Hell With the Lid Blown Off (13 page)

“Look, Dad.”

Gee Dub's voice startled him out of his preoccupation. “What, son?”

“The fence is gone.”

The barbed wire fence that divided the Tucker and Day farms now consisted of a couple of broken fence posts sticking out of the ground at crazy angles. There was no barbed wire to be seen.

Shaw's heart fell into his boots with a thud. The landscape was unrecognizable. “Come on,” he urged, his voice tense with fear.

If it hadn't been for the creek on the Day side, Shaw expected they wouldn't have been able to find their way at all. The path had been scoured out. The continual lightning threw demonic flashes of light on the collection of leafless, limbless sticks and poles that used to be a stretch of woods. Shaw wondered if hell was similar.

He didn't realize that they had reached the farm until he saw the back of the house. The little white clapboard cottage stood pristine in the middle of a bare yard. Two small saplings that John Lee had recently planted stood straight and fully leafed beside the back door.

“Looks like it's still standing,” Gee Dub exclaimed, breathless with relief.

Shaw broke into a run. “Phoebe!” he called.

As they rounded the corner of the house, Shaw stopped so abruptly that Gee Dub ran into him. The back of the house was untouched, but the front of the house was gone.

It had been sheared in half as neatly as if by a giant buzz saw.

Even the floor was gone. There was no parlor or kitchen, though Phoebe's heavy iron cookstove stood on the ground in its usual place. The recently added bedroom at the back of the house was neat as a pin. Three walls stood undamaged but the fourth had disappeared, along with half the roof. The bed was made up with a colorful quilt and white eyelet curtains hung at the window. A rocking chair sat on top of a rag rug next to the bed, opposite a chifforobe upon which lay a comb and mirror, a shaving cup with brush, and a crocheted doily. All in all it was like looking into a giant doll house, complete with a doll.

Zeltha was sitting on the floor with one leg of the chifforobe sitting on the tail of her nightgown, her face wet with tears and purple with fear. She shrieked when she saw her grandfather and lifted her arms to him.

Shaw scrambled up onto the foundation and hauled the child free as Gee Dub lifted the heavy dresser off of her gown. Her little body was shaking with cold and terror. Shaw snuggled her up to his chest and wrapped his coat around her.

“Do you think they're blown away?” Gee Dub had one arm around his father's shoulders and was patting Zeltha's back with his other hand.

“Phoebe put the leg of that chest on Zeltha's shirttail.” Shaw raised his voice to be heard over the girl's wails. “Your mama used to do that to keep little ones from straying when she had to do a quick task. Maybe they've run to check the animals. Zeltha, baby, where's Mama, honey? Where's Mama?”

“Mamaaaa!” Zeltha howled, but offered no other enlightenment.

Shaw walked over to the gaping hole that was once the bedroom wall and yelled into the night. “Phoebe! John Lee! Holler if you can hear me, young'uns!”

Shaw heard no answering call, but Gee Dub had younger ears. He stiffened. “Listen, Dad.”

Shaw cocked his head and strained to hear over Zeltha's sobs and the receding crackle of thunder as the storm moved farther away from them. His first thought was that he was hearing a wounded calf bawling, but he realized with a jolt that whatever it was, it was speaking English.

“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy…” A high-pitched voice that he didn't recognize, a woman's voice.

But Gee Dub did. He started out into the muddy yard. “It's Phoebe, Daddy. Come on, come on!”

They rushed toward the voice as fast as they could in the dark. They didn't have to worry about debris since the yard had been scoured right down to the bare ground, but the landscape was so changed that they had no way of recognizing where they were. Zeltha was snuffling quietly against Shaw's chest, now, clinging to him.

If it weren't for the near-constant lightning, they'd have never been able to see Phoebe, barefoot and clad in a cotton housedress and apron, so pregnant that she could hardly bend over. She was frantically digging in a pile of what seemed to be muddy firewood. When she saw them approach she stopped calling for her father, but she didn't stop flinging sticks and pieces of wood off the pile. Her auburn hair was wet and hanging in strings over her face and shoulders.

Shaw handed the two-year-old to Gee Dub and scrambled up onto the woodpile to grab Phoebe's hands. “Honey, what in the world are you doing? You'll hurt yourself! Come on down with me. We found Zeltha right where you left her. Where's John Lee?”

Phoebe shook him off and grabbed another stick of wood to throw aside. “He's here, Daddy, help me! He went to see that the barn was closed up when the storm hit.”

“The barn?”

“This is the barn. It collapsed and John Lee is under here somewhere!”

Shaw felt like he'd been hit in the chest by a fist. He picked Phoebe up bodily and carried her kicking and protesting off of the hill of splintered wood.

“Hush, honey, hush.” He spoke right into Phoebe's ear as she squirmed in his arms. “Look, here's Zeltha! Hold her while me and Gee Dub dig John Lee out. Look, honey. Zeltha needs you.”

Gee Dub thrust Zeltha into her mother's arms, and Phoebe squatted down on the ground with her, freezing and bruised, but refusing to go any further. She had no idea how long she hunkered there, with her skirt tucked around her bare feet and Zeltha pressed against her breast, watching her father and brother dig through the rubble. At intervals, Shaw or Gee Dub would call John Lee's name, then stand still for a few seconds, listening. Thus far there had been no response.

Phoebe caught sight of a dim spot of light coming up the path. Kurt, carrying a lantern, and Charlie. She could tell who it was by the lightning illumination.

She ran to meet them and was in the midst of explaining the situation when Shaw yelled, “He's here!”

Phoebe tried to follow Kurt and Charlie up the woodpile that had once been the barn but Shaw grabbed her arm. “Stay out of the way, honey.”

“Is he alive, Daddy?”

Shaw would not keep the situation from her. “I can't tell yet, darlin'. But you can't help. Think of Zeltha and this other little one who need their mother right now.”

999

They began to dig with fingers and sticks. Miraculously, Kurt found a shovel and a hoe, both of which worked well as prying instruments and speeded things along considerably. They worked by the light of Kurt's kerosene lamp. Shaw insisted they dig slowly to avoid a disastrous shift of the rubble, but inch by agonizing inch, John Lee was disinterred.

The rescuers took turns standing over John Lee's head, shielding his face from the rain with their coats and bodies.

It took all of them to lift a beam from the barn roof which had fallen across one leg, and then he was free. Shaw knelt down and ran his hands over the limp figure, briefly assessing the damage before attempting to move him. It didn't take much of an examination to feel several raw, pulpy wounds and a couple of broken bones. John Lee's right leg was bent at an odd angle. Shaw could feel breath on the back of his neck as his other boys anxiously huddled close, trying to see what was happening.

John Lee's eyes fluttered open briefly. “Water,” he croaked.

If his tears hadn't been warmer than the rain, Shaw might not have known he was weeping with relief.

Phoebe appeared at his side, desperate to get to John Lee. Shaw blinked at the bedraggled figure in the sodden housedress, not quite sure how she had gotten past him. She was so agitated that Shaw feared she would go into labor then and there.

He looked up at Gee Dub, standing behind her. “Gee Dub, get Phoebe and Zeltha out of here. Take them back to the house. See if you can find her some shoes and a coat and get them to Mary's house. Your ma is over there now. ”

“No, Daddy!” Phoebe protested, but Shaw cut her off.

“Phoebe, you're making it harder for us. Me and Kurt will get him out and rig up a stretcher. Honey, we'll bring him to you as fast as we can. You're going to hurt the baby and Zeltha's going to end up with pneumonia. Get back to the house and take care of that child before she freezes clean to death. Gee Dub, go on. Hurry up, now. Charlie, go with them and bring me back some drinking water and see if you can find another lamp.”

Gee Dub Tucker

Gee Dub dragged Phoebe most of the way back to the half-a-house, but as soon as they were out of sight of what was left of the barn, she stopped struggling and allowed Gee Dub to lead her, docile as a lamb.

Since the kitchen had disappeared Charlie couldn't find any water, so he left with a glass of sweet tea that was still standing on the bedside table and a couple of sodden candles that would be useless in the rain.

Zeltha had fallen into an exhausted sleep against Gee Dub's shoulder. He laid her down, still asleep, on her parents' bed, and wrapped the quilts around her. He sat Phoebe in the corner rocker and threw a quilt over her while he rummaged through the clothes press, hunting for something warm for her to wear over her housedress. It was downright cold, now, and three walls were no adequate shelter against the drizzly rain.

No coats. They had probably kept their coat tree in the parlor, the contents of which were more than likely in Missouri by now. Gee Dub cast a glance over his shoulder at the bedraggled figure huddled in the chair. He could hear her teeth chattering from across the room, whether from cold or shock he couldn't tell. He pulled out one of John Lee's flannel work shirts and a woolen shawl and seized a pair of Phoebe's shoes and some stockings. She limply allowed him to slip the shirt and shawl over her dress. He knelt down and slid her feet into the stockings and shoes, talking gently to her all the while. Her feet were bloody. He knelt there on the floor for a moment, overcome with a feeling of unreality as he looked out at night where the wall had been an hour earlier.

Why am I so calm,
he wondered? He stood and took Phoebe's hands to pull her up. They were black with mud and blood, her fingers shredded. If they were hurting, she didn't show it. Gee Dub briefly considered first aid, but where was he going to get water to wash her wounds or clean bandages to wrap them?

He picked up the sleeping child and arranged her against his shoulder, then tucked his free arm around his sister. “Come on, now,” he urged. “Let's go to Mama.”

“Is John Lee dead?” Phoebe's voice was small.

Gee Dub was firm. “No. Daddy and Kurt and Charlie are pulling him out of the mud right now.” He fervently hoped it was so. He led her out through the gaping hole, across the yard and toward the path that led to the Lukenbach farm.

Phoebe straightened in Gee Dub's grasp. “Let me hold my girl. Soon as I get her to Mama and get some proper clothes on, I've got to get back here to John Lee.”

The tenor of her voice had changed in the blink of an eye. Gee Dub was not surprised. He knew his sisters. Phoebe didn't have time to be weak right now when there was work to be done.

The rain had let up but a fine mist was in the air, so fine that it barely wet their hair. Gee Dub handed Zeltha to her mother, hoping that Phoebe had enough strength left to manage the girl's leaden weight. When they reached the path, he moved ahead of her in order to remove any impediments.

Behind him as they walked, Phoebe began to talk. “Me and Zeltha were alone in the house, Gee. When the ceiling started to cave in I knew we were in for it, so I stuffed her under the dresser. I'd have got under there with her but there's too much of me right now, so I just scrunched down as close to her as I could and held on. I swear, Gee Dub, the walls moved in and out like they were breathing! Then the roof lifted off like a lid and then sat right back down again. Then…I swan! There was a noise like I never heard in all my born days, and half the house was just gone! I couldn't even believe what I was seeing, all hunkered down there just staring at the front yard instead of the wall like I should have been. Jesus was watching over us sure, Gee, 'cause if we hadn't been in the bedroom we'd be gone, too!”

Trenton Calder

It didn't take me and Ruth long to realize that we weren't going to get very far on the road to her folks' farm. Truth is, there wasn't hardly any road anymore. The wind had scrubbed it right off the face of the earth and laid the ground over with broken trees and pieces of barns and furniture and dead animals. We didn't see any dead people, thank the Lord, but that's just because we didn't go far.

I had to talk faster than a carney in order to persuade her that this was a bad idea. “Better wait until light so we can see where we're going. Otherwise we'll end up riding around in circles all night and that won't do your folks any good. Besides, they've all got root cellars, so even if they've got storm damage, they're all right.”

I didn't think she was going to listen until I suggested that we go back to Alice's and see what the Kelleys had to say about the situation. Walter let us in when we got there. Alice was sitting in an armchair with the new baby, and the oldest Tucker sister, Martha, was pacing up and down the floor just as concerned about her family as Ruth was. I was glad to see that Martha's betrothed, Streeter McCoy, was there, too. I admired Streeter McCoy a bunch. If anybody was going to figure this thing out, it was him. He was Boynton's town treasurer, which means that he had a good head for figuring.

He didn't waste time. “It's cold, raining, and black as sin out there,” he said to the women. “Trent couldn't even find the road a bit ago. Now, I'm as worried as you all are, so I suggest that Trent and I take a couple of good lanterns, some tools, and maybe some quilts, if you've got some to spare, Alice, and we'll see if we can pick our way through the mess on horseback. Walter needs to stay here with Alice, and, besides, I'll feel better if you all have a man around tonight.”