Storm's Coming
1835 Words
Jay jumped off the hay bale. "Whoa! Where did that come from?"
Talk about it being pointless shutting the barn door once the horse was already in the pasture! "Oh, hell, I didn't mean to..." Donny kicked the hay with his heel.
"Well, you did! Now what?"
"Now we forget it ever happened – then and now. It doesn't matter. I'll be gone in two days. Look, it's late. I shouldn't have texted you and asked you to come over tonight. I have some of your stuff in the house. Your baseball glove. Some computer games. I'll put everything in a box. Just come by and get it tomorrow."
Donny's heart raced as he ran out of the barn. Leaving Kansas was the right decision. He had to get away. Start over somewhere else. Figure out how to deal with who he really was. Forget about Jay somehow.
"Donny, wait," Jay called after him in the loudest whisper possible since he didn't want to wake up Donny's aunt and uncle.
His friend had already disappeared into the house. Jay pulled out his phone. His thumbs flew over the screen. The system told him that Donny was offline, but the texts would be stored in his inbox. "Damn!"
Jay left the barn and headed home. He didn't know what to make of everything that had transpired, but he knew one thing for sure – nothing would ever be the same between him and Donny Windham again!
* * *
The next morning, the sky suddenly seemed grayer than usual, something Donny hardly would have thought possible if he hadn't noticed it himself. It provided a nice distraction for him from trying to figure out how to tell his uncle that he'd essentially decided to run away to college in New York.
"I think there's a thunderstorm coming," Donny said.
Uncle Henry looked up from the hole he was repairing in the wire fence around the chicken coop. He stood up and removed his straw hat. The older man wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand as he looked across the great Kansas prairie.
The low wail of the wind reached the two men's ears. The long grasses bowed down in waves in advance of the rapidly approaching weather front.
Donny imagined they did so out of respect and fear, considering the nasty thunderstorms he'd witnessed since moving to the farm.
The two men heard a sharp whistling in the air from the other direction. They twisted around and saw the ripples in the grass coming from that way too.
"That's no ordinary storm!" Uncle Henry shouted as he peered into the distance. "That's a tornado!"
Donny instinctively held Toto tighter in his arms. The puppy's ears perked up and he growled at the quickly darkening sky.
Donny's eyes went wide with amazement. It was one thing to see the wind twisting violently in a movie or in a YouTube video. It was quite another to actually see a monstrous whirlwind whipping its way across the cornfield towards the little farmhouse.
Experiencing the phenomenon in person, he couldn't believe that people actually stood there with cell phones and filmed the storms heading straight for them.
The young man actually froze for a moment. He knew he had to move, but his feet seemed heavy and bolted to the ground.
"There's a tornado coming, Em!" Uncle Henry yelled through the open kitchen window to his wife as she washed dishes in the sink. "I'll go check on the livestock," Uncle Henry told her as he ran towards the barn where the cows and horses were kept.
Aunt Em immediately put the dishes down and ran to the kitchen door. One glance at the sky and she knew the danger was close at hand. "Don't just stand there, Donny!" she screamed. "Run for the storm cellar! And take that little munchkin with you!" she yelled, referring to Toto. Aunt Em ran outside and shooed the agitated chickens into the barn.
Uncle Henry and Aunt Em reacted like teachers in a fire drill. They knew exactly what to do. Donny knew they must have told him in the past, but now he just stood there dumbfounded. He wasn't sure how long he'd been standing there immobile when Toto's barking snapped Donny out of the shocked state he had been in.
The wind whipped through Donny's hair. He blinked to clear the flying dust particles from his eyes.
"Get in here, boy!" Uncle Henry yelled from the open doorway of the storm cellar.
"Storm cellar" was a fancy name for a big hole in the ground. From the outside, it looked like a wooden "trapdoor to nowhere" stuck in the earth. Inside, a rickety wooden ladder led down to a bare-earth small hole where the family could ride out a storm.
Donny had once asked why they didn't just go in the regular basement of the farmhouse. Uncle Henry had explained, "The shelter was purposefully built away from the main house. That way, if you're hiding in it and the house is ripped off the foundation, you're not suddenly exposed to the open air of the storm. Also, if the house caved in and you were in the regular basement, you'd be buried in the rubble of the collapse."
Donny felt someone give him a shove from behind. He almost lost his balance as he took several awkward steps forward. The young man held onto Toto with one hand and readied the other arm to break his fall if he hit the ground.
Once he steadied himself, he spun around to see who had pushed him. Nobody there! A blast of wind in his face explained it. It had been the force of the wind that almost knocked him off his feet!
A loose board on the nearby picket fence rattled until a gust of wind ripped it free. It flew across the garden with its nails sticking out like some kind of crude weapon. Donny ducked just in time to avoid being attacked by it.
Aunt Em had already disappeared into the storm cellar. Uncle Henry stood on the ladder with half his body underground and the other half visible above ground. He held onto the trapdoor's interior rope handle with both hands. The strain showed on his face as he fought the wind for control of it.
As Donny finally approached it, Uncle Henry shouted to be heard above the rising din of the storm. "Give me Toto," he yelled as he reached out with one hand.
Donny started to pass the puppy to his uncle. Just then, Toto spotted Old Sally, the calico cat, running towards the house. She leaped through her kitty door. Toto jumped out of Donny's grip. The energetic puppy made a beeline for the feline!
"Toto! Get back here! Toto!" Donny yelled wildly.
The naughty puppy followed Old Sally right up to the kitty door. He was just small enough to still squeeze through it himself. He disappeared into the farmhouse.
"Stupid dog!" Donny screamed rather pointlessly.
"Come on, you're gonna have to leave him," Uncle Henry ordered.
"I can't do that!" Donny objected.
"Get down!" Uncle Henry cried. "Cover your head!"
Donny obeyed instantly, dropping to lie flat on the ground.
Aunt Em's favorite rocking chair tumbled through the air as effortlessly as a chicken feather. Uncle Henry ducked behind the open trapdoor. The chair crashed into the door and broke into several pieces. A chunk of wood banged against Donny's arm and flew off into the wind.
"Are you OK?" Uncle Henry called out.
"Yes," Donny yelled as he rubbed his arm. "I'm going back into the house to get Toto! I'll go as fast as I can! Close the cellar door for now so you'll be safe!"
Donny ignored his uncle's protests as he pushed the door shut with all his strength, forcing Henry to step down the ladder and into the safety of the storm cellar.
The young man ran back to the house as fast as he could. The wind gusts threw him back and forth in several directions. He burst into the kitchen, fighting the air currents as he tried to close the door.
He found Old Sally on the kitchen counter with her hair on her back standing straight up, partly from the storm and partly from Toto's barking. Toto stood on his little puppy-sized hind legs and leaned against the cabinets. He hadn't grown nearly big enough to actually get his paws on the edge of the counter top, but that didn't deter him from trying.
"Let's go, you. You're in big trouble, mister," Donny scolded Toto as he scooped the pup into his arms. Well, he wanted to use a scolding tone. However, his voice barely had an edge to it because it showed the relief he felt that the debris flying around outside hadn't hurt the puppy.
Freed from her barking nemesis, the cat jumped off the counter. She bolted through the kitty door again and headed for the barn.
"Come on, Toto. We've got to get into that storm cellar before it's too late." Donny opened the kitchen door effortlessly. In fact, too effortlessly! The gale-force wind ripped the door right out of his grip. Then, it ripped the door right off the hinges!
Donny watched helplessly as the kitchen door flipped through the air and across the yard like a playing card tossed in the breeze. It disappeared in an upward spiral of wind gusts, joining numerous other debris. Donny thought he noticed one neighbor's mailbox and some spare tires from another neighbor's junkyard pile.
A gust of wind roared through the now open kitchen doorway, tossing him around like a rag-doll on a puppet master's strings. It sent him flying head first into the side of the microwave. He heard the crashing sound as his head dented the metal.
Donny staggered backwards and fell onto the floor. He felt Toto licking his face. The young man knew he had to get up and do something, but what?
Doorframe! He remembered seeing something once on TV about standing in a doorframe if you couldn't get to a basement during a hurricane. Tornado, cyclone, hurricane, typhoon, whatever – the doorframe idea seemed as reasonable as anything else.
Donny struggled to his feet. The wind suddenly shrieked its loudest yet and the entire farmhouse shook. A strange jolt caused Donny to lose his footing again. He fell back, grabbing the counter for support.
He felt the floor moving under him, like being in an elevator that sprang into action unexpectedly. Donny looked out the window. The barn was moving! Had the tornado ripped the barn right off the ground?
Then he saw the cornfield go by the window. Then the giant oak tree. Wait, there was the barn again, but now he could only see its shingled roof.
Then the realization hit him! "Everything else isn't moving. We are!"
- Writer
