It took us only about a minute to get to Moses’ house.
Willis got out and untied Chester. Me and Vern and Fable followed Miss Alma up to the house, her two giant butt halves battling each other all the way.
“I thought we were going in the storm cellar Miss Alma,” I said.
She huffed and puffed herself up to Moses’ front door and stopped to look in the sky. “Let see what da radio say. Fable. Vern. Ya’ll go on now. Get dat cellah ready. Dey a broom down there. Some rag in a bucket.”
Vern made a face.
“Go on now! Fable, you too. We be down soon! Willis, you and Orbie come with me. Ain’t no time be horsein’ round.”
“Momma will be along soon, won’t she?” I said.
“Uh huh. Soon,” Miss Alma said.
Moses’ house was maybe about half the size of Granny and Granpaw’s, the outside walls covered in brown sandy shingles. The tree that had fallen on the roof was gone. Still there was a place inside where the ceiling had bellied down.
“Tree almost break through,” Miss Alma said. “Mo gone fix it ‘fo he up and vanish.”
Just then, it was something grabbed me around by the neck. I tried to twist loose, but whatever had me wouldn’t let go. I turned around to face the thing and there sat Bird, outfitted like usual, hunched forward in a rocking chair. She’d hooked me around by the neck with her cane. “That is you, ain’t it? Ruby’s boy! I knowed it was. Come closer to me!” She opened the brown hole of her mouth and a world of garlicky dead breath washed over my face.
“Unloose dat chile,” Miss Alma said.
Bird unhooked her cane from around my neck. “He thanks I’m crazy but I showed him the moon. Didn’t I, Ruby’s boy?” She spied Willis then, standing in back of me. “Zat that brokeleg boy? Tiz ain’t it?”
“Let dem boys be,” Miss Alma said.
Bird poked the floor with her cane and a grin gashed her face. The front room was small, the ceiling so low the rabbit ears on Miss Alma’s hankie almost touched it. Off from the room was a kitchen. A radio was playing scratchy hillbilly music out there. Bird worked her rubbery mouth around in a circle. “Radio say a funnel cloud touched ground. Up Glasgow way. Mudlick too. Two drowned up there! Flash floods!”
“Lawd!” Miss Alma said.
Willis and me looked at each other.
“I hope to God that cellar’s clean!” Bird said. “Last time it was so nasty, I couldn’t find no place to sit!” Miss Alma’s eyebrows hitched together. Bird got up and spider-walked herself toward the kitchen.
Miss Alma looked out the window. “Sun gone now. Lawd Lawd.” Right then a white sheet of light flashed all around Miss Alma, all around the house, in through the windows in the kitchen. There was another sound of something like boulders hitting the ground. The radio went dead. Miss Alma turned away from the window. White whiskery hairs — little pieces of silvery green fire — stood out on her chin. It started to rain — a million hands, slapping against the house, against the window in the front room, against the windows in the kitchen. Miss Alma hollered over the roar.
“Bird! It time!”
Bird shambled back into the front room, carrying a basket now with a red-and-white-checkered dishtowel over the top.
“Dis rain let up, we go!” Miss Alma hollered.
“What about Momma?” I said. “What about Missy?”
Miss Alma smiled. “We’ll keep dat cellah door open till dey come.”
“Not if they’s a twister we won’t,” Bird said. “They’s a twister that door will be shet!” Miss Alma hitched her eyebrows together. Willis touched me on the arm.
Bird held up the basket. A warm good smell flowed out from the dishtowel. She spider-walked herself to the front door and pulled it open. The rain had already started to let up, the air cool as the inside of a well. Bird went out, then me and Willis — then Miss Alma. Bubbly purple and green clouds circled overhead. The storm cellar was a stone’s throw away from the house, a bulge of red clay with a rusted slantwise door that was now open and lying off to one side. I could see the dark box of the cellar’s opening and Vern’s fuzzy head sticking out.
As we walked toward the cellar, I turned and looked up Bounty, halfway expecting Momma and the black Ford to come barreling over the hill. What I saw instead was a little river of red muddy water, boiling down the side of the road. A new pond had formed at the bottom of the hill, covering the road there and spreading out over Moses’ front yard.
“I be fit to tie!” Miss Alma said, but she was looking in the other direction, toward Circle Stump. From there came Reverend Pennycall’s white police car, rushing toward us with its red bubble light madly circling on top. It slid around into Moses’ driveway; slinging orange muddy water and spinning its wheels before coming to a stop. Old Man Harlan got out the car on the passenger side. Reverend Pennycall on the driver’s. The rain was just a sprinkle now, but cold and steady. Both hurried up to the red hill of the cellar, Old Man Harlan holding the lapels of a black coat around his chin, Reverend Pennycall with his hand pressed flat against the top of his dingy straw hat.
Old Man Harlan’s eyes were bloodshot. Beads of rain slid off the end of his veiny nose. “Cold son?” he said to me.
I stood next to Willis just in my shorts and tee shirt. I was cold, but I wasn’t going to talk about it with Old Man Harlan.
“Not cold as his grandparents is going to be,” Reverend Pennycall said. Both stood in the rain, grinning and nodding their heads like the truth was a secret nobody knew but them.
A loud cracking sound wandered across the sky — like an earthquake I heard on TV once, like the ground cracking apart. A fist of wind knocked Reverend Pennycall’s hat away. He went chasing after it, his hair thin and light brown, circling a bald spot on top his head. Old Man Harlan laughed. White popcorn shapes began hopping across the ground.
“Hail!” Miss Alma shouted. I looked up to see a white curtain of hailstones clacking over the hill toward us.
Reverend Pennycall trapped his hat against a fence post, got it on his head and pushed by Willis and me. “Let’s go Nealy! Hell fire!” Him and Old Man Harlan both hurried themselves down the cellar stairs. The rest of us just stood there, dumbfounded, watching the curtain advance down the hill.
“Go on!” Miss Alma finally shouted. Willis and me ran for the cellar. Even with just one good leg Willis could go fast. He walked himself lickety-split to the cellar door and did a quick hobble down. Some of the hailstones were big as marbles. Some rock-sized. They popped off the bill of my ball cap and stung the back of my legs. I turned to look up the road one last time and almost knocked into Bird, her eyes filled with miseries and water.
“I don’t thank she’s going to make it, do you?” she said. “I’m a feared she’s in some bad awful trouble.”
29
Comes a Storm
“Twister took half a Grinestaff’s store,” said Old Man Harlan.
Bird set the basket with the checkered dishtowel on a little bench in the middle of the cellar. “Radio said them funnel clouds was north. Not in Circle Stump!”
“I don’t care what the radio said!” Old Man Harlan squawked. “I’m tellin’ you what I seen! What the Reverend here seen!”