoulder. She endured more pushing, then rested. The door was extraordinarily heavy and she felt her strength waning but she was determined now. Her continued struggling paid off as her head emerged into the daylight. It was then she discovered that a large branch from one of the ancient oaks had come to rest right across the storm cellar door. No wonder it was taking her so much effort to squeeze out from under the door. She looked around and then it hit her, the yard was devastated. It looked like a battlefield strewn with the debris left behind by a bomb. Her father wasn’t going to be too thrilled with all this extra work. Where had all that debris come from? She’d seen a movie that had shown an explosion, that’s what this reminded her of; as if something had exploded all over the yard. She’d better get started with the cleaning up and soon, or he would be furious. She wiggled through the rest of the way, hurting her hip as the door came down on it hard. She pulled her legs through the tight gap and sat there breathing hard from her exertions. It was then that she got up and turned around and saw it.
The house was nearly gone. It was off its foundations, but it was like the hand of God had taken a finger and pushed it sideways. The second story lay out by the clothes line on the side of the house. The basement was exposed in several areas, but it all leaned precariously.
“Oh my God,” she mouthed and then quickly looked around to see if anyone had heard her use the name of God in vain like that.
Looking around she realized there was nothing other than the barns and out houses left standing. Debris was everywhere. The house wasn’t quite a pancake, but that was when she remembered her father. She looked back at the house. She couldn’t decide for a moment if she should go look for him. Should she go for help first? Had he already gotten out of the house and gone? She glanced towards the shed that held the family truck. It looked worse for wear and boards protruded at odd angles out of the side of the building. They weren’t nailed to it, simply stuck in it like needles in a pincushion. She could see the truck inside, behind the door. The windows of the shed were gone, but the truck remained. She was strangely relieved. That meant he might still be around. She was sure he wouldn’t have really made an effort to look for her.
She looked towards the house again. Slowly she walked towards it, stepping over the countless boards and tornado-strewn debris. She glanced again at the barn and wondered where all these boards had come from, their barn still stood. She glanced back at the house; all the boards seemed to be there despite the lean of the house. She skirted a toilet that sat in their backyard. It was rather clean, almost as if it had been sand-blasted; she thought idly as she walked past it. It even had the tank, perfectly intact. She walked closer to the house and peered in where she could. Her bedroom was on the ground floor now, almost where the clothes line had once stood. Wait, no, the clothesline was through her bedroom window. She began to circle the house. The chimney which she had relied on for heat was now splayed out over where the garden had been. Her father didn’t see the importance of getting the heating fixed, especially for a girl’s room...maybe now he would, she thought. The roof was fairly intact, just a few shingles gone, but it sheltered the second story only, which was now on the ground next to where their house had once stood. Her mother’s sewing room was wide open on the other side of the house, the room where she had made all of Avril’s clothes until she died, was exposed, the dress dummy looking obscenely naked to the elements as it faced the front of the yard. Her parents’ bedroom was smashed in on this corner; she could see one of the oak trees had done a thorough job to it. It was missing a branch and she idly wondered if that was the same branch that had tried to trap her in the cellar.
She couldn’t see the kitchen or the living room where she had last seen her father. She was about to climb into the debris when she heard someone shout from the front and she looked up to see Sheriff Worley and some neighbors drive up in assorted cars and trucks. She could see concerned faces and she had to wonder if they were for her, or for her father who had been well liked. She knew she wasn’t well liked, he had convinced them all she was worthless. That she was a nasty little kid with an attitude. No amount of teacher’s notes or good grades had convinced anyone otherwise; they believed him because he was their neighbor, friend, or drinking buddy.
“Avril! Where is your father?” Sheriff Worley asked, sounding official as he pulled up his belt. It didn’t matter; his beer belly gut hung over it and hid it anyway.
She noted he hadn’t asked how she was. He didn’t care anyway, and she pointed sadly inside the house.
“He’s in there?” he asked incredulously as stared in horror at the devastation.
She shrugged as she headed for it once more, raising her foot to climb onto the debris.
“Hey there, let us men folks do it. You don’t know how dangerous it might be,” he told her condescendingly and some of the neighbors came up to help him search the house.
Avril pulled back and crossed her arms, holding them protectively close to her chest as she watched the men start going through the bedrooms. It was easily accessible as every window was blown out of the house.
“Where was he?” Worley calle
d to her for clarification.
“He was in the living room,” she answered in a monotone. No expression was in her voice. Some would have thought she was in shock. Some wondered but not many would voice an opinion though. Owen Christenson had been a big blustery man, but well liked. No one would argue with him when he told them that his daughter was worthless. No one stood up and said those bruises she sported needed looking into when they saw them. The gym teacher at school had sworn she was just a klutzy kid, but only after Owen had visited him after he had mentioned something about her bruises to the Principal. No word was spoken up about this redheaded child again.
“It’s okay honey, they’ll find him,” one of the women who came up tried to put her arm across Avril’s shoulders.
She maneuvered her torso in a way that caused the arm to fall off them as she stood alone and wondered what would happen when he was found. How angry was he going to be that she hadn’t woken him? How angry was he going to be that their home was a total loss? He had, after all, gotten it all for free by marrying Ellen Sheehan and taking over her parent’s farm. Avril glanced around as the men went further into the house, wondering if they would find him alive, or worse, incapacitated. The thought of taking care of him the rest of her life didn’t appeal, and she knew she would be judged if she didn’t do it right.
The men searched for hours and it grew hotter. Avril ignored the food that was offered to her in the form of sandwiches, but drank the water; she knew that becoming dehydrated was dangerous in the hot winds that blew across Oklahoma.
“Well honey, you come home with me, and my missus will fix you up right well,” Mr. Davidson told her and the sheriff nodded in agreement. They had searched all day and found nothing in the house. He’d looked away as a few of the men had pocketed what they had found in the debris.
Blown Away Page 2
