One hand curled around Snickers’s collar so tightly that my fingers cramped, but I was afraid to let go. With my other hand, I opened my backpack. I planned to snap the leash on Snickers and tie the other end around my waist. Whatever happened to us in this tornado, I wanted to stay together.
Like a giant scoop, the wind lifted up big chunks of the shed walls and sent them sailing into the air.
Then the wind ripped my backpack right out of my hand. The strap simply pulled from my grasp and the backpack rose as if it had sprouted wings.
“No!” I screamed. I grabbed at it, but it was far beyond my reach. All I could do was watch my backpack disappear into the distance, along with pieces of the shed, tree branches, and other debris.
Snickers panicked when I screamed. He jerked so hard that I could not hold on to his collar. He ran from me, racing blindly into the storm as if he believed he could run away from this nightmare.
He did not get far.
The whirling wind chased him, and as I watched in horror, a big branch dropped from the dark sky above Snickers and struck him in the head. He went down.
Feeling sick to my stomach, I tried to crawl to him, keeping myself flat on the ground while I pulled my body forward with my forearms. If he had been killed, I would never forgive myself. Even though I had no control over the weather and could not have prevented a tornado, I had brought him to this desolate place. I had made him endure a horrible storm, with nowhere to take shelter. As frightening as it was to me, I could only imagine how scary it must be to a dog, who did not understand what was happening. Snickers knew sit and stay and good dog, but he did not know what tornado meant.
The wind blew dirt in my eyes even at ground level, and bits of mud stung my cheeks. I kept my lips clamped shut, trying to keep the grit out of my mouth. I kept expecting some unknown object to drop on me, as it had on Snickers.
How could my trip to find Starr—the trip I had dreamed about for so many years—have ended like this, with my dog unconscious or worse, and me crawling in the mud while a tornado swirled around me?
Before I reached Snickers, the noise let up, and the wind became less intense. I raised my head and could not see the tornado. It had moved on or had worn itself out. Either way, it was gone.
The wind eased more. Several seconds elapsed between the lightning and the thunder that followed.
Snickers still lay motionless. I got up, ran to him, and knelt beside him. I put my hands on his side, relieved to feel the slight rise and fall as he breathed. “Good dog,” I said. “Good boy.”
Now what? He needed to be seen by a veterinarian. How would I get him there? He was too heavy for me to carry. Not a single car had gone past since the bus, so I couldn’t wait to flag down a passing motorist.
Much as I hated to leave him, I decided the best chance of helping him would be for me to walk back the way I had come. I’d return to the town and ask the man in the gas station to help me. Even better, I might be able to find June. Maybe she had waited out the tornado in her aunt’s basement or maybe the tornado had bypassed the town.
If I couldn’t find her, I’d ask the gas-station man to help me find a phone number for June’s Home-cooked Meals, and I’d call her. June would come to get Snickers, and help me lift him into her car. She would drive him to a vet.
I worried that Snickers would come to while I was gone. If he woke up and didn’t see me, he might go wandering through the countryside, looking for me. If he did that, I might never find him again.
I wished I still had my backpack so I could write a note and tuck it into Snickers’s collar. That way if anyone happened to see him, they would know he wasn’t a stray, that he belonged to me and that I would come for him.
But my backpack was nowhere in sight and I couldn’t take time to search for it. I needed to get help for Snickers as quickly as I could.
I stroked his side. “I need to leave,” I whispered. “I’m going to find help for you, but I’ll return as soon as I can.”
I kissed his forehead lightly. He didn’t move. “Stay where you are until I come for you,” I said. “Stay.”
Blinking back tears, I walked away. When I looked at Snickers, he lay still, like a big brown and black rock in the field.
10
I picked up two boards that the storm had deposited in the field, and arranged them in an X at the side of the road so that I’d be sure to remember where Snickers was.
The scenery on my return trip was far different from what I had walked through only a couple of hours earlier. The cornstalks that had stretched tall in straight rows now lay broken, their tops angled in all directions. Some had been completely uprooted. Others looked as if someone had driven a large vehicle at random through the field, crushing everything in its path.
The green-black sky had brightened, but clusters of melting hailstones offered further proof of the horrible storm that had passed through.
I walked faster without Snickers, jogging part of the time. I felt an urgency that I had never experienced before, a fierce desire to save my dog. Except for Starr, Snickers was the only family I had. I had quickly learned to love him, and now, when he was in danger, my fear that he might not make it made me love him even more. I had to find a vet for him as fast as I could.
This is farm country, I told myself. People probably have horses and cows, plus barn cats and family dogs. Surely there will be a veterinarian in the area. Snickers will get the treatment he needs. He will get well. He has to!
One bright spot: I still had part of my money. If I had left it all in the backpack it would be gone now, but by dividing it up when I did I still had half, enough to pay the vet. Maybe even enough to get me to Starr.
As I hurried forward, my eyes scanned the horizon, looking for the town. I was almost upon it before I realized that what I saw ahead was not what I had seen two hours ago. Instead of the gas station and the clumps of old houses, piles of debris littered the ground. The gas pump itself rested on its back, on the wrong side of the road, with the hose and nozzle missing.
A crumpled car lay upside down, squashed like an aluminum can that had been stomped on. Uneasily, I peered in the car’s shattered window. The vehicle was not occupied. Either the driver and any passengers had managed to climb out and walk away or the car had been empty when it was lifted up somewhere else and deposited here.
The building where the old man had listened to his radio was only a heap of broken boards. Its tin roof was rolled back like the pop-top on a can of tuna, and pieces of pink insulation looked like mounds of cotton candy. Was the man buried under the rubble? Might he still be alive?
With my heart pounding, I approached what was left of the building. “Hello?” I called. “Are you there? Can you hear me?”
Nobody answered. I looked around. Where was everyone? Some of the houses on the other side of the road must have been occupied when the tornado hit. Were there survivors? Staying clear of a downed power line, I walked toward the houses, past a flowered sofa, an old refrigerator, and a baby’s high chair that had three legs snapped off.
As I approached the closest house, I heard a hissing sound. I quickly looked around for a snake. Were there rattlers or other poisonous snakes in this part of the state?
I didn’t see a snake, but the hissing continued. Then I smelled an odd odor and realized I heard propane leaking from a broken line. I’d noticed a white propane tank near every house, and wondered why they weren’t painted green so they’d blend in with the landscape. Fearing an explosion, I skirted that house and approached what looked like a huge pile of kindling that had pieces of furniture mixed in with the wood.
A piece of paper fluttered down and landed in the dirt beside me. I picked it up. It was a child’s drawing: a family of smiling stick figures with a bright sun overhead. SUZY was printed in wobbly block letters on the bottom of the drawing.
Where was Suzy now? What had happened to the people who lived in these houses? Where was June, and her aunt? I folded th
e drawing and put it in my pocket. The still air made it feel like a ghost town, and I shivered in spite of the heat.
“Hello?” I called. “Is anyone here?” As I zigzagged through the splintered wood and rain-soaked contents of the former houses, I heard a sound.
I stopped, listening. It came again, a faint cry. “Help.”
I went toward the voice. “I hear you,” I called. “I’m coming! Keep talking so I can find you.”
“Here,” said the voice. “I’m under here.”
The voice came from beneath a heap of rubble, all that remained of one of the houses. I began to dig, throwing pieces of wallboard and roof shingles off to the side, trying to reach the voice.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll get you out.”
“Hurry,” replied the voice. It sounded like a child.
When I tried to pry a piece of siding loose, I got a splinter under one of my fingernails. I tried to pull the splinter out with my teeth, but it broke off. Ignoring the soreness, I kept working toward the voice.
After I pulled away a large chunk of ceiling tile, I was startled to see the soft brown eyes of a cow looking at me. I had uncovered a large oil painting that, except for being dirty, did not appear to be damaged. I lifted the painting, shook the dirt off, and set it aside. If the owners of this home returned, they would be surprised to find their cow painting in such good condition when the rest of the house was demolished.
Beneath where the painting had been, I glimpsed hair. Human hair. I was looking at the back of someone’s head. No wonder the voice seemed so muffled. The person was lying facedown in the dirt. I removed more debris until the whole head was uncovered.
“I see you!” I said. “Can you turn your head? You’ll be able to breath better if you can turn.”
The head turned slowly and I saw the profile of Randy, the youngest of the three boys who had tried to rob me. He looked at me for a second, then closed his eyes.
“I’ll keep digging,” I said, “until you can crawl out of there.”
He moaned.
I tugged at the rubble that covered Randy’s shoulders and back. When his arms were free, I said, “Can you raise up on your elbows and pull yourself loose?”
He struggled briefly, then started to cry. “My legs hurt,” he said. “My legs hurt really bad.”
“I’ll dig them free,” I said.
But I didn’t.
I couldn’t. When I yanked a piece of ceiling off Randy’s legs, it revealed a cast-iron sink lying on top of him. The sink covered his legs from mid-thigh to mid-calf. His ankles protruded out the bottom at an unnatural angle. His legs were surely broken.
If I lifted the sink off him, I could fashion splints from pieces of board and make him more comfortable while he waited for medical help.
I tugged with all my strength, but I was not able to remove the heavy sink.
“There’s a sink on top of your legs,” I said, “and it’s too heavy for me to move it. I’m going for help. I’ll send someone back to get you out of here.”
“Don’t leave me,” Randy whimpered. “I don’t want to stay here alone.”
“Where are Zooman and Hunker?” I asked.
“I don’t know. We came home to their house to get some lunch and we heard hail on the roof. I was in the bathroom when I heard Zooman yell, ‘It’s a twister! Run to the shelter!’”
Good, I thought. Maybe there are other survivors who are still in a storm shelter.
“By the time I got out of the bathroom, Zooman and Hunker were gone. When I called to them, they didn’t answer.” Randy spoke haltingly, as if it hurt to talk. “I stepped outside, but I didn’t see them, and then the wind blew so hard I fell down, and then something landed on top of me and I blacked out.” Sobs temporarily replaced words as he struggled for control. “When I woke up, I couldn’t move or see and my legs hurt. I lay here, and then I heard you calling, and I answered.”
I patted Randy’s shoulder. How could the older boys have run to the shelter and left him behind?
“I’ll get help for you,” I said. “You need to lie as still as you can while I’m gone. I promise I’ll find someone and send them here to get you out.”
“Cross your heart?” he asked.
“Cross my heart.”
Tears trickled down his muddy cheeks. “We were mean to you,” he said.
I wondered if he was afraid I wouldn’t really help him because of what had happened earlier. “Zooman and Hunker were mean,” I said. “I don’t think you wanted to take my money, but you were scared of them.”
“I’m scared now, too.”
“I’ll hurry,” I said. “I’ll send help as fast as I can.”
I left Randy pinned under the sink. I wasn’t going to find a veterinarian here, or a doctor for Randy, or aid of any kind. I returned to the road and hurried back toward Snickers. I had spent a long time trying to free Randy, and my dog still needed help.
My arms ached from lifting and digging to get to Randy, and my fingernail throbbed where the splinter was lodged under it. I wished I could take a warm shower and then crawl into my comfy bed at Rita’s house and have a nap.
As I headed back to Snickers, I thought back to televised news accounts of natural disasters. The Red Cross usually sent workers. So did the government, although I remembered that the government aid was often slow to arrive. After Hurricane Katrina, animal-rescue groups had gone to New Orleans to aid with injured or lost pets. Maybe that would happen here and an animal-rescue group would help Snickers. Not today, though. It takes a day or two for rescue groups to arrive. I wasn’t sure Snickers could wait that long.
I should have spent some of my money on a cell phone. When I planned this journey, I didn’t think I would want to call anyone. Who would I call? Now I wished I had considered the possibility of an emergency. I could have used a phone to call for help.
I’m coming, Snickers, I thought. Stay where you are. I’m coming!
I ran, even though my knees felt as if they would buckle at any moment. My breath came in short gasps, and a persistent pain jabbed my side, but I kept running. I ran toward Snickers, and away from the devastation I had seen. I wanted to run until I was miles away from this place. I wanted to run and run, until Snickers and I were safe.
Eventually I saw the boards that I had used to make my X beside the road. When I reached them, I turned to the right, to where I had left Snickers.
I saw only the empty field.
Snickers was gone.
11
My eyes scanned the field, searching for a black and tan dog. Instead I saw battered rows of corn and debris from the tornado.
Snickers must have awakened and gone to look for me.
Fear rose in my throat. Sometimes when an animal is sick or injured, it will crawl away and hide somewhere, and wait to die. What if Snickers had done that?
“Snickers!” I shouted. “Here, Snickers! Come, boy!”
Wouldn’t he have smelled me and followed my scent? But if he had gone after me toward town, we would have found each other. Did the rain-soaked ground dilute my odor, making it harder for him to track me?
Perhaps he had gone back to the tree where we had waited out the tornado. That’s where I had been when he panicked and ran. That’s where he had last seen me.
I ran toward the tree.
Paw prints circled the base of the tree, and my hopes soared, even though I knew they could have been made before the tornado hit.
“Snickers!” I yelled again. “Here I am! Snickers!”
I heard him before I saw him—a soft whimper coming from a patch of corn that was still standing.
“Snickers!” I called, and then he emerged, walking slowly toward me as if it hurt him to move.
I ran to him, and threw my arms around him. Relief flooded through me as he licked my cheek.
I had told Randy I’d find help for him, but it was clear that Snickers was in no condition to travel and I couldn’t leave him alone again.
>
Knowing I was as likely to find help by waiting here for it to arrive as I was by walking any farther with an injured dog, I decided to stay with Snickers until we were rescued, and then I’d direct the rescuers to Randy. Maybe he’d be found first. Search teams would look in the remains of a town before they’d hunt in a cornfield. I should have told him where I would be so that he could send help my direction if he got found before I did.
I sat on the ground, and Snickers lay beside me. The wound on his head had formed a scab, and there was a lump the size of an egg. I didn’t touch it. I wished I still had my backpack so that I could give Snickers a drink of water and a dog biscuit. All I could offer him were words of comfort.
“Someone will find us,” I told him. “There are probably people searching already, looking for survivors of the tornado. They’ll find us before long. They’ll help us.”
I knew that I spoke the truth, and my heart filled with gratitude for these strangers who would come to our aid. There may be mean people like Zooman and Hunker in the world, but there are also good people who leave their comfortable homes and rush to help in times of trouble.
I stroked Snickers’s fur. He put his head on my leg, closed his eyes, and sighed.
We sat like that for about an hour before I heard the helicopter. I stood and looked up, shielding my eyes from the sun. The helicopter approached from the west, flying low. It appeared to be following the road that Snickers and I had walked on. I could see two people inside it.
I waved my arms over my head, trying to signal the pilot and his passenger. The helicopter passed to my left, then circled back over me. I waved again, and watched as it hovered over the road and then slowly landed. Snickers began to pant again, afraid of the noise, and I held tight to his collar. The chopper blades sent swirls of dust into the air. A man jumped down and ran toward me.
“Are you okay?” he called.
“I’m not hurt,” I yelled, “but my dog needs a veterinarian. He got hit on the head with a branch during the tornado.”