El Tornado

 

The Tornado

      Whenever it seemed the art shows became repetitious and unprofitable Matt thought of Derwood. Derwood was fifth generation in Waldo. He had worked his entire life in Hodges’s sawmill in Waldo, Maine and when finally after hobbling along for years it closed Derwood’s dinghy was set adrift. Derwood was somewhere between slow and retarded but possessed the capacity to count lumber. It had been required in school, to know how to figure how many board feet there were in a piece of wood. That was his one skill,, along with honesty and with diligence in his work. In 1985 in Waldo, Maine with its 770 people Derwood had become obsolete and was tossed upon the scrap heap. Too young yet for social security Derwood could be found about the village doing odd jobs of a brutish nature for little money, like digging post holes in the hard clay or even bailing out old septic tanks with a bucket. After the mill closed his old house began to visibly deteriorate, as if it had contracted a form of leprosy. Derwood could no longer afford the upkeep. First the front stairs rotted away then a corner of the porch fell to the ground. What was left was supported precariously by some withering 2X4’s. Eventually even smoke ceased swirling out of his chimney. He was from another generation, much too proud to ask for help. Even when it was offered he would adamantly refuse.   

     Matt recalled one morning leaving his house perched on Capitol Hill on his cross country skis making his way for Chase Stream. It was a frigid winter morning and there was a shallow lake of ice fog suspended above the snow. Ice fog is made up of suspended ice crystals. It only occurs when temperatures fall below -22 degrees Fahrenheit. When Matt left his house at 9:00 AM the thermometer on the porch registered -28. The temperature had fallen suddenly in the wee hours of morning. He had felt the cold creep into bed beside him. Last night when it was warmer , the air must have become saturated with water vapor from the snow, then when the cold snap came down like a hammer conditions were too cold for liquid water to exist, and small ice crystals developed creating the eerie fog. He skied down through Levi Gordon’s fields entering the forest where the woods began. There was an opening in the fence next to ‘barrel spring’. It was called barrel spring because long ago someone had interred a barrel without a bottom in the earth about the vein. As he emerged from the woods he spied Derwood embedded in the brume on the other side of the Bog Road. He was splitting wood in front of the house of Eben Gould. Durwood stood in front of a haphazardly piled cord of some of the largest knarliest elm Matt had ever seen. Gould was notorious for paying little and spending even less. He had hired Derwood to split this impossible wood its grain tightly aligned like frozen whorls of smoke. Derwood’s breath mixed with the fog in which he waded. His bore two sweat shirts under a ragged jacket and his traditional watch cap. The cuffs of his sleeves hung down in tattered strands. He had no gloves,, probably couldn’t afford them thought Matt. He came down upon the elm with a wallop with his double bitted axe only to plant the axe deeply into the twisted elm grain. It was slow difficult work and no doubt Derwood was desperate to have it and had most likely contracted to split the cord for a set fee. Even a hydraulic wood splitter would have had problems with this pile of elm. Matt was sure Gould had made a great bargain for himself. Derwood stopped and looked up at Matt knowing it would cost some work to extract the axe.

     “Matthew”, Derwood said, always using the full name of anyone he addressed. How be you this cold morning.”

     “Fine Derwood, fine,, and you?” Matt spoke the words knowing that Derwood was anything less than fine.

     “Aww, I’m afraid Matthew that I’m between a rock and a hard place.”

     “You don’t have any gloves, Derwood”, asked Matt.

     “No Matthew they won’t let me get a good purchase on the axe handle.”

     Eben emerged from his house and stared at the two with an impatient look. He didn’t speak but Matt knew that his demeanor was saying get back to work and you on the skis, be on your way.

     “Well take care of yourself Derwood and remember to slab it off the edge.”

     “Thank yee Matthew and Godspeed”, said Derwood.

     Eben watched with narrowed eyes as Matt continued on his way.

     At some point during the physical deterioration of his house Derwood and his wife disappeared from view. It was February and no one had seen Derwood or his wife about town for a week. His nephew was dispatched to the house and after heavy knocking could elicit no response.  With difficulty he entered. The porch was treacherous, and the door had been skewed into a parallelogram. Once inside the nephew found a shocking sight. Most of the floor was dry rotted and had fallen into the shallow basement. He saw Derwood and his wife on a small section of floor still in its place. They lie there like two frosted dolls, side by side, frozen to death.

     That memory always rattled Matt’s soul enough to easily shake off any arrogance that might creep into his thoughts. Matt’s life was a cakewalk because he had what he needed and in addition the gift of time. Jesus I am farting through silk he thought. He was in Catskill, New York at the annual Jefferson Heights Art and Craft Fair. It had begun as a pure art show but now twenty-five years after the first fair crafts represented more than 75% of the exhibitors. Many artists had grumbled about this trend in the outdoor shows but Matt felt it had actually worked out positively for him. There were less overall art exhibitors and therefore less competition. He only worried about the future when shows might become exclusively crafts. It seemed to be the trend.  However he had made some money after spending three long days in Catskill, but not like in years past.  The crowd had been small and the movement was interminably slow. This was the first year the promoters had charged admission and that made a visible difference in the quantity of clients. The Greed Factor times the law of entropy was work.

     It was Sunday about 5:30 on a balmy summer afternoon. The show had ended and Matt had broken down and stored his booth in his Van. Veronica Carlisle, an old friend, and his neighbor for three days was still meticulously packing her melted glass objects. He lingered a little talking to her while she worked. Claps of thunder could be heard as the sky to the east began turning gray.

     “Better hurry up Vero or everything is gonna get wet.”

     “Don’t fret Matty, I’m nearly there. You should go you have a lot further to travel than I.”

     Matt made his goodbyes, giving Veronica a good hug and took off up Route 9G heading north parallel to the Hudson River. At Hudson he turned to the east on 23 heading for the Massachusetts border. He crossed over just after Hillsdale, New York when the route number changed to 41. The destination was Great Barrington where he would continue north and meet the Massachusetts Turnpike. Just after South Egremont and before Great Barrington a heavy rain began to fall, so heavy that the wipers on high couldn’t handle the quantity of water. The patter of the enormous drops on the van roof was deafening like an brigade of energized drummers. The sky had darkened to the color of wet slate as if night were falling. Matt spied his watch and saw it was 6:30 PM. It was summer in the north and darkness didn’t fall until nearly 9:00. This must be a whopper of a storm he thought that turns the day into night. He had slowed considerably, his visibility severely restricted by the rain. In the distance distorted by the heavy rain on the windshield he saw bright tail lights as if there were a line of cars stopped. Matt slowed to a crawl, and then stopped behind a queue of about ten cars. Traffic was stalled. He rolled down his window and asked an officer in a parka what had happened.

     “A tornado just cut a swath through here. You cannot enter Great Barrington it’s a mess.”

     “A tornado,,, in Massachusetts?”, asked Matt incredulous.

     “It was strong enough to tear gravestones from the cemetery and send them flying. It even picked up a Volkswagen with four kids and deposited their bodies about a mile away. Downtown Barrington is a mess, just a tangle of trees and rubble, you can’t pass through there.”

     Matt was stunned. He didn’t even know there could be powerful tornados this far north. He thought of any of the other exhibitors who might have traveled in this direction. If he had not lingered with Veronica he might have driven into this. I must remind myself to kiss her when I see her again. He asked the policeman for an alternate route to the turnpike and was told to retrace his steps and in about a mile he would turn right on the Egremont Plain Road which would take him north into New York once again towards Austerlitz where he would meet up with the turnpike.

     The dark slate sky had turned to a lighter shade of gray but the sunlight that filtered through it was combed slightly orange. He made the New York border quickly and a few miles before Austerlitz he encountered a strange intersection, where the path taken by the tornado had crossed perpendicular to the highway.

     He paused on the empty highway, mists from the rain emmanating from the hot earth suspended in the air like unspun wool. “It passed here”, he said aloud. There was a wide path resembling the initial clearing for a new highway, about 50 yards wide beginning abruptly like someone had laid down a chalk line. All the trees within the aisle had been plucked of all their leaves. Only in this particular track, like an erratic band that trailed off towards the horizon on either side of the road it seemed like autumn. On the left was a house squashed flat as if stepped on by a giant. Delicately leaning upright precariously propped against the pile of rubble was a large maple with an enormous crown of bare branches shorn of all their leaves. Thirty minutes ago it had been a shade tree. What was remarkable was that the roots were still in the ground untouched. The tree had not been uprooted. The wind had torn the trunk off where it met the ground, lifting the weight of the entire tree then depositing it twenty feet away, upright alongside the house to which it once offered shade. It was a surreal painting. Matt turned his head to the other side of the road. There were high bushes.Trimming the thicket of bare branches and trailingoff perpendicular to the ground were sashes of fiberglass insulation sucked from the squashed house, all extending in one direction like frozen ribbons.

     By 8:00 the sky was swathed in charcoal. The heavy rain recommenced. He was west of Springfield and off to his right every two or three seconds the sky was illuminated by enormous streaks of lightning coursing horizontally across the sky in branches,, flashing like a roadmap. With every blazing flash Matt was reminded of how lucky he had been. By the time he made Springfield the sky was tranquill and he felt he had left the worst behind.