Before Dorothy, page 15
Henry looked up from his accounts. “How about we both go in early? I could use the time to go to the bank.”
Emily detected a hint of concern in his voice. “Is everything okay?”
He stood up and kissed her cheek. “Everything’s fine.”
The one part of married life that Henry kept from Emily was money. He didn’t like to discuss it with her, believing it to be man’s business. It was John he’d turned to for financial advice when he was saving and planning his move to Kansas, and John’s business success made it hard to argue against him. Emily still didn’t care for the way John conducted his deals, and gut instinct still stopped her from fully trusting him. All she knew was that he’d written, a month ago, to tell Henry prices had taken a big hit on the stock exchange and that he should sell off whatever shares he had in steel and electricity and put his savings in the bank. She’d found the letter when she was tidying Henry’s things. She hadn’t mentioned it. Whatever she thought about John, she trusted Henry to do the right thing.
The wind had strengthened even further by the time she and Henry arrived in Liberal that afternoon. Henry made his way to the bank before it closed, too preoccupied by his own thoughts to ask Emily where she was going.
“I’ll see you later,” he called. “Pick you up at nine.”
“Make it eight,” she replied. “Just in case.”
She waited until he was out of sight and then, head down against the wind, hurried to the doctor.
By the time she was done and had arrived at the general store, the sky was already darkening.
“Wasn’t sure we’d see you tonight,” Laurie said as she ushered Emily inside.
“Neither was I. Henry’s picking me up a little earlier than usual.”
“Good thing, too. I don’t like the look of that sky one bit. Now, come on inside.”
The tentative friendships Emily had formed in her first year on the prairie had solidified into strong bonds with women she now admired greatly and cared for deeply. They had even added some actual singing to their weekly gatherings as Emily taught them her favorite Irish ballads, and Ingrid taught them songs from her Dutch heritage, and they all sang the blues.
While the women shared their hopes and fears over pie and music at the Millers’ home attached to the general store, the men gathered at the saloon to discuss yields and wheat prices. The wheat surplus had expanded again after another strong summer harvest. Grain elevators across the state were stuffed full, which meant prices would inevitably drop.
“I’ve never seen Hank so worried,” Laurie said as the women discussed their husbands. “He can’t sleep at night for turning over everything in his mind, and then he’s as irritable as a horsefly bite the next day.”
“I don’t understand why the government won’t buy back the surplus,” Ingrid added as she told little Eric to stop bothering his older brother.
“And still more folk arriving on the trains every week, and more acres being plowed up,” Emily added.
The lush fertile fields that had greeted her when she’d first arrived were now a torn and tattered patchwork of plowed sod. Once again, she recalled Ike West’s warning when they’d first arrived. She felt ashamed by what they’d done to the land.
“Eric! Leg dat neer,” Ingrid scolded her son, turning to her Dutch language as she often did when she was tired or irritated.
Baby Eric, named for his father, reluctantly put down the wooden spoon he’d been using as a drumstick on his brother’s legs and sat, scowling, at his mother’s feet. He was a sweet little boy most of the time, but Ingrid’s struggle to raise the two boys on her own was plain to see. Emily had hoped to find a quiet moment to confide in Ingrid following her appointment with the doctor, but decided it could wait. She hated to see how tired Ingrid looked. She rarely smiled these days.
She’d felt the optimism fade among them all lately. They were bringing in record harvests, but for what. Barely a profit to be made between them. She tried to lift everyone’s spirits with a song on the fiddle, but a string broke in the second verse. “A sign of bad luck,” her father used to say. “A broken string warns of a broken heart.”
* * *
—
Henry was quiet in the car and went straight back to his ledgers when they arrived home, rather than sit with Emily on the porch to debrief each other on their evenings, as he usually did.
Emily left him a while before gently encouraging him to join her. “You look tired,” she said. “Come and sit with me. Shake the day off.” She was eager to get his attention and try to lighten the mood.
Eventually, he relented. He closed his ledgers and pushed his pencil behind his ear.
“A problem shared?” she prompted as he sat beside her. “Laurie was saying she’s never seen Hank so worried. It might help to tell me what’s troubling you, or do I have to rely on Laurie Miller to know my husband’s state of mind?”
Henry offered a tired smile. “Seems like you already know. City folk are being encouraged to eat wheat three times a week, but if the surplus continues, wheat prices will tumble, no doubt about it.” He ran his hands through his hair. “I don’t care for how things are looking, Em. I don’t care for it at all.”
Emily offered reassurance, just as he had reassured her so often over the years. “We’ll be fine, Henry. We’ve savings in the bank. You followed John’s advice and, although it nearly kills me to admit it, he’s proven to be right so far.” She kissed the top of his head. After five years of marriage, and even with all the irritating little habits and ways that those five years had slowly revealed, Emily still adored her husband. Whatever happened, and wherever life took them, they would share it together. They complemented each other, like sunshine and rain. It was a powerful combination. “Henry, there’s something…”
He reached for her hand as he yawned. “Sorry, Em. I’m beat. I’m no company tonight. I think I’ll turn in,” he said.
Emily kissed his hand. “Get some rest. I’ll close up the coops and check on the animals. That wind’s really picking up.”
Her news would have to wait.
* * *
—
Emily woke to a low ominous wail.
She sat up. “Henry!” She pushed his arm to wake him. “Henry, wake up.”
Beside her, Henry stirred. “What is it?”
“Listen. The wind.”
The timbers already creaked all around them. The iron hinges on the doors squeaked as they were pulled and stretched. The sound was distinct, different from any other wind. They both felt a dull headache from the change in air pressure.
“Tornado!” Henry jumped out of bed. “Get to the cellar.” In a rush, he pulled on his boots and ran to the door. “Go, Em! Now!”
She hurried to the center of the room, rolled back the rug, and pulled up the hatch. Her heart lurched as she made her way down the ladder into the cold dark space. “Hurry, Henry!”
He was with her a moment later. “Looks like a big one, Em. A real big one.”
They clung to each other in the dark as the house shook violently above, the floorboards straining against the joists as they began to pull away. Emily heard a sharp snap, then another, then a cacophony, like gunfire going off as nails sprang loose and the house seemed to heave and sway above her. The noise was like nothing she’d ever heard—the impossible crescendo of ever-stronger gusts, the deafening, bloodcurdling shriek and whine and roar of the wind.
And then the unimaginable happened. The floor started to separate from the foundations and the house began to lift from the ground, heaving and swaying above Emily’s head, tethered only by a few stubborn struts. Blinking against the roaring wind and sharp grit that peppered her skin, she saw the green-black sky above.
“Henry! What’s happening!”
He held her tight to his side. “Hold on, Em. Hold tight. I’ve got you.”
She gripped him like a vise as the house twisted some forty-five degrees before being dragged several feet and smashing into the ground. The windows and timbers were crushed and twisted. Everything that had once been inside was now outside, caught up and hurled in every direction by the storm.
In the cellar, Emily shut her eyes and clung to Henry. They cowered against the farthest wall as rain and dirt hammered down on them until she was sure they would be buried alive.
She couldn’t speak. Couldn’t cry out. Couldn’t breathe. The wind and dirt choked her. Smothered her.
She prayed desperately, pleading for it to end—the deafening noise, the murderous wind, the terrifying bangs and booms and crash and shatter of God knows what above.
Please stop! Please be over! Please spare us!
She buried her face in Henry’s chest and retreated into herself, longing for it to stop as terror and panic set her heart racing and made her body shake as violently as the house above.
It seemed to last forever,
screaming and roaring,
endlessly raging,
forever,
on and,
on,
and
on.
And then it was done.
All that remained was silence.
21
For a while, she was too afraid to move, too afraid to open her eyes, too afraid to see what had happened. She couldn’t stop shaking.
Eventually, she opened her eyes and turned to Henry.
His face was covered in dirt and full of fear as he placed his hands on her cheeks. “We’re still here, Em. Whatever’s happened, we are still here.”
“What time is it?” She wasn’t sure why she asked. She needed something simple to root herself back to reality.
Henry checked his watch. “Nearly ten past.”
They’d gone to the shelter on the hour. Two a.m. It had lasted less than ten minutes.
They stayed where they were. Emily held tight to Henry, afraid to let go, afraid to face what was waiting for them above.
Henry stood up first. He reached for Emily’s hand and helped her up.
Her teeth chattered. Her whole body convulsed violently as she slowly climbed the ladder.
At first, she couldn’t orient herself, couldn’t find a single thing she recognized as she clambered out of the hatch and saw a scene of utter devastation, lit by the moon.
Then she saw it.
The water pump.
The only solid undamaged thing left standing.
She crawled on her hands and knees toward it and clung to the handle like a life raft as she took in the scene around her. Their beautiful home, their crops, their dreams lay scattered all around her, like toys thrown in temper by a petulant child.
Emily had felt pain and loss in her life, many times over. But this was different. This was visceral and shocking and completely overwhelming. She felt as torn apart as their beloved home. She was the scattered broken ruins strewn across the prairie.
It was gone.
Everything.
She let out such a heartrending wail that she frightened herself. She had never heard a sound so utterly devastating.
She turned then and vomited onto the ground, retching over and over as the last of herself was purged to join the scraps and shattered fragments of what remained.
Henry placed his arms under hers, supporting her as he hauled her to her feet.
“Stand up, Emily. You have to stand up.”
She gripped his hands. “It’s gone, Henry. All of it. Everything.”
“Don’t you dare give up, Emily Gale. Remember who you are. Who we are.”
She looked at him and saw such fear in his eyes. She didn’t know who they were anymore. Without their home, their farm, what was there? When it was all taken away, what was left?
Just as Annie had predicted, it had all been a terrible mistake. “But is it enough, Em? Really? Is it everything you wanted it to be?”
She felt like a lost little girl who had wandered far away from her home and her family and couldn’t find her way back to them.
She broke down in tears, and through her raw wild anguish, there was only one thing she wanted.
“I want my mother, Henry,” she sobbed, clinging to his shirt. “I miss her. I miss her so much.”
* * *
—
They spent the night in the motorcar, which had miraculously survived the tornado, directionless passengers with nowhere to go.
They didn’t talk much.
Neither of them slept.
At first light, they wandered around in a daze, recovering what they could. Like a child picking up dropped candy, Emily stooped to gather anything she could find, no matter how small: a single spoon, a chipped milk jug, her rolling pin, pillows and cushions covered in dirt, several books with their covers torn and spines broken, one tattered red shoe, then the other some distance away, the straps snapped and the buckles missing. The larder had remained relatively intact, her carefully preserved jars miraculously unspoiled, the wildflowers on the wallpaper still in full bloom. Three steps led to an invisible porch. The swing seat lay on its side in three pieces. She found a pair of Henry’s dungarees wrapped around a clump of Russian thistle, and his hat impaled on the end of a broken fencepost. All that remained of the scarecrows were torn shreds of Henry’s old clothes, their straw stuffing blown clean out of them. She felt just as lifeless and empty, flapping aimlessly in the breeze.
Hours passed.
The horses returned. The surviving sow snuffled tirelessly through a bank of earth. Three chickens scratched in the dirt.
By midmorning, the blue skies and golden sun seemed out of place among the scene of violent destruction below. Hank and Laurie Miller arrived after hearing that a tornado had touched down a few miles south of Liberal. Hank brought hammers and nails, Laurie brought corn cakes and coffee. It was the saddest breakfast Emily had ever eaten.
Henry tried to lighten the mood. “I would say pull up a chair, but our chairs are probably in Oklahoma by now.”
Laurie burst into tears.
Emily comforted her. She was too exhausted to cry anymore.
The four of them continued their despondent search throughout the morning, rounding up broken bits of Emily and Henry’s life as if they were a team of old ranchers driving the herd. Emily found a window frame, the glass shattered, the blue and white gingham curtains she’d made still attached to the broken pole. Laurie found an upturned dresser drawer, the photograph of Dorothy still inside it. Emily didn’t have the energy to be embarrassed when Hank found items of her underwear. She already felt as broken and exposed as the remaining timbers of her home.
Talk of Gale Farm being upended by the tornado spread like a prairie fire across town. More folk came to offer help in any way they could: a tractor to move the dirt, a pie, a bottle of hooch, more coffee, another pie. As Emily looked around their busy little patch of torn-up land, her heart broke to see such gentle kindness after such violent destruction. These were good people. The best people. She could never thank them enough.
“We’ve seen this before,” Laurie said. “And, no doubt, we’ll see it plenty again. We help one another. That’s what prairie folk do. We pray it doesn’t happen, but we come through for one another when it does.”
Sometime in the afternoon, Emily found her prairie journal, safe in the drawer of her nightstand. It had been carried over what was left of the barn and thrown at the base of the windmill, which was, miraculously, still standing. The journal was more valuable to her than she’d realized, her hopes and dreams captured among the pages: precious memories now of what they’d built, and lost.
Henry placed his arm around her shoulder as she turned through the dirt-streaked pages that she had filled with her thoughts and hopes, and the empty pages that remained.
“See, so many more pages to fill,” he said. “So much more of our story to tell.”
She laid her head on his shoulder. “But I loved the story I was writing, Henry. I didn’t want it to end.”
He pulled her to her feet and brushed dirt from her cheek. “End? What is this talk of endings?” He offered a hopeful smile through his despair. “We’re only just beginning, you and me. We knew this wouldn’t be easy, or always go our way. We’ve had a good run, Em—a great run, so far. This is our test, and we’re alive and we’ll survive it. It’s done now, the thing you feared the most. It’s over.”
They salvaged what they could find, and what wasn’t broken beyond repair, or could be put to other use. In one final miracle, just before dusk, Emily found her father’s fiddle, propped against a fence post, as if he’d left it for her there as a gift.
As they rode back into Liberal to stay with the Millers for a while, Emily’s hand strayed to her coat pocket. The lump of Connemara marble was still there. After all these years, through all this time and upheaval, this little piece of Ireland was still with her.
It was that, in the end, that broke her.
She should have planted her dreams elsewhere.
* * *
—
Folk rallied around, everyone lending what bit of something they could spare: timber and nails, pots and pans, fabric and linen and clothes. The men worked every day and late into the night, hauling timber, helping Henry build a temporary shelter that would see them through until they could build a permanent home again. Ingrid gave Emily the black mourning dress she’d worn when she’d buried Eric. Laurie gave her an old black coat.
“It has seen better days,” she said. “But the lining will make a decent shirt for Henry. And there’s a pair of old boots here that Hank will never miss.”
