The Palm Sunday Tornado

THE PALM SUNDAY TORNADO / Christine Deavel When we drove to Koontz Lake I knew I would see my cousin's arms and face flecked with cuts. The others had shut themselves in closets while she curled beneath the kitchen table. Dad said Aunt and Uncle had thought the girls were safe. But in the kitchen the window exploded above her. She sat silently on the tile in her white Sunday dress as they walked through the splinters to reach her. It had come on the Sunday of His entrance. That morning, in our churches, my cousins and I had waved long fronds to welcome Him. Sometimes I see flat Indiana 1965, shattered, greened only by scattered shocks of palm. This is what we learned in spring: to open windows but close the door, go quietly and single file. It bothered me. Being the tallest, I was at the end near the glass. When the tornado comes, I decided, I will shove into the middle with the first graders. This is not like a fire drill, where we go out by the trees and whisper. We have to do the best we can here, trapped just a few blocks from home. They point at us. She grips my shoulders, "Head down!" What if I survive and take my sweater home 34 · The Missouri Review and find the house is gone, the basement empty? The lake roads were roped off against the thieves who walked through walls hunting the unbroken. On Easter Sunday the cords and chains were coiled back. We drove among the piles of jagged things with our glazed ham. I wanted to see the long scratch to the lake, where the tornado hovered when it sucked the water. Did the sand stretch yellow to the other side while fish and turtles spun? In the lake might be fence, antennas, a lawn chair from Illinois. For one year no swimming because it is awful to float so close above a car, to dive to a doll's head. After dinner, behind my cousins on the path, I saw the adults through the kitchen window pushing dishes aside to spread the blueprint of the yard shelter. We spread out into the dusk, hunting the plastic eggs filled with candy and hidden in the fallen trees. Christine Deavel The Missouri Review · 35 ...