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Show Go Love/125 his way home. The wind stilled and the girls skirts righted themselves, which I was sorry to see, especially with regard to Fonda Whitehurst, whose purple panties seemed ripeful of the storm itself Her confession has always held for me the most heft. "Little girl, daughter," she said. "I'll comfort you. Where you are, sweetie, I'll be soon. Mama loves you," she said, and I knew she meant it, and it was then, right as love rolled off Fonda's lips, that the, great black tornado of 1976 chose to let us be. The sun shone and red-headed hummingbirds began to dive-bomb us from the Visitor's bleachers. A ways toward town, the twister gleamed and we got up off our hands and knees This was tornado alley, they'd been before and they'd come again. Something had happened~we were not the same people. I knew that. We turned red. I put my arm on Fonda Whitehurst's pale shoulders, she was my sister now. Off in the distance, the bank exploded. The P.O. went next People died right that second, but we survivors had responsibilities. "Dead God," Fonda said with this holy white light on her face, in the coils of her black hair. Sirens sang off toward home. We gathered ourselves and stepped into the newly deformed world. Dora says, RAIN. "Let's get inside." O.W.'s walking up Mama's plywood ramp, so its gut sags. The seam I heard in his voice three nights ago, it's here. When his father died, I heard it then, same with Jimmy, that crack his voice showed through. |