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Show Twisters . . . 85 cold, whining, clinging. I wanted to tell them they'd soon be warm again. The lady wearing a skirt was missing the heel off one shoe; the other woman was wearing a bathrobe minus the belt. We sat up and listened as they told the matron their names and addresses and what had happened. One family had been hit on Sycamore, a street that parallels South Locust. "Dave had just gone outside to see if things were letting up," the wife said, glancing at her husband, whose cigarette was shaking so bad he could hardly get a drag on it. "It knocked him flat on his face. He crawled back to the house. When it hit . . . God in heaven! . . ," She was trembling so hard she couldn't finish. I knew how she felt. The other family had been living in a trailer. "A big double job," the guy said, "but that tornado flipped us over like a cardboard box, dragged us thirty feet--" "We were deathly afraid to go out," his wife interrupted, "but the smell of gas in that place was so over-powering we had to. Everyone in the trailer court was forced out." "What happened to the others7" Mrs. Minetti asked. They looked at each other, shook their heads. "We were running down the street carrying the kids when the police picked us up . . ." "Thank God you're all safe!" said Mrs. Minetti. "That's what counts," the first man said. Then, sadly, "everything else is gone, even the dog-" He shouldn't have mentioned the dog because it set his older boy to crying. "..yeah, dead-" he nodded at the other man, "-and we happened to see her." He lifted his big kid, held him close to muffle the sobs. The father wanted to cry, too, I could tell. |