Lightning bounced off the clouds in the western sky. Her parents used to tell her it was “heat lightning.” She knew better. It was a coming storm. And a bad one. She secured the livestock and headed toward the house.
The local weatherman was on the TV. Rotation had been detected in a severe thunderstorm off to the southwest. She popped open a soft drink and smiled. The weatherman would be fielding lots of nasty phone calls; he was interrupting football. How dare he? For just a tornado? The nerve.
Lucky the three-legged beagle limped into the room. Lucky had taken on a Cadillac and the Cadillac won. The vet said he was lucky and who was she to argue with a vet? So Lucky got his name. And an attitude. The only thing that slowed Lucky down was trying to hike his leg. There was nothing sadder than seeing a three-legged dog tip over at a most vulnerable time.
Thunder rumbled and Lucky howled. You didn’t need a weather radio with Lucky around. He could tell you if a cow farted in Port Gibson. The first sign of thunder and Lucky was a quivering, barking mess. The woman turned the TV up louder to drown out the spastic beagle and noticed the weatherman mentioning her county. The funnel cloud was heading toward her farm.
She put Lucky in his cage and threw him in the safe room. Lucky would be safe. She then went outside and sat on the farm house’s huge, wrap-around porch. Lightning was now more like a strobe light. Night and day were duking it out on his rural Mississippi farm. Right now, day was winning. It was 9:30 p.m.
The clouds were rolling in like Sherman’s Army marching to the sea. The storm was 10 minutes off. She pulled out a notebook out of her purse and began to jot down observations. Winds from the south-southwest. Inflow feeding the storm from northeast. She pulled out her cellphone and called her closest neighbor, “The tornado will pass near our places. You had better take cover. NOW!” She stuck the phone back in her pocket and scanned the southwest horizon.
There is was. The funnel. It hadn’t touched the ground yet but was trying. She watched in awe and fascination as one of the most powerful, fearsome events on the earth headed right toward her. The finger of God.
She could hear the roar. It sounded like a pulsating jet engine more than it did a freight train. She wondered, “What did they say it sounded like before freight trains?” Lucky was howling.
Trees began to dance in the wind. Strobe lightning illuminated the storm as it passed between her and her neighbor’s house. Limbs and leaves pelted the porch but she just sat there, watching. Waiting for the storm to pass.
The funnel looked like spinning gray cotton candy. It rotated slowly, grinding and moaning as it went past. Baseball-sized hail began to fall, making a deafening roar as it hit the metal roof of the barn. Then buckets of rain poured down. Lightning illuminated the show. Thunder provided the soundtrack. The the only sound she could hear was her breathing. The storm had passed.
She slowly got up, walked in, took another soft drink out of the fridge and released Lucky from his crate. The three-legged dog went out on the porch, tried to hike his leg and fell over. The weatherman on the TV was talking loudly and turning red now. The storm was heading right toward the TV studio.
Both Lucky and the woman watched the tornado as it headed on toward to Jackson. The TV station went off the air.
She looked down and patted her right leg. It was artificial. Like Lucky, she had also survived a run-in — just not with a Cadillac. She had survived an EF-5 tornado and was found under four feet of what was left of her previous home in Northeast Mississippi.
Sometimes you chase a tornado. Sometimes a tornado chases you. But sometimes you just sit and watch all nature’s power in all her glory. Tonight was one of those nights. She, like her dog, was lucky.
