Adele was shopping in Hidden Creek. Sudduth was distracted because she had taken the girls with her in the Dodge. Hannah had a stye and they planned to stop at the doctor’s. “I said, Adele, it’s fixing to storm. You ought to stay home,” Sudduth was explaining. “She should do what I say. I’m supposed to be wearing the pants.”
“Adele’s smart,” Pop soothed. “She’s all right.”
Pop and Mom and the boys were going down the cellar stairs, Sudduth pushing them before him. Ellen followed. Dennie was carrying the feist dog and Simon three cats. “Get a move on, Simon,” Sudduth was muttering, “Hurry.” Then on the last step he tripped, sprawling on the cement. “God damn it.” His voice was shrill, near tears.
“We’d pull the shades and stay in the house because of lightning.” Ellen went over to Mom. “But we ne’er would go down to the cellar.”
“Land, we always do.”
Pop and Dennie sat with Simon on a crate in a corner. Sudduth was rubbing his back. He leaned on the wall and whined, “Don’t you be sick now, Dennie, or I’ll swat your bottoms.” He ran his hand nervously across his face.
The boy laid his small head in the fur of the dog. He was pale. Pop turned to him, “Say, Dennie. Let’s you and me buy a sofa. Might as well set the storms out comfortable.”
Then Ellen remembered. “Where’s Dan?”
“He was working,” Sudduth said, “on the dump rake last I saw. I hollered to him to come.” He was rubbing his palm across his face again. “I don’t know.”
“I’ll go see.” Ellen ran up the stairs.
“Ellen,” Mom called.
“I’ll be all right.” The sky was massed with rolling cloud of blue and green and purple. In the north, lightning erupted in a yellow flare and the blacked clouds hanging before were outlined. A jagged orange bolt cracked through them. She was exhilarated. It’s a sight. And those folks are all hiding from it. She heard a rushing noise. The wind was coming. It tore at her hair, loosing it from its bonds. Within her, joy leaped again, like youth and first experience. And underneath she quailed. She was rounding the corner of the barn, running toward the shed.
She heard his shout and Dan was in the wide barn doorway, scowling, booted feet spread. His black hair was wild, the wind had whipped his shirt out, the birthmark burned like a new wound. He cried again, “You damn fool.” She was stopping, poised.
He strode out and pulled her arm, hurrying her to the barn. She protested, “I was afraid for you.”
“For me? You fool.” He was roaring above the wind. “Dammit. Look there.” He pointed at an inky cloud where a tongue licked downward and retreated. “That’s a twister.” Like a long thick snake it shot down to the earth and a whining roar commenced.
Dan’s hand was gripping hers. They were dashing to the stalls in the middle of the barn. She was suddenly afraid. “Now they’d talk of cyclones, but I ne’er saw one before, Dan.”
Swiftly, in the dull light, in the musty smell of the unused stable, he had his arms about her. His yellow-green eyes glittered, laughing, “Lady Nancy Belle.”
It came upon Ellen the way Craig Hedrick was grabbing with a band of steel while she struggled. That had haunted her dreams so she would awake in a sweat sometimes. And there was Uncle Garland’s hand seeking incestuous under her coat that lonely winter, so she had to drive the memory from her, suppress it, divorce it from her uncle whom she loved for his goodness. These things flooded up when she saw Dan’s weathered face, his shut eyes and hawknose, the red scar bending. She fought, violent, her hands hard against his blue shirt. “Bullying bastard.” The words were framed out of fright, without volition.
He shoved her against the stall’s side planking, furious because her struggle disconcerted him. “You little bitch, what do you mean? You’ve been licking after me ever since you came.”
“That’s not so.”
“Dammit, Ellen. You aren’t going to get raped again. You’re not that lucky.” His yell was coming under the hurricane wind. He was gripping her arms, forcing his hard mouth against hers.
By the stiffness of her lips and body, she resisted. But suddenly it all was falling away and a gentle hotness came up within her. She was parting her mouth and his tongue was seeking its softness. She moved her arms, laid them about his neck, holding him, feeling the coarse hair at her fingers. Wish I was Star. And there was the distant storm racket.
He let her go, laughed regretful, “What were those names I called you? Dammit, Ellen, you are pretty. I never noticed that.” She felt it too, though her dark-blue dress was long and her low-cut shoes soiled because she wore them at her work about the Leghorns. “I never saw you before. Look at your hair. The wind’s blown it out.”
Hail clattered on the galvanized tin roof. Thunder rolled. She leaned upon the worn wood of the manger, where bites of cribbing horses had made notches during long winters. She was putting her hand to her yellow hair, tucking it up while he watched. The thing that had happened, she felt it. How she would never be rigid and tied again, how she was free. Courage had replaced her hidden fears. Then it was that she came up to kiss Dan. And she put her head against his opened shirt, his tall strength, she felt the even thrusts of his heart. His hard arms were holding her and he stroked her hair. “The rain’s come,” she said, “it’s all o’er.”
“Did you see that twister come out of that cloud?” He was releasing her.
“First one I e’er saw, Dan.”
“We’re safe for another year, now. They never come twice.”
“Why’s that?”
“The law of averages.” He was going down the aisle then to the doorway. “The rain’s letting off.”
She was following, seeing the cuff was untucked from one of his heavy boots, the smoke of his cigarette drifting blue. “What are you looking at, Dan?”
“Nothing. Smells good. I like a storm, even a mean one.” He looked down at her, absent.
“I always did too.” The wind rode on bright clouds. She felt he was many miles away. Wonder if he’s thinking on Star. Well, I don’t care.
They went into the light drizzle, met the family streaming from the house. “You scared me, Ellen,” Mom shouted. “You two all right?”
“Was there a storm?” Dan cried. Ellen laughed. Dennie and Simon skipped, whooping.
“I heard it,” Sudduth frowned. “Bet it went through Hidden Creek. Adele could be killed.”
“Oh, Sudduth,” Mom said.
“And the girls.” Sudduth added.
“Now,” said Pop.
“And she’s with child.”
“What’s that?” Pop said.
“No, she’s not,” Mom was soothing.
“She’d have told us, Sudduth. She was just taking Hannah for that stye.”
“She didn’t want it. She tried to kill it with vinegar.” Sudduth leaned his skinny body forward eager, his thinning hair damp, his black eyes full of tears. “She was going to try arsenic.”
“But a baby.” Mom twisted her hands. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Well, we have our own affairs, you know.”
“I’m going to have a look around.” Dan was striding off.
The two boys came running. “The lines are down. And one of the chicken sheds is a sight.”
“Let’s go see,” Sudduth led the way. His parents came behind, whispering.
The people moved about Ellen, words were spoken, but it was as if it flowed separate from her, reached her through a blurred wall. Everything was new, everything changed. She went to the field where the Leghorns were kept. She righted an overturned coop, discovering a dead hen under it. The rest were huddled safely beneath a shed. She got a dipper of cracked grain. The white flock was coming up one by one, clucking, bobbing brilliant red combs and wattles, discarding their fright as they pecked the seed in the clean afternoon sunlight.
I came down the mountainside Give my horn a blow Everywhere them pretty girls Says yonder goes my beau
I went down in the valley green To win to me my love When I was done with that pretty little girl She turned to a turtledove
The tongue that Ellen and Dan saw had spun over a path fifty yards wide, catching a neighbor’s cow shed from an angle, sucking rafters aloft, strangling a cow while her bull calf brayed feebly below. It had prowled across the level land, come upon turkeys in a corn field, the gobbler shrieking insanely, flapping, trailed by his harem of hens. They were sucked into the wind like dust. Green oat shoots were rooted out so that when the field ripened later there was a clean swath across its bottom third. Varied incidents had occurred; a nest of newborn rabbits was flipped up, numbers of birds that clung to fence corners were torn loose and pounded into obstructions, the mortality among the insect life was untold. It had circled Hidden Creek. Adele was at the doctor’s office, calling to say she would be home as soon as her shopping was finished.
“That’s fine,” Sudduth said in a low voice to Mom and Pop in the doorway. “That God-damn stair. I wrenched my back good.” Through coming years he would try out different chiropractors. For weeks at a time the pain would recede, then each movement would drive a dull fire as he dragged his way about the farm. The family would laugh at his self-concern, taking it as Sudduth’s way. He talked about “that first twister of thirty-six,” like men talk of a battle. When he spoke to his children’s children, putting a hand on the small of his back, it would seem to them that Sudduth had by himself stemmed a tornado in its path.