The Talent Show (2 page)

Elke quickly rinsed off and got out of the shower. She threw on a T-shirt and shorts, went into her bedroom, and pulled the mattress off her bed. Then she dragged it into the bathroom. She picked up her dog, Lucky, climbed into the tub, and pulled the mattress over the two of them. She and Lucky would stay there in the bathtub until the all-clear signal sounded.

Mrs. Mary Marotta quickly screwed the cap on the Marshmallow Fluff jar and grabbed the remote control to her TV. She flipped away from
Oprah
and turned to The Weather Channel. The screen was flashing tornado warning for four state area. But almost instantly the power in her house went out and the screen faded to black. She rushed to get a flashlight and transistor radio from her pantry.

“Mommy, the TV went off !” cried her daughter, Elsie, from the living room. Elsie was in second grade, and her little brother, Edward, was in first.

Mrs. Marotta grabbed each of them by the arm, and hustled them outside to the prefab bomb shelter constructed belowground in the backyard. It had been built in the 1950s, in case of a Russian atomic blast.

When he heard the siren, Paul Crichton, the young guitar god, grabbed his most precious possession—his Strat—and crawled under the workbench in the corner of the basement. That's what his parents had taught him to do. If anything was going to fall on him—like the entire house—he would be protected.

At The Fontaneau Ballet Studio, Julia Maguire and the other students were hustled away from all that glass—the picture window in the front and the giant mirror that covered one whole wall of the studio. The school had no basement. The students were led—in an orderly fashion—into the office and instructed to crouch down in the corner to make as small a target as possible. The leotard-clad girls covered their heads with notebooks, backpacks, or in some cases, just their hands.

All over Cape Bluff, people rushed to prepare for a disaster. Some were hiding in closets, hoping to put as many walls as they could between
themselves and the wind. People huddled on the floors of interior rooms, avoiding halls that opened to the outside in any direction. Kids rushed to put on their bike helmets, batting helmets, and hockey masks. Anything to protect themselves from flying objects. Some people crawled into metal trash cans. Parents were exchanging final glances, just in case they would not see one another again.

The storm picked up momentum as it rushed through town. People who were unfortunate enough to be out on the streets of Cape Bluff watched the black funnel approaching, fully aware that a falling tree, power line, or lightning bolt was just as dangerous as the tornado itself.

The smart ones jumped in a nearby ditch and lay there. That's the safest place outdoors, unless of course, you get swept away by a flash flood.

All over town, a continuous rumble could be heard in the distance. As the funnel moved closer, it became a muffled
whoosh
ing sound, like a waterfall or air rushing past an open car window driven at high speed. The roar grew sharper and louder, until it sounded like a freight train or jet engine.

It was officially an F4 tornado. The wind speed topped out at 260 miles per hour. But
nobody knew the speed for sure, because at the weather station the device they used to measure wind speed blew away. Trees began to bend, and finally snap.

Some people—some foolish people—ran around their houses frantically opening the windows. They had been told that if the windows are open, it allows a tornado to pass through more easily and cause less destruction.

They were wrong.

The black funnel, now visible for miles, began to stab the earth like a dagger from the clouds. The snakelike tail flipped back and forth underneath it, licking one neighborhood for a minute or two before dancing on to the next one, like a bee trying to decide which flower to pollinate. It lashed out as if it had a purpose, an insatiable twisted mind intent on destroying anything below.

Like a carousel out of control, debris was swirling overhead. Bricks, beams, concrete, chairs, tables, clothes, toys, jewelry, and family heirlooms. Kitchen knives were flung 150 feet per second, impaling anything in their path. Years later, one would be found at a construction site, eight feet below the ground.

At Pete's Lumber Company on the north side of town, two-by-fours were being tossed around like Popsicle sticks. A hundred-year-old oak tree was yanked out by the roots. Cars were flying through the air like Frisbees.

At Cape Bluff Elementary School, the door to the library was ripped off its hinges. Water flooded inside, and virtually every book in the library was ruined.

At Booker's Stamps and Coins, the entire inventory was swept away. In an instant, a lifetime of work that had been so carefully collected and stored was gone.

Objects were plucked off the ground and thrown every which way. A pair of German shepherds was picked up and carried a quarter mile from their home. Miraculously, neither was hurt. An entire maple tree would be found, intact, two miles from where it grew. Forty miles away, a phone bill from a Cape Bluff resident would be found on the street. Debris would be picked up as far as eighty miles away.

Don Potash, the young comedian, had been home alone, watching his portable battery- powered DVD player. He had headphones on and
hadn't heard a thing. As he listened to Jerry Seinfeld tell jokes about doing laundry, Don's house began to shudder as if a giant was shaking it. The building vibrated as the roar grew steadily louder. Don was concentrating heavily as he copied down the jokes in his special notebook that was filled with his favorite comedy routines.

By the time Don realized anything was going on, the aluminum siding was being ripped away from the frame of his house like a banana peel. And then, the building literally
exploded
and flew away. Seconds later, you couldn't even tell that a house had ever been on that spot. It had been wiped clean.

All that was left was Don Potash, sitting where his house used to be, dazed and confused, with the headphones still on his head.

And then, after all that … nothing. The tornado had done the only thing it knew how to do—destroy things indiscriminately. It suddenly dissipated, exhausted, like a car that had run out of gas.

Just ten minutes after the tornado started, it was all over.

A Crazy Idea

“I'm just about busted, George.”

Honest Dave admitted it to an old friend as they trudged up the steps of Cape Bluff High School three days later. Even though the tornado caused just minor damage to Honest Dave's Hummer Heaven, business had been way off for more than a year. Few people in town had enough money to buy a new car, especially the big gas guzzlers at Hummer Heaven. And the only people from out of town who were coming to Cape Bluff were gawkers who wanted to see what it looked like after a tornado had just about flattened a town. The tornado had delivered a knockout blow.

Honest Dave wiped his muddy feet before
entering the auditorium. He wore a jacket and tie, like always. People treat you with respect when you wear a jacket and tie. Nobody wants to buy a car from a slob. That's what Dave always said. He was a salesman's salesman. There are three kinds of people in the world, according to Dave: old customers, new customers, and potential customers.

A large percentage of Cape Bluff citizens (population: 1,098) had gathered at the high school for the seven o'clock town meeting. The football field out back had been torn up pretty badly, but the tornado had mercifully left the school alone. The auditorium was half-filled by the time Honest Dave got there, and people were still streaming in.

The official estimate, according to
The Cape Bluff Tribune
, was $34 million worth of damage, 168 trees down, thirty-five houses destroyed beyond repair, thirteen stores damaged, and nine cars totaled. One of those cars hadn't even been
found
yet. There had been hundreds of injuries, including twenty-four broken bones, a punctured lung, and at least one concussion. Miraculously, there had been no deaths. People in this part of the country know what to do when there's a tornado.

A brief history of Cape Bluff, Kansas. If you don't like to read brief histories, that's okay. Skip the next couple of pages.

The town is located where the flat plains and rolling hills of Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, and Kansas just about meet at the corners. It was founded in 1842 as an Indian trading post. A U.S. army officer, LaRue Bluff, surveyed the town, and the Reverend Harris G. Cape founded the first Methodist congregation in the area. When it came time to give the place a name, Reverend Cape and Captain Bluff agreed to flip a coin. Defying all odds, the coin landed on its edge, and the town was officially named Cape Bluff in 1859.

There were about a thousand residents by the time of the Civil War, but Cape Bluff didn't get on a map until the arrival of the Missouri Western Railroad in 1872. Around the same time, zinc and lead were discovered in the area. Southern and Eastern European immigrants poured into Cape Bluff, starting up a foundry, a furniture factory, woolen and grain mills, a plow works, and other businesses. Cape Bluff grew, and at the turn of the twentieth century, ten thousand people lived
there. It was one of the first towns in Kansas to have electricity.

An interesting side note: in 1933, Bonnie and Clyde spent several weeks hiding out at Cape Bluff after pulling off a string of bank robberies across the Midwest.

After World War II, the price of lead and zinc plummeted, and the fortunes of Cape Bluff with it. Most of the mines closed down, and the population dropped by half.

Today, there isn't much evidence of Cape Bluff's glory days. You can still find a few badly marked open pit mines and shafts that occasionally cave in, creating sink holes big enough to swallow large animals and small cars. The main street—Main Street—is cluttered with a Burger King and a few other fast-food joints, gas stations, a supermarket, a movie theater that doesn't show movies anymore, and the faded signs of businesses that picked up and moved elsewhere many years ago.

The rich folks, with their summer homes and designer cars, live in Kansas City, Tulsa, or Little Rock, each about three hours away. Cape Bluff is working class. You have to be tough to live there. Resilient. The people have survived two World
Wars, one Depression, countless recessions, gas shortages, crop failures, not to mention the occasional “weather event.” Four tornadoes touched down in the 1990s, ruining countless lives.

There were a lot of downcast faces as people filed into the high school auditorium that Friday night. Many were wearing ripped clothes and soiled shoes, or walked with a limp. Some people had lost everything they owned. Tornado insurance was a luxury not many people could afford.

There were few smiling faces, and no laughter. Old friends hugged one another, relieved to see that the other was still alive.

Some people came to ask questions, to get advice, to see neighbors, or just to vent their anger. Some came for a Friday night out. It was something to do, and it didn't cost anything.

Reverend John Mercun, the pastor of First Presbyterian Church, greeted everyone as they lumbered up the steps.

“Maybe God didn't intend for people to live here, Pastor,” said Honest Dave.

“God protected us, Dave,” Reverend John assured him. “Nobody died.”

Usually, it was Mayor Rettino who ran the town meetings. But on this night, she sat quietly on the stage with the other local politicians. There were no prepared speeches. Nobody wanted to take ownership of a natural disaster. It was left to the chief of police, Officer Michael Selleck, to tell everyone to take a seat and call the meeting to order.

A microphone had been set up in the front of the auditorium. People began lining up to wait their turn to speak. First in line was Bill Potash, the father of Don, the young Seinfeld fan.

“I rebuilt my house three times,” he said before the microphone produced some squealing feedback. “Now it's gone. There's nothin' left. My truck is wrecked. The insurance doesn't cover tornadoes. We're living with my sister's family. And we're lucky to have 'em. But why is it always us? How much am I supposed to take?”

There were murmurs of sympathy through the auditorium.

Bill Potash wasn't expecting anyone to have a satisfying answer for him. He just wanted to say it out loud. Tears in his eyes, he went back and sat down next to his wife and son.

Honest Dave was next in line.

“I may have to shut down Hummer Heaven,” he announced. “Nobody's buyin' big cars anymore. How am I supposed to sell anything when everybody wants to go fifty miles on a gallon of gas, and all I can give them is sixteen? I didn't see this coming. I guessed wrong, and now people are laughing at me.”

“Nobody's laughing at you, Dave,” somebody called from the audience.

Mary Marotta, the PTA mom who was making sandwiches in her kitchen when the tornado hit, stepped up to the microphone.

“If folks like you move out, we lose our tax base,” she said to Honest Dave. “Fewer businesses means we have fewer places to shop. People move away. Then the schools start shutting down because there aren't enough kids. Then families don't move here because the schools aren't good. And then we become a ghost town. Don't leave, Dave.”