Free The Inner City by Karen Heuler

path—clear but brown and aching—straight through.
    The weather was changing again; they could feel the wind scraping against their eyes.
    Gina had taken Buster with her, Joey’s dog, to see Joey’s last place alive. Jonah noticed the dog dangling from Gina’s embrace, one leg thrown out straight, not able to fit in the crook of her arm.
    “He was right here when it happened,” Jonah said. “Probably looking out the window the wrong way. I mean, on the other side of the bus, where nothing was happening.”
    “It’s getting dark,” Ann Mary said. “We should go.”
    “Just clouds,” Paul said. “You know how the weather’s been lately. We could use the rain.”
    “Mom?” Gina said, pointing at where the valley was narrow. The trees were rippling.
    They all looked and paused. Ann Mary put her hand on Gina’s shoulder, gripping too hard, but Gina leaned into her, gripping Buster too hard.
    “Good Lord,” Paul whispered. His voice rose on the last word. Ann Mary squinted, leaned into the wind, and looked at her husband’s beatific face. Her heart rose, too.
    Jonah thought only of Joey, caught in the grip of the wind, and how much he had missed him already, and how impossible it would be to go on missing him.
    The wooden saw horse flew away—out ahead of them, like something jerked by a magnet. It looked like a wide, dirty cloud dipping its head at them . . . a whirlwind, a spout. It was rushing towards them and as it rushed it got broader and thicker and there was a sound—a big shout in the background of the other shouts.
    As Jonah watched he saw two thin spouts split off from the massive centre, one to each side. They tipped away from each other and then magnetically the feet of their spouts drew back in to the centre and the high wide whirling wash of it took a breath and rushed forward.
    The horizon twitched and rolled towards them and the renewed tornado bore down on them, shrieking.
    It took up leftover trees and pieces of earth; things were lifted and swirled, intact, for half a rotation and then they went to pieces, the smallest parts swinging up ahead of the largest. A mailbox from down the road faced forward, standing upright, as if it were being shooed.
    The lifting up was stunning and fast. The tornado jiggled to the right and swept up trees and a rock and a baler. Joey thought he saw birds being pulled in, because he saw things pulled in now, not just lifted up. An old boundary wall got pulled up like a carpet, and a small wood outbuilding fell apart and got swept up all at the same time, rising in pieces almost neatly disassembled. And was there a man in there too? He was sure now he could see people rotating up the wide whirl of it, some upside down, some with their arms out, as if to steady themselves. There was a dog, too, and it seemed that its mouth was moving, that it was barking, all astonished, as it was turned and disappeared. The dog hurt his heart.
    His mother started forward, then looked back at them, laughed, said something that couldn’t be heard, then faced back into it. Her hair was straight up now, blown up.
    He could barely breathe. With all that wind, there seemed to be too little air. He was afraid but he was thrilled, too. His father, bent over, tried to make his way to Ann Mary, and Gina fell over and then fell up, and the dog ran to the side and then got knocked over. His mother turned again and her face was splendid.
    His father reached an arm out to him and grinned. He was rising, that’s all he knew, and his heart, already beating wildly, beat hopefully. He reached his hand out and grabbed, feeling his father’s hands close on his. He shouted for joy. His back arced as he rose. He held his eyes open. It was glory, it was glory, it was glory.

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    I am dizzy with height, breathless. The wind up here is so strong it has fingers, fists, walls, even waterfalls in it.
    The rope—thick as my wrist—is curved like an inverted horizon. Einstein