Suggested by: Amy Hopkins
The List:
-Dorothy
-Kansas
-the era of Technicolor
-a chainsaw
The Result:
"No Place Like Home"
On a little farm in Wichita, a middle-aged woman enjoyed a
quiet, hazy afternoon from the comfort of her porch. The weather had been prime
of late, and the storm season was coming, so these opportunities should be
treasured as long as they lasted.
Emily Brown sighed to herself as she watched the fat yellow
bees buzzing around her baskets overflowing with brilliant fuchsia. Bright
orange and yellow zinnias beckoned from the center of the arrangement, nodding
in the light breeze. The really was no place like their lovely little farmhouse. Televisions and movies introducing this newfangled
phenomenon dubbed “Technicolor” had nothing on the vivid hues of real life! She
could see the green grass of the front yard; off to the left, the small patch
of volunteer wheat that had managed to sprout this year. It was hard work to
maintain, but the young newlyweds of Wichita didn’t move out here, “eighteen
miles from anywhere” to sit on their laurels and have everything delivered to
their front door!
Just then, a figure emerged from the wheat. Emily waved to
her husband, Henry as he came up from working in the fields. She laughed to see
his dark curls all full of hay. His long, lanky frame was gaunt enough for a
specter on a good day; the additional vegetation he sported made him look
nearly like a scarecrow.
He grinned shyly when she let out a hearty laugh for his
benefit.
“What do you find so funny, Em?” He ambled toward the porch
as if nothing were out of the ordinary.
“Nothing at all, Hank,” she replied, throwing her arms
around his neck and knocking out a few straws as she did so. “Or if you like, I
was laughing at the thought of what the crows’ faces must have looked like when
they saw a big, living scarecrow lumbering through their breakfast.”
Henry shook his head, sending chaff to be carried by the
warm summer breeze. “A man’s gotta do something to keep those flying, thieving
monkeys out of our crops!”
“My hero!” and Emily laughed again.
Henry left his wife with a kiss and moved into the house.
It was a small two-story farmhouse, with a kitchen and
dining room on one side of the ground floor, and the rest devoted to a spacious
sitting room. In this room, Henry paused, sinking onto the sofa with a sigh.
“Ah, that feels better,” he murmured. The stately wooden
radio caught his attention. He reached over to the tuning dial.
“Say, Ems,” he asked as she came in behind him, “Have you
heard the latest from the BBC yet?”
“No, I haven’t touched the radio all day,” Emily replied.
She joined her husband on the sofa as the clipped accent
warbled through the speakers.
“… just in, passengers on an aeroplane flight from
Lisbon, en route to London, shot down by German military. This is the state and
the nature of Hitler’s ‘total war,’ ladies and gentlemen: a civilian aeroplane,
in a non-combat zone, completely destroyed… Innocent lives lost, bearing the
brunt of German brutality…”
As quickly as he had turned it on, Henry switched the radio
off again. Emily cuddled against his shoulder even closer.
“So awful,” she murmured. “Hitler must be a horrible,
horrible man for letting such things happen!”
Henry wrapped his arms around her curled-up body. “I’m just
glad I married you and moved out to Kansas to be a homesteader right at the
perfect time. Saved me from having to go down to the nearest USO. Now, nobody
can bother us, not even the government.”
Emily gave him a little shove. “You coward,” she chided
softly. “I always thought you were as brave as a lion! What would you risk to keep me safe?” She stuck her lip out in
a pout as her pretty blue eyes pegged him accusingly.
He held her gaze as he responded, “That’s just it; I care so
much about keeping you safe that I never wanted to leave your side, not for a
day, not for a moment. Giving one’s life for one’s country is one thing;
offering myself as a human shield, should any danger threaten you, my
darling—well, that is a horse of a different color entirely.”
Emily only just noticed that it was getting almost too dark
to see—but according to the grandfather clock standing next to the wall, it was
only three in the afternoon. She glanced outside.
“Speaking of a different color…” she muttered.
The world outside seemed bathed in a brilliant green hue. It
was as if the Technicolor television had leaked out into the real world, and
somehow the colors weren’t quite what they should have been. The light summer
breeze had quickened into gale-force winds, and the shutters flapped hard
against the latches holding them open.
Henry and Emily raced around, pulling shutters closed and
latching them.
Emily grabbed the last pair and slid the window shut after
them, but something at the edge of the wide, green plain caught her attention.
“Henry… what is it?” she asked.
The clouds seemed to take on a life of their own. They
danced and shifted, building and swirling and reaching down in a long column. A
streak of lightning obscured their view, and the immediate report of thunder
cracked like a cannon standing right beside the house. When Henry and Emily
looked again, an enormous twister had formed overhead, a dark, swirling mass of
cloud that seemed as if the storm was trying to inhale the ground beneath it.
Emily felt Henry’s grip on her shoulder tighten.
“Get to the storm cellar, Ems,” he said quickly, shoving her
toward the door.
In that instant, the door suddenly blasted open, and a
powerful wind swept into the house, knocking dishes off the walls and sending
the knickknacks flying from their shelves. Emily nearly tumbled backward at the
velocity of the air heading for her. She cringed and threw an arm around her
face in terror.
“Henry!” she squealed. “Henry!”
She felt his hand grasp hers, and the two made for the front
door again.
A flash and a bang, and suddenly Henry was pulling her
backwards as branches scratched at her outstretched hands. Emily clutched at
him and tried to see what had happened.
An enormous tree had fallen right onto their porch. The mass
of foliage completely blocked the front of the house—which had been their only
route to safety. Their storm cellar was safely hemmed in by concrete, situated
right on the edge of the foundation—but what good was it if they couldn’t reach
it?
Emily’s knees buckled and Henry gently guided her into a
sitting position. They cowered on the floor, listening to the ominous roar of
the massive tornado getting closer and closer, watching as one by one the
windows shattered. Soon the glass would be spraying right toward them…
A roar of a quite different sort soon interjected itself in
the midst of the roar of the tornado. The Browns could only stare in
astonishment as the thick, weathered blade of a chainsaw protruded from the
mass of branches. A few more thrusts and jabs, and a pair of hands poked
through, parting the bracken to allow the appearance of a head, followed by the
rest of a body. A lithe young woman wearing sturdy trousers and a leather
jacket scrambled into the house. Her brown hair was swept back into a ponytail,
and her brown eyes were ablaze with a determined and fearless light. She nodded
to the traumatized couple.
“Looks like you folks could use a hand getting to the
cellar!” she said brightly.
“Who are you?” Henry demanded.
The young woman smiled. “They call us storm-chasers, see.
People like me read the sky like most people read the newspaper; it tells us
what’s coming. We watch the wind like most people watch the moving pictures; we
get to know what different signs mean and watch what the weather does. Now I
had word of a tornado that was due here, so I happened to be watching when you
two went into the house, and when the storm kicked up and you hadn’t come out,
and then the tree fell—well, I figured you might be needing my help.” She
picked up her compact, portable chainsaw and started it up again. “Care to
follow me?”
Emily and Henry Brown stood up and instinctively huddled
close to this strange, dauntless woman.
“What’s your name?” Emily asked in a quavering voice.
The woman smiled at her. “I’m called Dorothy,” she said.
“Stick with me, and we’ll make it through all right.”
Previously in This Series:
#8 "The Siren Song"
#7 "After All" ("Soul Mates" Part 4)
#6 "The Fairies' Keeper" ("Soul Mates" Part 3)
#5 "Soul Mates" (Part 2)
#4 "Inside The Impact Zone"
#3 "Soul Mates" (Part 1)
#2 "The Artist's Wife"
#1 "Red of Morning"
#7 "After All" ("Soul Mates" Part 4)
#6 "The Fairies' Keeper" ("Soul Mates" Part 3)
#5 "Soul Mates" (Part 2)
#4 "Inside The Impact Zone"
#3 "Soul Mates" (Part 1)
#2 "The Artist's Wife"
#1 "Red of Morning"
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