The Devil Came West to Kansas

“Run, get inside! It’s nearly on us!”

My father’s voice barely carried across the yard through the din surrounding us. In the distance, I could see uprooted trees colliding with buildings, great clods of earth torn from their places and scattered to the wind. Over a mile away, and still its roar drowned out his voice at a hundred feet.

He was standing at the door to the root cellar, beckoning me with one arm while holding the hatch with his other. The flimsy corrugated sheet steel wobbled and flapped as if it were made from crepe paper, but he held it all the same.

I gathered myself and ran for the cellar, leaving the rest of the world behind. My legs were stiff and sore from our work yesterday, but I forced them to act. As I ran, the air around me shifted and whipped as I’d never felt before. It pulled and pushed in every direction at once. The coat I’d thrown around myself lashed my bare legs, threatening to tear away entirely. We thought we had time to prepare. We thought we would be ready for what was to come.

I reached the hatch and leapt down, meeting the packed earth at force. My father yanked the hatch shut behind him, then wedged an oak plank between the handles. It would do little to stop the hellacious twister on our heels, but it was all we had.

Inside the cellar it was dark, dank and damp. But it was quiet. Under three feet of dirt and a roof of tarred timber, we would be safe. Safer than above, at least. I heard my father shuffle through the pitch-blackness, then strike a match. The room came into view, lit by a single oil lamp hanging from a rusted nail. Four bins of potatoes, yams and carrots, then a shelf of pickled beets and cucumbers. And, naturally, the horrified face of the one who raised me.

“Are you alright? You’re not hurt, are you?”

“I’m fine. Just… Jesus. Where did it even come from?”

“Once again, the weatherman fails us. If I hadn’t been watching the television, we’d have been sunk.”

“We might still be. The barn, the house, everything we own is still up there. Without them-”

“But we’re safe. We made it. Nothing else matters right now. Even if we lose everything and we come back to a flat waste, we can start again.”

“Can we? The last harvest was slim, and the chickens - shit. The chickens. They’re probably dead already.”

“Watch your language. And we don’t know that, not yet. It could just pass us by. Lord willing, it’ll all just blow right over and leave us be.”

He looked to the hatch, which told a different tale. It rattled violently against its rust-flaked hinges, and water trickled under it and into the cellar. Its rattle grew nearer to a thrashing by the second, fighting to shake itself free.

We sat against the back wall of our shelter and listened to the wind’s roar, and the torrential rain that always follows. The noise of splintering wood and twisting steel persisted under the rest of it all. Each irregular thud dragged our hopes down ever further, as another piece of our meager livelihood was flung to the ground. Each minute felt like hours, and we were helpless to do anything but wait.

My father dropped his arm around my shoulders and drew me in. His hold was firm, but he said nothing. We both knew it would pass soon, but what awaited us on the surface? I almost wished the tornado would go on forever, or tear us from our hiding spot, just to avoid facing what was left of our home. 

I looked to my father. By the dim light of the lamp, his features took on a deep, severe tone. Shadows cast dark pits over his eyes, and his mouth was fixed in a tight-lipped frown. He glanced down at me and his expression softened slightly. Reassurance was usually my mother’s domain, but I could tell he was trying.

After a while, the wind started to die down. The cellar door quieted, and eventually came to rest in its frame. A sliver of golden light shone through the dust. My father withdrew his arm and stood slowly, making his way toward the exit. The trusty oak plank found its place, leaning against the earthen wall. Iron hinges groaned as the door was lifted away, making way for a dreary orange sky to cast its light across the weathered wooden steps. My father stood there in the doorway, staring out in silence.

I stood to join him, and from the back of the room I could already see ruin. Where the grass hadn’t been torn up entirely, it laid flat along the ground. The dusty, bare dirt had turned to mud, and it looked as if it had been tilled and tamped again.

Once I was under the sun, our surroundings were nearly unrecognizable. Where once stood a two-story farmhouse, there was a stone foundation and a pile of shredded wood. The barn had been scattered across the plain, leaving only a square patch of trod earth and a few eight-by-eight oak columns. The remains of my father’s tractor were mixed in with everything else; a wheel here, a hose there.

My father’s gaunt frame knelt beside the foundation of our home, inspecting a single fragment of something he used to know. One hand held the object, the other held his bowed head. A minute passed. Then another. He suddenly shot to his feet and slung the object into the wreckage, cursing heaven and hell alike.

“God… damn you! Why? Why us? Why now? After all we’ve done, all we’ve suffered, that wasn’t enough? You had to go and take the last little bit. God damn you. God…”

He fell again to his knees. Arms slack by his sides, shoulders heaving. I stood by the entrance to the cellar, looking across the scene and to the horizon. Far off, the clouds parted and beams of light streaked toward the ground. The sky began to shift from orange to blue, and all was well with the world again. The air, having been dead-silent and still, resumed its usual route eastward. A soft breeze swept across me, the hem of my only coat gently brushing my legs.