Them Bones

Leake IV

Sunflower was in labor and there was a hell of a storm coming.

We just don’t have weather like that in the time I come from. The sky had clouded up late in the afternoon. A huge black thunderhead covered the whole southern sky by dusk. The top of it flashed silver and purple with lightning even before the sunlight faded. It must have been forty kilometers away when it formed. It was moving slowly and majestically toward us.

We were hearing the thunder by the time the midwife came and shooed us out. A flash of lightning made the sky white. Torches were lit down at the plaza.

‘What’s up?’ I asked Took-His-Time.

‘People are going to pray to the Woodpecker God,’ said Took. ‘Lightning tends to hit the village.’

‘Oh? Should we go down there?’

‘I can pray just as good here. Sun Man’s in fine form without me.’

There was a high moan from Sunflower in the hut.

‘Let’s get a little farther away,’ said Took.

‘Are you worried? I am,’ I said.

‘It’s in the beak of the God,’ said Took. ‘Tradition says I shouldn’t be in earshot, though, or he may be born deaf.’

We walked farther toward the plaza. Some of the Buzzard Cult people were standing in the doorway of a hut, looking toward the storm, not moving, not saying anything.

The thunder came in a continuous rumble, the cloud a constant pulse of lightnings. I saw bolts dancing beneath the cloud over the notches in the palisades. The smell of ozone came to us wetly.

‘Soon the Buzzard Cult people will start dancing to call down the thunder,’ Took said.

‘Why would they do that?’

‘They revel in death even more than we do,’ he said. ‘They invite it. It’s their way.’

‘I don’t think this storm will need any help,’ I said. The sound of the thunder was like a kettledrum being beaten just in front of us.

I looked out past the wall and the burial mounds, the dried fields. The woods, lit by the coming storm, began to rock and bend. Wind and water smacked me in the face.

Lightning bolts sizzled beneath the cloud, walked across the sky, boiled inside the thunderhead. Thunder smashed at us.

There were torches in front of the temple mound, and chanting I couldn’t quite catch through the wind and the noise.

‘Let’s go to the big mound,’ said Took.

People ran by, heading for the plaza. We ambled down that way, going instead to the big mound that had once been used for burials on the east side of the courtyard. We sat down.

The wind was whipping the straining woods. The thunder was as loud as a 155 going off next to your ears. The cloud leaned over us. A ragged wall cloud spun around, its top nearly touching the trees. The undersides of the clouds were green and purple.

‘We’re going to get hail,’ I observed, needlessly.

Took had one of his unfinished pipes out. He could have worked on it by the continuous lightning. I couldn’t keep my eyes off the storm.

Over on the plaza Sun Man was atop the temple steps. Thatch from hut roofs blew across like long snow. Torches went out.

The cold wet air hit us like fists. The hail hitting the River and the trees beyond sounded like an animal gnawing on them.

Lightning struck the palisade to the east. Thunder sounded like hot grease thrown on ice. Fist-sized hail started bouncing around like batting practice at the Astrodome. We got off the mound just as rain crashed into the village.

We made it to a hut belonging to Took’s cousin, along with a few other relatives. The wind shrieked, rocking the mud-wattled walls. We stood in the doorway, looking out. The plaza was a deserted blur. There were a few torches under the eaves of the temple showing where everyone ran.

Lightning hit a hut across the village, setting the roof on fire in a screaming explosion. Hailstones strobed in the flashing light, like a sky filled with Christmas tree ornaments. The white sky went away and fires sprang up. People pulled others from the burning hut. One of them was hit with a hailstone, then the hail quit and the rain came in flat level sheets.

Thunder crashed. I thought my sphincter would open. Part of the hut we were in blew away. Rain came in lumps. We ran around inside bumping into each other and getting things up off the wet mud floor.

Then two things happened at once:

I saw the midwife and Sunflower coming between the huts, towards the plaza, carrying something.

And lightning hit the temple, exploding it.

People screamed and ran toward the temple mound, Took with them. I ran toward Sunflower.

The lightning was horrible. We could all be hit anytime. The wind and rain mauled us. I was soaked in a few steps. If the hail hadn’t already stopped, I would be dead.

Flames lit up the night between the lightning bolts. The whole top of the mound was afire. Men were climbing up the temple walls, across the roof, cutting lashings, throwing handfuls of mud and dirt.

I reached Sunflower and the midwife. Sunflower looked up at me, the rain washing her face in streams. She and the midwife held a covered bundle between them. They said nothing. They didn’t have to.

Between thunderclaps I could hear Sunflower crying softly.

More lightning hit the village, a real explosion of flying sticks scattering in the air toward the north wall.

Now the Buzzard Cult people were dancing in the middle of the plaza, standing in one place, rocking back and forth on their feet, chanting some tune to themselves, not helping with fighting the fire or pulling people out of their huts.

Rain pressed us down. The whole roof of a hut gave way and sailed like a tumbleweed through the plaza, missing everyone. Wails and moans were starting all over the village, with real names, not ritual ones. People were getting hurt, crushed, burned, maybe killed.

I reached out and took the limp bundle from the midwife. I pulled Sunflower to me by the shoulder. She was weak, shaking. I guided her toward the temple mound.

Up on the mound they had some of the fire out, and most of the stuff was outside. People were still running around, Sun Man directing them to other parts of the village to fight other fires. He yelled to the women to get baskets and jugs and bring them back. Everyone was outside the huts now, oblivious of the rain and the lightning.

Then we heard the rumbling like a freight train coming through the forest to the south, the sound of tearing trees rising above it.

Through the lightning I could see a low wall cloud.

Then the rain stopped, like a faucet turned off.

The roaring grew louder. Lightning flashed deep within the cloud, and we all saw the tornado hanging like a fat anaconda from the ragged clouds, heading straight for the fields and the village.

Through the roaring tornado I heard other things. In the stillness of everything else I heard a cricket chirp, and rain dripping from a roof. I heard someone’s feet run through a small puddle. I heard the crackle of fire from the temple roof. I heard someone across the village say the word ‘basket’.

Then the roaring became louder, like a volume knob being slowly turned up.

I started Sunflower up the temple steps.

‘I can’t go up there,’ she said.

‘Yes you can,’ I said, and pulled her.

She came with me.

Everyone was transfixed watching the tornado tear up the trees. There were lightning flashes, but the thunder was drowned by the echoing roar.

The twister looked like a sideways S. Lumps that were trees, alligators, fish, boulders flashed and disappeared around its outside. The bottom was a haze of airborne garbage. Trees leaned in toward it from all directions, tearing away in the drowning roar and being sucked into the funnel. My ears popped.

Someone saw us.

‘No,’ they said. ‘No!’

We had reached the top step. Sunflower, me, the dead child. I turned facing the tornado and held the bundle up over my head.

The screaming tornado reached the edge of the fields, ripped up leaves and dead vines, heading for the south wall.

I held the baby up as high as I could. Nobody tried to stop me. The lightning was a purple dance around the tornado funnel. The landscape looked like it would through the bottom of a Vick’s Salve bottle.

The tornado lifted up.

It left the ground, broke contact with the dirt and debris, just outside the south wall. I felt my hair stand up. It was dark for a few seconds. The lightning quit for the first time in two hours.

Then a huge flat sheet of light enveloped everything. Up above my head, past Took and Sunflower’s dead child, I saw it.

The tornado hung. I could see inside the funnel, straight up. I tingled from fear and static electricity, my hair glowing. The tornado roared above us, moved to the north majestically, as if a moving cliff hung over us, upside down. It roared louder, set down to the north of the fields, tearing up the woods again, moving toward the River.

Thunder fell. A gentle rain started, cool and slow. Lightning still played but the thunder got lower, farther off. The last of the flames went out on the broken-down temple.

Took came to us, put his arms around Sunflower. I lowered the baby, went back down the steps. The only manmade sound in the village was that of the Buzzard Cult dancers, who had stopped only at the first appearance of the tornado.

The midwife was gone when we reached the plaza. Some of Took’s relatives joined us at the bottom of the steps.

From up above on the mound, Sun Man started a chant of thanksgiving, which everybody except Took and Sunflower and I joined in.

Before we reached our hut, stars were peeping out to the west.