• Peigra's Blog:

Fields Of Gold, Pt 4

By: Peigra

In the annals of weather and its related fields, of county history and FEMA reports that would be gathered in the aftermath, it was simply what would be classified as an F4 tornado.

It touched down just outside of the small town, riding currents of its own making and self destruction over time, reaching down with jealous fingers to the soft soil beneath it and becoming black as its nourishing warmth and density. Fingerling and gypsy dancer showing its length of skirt and parts dreamt of, twining the skies into a mass of green-gray sludge of moisture and wind, there were few who saw its beginnings save those who were wearily looking to the clouds with growing fear and watching the break in the silence.

Silence broken, destruction unleashed.

Fingerling to rope to fleeing for one's life, there would be little that stood before it. Rampant child unleashed for a finite moment of life and time to display itself in a tantrum of sound and rage and wind.

An F4 tornado, born of the wind and moisture. Destructive child without means or reason.

To those in its path, it was the end of an era of farming and memories.

Dixon Road, ComeOnInn Corner, Jed's Barber Shop, Cenex Co-Op & Feed, Ray's Hardware & Soda Shop, Little League's banners along the roadside into town for their next in-town game and the Burmashave-type signs for Darla's Peach Pies from the Do Drop Inn & Breakfast, newly remodeled and moved from near the City Hall to a double-wide lot just across from the Library.

What they were, what they represented, were family business, commerce, trade. Mercantile of old joined with financial status of the new, and in all at the root of the matter was family, friendship, and helping those who needed it during the lean years.

For those who had grown here, it was home. To those who passed through, it was Small Town America and get out the camera, Marge, we're passing a cow. To generations of youth, it was dead-end to nowhere unless they could get into the state college and perhaps graduate brighter than their parents and not inherit the family store.

To those who would descend into the aftermath, it was nothing less than one's greatest nightmares come to life, in a small town that had not seen a tornado in 122 years. Galveston, at least, had had some buildings to rebuild upon.

FEMA would be there for a total of three months, an inordinately short amount of time for such a short, destructive force of nature and its annihilation of the town of 610 people.

The Federal Government issued loans for the rebuilding of the town, all refused by a stubborn people who had known little of what was coming towards them when they all descended that morning for their morning coffee and breakfast.

The storm-chasers would be filming the aftermath, as well as collecting what few videocams and photos that were had of the killer funnel. Shattered photos and memories found in the wreckage were suddenly more than keepsakes of what had been and what must be built again.

Those who came out of storm shelters and closets that were now the only standing remnants of homes were first amazed that the skies were still black, churning with moisture and gripping blood-fear that something would return for a second nibble at their sanity and lives. Then they noticed the silence, heard the groaning timbers, the lack of wind through the leaves as they were long stripped off the branches, and looked to one another and hugged and cried and helped those who required it.

The town was gone, in the sense of the survivors who poked their heads through wreckage, out of the fridge from Ray's Hardware, or what was left of it anyway, and they stared at the destruction, the jackstraws of wood that had once been homes, businesses, livelihoods for man and beast.

Tomorrow seemed gone for an eternity...and it was only 11 am.


Allen knew nothing of the destruction of the town that he had called home all his life, where he had gone as a child on his bike, when allowed and not needed for chores, to perhaps get an ice cream as a treat when there was spare money. Allen knew here and now, as most farmers did, for that was what one clung to during the lean times, because to think of the future was to die early, and die leaving a wife and children in worse straights than if they'd lived. He knew that he was in a tornado shelter, at Emmie's homestead, and that Emmie's niece was loonier than he'd first believed. She'd wanted to see the twister, to watch it, the stupid woman. No idea, not even a thought of what was above their heads.

She was nothing short of mad.

For twenty minutes there had been silence, though, the dim light from the lantern casting dancing shadows on them. Allen's dark brooding face, thinking of his family, and Margaret's deep, blank expression that he couldn't fathom for the life of trying to. She'd stopped speaking the moment the roar had come upon them, mouth open and staring up at the doors trying to become airborne above them. He was afraid she was in shock, she was so still and silent and breathing slowly. But he had to get her out of the shelter, if for nothing else than he had to know what was happening, what was left of Emmie's farm. Emmie was gone, and its care and concern were gone from her hands, but that left the responsibility to others. If Emmie's niece wasn't going to care for it, and her only concern was to sell it for the highest profit, then others had to take over where kindness and manners left off.

Allen reached up, expecting Margaret to do anything...shriek, cry out, begin to bawl, anything to say that she was even still alive, but she was moving, at least, her fingers were scraping against her palms slowly in an effort of...of what? Had they fallen asleep? She was simply staring up at the doors, and Allen couldn't open them. Rather, he was trying to pull at them, shaking his head in annoyance at his own stupidities. They pushed out, as he and others had played in this one on occasion in the past, but always, always it was known NEVER to open the box that was at the bottom, and leave the lantern unlit. And if by some chance used, it was always to be refilled. Drilled from the youngest to the eldest, this was Law, and never to be neglected or broken.

The doors met against resistance, and Allen tried again to push them open. "I need help," he said slowly, motioning to the doors. "They won't open."

Margaret's fists clenched, unclenched, and Allen sighed, and tried it again, something loosening its hold and the door swinging free and nearly taking his arm with it, the ease of opening it suddenly making him frown. Adjusting his eyes to the sudden gray light around him, he looked down, seeing his pathway clear, and took the steps from the shelter out onto what should have been packed gravel for Emmie's driveway.

To his surprise, coated with hail and slick, it was still there.

The barn was still there, though lacking a piece of the metal roofing, but that had already been bent due to an earlier mishap with a loading company's tractor years earlier.

Allen turned, staring at the house, and saw that it, too, was functional, whole, at least, to the immediate observation, and that nothing appeared to be amiss.

Save till Margaret came to his side, looking around and frowning, and stopped, looking to Allen's left, into the pastures.

The shed that lay in crumbles, and the small building beside it intact and painted a deep yellow, were not in the pasture before they had gone into the shelter. Nor were the other pieces of broken 2X4's, tossed farm equipment, the remains of what would, later, be recognized as Old Man Shelton's antique tractor. Intact, as it had been for more years than anyone cared to count, somehow Emmie's house, her farm, and her livelihood had withstood the test of nature.

The fields of gold, as Margaret moved tenatively towards them, slowly, ignorant of her white, wet shoes and the small pieces of rubbish she now had to tread over or around...she saw nothing but the fields. Littered with debris for as far as she could see from the direction of the town out towards the river, the wheat fields that had enchanted her with their rustling, had kept her up at night because of the noise, despised because they were a commodity and their price was never fixed and, perhaps now, would be very poor. The fields of gold that Emmie had methodically hired someone to plant for, at that time, it had been one last crop, were nothing but ruins.

Margaret knew none of this, nothing that wheat did not grow back once snapped from its stalk, that it was a one-time growth period, and had to be replanted over and over and over again each season. She saw only the wreckage, her eyes slowly digesting little bits and pieces of things she could, in such a short time, recognize. That was a piece of the side of the tavern she'd avoided, even for things such as coffee, with its bright Pepsi Cola clapboard message. And beyond that was something that resembled the silo welcoming people into the town, and perhaps if she looked closer, if she could get that close, she would see the paint on the other side all but stripped off from the hail and wind.

It was all surreal, and the first thought, as always, was that the wheat crop she had so methodically spoken to Garrison about would be somewhat less than her original estimate. But a greater emotion was pulling at her thoughts of loss and profits.

Less than an hour before, she had been here, near the fence, listening to her own thoughts for once, and remembering what she had been. There had been something else with her there, helping her to remember.

The horses...where were the horses?

She looked underfoot, looking around the driveway, to Allen who was coming to her, afraid for her silence now as well as taking in the wreckage. The town had taken a direct hit, he could see that now as he also recognized things that would never again be there to welcome him.

"Ma'sm, what's wrong?"

She looked up, as if comprehending him for the first time, and looked around. "The horses...where are they?" She noticed the silence at last, the wind going through the bared branches of the trees around Emmie's house. "And the chickens...they're usually there this time of day. And the goats...they're not here."

Allen's audible sigh and the stamp of his foot stopped her, and she looked at him, at his increduous expression and his horror.

"What the hell'd you expect? They ran from the twister! There's prob people dying in the town and all the hell you care 'bout's the animals?"

He couldn't take any more, concern for his family, their farm, as well as the town driving him back to his truck and, without care for the gravel nor what lay beyond it, raced down the road towards the town to see if he could assist with anything...

...Leaving Margaret to stare at the fading truck, to wonder why he was angry with her. Hadn't he been the one to give her the impression that she didn't care about the animals? They had a value as everything else did here on Emmie's farm. Granted, not as great as she'd have liked to have them, but they were a commodity...

A commodity.

Why did that word make her frown now.

Something was ringing in the house, and she carefully picked her way through the boards and the bits and pieces of other people's lives and opened the screen door, frowning that it had been blown nearly off its hinges and the wood would need to be replaced. What could have done that so forcefully? The tornado? Did it have that strength of wind?

Her cell phone was chirping, and she found it on the computer desk, as she would find that nearly all the house's breakers were blown, thankfully, not that there was any power to run anything with now. Garrison was on the phone, demandant to know if she was alive. The news reports were already filtering out that the town and all surrounding areas were nothing but flat prairie. Was she alive? She was speaking to him, so yes, she was alive.

Several friends wanted to speak to her, she would find out later that suddenly she was a celebrity, speaking to news reporters via phone and speaking of the wreckage through the fields, the door of Emmie's house, and taking the cell phone with her, began to walk up the road to where, from the ridge, she could see the destruction of the town in the distance's growing light.

The clouds that had spawned the tornadoes, for there were others that had touched down in other places, were fading with the winds and moving onward.
Margaret knew nothing, only that speaking to old companions, to colleagues, and to co-workers was suddenly a chore she didn't want to do.

Garrison asked her if there was anything he could send her, to which she was silent for a moment, and gave a quick excuse that there was a medical vehicle coming up the road and that she'd call him back.

Pressing herself against the sides of the ridge as well as off the road itself, she watched the beginning of what would be a parade of ambulances, fire department ladders, state and local police forces, as well as, from the largest city nearly 200 miles away, the first of the FEMA and relief people to survey what had happened. Planes would begin flying overhead for the nation's first views of the destruction of Small Town America and record with flatness and without care the death of a town, and of some of its people.

Margaret watched it, dispassionate, but not in the sense that she was part of it. Allen had warned her about the tornadoes, had told her they weren't things of beauty but of destruction, terrible things that took lives and family heirlooms.

A look to Emmie's barn, to the house peeking just beyond that, and then out to the fields. There were, no doubt, fences down from the tornado, which she would have no possible idea of how to fix, but from the ridge, she could now see the way the tornado had gone. She would learn at a much later time that the tornado had formed just outside of the town, and for reasons that would never be explained, did a loop through the town as if it were an errant tourist, wanting a second look at something, and then headed out towards Emmie's farm and dissipated there in the middle of the field, leaving all its debris and offerings there on the fields.

She clutched herself, for no other reason than for some reason it felt good to do so. She had no family here, none save the dead Emmie, nor had she ever intended to live here with the poor phone lines and the lack of coffee houses with private rooms for meetings and the subway always beneath the city when one needed to go somewhere.

A thought struck her, something someone, perhaps Brian, had once said to her, or perhaps she had heard elsewhere during her long travels. Towns were rebuilt by survivors, and for all she knew, she and Allen may be the only survivors of the tornado.

She called Garrison back quickly, ticking off things she needed immediately, wanted them there yesterday, and Garrison calmly asked her if she'd gotten injured in the process of surviving the tornado.

She repeated what she wanted, and told him the airport, and that she wanted them there by afternoon, if not morning the latest.

Again, he asked if she was injured, and she assured him she was not, though the town had been destroyed. Emmie's beloved little town was no more.

She gave Garrison a goodbye and closed the cell phone's cover, looking around for something and then racing to the rental car and driving in the opposite direction of the destroyed town. She knew what she had to do, and would require time to do it, provided they didn't turn her down to begin with.



For Allen, it had been driving into a nightmare beyond all proportions. The town, his beloved town from childhood's first memories to when he'd proposed to Molly and had, later, lost her to a tractor accident, to where he'd gone to the small prom with his borrowed suit and he had watched the baseball team get to the state finals only two years ago in a record-winning season.

All he saw, upon cresting the ridge from Emmie's farm, was total destruction.

He couldn't get close enough on the main road to the town, so he backtracked, taking old roads, hesitant to drive through anything now, even what looked like plowed fields that may not have been. He was eventually forced to literally drive around the town and come into it as the tourists would, through the state highway and then looping down along the business district, or at least, what posed as a business district.

He, as well as others, wanted nothing more than to simply re-create the day and wish they had never gotten up to face this.

With a working vehicle as well as having two solid hands and several pairs of gloves in the truck, the first people he encountered were, of course, those who had come out of the refridgerator from Ray's Hardware and the others from the Do Drop Inn & Breakfast. They were all gathered nearly crying as he found them, counting heads and crying as they all embraced, though others were still to be found. People were walking around in a daze of confusion and Allen put several of the elderly or the smaller children in the back of the truck to at least keep them in one place.

Behind him, lights and sirens roaring, was the first of the emergency vehicles...a state trooper friend he'd gone to school with, and they both looked to one another, to the town, and then shared a look of sorrow and it was all they could do. They had a job to do, to search through the wreckage for those who might be missing, unaccounted for, perhaps they had been alright in those moments before the twister, but were now unheard or unseen.

Allen's sleeves were already rolled up, Chuck's, well, he said he could always squeeze another uniform out of his paycheck if need be. Everyone who had been in Ray's was accounted for, so they moved on to the Inn, hearing from two guests of the four that the others were in the rubble and that Darla herself was pinned beneath some pieces of wallboard.

Two of the wandering began to help with the rescue of others. Allen offered them the coffee in his thermos, not much and probably lukewarm now he said with a sad voice, but anything liquid was appreciated now. But Chuck insisted on keeping it in case they needed to cleanse a wound, and they did once they unburied Darla with a broken collarbone, left arm and lying in the remains of her own business that she'd built up after the death of her husband in a farm accident.

Chuck didn't want to leave, there were others who needed him, but he took the children and the older folk out of the back of Allen's truck, got some blankets, and wrapped Darla in them and sent Allen on the first of many trips to the nearest hospital. He encountered the first of the ambulances on the way, leaving Darla in their care and taking the fire trucks as well as the rest of the police to the town.

Hours ticked by, for there was no time to be measured now but "before the twister" and "after the twister". Supplies from Ray's were found, shovels, claw hammers, and by some miraculous discovery, the 10 canisters of propane that could be used to burn small areas of debris, hidden in Ray's own storm shelter beneath the hardware store.

Allen, Chuck, Ray himself despite a bruise that would later turn out to be a broken wrist, Harry Benderston who had been staying at Darla's inn and many others began searching for other human beings who had survived, and they all suddenly became one family as they embraced at the survivals...and, in the wreckage of the Do Drop Inn, they found the first of the twenty-four bodies.

But the radio at Chuck's side, however, was constantly in a state of static flurry. "Tell Edna that her husband Walsh says he's safe and he doesn't need the gas for the mower...the lawn's been watered and it's too wet to mow now anyway"...that one brought more than one hysterical laugh to the faces of the firemen, police, men and women off the streets of the very town that had been destroyed.

"We need more blankets and another unit over near the inn" was one they were trying to ignore, as no one had survived its destruction for reasons known, now, only to the dead.

Allen was assisting Chuck with the remains of the library, all mourning the soaked books and the loss of the two-year-old building that they had worked so hard to plan and had dedicated with happy hearts, when Chuck's radio again squawked. "Benson, you call for a load'a stuff from Ryder?"

Frowning, they paused, and Chuck took up the radio. "Ah, that's a negative, I've been here since nearly the start of the shift, Peters."

"Well, there's some crazy gang of drivers here sayin they got forklifts, tractors...gotta bout seventy men too to help clean up things. Say they're here to help."

Chuck and Allen looked at one another, shrugging, and Chuck shook his head. "Peters, I don't care who they are or who sent'em...put'em to work clearing a road through the town if they have a backhoe and get the junk off so we can move the ambulances in."

So seventy men descended into the town, from Ryder, sent with two backhoes and two forklifts and a John Deere Tractor straight out of the dealership it looked who unloaded quickly and got to work moving piles of debris that were known to be body and survivor free.

Chuck received another demand over the radio, this one pausing their work yet again, saying that there was a guy giving away free food and drinks at the edge of the town near Ray's Hardware and that he'd brought a semi full of the stuff...who was hungry?

At seven o'clock that evening, as FEMA had already begun to descend and the quiet of the evening, or at least what should have been the quiet of the evening, was coming on, Chuck Benson again received a call saying that nine of the little storage sheds had come from Ryder complete with blankets, sleeping bags, and camping gear...who was sleeping where tonight?

Chuck was at a loss, but had Allen supervise their arrival in between the ambulances, fire trucks and the comings and goings of the curious who wanted to see the death of a town for posterity's sake. So there was a place, for most, to sleep that night if they didn't have a place to go. Chuck had Allen seize one and begin a check-in station for everyone who was accounted for and where they'd been found, and if they knew of any relatives or friends and where they might've been in the town.

Eight o'clock the call came from the airport saying that they hoped there was a clear railroad track as the flotilla of nine planes who had not been given clearance to land had been diverted to Ryder's airport and they would be coming rail with nearly two hundred construction workers, contractors, surveyors and two demolition experts "in case" or so they said.

Eight thirty saw Chuck sending a crew down the road to see where the hell they could put the five industrial-scale garbage trucks that had been sent to the scene.
Lights had arrived with the storage sheds, throwing the scene into a surreal landscape of twisted shadows and people still in a daze but recovering quickly. Small though the town was, not all had been in the town when the twister hit, though those who had would be scarred and long time recovering.

Chuck demanded, once all bodies and people were accounted for whom they believed to be in the wreckage, that the "first team" of people who had come to the town's rescue sleep for the night. They weren't doing anyone any good staying up and there were plenty of people now to help with the rescue effort. That included Allen, whom Chuck personally took back to his truck and motioned him out of the town. "Folks know you're alive?"

"Dunno," was his tired reply. As everyone else had done, he'd headed to the town first.

Chuck gave a nod and looked out to the trail of destruction. "Gonna hafta begin clearing that after we're done in the town. Helluva mess."

To that, Allen only nodded. "Stopped over at Emmie's from the looks of it, dumped it all there."

It was a grimace that Chuck gave his friend then. Emmie's pastures were as all the ones in the area...clean of anything but the crop they were growing now, thanks to nearly five generations of clearing the land. To have one's fields inundated by water was one thing, to have to have trucks driving on them to clear debris as well as search for bodies was another. Emmie's wheat crop would probably be a whole loss by now.

"Go on, sleep...folks'll prob be worried."

Allen was cleared to leave and slowly made his way through the tangle of cars, wandering people, semi-trucks, heavy equipment all coming from Ryder as well as other surrounding towns.

He didn't pass Emmie's farm on his ride to his parents house, all of whom were sitting at the table concerned, brothers and sisters and in laws and they all had a huge family embrace as he got out of the truck and they were relieved that he was alive. Whom he knew hadn't survived, he told them, what had survived was nothing and that was all he made mention of it.

His cousin, however, asked about Emmie's farm, as it had been headed in that direction. Allen said that the fields were probably useless for a season, maybe two before they got all the rubble out of it. Solicitous as ever, his mother asked about Emmie's little niece. To that, Allen shrugged and said she was alive when he'd left her, and went in to sleep.

In the morning, he was startled to find that power had returned, or at least that the house was on the backup generator for an hour or two for a hot shower. Generators, from what his brother-in-law was saying, had been delivered to the town, as well as more supplies, some unneccesary such as stuffed animals, but Allen knew the tiny faces of those he'd rescued and knew they could use them now.

Things kept arriving, the brother-in-law was saying...that Chuck had been personally radioed via his own cell phone from Canby, 200 miles away and the largest airport in the surrounding 7 counties, that there were four rail shipments coming within the next three days of lumber for building new homes, and that if there were any heavy requirements such as replacement machinery, stoves, anything that was needed, they only had to ask as the rails were being loaded now. Electrical wire, lamps, wood stoves...if they wanted anything else, they simply had to call and it would be sent down via rail as the roads were swamped with do-gooders.

All they kept stating was that it was for Daisy, and whomever Daisy was, they had a kind heart, and must have been from farming stock.

Allen couldn't comprehend it, nor would he for the first few days. No one had the sense to ask FEMA why they were bringing in so many things, but the outpouring from surrounding towns was more than they could ever have imagined. Places for people to sleep that night and be warm and dry with family and friends and people opening their homes and port-o-potties here and there for those who might need one and temporary showers and it was nearly too much for one to comprehend.

Thought FEMA was honest in that they had much to do, they admitted, that first night, to which Chuck didn't truly pay attention, that they hadn't brought in the contractors, as that was the town's responsibility as to what each owner wanted to do with their property. Daisy again, and no one knowing who she was.

All Allen saw that next morning, out of duty that his mother was concerned, was that Emmie's house and barn and outbuildings were still there, that the fields were flattened by twister and debris, and that the rental car was gone, but his father reported it back that afternoon when he himself went to the town to bring lemonade that his wife had made for the workers.

Day one was over, day two was coming to a close, and day three would fall into the same routine as many others, they would all discover in the coming weeks. No one, however, as the rescue vehicles departed one by one, and FEMA began to take a tally of who was alive, whom was lost and what had been destroyed, thought to ask where the supplies had come from, not even after day four when the first of the railcars with supplies came charging into the cleared area near what had been the Co-Op.

Welcome supplies to begin as people methodically began gathering what treasures they could and burning what they didn't want when FEMA wasn't watching. Oops, it caught fire, sorry bout that. Daisy'll be upset, but she'll see if they can be replaced.

The rails came from Canby with the orders that there was an open account with several businesses, contractors, as well as stonemason shops and hardware stores, and if anything was needed, they had only to send a list and they'd receive it in two-three days, by truck within a day if it was truly necessary. FEMA, it seemed, worked quickly, though even Allen's mother asked who was going to pay for it all in the end and feared, as all farmers did, being indendured further for the sake of their livelihoods for the weather they could not control.

Darla herself had received an anonymous gift of a check for the worth of her business and property, from one of the contractors who had surveyed the remains and given it to her. Daisy again, the unknown Daisy. When did Darla want reconstruction to begin? Staring at the man from the foot of her hospital bed, with a doctor and nurse in attendance, she thought she'd been dreaming or under the influence of pain medications. Ray Benson also received a check for the worth of his business as well as the property to begin rebuilding, as did Sheila Ray from the Come On Inn and Jarrod & Millis Jacobs who owned the Co-Op.

Whoever Daisy was, they were generous, but they were also anonymous, giving and kind.

Questions began to arise, but no one had answers, nor did anyone think to possibly ask about Emmie's niece, alone in the house and faced, on day five, with having to allow trucks onto the property to remove the debris as well as search for bodies and, in this manuver, the destruction of most of the wheat crop Emmie had overseen for the last time. No one had time to spare as nothing on Emmie's place had been destroyed...save the wheat crop, which was the same as telling the bank you wanted to foreclose and how much do we still owe you?

No one thought to ask, because no one knew.

Only the hole on the wall knew, where a photo in Emily's photos had been peeled off, if one looked for it, a faded color photo of a smiling girl and an old mare, and a boy holding the reins and looking on with pity.

Daisy knew why it had been done.

Daisy had been remembered.