The sirens had been howling for nearly twenty minutes. Ten of the twelve windowpanes in the storm door exploded against the porch railing when the door was ripped from Kate’s grasp. Trees leaned in the gust, bowing, kissing the ground in the presence of its eminence: the EF5 twister. A trash can summersaulted down the alley, smashing into a trucks windshield.
The goal posts on the high school football field rocked violently, as if a state championship crowd maniacally descended them and weighed them to the turf. The ominous sirens infected the air, wailing like banshees warning of bombs about to drop from the heavens and pock mark the landscape. Kate’s father grabbed her by the arm as he bolted from the front door, pulling her around the side of the house. The tornado was 30 yards away, a giant martini glass swirling and churning and zipping like a blender, making a puree of the terrain in its wake. "In to the crawl space. It’s our only chance to beat this thing." His hand gripped her forearm—thick bratwurst fingers, white knuckles drawing her under the house—pulling her as a father would do to a child stunned in the path of a roaring 18 wheeler. They eased beneath the small house, knelt in the coffin of a crawl space and waited, hearts throbbing, locked arms over bodies, the seconds seeming to triple, even quadruple. Time stopped. The lone overhead light bulb snuffed out. "Daddy what’s going to happen? Are we going to die?"
"I don’t know baby. I don’t know. Just stay still." The light flickered back on as the house shook.
"Daddy!"
"Stay still!"
Kate heard something large slide across the hardwood floor and shatter against an unknown wall. "What was that?"
"The China cabinet."
The light fixture’s cord shook and swayed, vibrating at first and then breaking into a pendulous swing. The bulb extinguished again. Kate’s ears began to pop; the air pressure’s rapid change turned the bar on the vise, squeezing her temples and teeth. More crashing, breaking glass, floorboards snapping like twigs under a hiker’s boots. Massive head pressure, nearly rendering her deaf. The light flickered back on. Broken water pipes began to fill the crawl space. Kate, still in her church sun dress felt the cold water rising to her knees, her hips, her waist. The cacophony of the crumbling house drowned her yelled prayers. She stopped shouting only to let the inner monologue commence. Promises with God—a foolish human unaware of her mortal limits. Kate could taste the sweet smell of natural gas. Her father lurched his hands upward, removing them from her for the first time, only to quickly turn the shut-off valve. Kate grabbed a broken piece of vent and used it to peer at the outer landscape like a submariner with a periscope. Severed gas lines blasted fire spikes into the air. The neighbor’s house seemed to be a giant eagle’s nest, a discombobulated mound of sticks and stones. A detonation from above tore apart the father-daughter grasp. "My legs!" Kate shouted. An above floor joist had pinned her calf muscles to the dirt floor of the crawl space. Her father was caged by wood and debris, virtually unharmed but locked in a fetal ball. "I’m stuck Daddy! I can’t move!"
"You’re gonna be okay! You’ll make it, I swear it!"
"I can’t feel my legs! I can’t feel them!"
"Don’t focus on that! Just breath. You’re gonna live! You have the will to. Just hold on! Hold on! Don’t you want to be a pastor one day? Hasn’t that always been your dream?"
"I want to be a pastor someday Daddy!"
"Listen to me Kate! Listen to my voice. Stay strong. Stay with me!"
"Oh my God this hurts!"
"Can you hear me?"
"It hurts!" Crying.
"Listen to me!"
"I hear you!"
"You gotta go through something! You have to go through some serious shit for people to believe you when you preach!" His mouth was covered with rolling saliva. His hand pinned, unable to wipe his chin. "That’s what I meant when I said you weren’t ready to be a pastor yet. I never meant to hurt you by it!"
"The water’s high! I can’t move." She could feel it eclipsing her chest.
"Stay alive baby girl! Fight!"
"I can’t!"
"Yes you can! This is it! This is your something! Live! Live!"
A spear of light cracked the darkness. An ax blade burst through the torn wood flooring like a bird’s beak piercing black wet soil. The light widened into a dim parabola. The ax head grew nearer. "I hear them!" A voice called out. The ax dug in one last time, an arm with divine strength pulled up a huge plank of joist as the ax drew back. Light. Salvation. Sheer pain.
