Free to Write

The tornado sirens attacked him like foreign invaders on a late Sunday morning. First, their threatening sounds felt as if a clot out of his heart was about to pop and become lodged in his brain, turning him into a stroke victim, unable to move. But he moved anyway, after a frozen second or two, picking up his baby daughter and rushing into the basement with his wife. It was as if realizing he wasn’t real; they weren’t real; the situation wasn’t real. What they did wasn’t real. They weren’t supposed to leave their late-breakfast table with half the pancakes uneaten and take refuge in this basement. His daughter blinked then whimpered, looking confused and kind of hurt, through picking up bits and pieces of the adults’ terror.

Next they heard the wind's vengeful roar, and the cracking of wood and the crashing of objects upstairs. He gestured to his wife and they rushed to the end of the basement, huddling together, away from the basement door. They stayed like this until the tornado passed, and it was eerily quiet upstairs.

“You stay here!” He couldn’t recognize his own voice, so hoarse and husky, as he talked to his wife and the baby. When he opened the door, he took an easy breath. Things had fallen and broken on the floor, but the house seemed to be intact. Outside, on the next street, however, was true devastation: The rubble that had been homes, the motionless bodies, and the broken trees and cars twisted together.

Why had the tornado bypassed one street and sacrificed the other one?

His home and street had been spared but what he saw would haunt him forever. He trudged back into his house and began picking up the broken objects.