The people of Joplin were going about their daily lives on a Sunday evening: cooking supper, watching TV, walking the dog. And then came the whirlwind, nearly a mile wide and six miles long.--Missouri Governor Jay Nixon
It was more like walking through The Twilight Zone than walking down Main Street.--resident Eddie Atwood, the day after
for the citizens of Joplin-the dead and the living-victims and survivors of the single deadliest U.S. tornado in 62 years of record-keeping history.
There's no one anywhere in town who's worried about much
of anything on a breezy Sunday afternoon like this:
Little League baseball in the park or a high school graduation
or firing up the barbeque under a sky that's seemed so unreasonably
clear all day, and even a last-minute run to the Gas-N-Go
for cigarettes, sunglasses, one more cold six-pack just in case
is truly no problem at all, even though the guy behind the counter
won't stop talking about his to-die-for Saturday night, even now
as he's getting louder, raising his voice so he can be heard
over the rising noise of sirens going off as so often they do
out of nowhere, here on the eastern edge of Tornado Alley, so yes,
he hears them but no, not really, because the truth is: tornadoes
have touched down hard only twice in the last forty years of sirens
just like these. But this particular day's about to turn on everyone
unthinkably fast, although they can't quite see it that way yet
If a watch means conditions that could easily lend themselves
to genuine impending trouble, then most of us have carried on--
weather and geography aside--under one kind of watch or another
in effect for our whole lives. When that turns into an audible warning
about whatever could be headed our way, in theory there should be
at least a little time to prepare for the worst. But the fact is
it's never sufficient. With hurricanes, there might be entire days
to know each one by name, and still too many people remain
unmoved. They end up stuck in the eye of the storm. With tornadoes?
At best, twenty minutes--and that's with radar and subsequent sirens.
This is where folks are right now, I'm afraid--the headlong rush
to hunker down, the trying to lie low. And blankets and pillows too,
if they're handy. Forget about those solitary nights they didn't do
nearly enough good. This time it's not about looking for comfort,
but instead--in all likelihood--unmetaphorical, tangible flying debris.
They're standing five-deep in the dark of the Gas-N-Go's walk-in cooler,
and what happens next is anyone's guess in a world this awfully small,
reduced to nothing but soundtrack--a continuous deep rumbling,
locomotive or jet engine or thundering waterfall, depending on
who's trying to put such a primal sound into words--a crazy-strong
200-mile-an-hour wind that's barely an outside-world away.
Not to mention the excruciating pressure.
It's best they can't see
what's exploding off the shelves on the other side of the cooler door
straining its hinges but hanging on, this near to bursting wide open:
breath mints, magazines, candy bars, a flying wedge of Little Debbie
no-expiration snack cakes. They can't see the facade of the Gas-N-Go
breaking completely apart, going and suddenly gone. Can't see
the power lines down, twitching out sparks that will light up the gas
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spewing from broken mains, homes and buildings on fire for miles.
And they can't see how much of this city is currently up in the air:
street signs, trash cans, windowpanes. WELCOME mats and floorboards.
Whole families unceremoniously blown out of their living rooms.
In the cooler they're actually sweating it out, praying and crying
and holding one another, wondering why these few minutes seem more
than even an overblown lifetime. Someone's humming Nearer, My God,
to Thee. Someone's singing Over the Rainbow. And that radio preacher
who'd wrongly predicted the end of the world for last night--what if
he'd somehow come closer than anyone thought just this morning?
A guy with no time for the Rapture swears to hell with Harold Camping,
what matters is right here and now--a second disconcerting round
of hail.
The ten-year-old kid, who's already had quite a day at shortstop,
who's also unabashedly something of a fifth-grade weather geek,
says hail forms at a tornado's leading edge, then once more in its wake.
They can't be sure he really knows what he knows, but they have seen
this kid's arm from deep in the hole, his unerring long throw to first.
They're afraid to say a word. They're holding what's left of their breath
in the dark and, with luck, in the ever-widening, elemental quiet.
It's surely nothing less than a flat-out, windblown wonder
that anyone's left standing after the furious spinning winds down,
after the attendant howling mostly has subsided. And yet here
they come, those people stunned but slowly emerging from coolers,
from low-lying ditches, from the legendary southwest corner
of basements--some still dragging behind them the last-minute blankets
they found extra refuge in. Now it's these tentative baby steps, as it
for once, knee-deep in their lives, they truly have to start over,
making their separate ways back into a clearly more harrowing world.
They knew the drill, and they know this aftermath-part-of-it too:
the deep breathing in, then the gradual exhalation. Soon they'll
be giving
themselves the once-over, searching for cuts and abrasions. The bruises
won't show up until later. There will be some who would rather
not look
at the devastation behind them-in any direction they're headed,
not even a hundred yards from the end of someone else's world-but
they'll find themselves staring all the same. In debris nearly three
feet deep:
torn-open animals minus their stuffing, a Darth Vader Halloween mask,
a birdcage, snapshots of birthdays and weddings, Let It Bleed and Let It Be
CDs, statues of St. Christopher in a jumble of steering wheels, a crucifix
driven into the trunk of the only tree holding its ground, and a smaller
unlikely miracle--a perfectly untangled slinky coiled tight at the top
of a flight of stairs heading nowhere.
And as for the citizens alive tonight
in a city they can scarcely identify: everyone's a stroke-of-luck survivor
on the move, no matter how slow their progress, looking out for the others
This is about the need to make sense
of what never will make sense, but still:
this is about the trying. This is not
about a return to normal. Although
the pressure has fallen to its more
natural level, there is always pressure.
In that way it's a lot like gravity.
This is by no means a metaphor
not after 161 dead. The wind
has only died down. Not out.
There will always be wind. This is not
some allegorical picking up the pieces.
This means to gather what's hopelessly
broken on the ground--detritus
to sigh over, maybe, when salvage isn't
possible. This means getting on with it
as more than a figure of speech,
proceeding one arduous step at a time,
making discernible strides.
You can see
it's not exactly easy to negotiate
a realm this relentlessly literal.
But it's time to make something new
out of all this water and mud and
wind-swept straw, something notably
solid--not like a brick, but the brick
itself. Then another on top of that one,
the way the ancients built dwellings
and temples and tombs. We know this
because these things now and then
weathered the stormy forces of history
much of that broken beauty still
surviving, still unmistakably here
in this world without end yet. Amen.
Electronic edition created by Megan Kipper for New Letters Digital Archive, Culminating Experience, Spring 2021