FAMILY IN THE WIND
THE TWO men drove up the hill
toward the blood-red sun. The
cotton fields bordering the road
were thin and withered, and no
breeze stirred in the pines.
"When I am totally
sober," the doctor was saying "I mean when
I am totally sober I don't see
the same world that you do. I'm like
a friend of mine who had one good
eye and got glasses made to cor-
rect his bad eye ; the result was
that he kept seeing flliptical suns
and falling off tilted curbs,
until he had to throw the glasses away.
Granted that I am thoroughly
anaesthetized the greater part of the
day well, I only undertake work
that I know I can do when I am
in that condition."
"Yeah," agreed his
brother Gene uncomfortably. The doctor was
a little tight at the moment and
Gene could find no opening for what
he had to say. Like so many
Southerners of the humbler classes, he
had a deep-seated courtesy,
characteristic of all violent and passion-
ate lands he could not change the
subject until there was a mo-
ment's silence, and Forrest would
not shut up.
"I'm very happy," he
continued, "or very miserable. I chuckle or
I weep alcoholically and, as I
continue to slow up, life accommodat-
ingly goes faster, so that the
less there is of myself inside, the more
diverting becomes the moving
picture without. I have cut myself
off from the respect of my fellow
man, but I am aware of a com-
pensatory cirrhosis of the
emotions. And because my sensitivity, my
pity, no longer has direction,
but fixes itself on whatever is at hand,
I have become an exceptionally
good fellow much more so than
when I was a good doctor."
As the road straightened after
the next bend and Gene saw his
house in the distance, he
remembered his wife's face as she had
made him promise, and he could
wait no longer: "Forrest, I got a
thing "
But at that moment the doctor brought
his car to a sudden stop
in front of a small house just
beyond a grove of pines. On the front
steps a girl of eight was playing
with a gray cat.
"This is the sweetest little
kid I ever saw," the doctor said to
Gene, and then to the child, in a
grave voice : "Helen, do you need
any pills for kitty?
The little girl laughed.
"Well, I don't know,"
she said doubtfully. She was playing another
game with the cat now and this
came as rather an interruption.
"Because kitty telephoned me
this morning," the doctor con-
tinued, "and said her mother
was neglecting her and couldn't I get
her a trained nurse from
Montgomery."
"She did not." The
little girl grabbed the cat close indignantly;
the doctor took a nickel from his
pocket and tossed it to the steps.
"I recommend a good dose of
milk," he said as he put the car into
gear. "Good night,
Helen."
"Good night, doctor."
As they drove off, Gene tried
again : "Listen ; stop," he said. "Stop
here a little way down . . .
Here."
The doctor stopped the car and
the brothers faced each other.
They were alike as to robustness
of figure and a certain asceticism of
feature and they were both in
their middle forties ; they were unlike
in that the doctor's glasses
failed to conceal the veined, weeping eyes
of a soak, and that he wore
corrugated city wrinkles ; Gene's wrinkles
bounded fields, followed the
lines of rooftrees, of poles propping up
sheds. His eyes were a fine,
furry blue. But the sharpest contrast lay
in the fact that Gene Janney was
a country man while Dr. Forrest
Janney was obviously a man of
education.
"Well?" the doctor
asked.
"You know Pinky's at
home," Gene said, looking down the road.
"So I hear," the doctor
answered noncommittally.
"He got in a row in
Birmingham and somebody shot him in the
head." Gene hesitated.
"We got Doc Behrer because we thought
maybe you wouldn't maybe you
wouldn't "
"I wouldn't," agreed
Doctor Janney blandly.
"But look, Forrest; here's
the thing," Gene insisted. "You know
how it is you often say Doc
Behrer doesn't know nothing. Shucks,
I never thought he was much
either. He says the bullet's pressing on
the pressing on the brain, and he
can't take it out without causin'
a hemmering, and he says he
doesn't know whether we could get
him to Birmingham or Montgomery,
or not, he's so low. Doc wasn't
no help. What we want "
"No," said his brother,
shaking his head. "No."
"I just want you to look at
him and tell us what to do," Gene
begged. "He's unconscious,
Forrest. He wouldn't know you; you'd
hardly know him. Thing is his
mother's about crazy."
"She's in the grip of a
purely animal instinct*" The doctor took
from his hip a flask containing
half water and half Alabama corn,
and drank. "You and I know
that boy ought to been drowned the
day he was born."
Gene flinched. "He's
bad," he admitted, "but I don't know You
see him lying there "
As the liquor spread over the
doctor's insides he felt an instinct to
do something, not to violate his
prejudices but simply to make some
gesture, to assert his own
moribund but still struggling will to
power.
"All right, I'll see
him," he said. "I'll do nothing myself to help
him, because he ought to be dead.
And even his death wouldn't make
up for what he did to Mary
Decker."
Gene Janney pursed his lips.
"Forrest, you sure about that?"
"Sure about it I" exclaimed
the doctor. "Of course I'm sure. She
died of starvation ; she hadn't
had more than a couple cups of coffee
in a week. And if you looked at
her shoes, you could see she'd
walked for miles."
"Doc Behrer says "
"What does he know ? I
performed the autopsy the day they found
her on the Birmingham Highway.
There was nothing the matter with
her but starvation. That
that" his voice shook with feeling
"that Pinky got tired of her
and turned her out, and she was trying
to get home. It suits me fine
that he was invalided home himself a
couple of weeks later."
As he talked, the doctor had
plunged the car savagely into gear
and let the clutch out with a
jump ; in a moment they drew up be-
fore Gene Janney's home.
It was a square frame house with
a brick foundation and a well-
kept lawn blocked off from the
farm, a house rather superior to the
buildings that composed the town
of Bending and the surrounding
agricultural area, yet not
essentially different in type or in its interior
economy. The last of the
plantation houses in this section of Ala-
bama had long disappeared, the
proud pillars yielding to poverty, rot
and rain.
Gene's wife, Rose, got up from
her rocking-chair on the porch.
"Hello, doc." She
greeted him a little nervously and without meet-
ing his eyes. "You been a
stranger here lately."
The doctor met her eyes for
several seconds. "How do you do,
Rose," he said. "Hi,
Edith ... Hi, Eugene" this to the little boy
and girl who stood beside their
mother; and then: "Hi, Butch!" to
the stocky youth of nineteen who
came around the corner of the
house hugging a round stone.
"Coin to have a sort of low
wall along the front here kind of
neater," Gene explained.
All of them had a lingering
respect for the doctor. They felt re-
proachful toward him because they
could no longer refer to him as
the celebrated relative "one
of the bess surgeons up in Mont-
gomery, yes suh" but there
was his learning and the position he had
once occupied in the larger
world, before he had committed pro-
fessional suicide by taking to
cynicism and drink. He had come
home to Bending and bought a half
interest in the local drug store
two years ago, keeping up his
license, but practising only when
sorely needed.
"Rose/' said Gene, "doc
says he'll take a look at Pinky."
Pinky Janney, his lips curved
mean and white under a new beard,
lay in bed in a darkened room.
When the doctor removed the band-
age from his head, his breath
blew into a low groan, but his paunchy
body did not move. After a few
minutes, the doctor replaced the
bandage and, with Gene and Rose,
returned to the porch.
"Behrer wouldn't
operate?" he asked.
"No."
"Why didn't they operate in
Birmingham?"
"I don't know."
"H'm." The doctor put
on his hat. "That bullet ought to come out,
and soon. It's pressing against
the carotid sheath. That's the any-
how, you can't get him to
Montgomery with that pulse."
"What'll we do?" Gene's
question carried a little tail of silence as
he sucked his breath back.
"Get Behrer to think it
over. Or else get somebody in Mont-
gomery. There's about a 25 per
cent chance that the operation would
save him ; without the operation
he hasn't any chance at all."
"Who'll we get in
Montgomery?" asked Gene.
"Any good surgeon would do
it. Even Behrer could do it if he had
any nerve."
Suddenly Rose Janoey came close
to him, her eyes straining and
burning with an animal
maternalism. She seized his coat where it
hung open.
"Doc, you do it! You can do
it. You know you were as good a
surgeon as any of em once.
Please, doc, you go on do it."
He stepped back a little so that
her hands fell from his coat, and
held out his own hands in front
of him.
"See how they tremble?"
he said with elaborate irony. "Look
close and you'll see. I wouldn't
dare operate."
"You could do it all
right," said Gene hastily, "with a drink to
stiffen you up."
The doctor shook his head and
said, looking at Rose : "No. You
see, my decisions are not
reliable, and if anything went wrong, it
would seem to be my fault."
He was acting a little now he chose
his words carefully. "I hear
that when I found that Mary Decker
died of starvation, my opinion
was questioned on the ground that
I was a drunkard."
"I didn't say that,"
lied Rose breathlessly.
"Certainly not. I just
mention it to show how careful IVe 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 I" 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 I 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. Ill 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 oper-
ate 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 hand-
kerchief. 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 approach-
ing 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 in-
creasing roar. He was in a strong
wind now ; blown debris, bits of
broken branches, splinters,
larger objects unidentifiable in the grow-
ing 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
centre of pandemonium.
First there was the sound, and he
was part of the sound, so en-
gulfed 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 noth-
ing ; 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 stand-
ing 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 he 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 I" 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 com-
pletely away.
"Mother ! " he called.
"Dad I " 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 elec-
tric 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.
There'll be a lot of frac-
tures " He raised his voice,
"Somebody bring me a barrel ! "
"I'll get started over
there," said Doc Behrer. "There's about half
a dozen more crawled in."
"What's been done?"
demanded Doc Janney of the men who fol-
lowed him into the drug store.
"Have they called Birmingham and
Montgomery?"
"The telephone wires are
down, but the telegraph got through."
"Well, somebody get Doctor
Cohen from Wettela, and tell any
people who have automobiles to go
up the Willard Pike and cut
across toward Corsica and all
through those roads there. There's not
a house left at the crossroads by
the nigger store. I passed a lot of
folks walking in, all of them
hurt, but I didn't have room for any-
body else." As he talked he
was throwing bandages, disinfectant and
drugs into a blanket. "I
thought I had a lot more stuff than this in
stock. And wait ! " he
called. "Somebody drive out and look down in
that hollow where the Wooleys
live. Drive right across the fields
the road's blocked . . . Now, you
with the cap Ed Jenks, aint
it?"
"Yes, doc."
"You see what I got here?
You collect everything in the store
that looks like this and bring it
across the way, understand?"
"Yes, doc."
As the doctor went out into the
street, the victims were streaming
into town a woman on foot with a
badly injured child, a buckboard
full of groaning Negroes, frantic
men gasping terrible stories. Every-
where confusion and hysteria
mounted in the dimly illumined dark-
ness. A mud-covered reporter from
Birmingham drove up in a side-
car, the wheels crossing the
fallen wires and brushwood that clogged
the street, and there was the
siren of a police car from Cooper, thirty
miles away.
Already a crowd pressed around
the doors of the hospital, closed
these three months for lack of patients.
The doctor squeezed past
the melee of white faces and
established himself in the nearest ward,
grateful for the waiting row of
old iron beds. Doctor Behrer was
already at work across the hall.
"Get me half a dozen
lanterns," he ordered.
"Doctor Behrer wants iodine
and adhesive."
"All right, there it is. ...
Here, you Shinkey, stand by the door
and keep everybody out except
cases that can't walk. Somebody run
over and see if there ain't some
candles in the grocery store."
The street outside was full of
sound now the cries of women, the
contrary directions of volunteer
gangs trying to clear the highway,
the tense staccato of people
rising to an emergency. A little before
midnight arrived the first unit
of the Red Cross. But the three doc-
tors, presently joined by two
others from near-by villages, had lost
track of time long before that.
The dead began to be brought in by
ten o'clock; there were twenty,
twenty-five, thirty, forty the list
grew. Having no more needs, these
waited, as became simple hus-
bandmen, in a garage behind,
while the stream of injured hundreds
of them flowed through the old
hospital built to house only a score
The storm had dealt out fractures
of the leg, collar bone, ribs and
hip, lacerations of the back,
elbows, ears, eyelids, nose ; there were
wounds from flying planks, and
odd splinters in odd places, and a
scalped man, who would recover to
grow a new head of hair. Living
or dead, Doc Janney knew every
face, almost every name.
"Don't you fret now. Billy's
all right. Hold still and let me tie
this. People are drifting in
every minute, but it's so consarned dark
they can't find 'em All right,
Mrs. Oakey. That's nothing. Ev
here'll touch it with iodine . .
. Now let's see this man."
Two o'clock. The old doctor from
Wettala gave out, but now there
were fresh men from Montgomery to
take his place. Upon the air
of the room, heavy with
disinfectant, floated the ceaseless babble of
human speech reaching the doctor
dimly through the layer after
layer of increasing fatigue :
". . . Over and over just
rolled me over and over. Got hold of
a bush and the bush came along
too."
" Jeff I Where's Jeff?"
". . . I bet that pig sailed
a hundred yards "
" just stopped the train in
time. All the passengers got out and
helped pull the poles "
" Where's Jeff?"
"He says, 'Let's get down
cellar/ and I says, 'We ain't got no
cellar' "
" If there's no more
stretchers, find some light doors."
"... Five seconds? Say, it
was more like five minutes!"
At some time he heard that Gene
and Rose had been seen with
their two youngest children. He
had passed their house on the way
in and, seeing it standing,
hurried on. The Janney family had been
lucky ; the doctor's own house
was outside the sweep of the storm.
Only as he saw the electric
lights go on suddenly in the streets
and glimpsed the crowd waiting
for hot coffee in front of the Red
Cross did the doctor realize how
tired he was.
"You better go rest," a
young man was saying. "I'll take this side
of the room. I've got two nurses
with me."
"All right all right. I'll
finish this row."
The injured were being evacuated
to the cities by train as fast as
their wounds were dressed, and
their places taken by others. He
had only two beds to go in the
first one he found Pinky Janney.
He put his stethoscope to the
heart. It was beating feebly. That
he, so weak, so nearly gone, had
survived this storm at all was re-
markable. How he had got there,
who had found him and carried
him, was a mystery in itself. The
doctor went over the body ; there
were small contusions and
lacerations, two broken fingers, the dirt-
filled ears that marked every
case nothing else. For a moment the
doctor hesitated, but even when
he closed his eyes, the image of Mary
Decker seemed to have receded,
eluding him. Something purely pro-
fessional that had nothing to do
with human sensibilities had been
set in motion inside him, and he
was powerless to head it off. He
held out his hands before him ;
they were trembling slightly.
"Hell's bells! "he
muttered.
He went out of the room and
around the corner of the hall, where
he drew from his pocket the flask
containing the last of the corn
and water he had had in the
afternoon. He emptied it. Returning to
the ward, he disinfected two
instruments and applied a local
anaesthetic to a square section
at the base of Pinky's skull where
the wound had healed over the
bullet. He called a nurse to his side
and then, scalpel in hand, knelt
on one knee beside his nephew's
bed.
Ill
Two days later the doctor drove
slowly around the mournful
countryside. He had withdrawn
from the emergency work after the
first desperate night, feeling
that his status as a pharmacist might
embarrass his collaborators. But
there was much to be done in
bringing the damage to outlying
sections under the aegis of the Red
Cross, and he devoted himself to
that.
The path of the demon was easy to
follow. It had pursued an ir-
regular course on its
seven-league boots, cutting cross country,
through woods, or even urbanely
keeping to roads until they curved,
when it went off on its own
again. Sometimes the trail could be
traced by cotton fields,
apparently in full bloom, but this cotton
came from the insides of hundreds
of quilts and mattresses redis-
tributed in the fields by the
storm.
At a lumber pile that had lately
been a Negro cabin, he stopped
a moment to listen to a dialogue
between two reporters and two shy
pickaninnies. The old
grandmother, her head bandaged, sat among
the ruins, gnawing some vague
meat and moving her rocker cease-
lessly.
"But where is the river you
were blown across?" one of the re-
porters demanded.
"There."
"Where?"
The pickaninnies looked to their
grandmother for aid.
"Right there behind
you-all," spoke up the old woman.
The newspapermen looked
disgustedly at a muddy stream four
yards wide.
"That's no river."
"That's a Menada River, we
always calls it ever since I was a gull.
Yes, suh, that's a Menada River.
An' them two boys was blowed
right across it an set down on
the othah side just as pretty, 'thout
any hurt at all. Chimney fell on
me," she concluded, feeling her
head.
"Do you mean to say that's
all it was?" demanded the younger
reporter indignantly.
"That's the river they were blown across 1
And one hundred and twenty
million people have been led to
believe "
"That's all right,
boys," interrupted Doc Janney. "That's a right
good river for these parts. And
it'll get bigger as those little fellahs
get older."
He tossed a quarter to the old
woman and drove on.
Passing a country church, he
stopped and counted the new brown
mounds that marred the graveyard.
He was nearing the centre of
the holocaust now. There was the
Howden house where three had
been killed ; there remained a
gaunt chimney, a rubbish heap and a
scarecrow surviving ironically in
the kitchen garden. In the ruins of
the house across the way a
rooster strutted on top of a piano, reign-
ing vociferously over an estate
of trunks, boots, cans, books, calen-
dars, rugs, chairs and window
frames, a twisted radio and a legless
sewing machine. Everywhere there
was bedding blankets, mat-
tresses, bent springs, shredded
padding he had not realized how
much of people's lives was spent
in bed. Here and there, cows and
horses, often stained with
disinfectant, were grazing again in the
fields. At intervals there were
Red Cross tents, and sitting by one of
these, with the gray cat in her
arms, the doctor came upon little
Helen Kilrain. The usual lumber
pile, like a child's building game
knocked down in a fit of temper,
told the story.
"Hello, dear," he
greeted her, his heart sinking. "How did kitty
like the tornado?"
"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, im-
personal, inconscient. Her lovely
little face looked up at him con-
fidently 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 sud-
denly.
"Dear, I'm coming back and
see you later later today. You take
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 un-
easiness 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 im-
petus that had lifted him
temporarily out of tired old stock was ex-
hausted, 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 be-
fore 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 direc-
tion. 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 grampa !
"
"Oh, save me, save me !
Jesus save me ! Help me ! "
"Jesus save my soul 1 "
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 centre 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 per-
haps 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 would be
years before the people of the
country ceased to reckon events as
happening "before the
tornado" or "after the tornado," and for
many families thing would 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.
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 be-
fore 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 direc-
tion. Reaching the bridge, he
jumped out and yanked Butch's
arm.
"Get out, you fool 1 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 grampa !
"
"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 centre 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 per-
haps 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 weie
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 would be
years before the people of the
country ceased to reckon events as
happening "before the
tornado" or "after the tornado," and for
many families thing would 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 cut off Gene's thanks :
"Pack up my books carefully
when I send for 'em."
"You reckon to practice
medicine up there, Forrest?"
"I'll maybe try it."
The brothers held on to each
other's hands for a moment, the two
youngest children came up to say
good-by. Rose stood in the back-
ground in an old blue dress she
had no money to wear black for
her eldest son.
"Good-by, Rose," said
the doctor.
"Good-by," she
responded, and then added in a dead voice, "Good
luck to you, Forrest."
For a moment he was tempted to
say something conciliatory, but
he saw it was no use. He was up
against the maternal instinct, the
same force that had sent little Helen
through the storm with her
injured cat.
At the station he bought a
one-way ticket to Montgomery. The
village was drab under the sky of
a retarded spring, and as the train
pulled out, it was odd to think
that six months ago it had seemed
to him as good a place as any
other.
He was alone in the white section
of the day coach ; presently he
felt for a bottle on his hip and
drew it forth. "After all, a man of
forty-five is entitled to more
artificial courage when he starts over
again." He began thinking of
Helen. "She hasn't got any kin. I
guess she's my little girl
now."
He patted the bottle, then looked
down at it as if in surprise.
"Well, we'll have to put you
aside for a while, old friend. Any
cat that's worth all that trouble
and care is going to need a lot of
grade-B milk."
He settled down in his seat,
looking out the window. In his mem-
ory of the terrible week the
winds still sailed about him, came in as
draughts through the corridor of
the car winds of the world
cyclones, hurricanes, tornadoes
gray and black, expected or unfore-
seen, some from the sky, some
from the caves of hell.
But he would not let them touch
Helen again if he could help it.
He dozed momentarily, but a
haunting dream woke him : "Daddy
stood over me and I stood over
kitty"
"All right, Helen," he
said aloud, for he often talked to himself,
"I guess the old brig can
keep afloat a little longer in any wind."
