4

Florence and Elmo Barnhill invite everyone to a comeand-go elk chili supper at their house. "We'll be using the fish cooker, since our power's still off. We don't want to waste all that good meat in the freezer," Miss Flo said. "If you've got something you want to add to the pot, bring it along."

—The Green News-Item

Flashlight in one hand and my arm in his other, Chris guided me down the steps of Grace Chapel, not exactly the exit I had planned.

The tornado had come with a sharp drop in temperature, and the beautiful spring day seemed like it belonged to someone else. Chris put his suit coat around my shoulders, and we set out for a quick check of our house before heading our separate ways. On our wedding night.

"We should check on Maria and the boys first," I said. "If they were in that trailer, they must have been terrified. We'll have to make it fast, though. There's so much to do."

The mobile home where Chris had lived until a week ago looked unharmed, except for a tree down on the chain link fence. A faint light glowed through the window.

We walked across the road, past the church sign, turned on its side, with letters blown off. It now read, "RATS, Lois and Chris." A hysterical laugh caught in my throat, and I pushed it down. Chris knocked on the door, and I called out. Maria appeared, the children quiet in the background. A tiny batterypowered light, a gift at the house-warming party we had thrown for the family, sat on the carpet nearby.

"Are you all OK?" Chris asked.

"Si," she said. "It was very loud. But we have light, and we make up stories. Thanks to you, we were safe."

"Thanks to us? We put you in a trailer in the path of a tornado." I said. She didn't understand, the same way I didn't understand how the day had turned out.

"This house very strong. Not like our old house," she said."I'm sad about your wedding. You look beautiful." I had forgotten I was in my wedding dress.

"Thank you, Maria. Be safe."

"I'll take care of that fence when things settle down," Chris said.

"If that trailer didn't blow away, everything else must be okay," I said to Chris as we walked on down the road. "Maybe the church was the only casualty. Like Bud said, tornadoes are weird. Thank goodness those children did not lose their new home."

"Or their lives."

Fallen trees partially blocked the road, and we sloshed in and out of the muddy ditch by the road, the water halfway up to my knees.

"We'll get Holly Beth, make sure everything's safe, and go from there," Chris said. "I know you want to get to the paper as soon as possible. I need to get Mom and Dad home, make sure your family's back at the hotel."

Everything was eerily dark with the power out and not a star in the sky.

"Who knows?" Chris asked, false cheer in his voice. "We might even make our flight to Montana tomorrow."

"I wish we had bought the trip insurance."

Stan's pickup was in Iris Jo's driveway, and the couple stood staring at the house, split in two by an enormous tree, my friend's head nestled in the curve of Stan's arm.

"How bad is it?" I asked, cutting through the yard.

"The big oak took out half of the house," she said, "but Stan says he'll help me rebuild."

I rushed to comfort her. "I know the house meant a lot to you. You and Matt had special memories here."

"It's only a house. It could have been so much worse. We weren't hurt or killed. I'm sorry your wedding day turned out like this. Whose idea was it to have a spring wedding anyway?"

"If you hadn't suggested it, I probably would have come up with it on my own. You know I wanted to beat Tammy down the aisle."

"Well, you're married, and it was a beautiful service."

"The reception left something to be desired," I said. "I knew I should have gotten the fondue pots." The small talk seemed to make things more normal, as though we weren't standing outside her broken home in wedding clothes, a ball of fear in our guts about the rest of Green.

"Are you headed to the paper?" Iris asked.

"After we pick up Holly Beth." I peered down the dark road."Chris says we probably have roof damage, since the church got hit so hard, but he's got a tarp. Do you want to stay with us?"

"Heavens, no." She laughed. "You're newlyweds. I'm staying at the Lakeside Motel until I figure out what to do. Pearl and Marcus said they have plenty of room."

"Lois," Chris called, "why don't you let Stan and me take a look at our place? You stay here with Iris."

"No way. I've got to check on Holly Beth. She's probably peed all over her crate by now."

"I doubt that I'll make it to the paper tonight," Iris said."But I'll send Stan as soon as he drops me off. He can get the generator going if the power's off downtown."

"I'll be there in thirty minutes, and everyone has assignments.Hopefully it won't be too bad."

Chris and I walked on, adrenaline fueling our pace as we rounded the small corner and looked over at our house.

It was gone!

My eyes simply could not believe what I saw—or rather what I did not see.

Chris didn't say a word, just stood with his head cocked at an angle as though the house might magically appear. A moment of pure insanity washed over me.

"Where is it?" I asked.

"Lois. . . ." Chris said in a voice meant to comfort me, a husband's voice.

A treasured giant pecan tree was uprooted, and trash was spread everywhere in tiny bits and pieces.

Nothing was recognizable, not sofa or table or refrigerator or . . . Holly Beth. I started screaming her name, running into my yard, afraid of what I would see.

Chris caught up with me in an instant and put both arms around me, pulling me close. "Sweetheart, catch your breath.We'll find her. Everything's going to be okay." He sounded as though he doubted the words himself.

"We have to find her," I said, sobbing. "She was trapped in her crate. It's so cold and so dark and—" I was being ridiculous.The chilly night was the least of Holly Beth's problems.Had the house smashed her? Had she been blown away and killed by the impact?

My mind raced as my legs tried to do likewise. I lifted the skirt of my dress and tore around where the house had sat, no crate in sight. Nothing here, I thought, and had a crazed mental picture of Chris's giant catfish pillow flying through the air.

Was this what shock felt like?

"I've never seen anything like it," Chris said, refusing to leave my side when I suggested we split up to search. "It's completely gone." I could almost see him shifting mental gears."The stuff has to be somewhere."

"Unless it was blown to bits."

Together we walked the boundaries of the yard, calling to the puppy. "I didn't even want a dog anyway, and now she's lost. And you gave your house away, and we don't have a place to live."

I knew the fear and anger in my voice were unfair. But this was not the way I had intended to spend my wedding night.

Instead of lashing back at me, as I would have done to him, Chris grabbed my hand and pulled it to his cheek. "Let's keep looking."

Suddenly he started running. "Lois, there." He pointed up, and I thought perhaps he had lost his mind.

Holly Beth's crate sat in the top of an old crape myrtle.

"Shhh," Chris said. "Don't say anything. If she's alive, we don't want her to jump around and fall. I'll get the ladder." As quickly as the words left his mouth, he seemed to realize there was no ladder.

"I used to be quite good at this when I was a boy," he whispered.My husband of less than two hours climbed the gnarly tree as though he did it every day. I heard him murmuring as he lifted the crate.

"She's alive," he yelled. "I can't tell if she's hurt, but she's glad to see me."

As he slid down, I stood at the trunk of the tree and took the heavy crate from him, my shoulders groaning with the strain. I set it on the ground, opened the gate and gently spoke to Holly. "Are you okay, baby girl?"

She leapt out of the cage and jumped around me, running over to Chris. She looked as though nothing had ever happened, licking both of us and barking what I thought of as her happy bark.

"Oh, Chris, she's all right," I squeezed my dog close. "She's OK."

"I would not have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes."

Holly Beth ran over to where the house had stood and looked back at us, barking louder now. Then she raced around the edges of where it had been, as though surveying the land.

"It's truly gone, isn't it?" I asked.

"Lois, I'm so sorry. I know how much this house meant to you."

"It's only a house."

Chris insisted on taking me to the paper after we made a quick stop at Grace. No one, not even Pastor Jean, was around, my car the only one in the parking lot. Even in the dark, it was obvious the church listed to the side and the parsonage looked weather-beaten.

I got my suitcase out of my car and shoved it next to Chris's, behind the front seat of his truck.

"At least I have clothes to wear," I said.

As we drove into town, the capriciousness of the storm stunned us. Cars were thrown everywhere like toys. A fourwheeler was perched on a wooden fence. Several buildings in a row would be demolished, while the house next door would look unscathed. Utility poles were thrown everywhere, and the occasional electrical transformer sizzled and sparked.

"Look, over there," I would say, and Chris would follow with, "Can you believe that?" and point to more devastation.Cotton trailers were turned over and strewn across a field, barely visible by headlights. A little tin utility shed sat in the middle of the road, and a tractor was upside down in a ditch.

"Surely it can't be this bad all over town," I said and punched the numbers on my phone for what seemed like the thousandth time with the same result. "All circuits are busy."

Chris drove slowly, dodging limbs and an assortment of unidentifiable debris. My worry grew with each sign of damage.

"I'm worried sick about little Asa and Molly's family. What if your parents' house is torn up? And we need to check on your dogs," I said.

Chris laid his hand on my knee. "One thing at a time. We have to have faith that everything is going to be OK."

"Faith?" My nerves erupted. "I gained a husband today but lost a house. Anna Grace may be dead, and we don't know if the paper is standing. I had planned to be on my way to a honeymoon suite, but I'm going to try to cover a big story with the journalistic equivalent of a kindergarten class. My faith is in short supply at the moment."

"We'll deal with this together," he said. "No matter what else happened today, we got married."

"I knew it was going to be one for the history books," I said, "but this took it a little too far."

"Lois, are you prepared for what you may find at the Item?"

"No" I said, hugging Holly Beth. "I'm not sure of anything. I have to cover this story. I don't even know where to begin."

"You'll figure it out," he said and then hesitated, an odd husky sound in his voice. "The paper and the church seem indestructible."

"They are more than buildings," I said, pulling myself together. "They don't need a building to make them real." My words worked up a new layer of energy within me, what I suspected Chris was trying to do.

"I'm going to have lots of busy days ahead of me," I said, attempting again to get my cell phone to work. By the time we reached downtown, the police and sheriff's departments had barricaded off most of the streets, standing guard against potential looters and unknown hazards. The flashing blue lights illuminated damage a moment at a time.

The young deputy who had so annoyed me during many of the fires stood near the turn we would have to make to get to the building.

"Sorry, " he said, leaning in as Chris rolled his truck window down. "Can't let civilians downtown tonight. Not safe."

"Son," Chris said, "If you think you're going to keep my wife from her newspaper, you obviously don't know who you're dealing with."

"Oh, I know Miss Barker, all right," he said.

"That's Mrs. Craig to you," Chris said. While they spoke, I slipped out of the truck with Holly Beth.

As I started running, both the deputy and Chris called after me. I stopped and turned.

"Are you wearing a wedding dress?" the deputy asked.

"Unfortunately, I am."

"Go on through," he said, moving the barricade so Chris could drive past. I hopped back in the truck and we drove down Main Street. Most of the buildings, including Mayor Eva's department store and Rose and Linda's antique mall, looked fine, but in the dark it was hard to tell.

As we turned into the parking lot of the News-Item, I covered my eyes with my hands.

"I can't look," I said. "You tell me."

"She seems to be all in one piece."

We walked through the littered parking lot, and with shaking hands, I unlocked the front door. Chris, Holly Beth, and I stepped into the newspaper.

"Tom? Tammy?" I called, but no one answered.

"Now what do I do?" I said to Chris. "For all the big stories I've ever covered, I've never been in a situation like this."

"Why don't you change clothes while I try to get the generator running? By then you'll have a plan of action."

In the dark of my office, I slipped the beautiful gown off and rubbed the fabric against my face. When I let it drop to the floor, Holly Beth grabbed it with her teeth and began to flop it back and forth. I couldn't help but laugh, and then hot tears filled my throat.

Slipping into jeans and a long-sleeve T-shirt, meant for a hike out West, I heard a faint whirring sound, and the lamp in the lobby came on. My wonderful husband had gotten the generator going. It seemed like a big victory in that moment.

Chris inspected the building while I got the computers booted up, with no Internet service. I typed in a list of stories and tried to think of how we would handle the twice-weekly print version, due out on Tuesday.

Pacing around the room while I worked, Chris furrowed his brow and kept trying to place a call on his cell and the newspaper phones, to no avail.

"You have to go," I said. "You're on the emergency team and you've got to check on your folks and my brothers, clear roads, or help with who knows what."

"I won't leave you here alone," he said.

"I can't go anywhere," I said. "Tom will be here any minute, and Alex, too. You're needed on Route Two."

"I won't leave you here alone," he said again.

"You're my husband, not my bodyguard," I said, trying to use a smile to soften the words. "You know you've got to get out there."

"I'm concerned," he said. "But I won't leave my bride until someone else shows up."

The sight of Alex coming through the front door had never been so welcome.

My only true reporter, a veteran at age twenty-three, had discarded his tie, but he wore loafers rather than his ragged tennis shoes and looked more mature than usual in his wedding slacks and nice shirt, dirty though they were.

"How bad is the damage?" I asked.

"Beyond bad," he said. "The mayor wants you at the command center. Chris, she needs you to meet a crew at the Grace Chapel parking lot."

"Fatalities?" I asked.

"Yes."

"How many? Who?" Chris asked.

"I think that's what the mayor wants to talk with Lois about. She won't tell me."

"Chris, I've got to go," I said, grabbing my purse, an extra notebook and a small digital camera. "Alex, you stay here and keep your fingers crossed that we get phone service back. Help Stan and Tom work up a plan for an extra edition for tomorrow afternoon. I'll be back as soon as I can."

"Take a laptop, boss," Alex said, handing me one of the two portable computers the newspaper owned.

Chris looked agitated. "I'm going to the motel to pick up your brothers and head out to see what needs doing. I'll plan to meet you back here in four hours. If you need me before then, send Alex or Stan. I'll use Mama and Daddy's place as a base."

"If it's still there," I said.

"It will be," he said. "It has to be."

I rushed into Chris's arms and held tight. "I don't want you to go."

"I'll be back," he said, pulling my head to his shoulder. "Be careful, Mrs. Craig."

"I will," I said, unable to come up with a clever response. "I love you."

"I love you, too." He kissed me gently on the mouth. "You were a beautiful bride."

The front door swung shut, my husband out in the pitch black night, the beam of his flashlight already gone.

"Lois, are you OK?" Alex asked.

"Not yet," I said, shaking my head. "But we know how to cover the news, and that's what we have to do. Lives depend on us. Have you heard from any of the others? Tammy or Katy? Linda? Anyone?"

"Everyone's spread out, but we agreed to check in here. I haven't run into Tom, but he posted a story at seven-thirty saying a massive storm was headed our way. I did two updates from the courthouse. We scooped everyone, and the Associated Press has picked up my first story."

"The wire services are following this?"

"I'd say everyone in the country is following this."