Night of the Twisters

Dan and Arthur turn on the TV when they get back to Dan’s house. When Dan goes into the kitchen for a snack during a commercial, he sees the window curtains blowing straight back into the room. His mom, who is sewing a dress for Dan’s grandmother in the kitchen, asks him to close the window. He grabs some crackers and heads back to the living room in time to hear the TV announcement warning of severe weather. Dan’s mom rushes into the room and expresses her relief when she hears that the funnel clouds aren’t in the immediate area, although they are close. She still seems worried as she looks out the window, commenting on how dark the sky is. Dan asks if they need to go into the basement and she says not yet. Arthur tries to reassure them that tornadoes move from southwest to northeast, which means it should steer clear of them, but Dan still feels uneasy. He knows he and his mom are wishing his dad was home.

Dan and Arthur keep watching TV, but Dan is distracted. He has experienced several tornado warnings in his life, but they’d never amounted to more than a barn roof being damaged. Dan’s mom goes to the kitchen to try to reach Aunt Goldie and Mrs. Smiley to check on them. She can’t reach either, so she decides to head over to Mrs. Smiley’s. She instructs Dan and Arthur to put a flashlight and blanket in the basement bathroom and head down with Ryan if the sirens start. She assures them everything will probably be fine, but Dan’s dad would be upset if they don’t take the siren seriously.

After Dan takes the items to the basement bathroom the sirens start going off. Dan refers to it as “a very sobering sound” with “its own built-in chill factor” (46). He realizes his grandparents won’t be able to hear the sirens where they are, so he calls them. The connection is bad, and he isn’t sure if anyone can hear him. The sirens suddenly stop for a minute, giving Dan a brief feeling of relief, only to start back up again. Dan heads down to Ryan’s room to take him to the basement but sees him sleeping peacefully and decides to wait a few minutes. By then he figures his mom will be home anyway. Just then, the lights start flickering and Arthur tells him in a panic the radio suddenly lost reception. The TV is blaring the message “CD” (49), which Dan explains to Arthur means “Civil Defense Emergency” (49). They hear a sucking sound coming from all the drains in the bathroom and kitchen and feel a pulling at their ears. Arthur tries to head out the door, yelling he must get home, but Dan pulls him back and says they must go to the basement immediately. The lights go out as Dan is heading to Ryan’s room.

Dan tries to get Ryan out of the crib, but he’s caught in the mobile above his bed and it’s too dark to see how to get him out. Dan calls for his mom knowing she isn’t there. He decides to yank the entire mobile off the ceiling, then runs to the basement carrying Ryan still entangled in the mobile. Once in the basement bathroom, Arthur shines the flashlight on Ryan and Dan frees him from the mobile. Arthur still insists that he needs to go home, but Dan tells him the tornado is here and throws a leg over him to stop him from leaving. Everything becomes silent and the sirens stop. Suddenly, the furniture upstairs starts moving around and crashing into each other. The windows smash upstairs and they feel a sucking sensation as if being pulled off the floor.

After ten more seconds, the tornado is over them. Its sound is “the loudest noise” (54) Dan has ever heard and seems to be sitting over top of them without moving. They pull the blanket over them and huddle together on the floor. They hear a loud crack as the house begins to tear apart. The ceiling starts to fall on their heads. Dan suddenly hears his dad’s voice saying that the shower is the safest place to be and they all crawl into it. Just then, the shower door shatters everywhere. Dan starts praying as the tornado “went on and on” (55). For Dan, it feels like the world is ending. Ryan grabs Dan’s hand and puts it in his mouth, which makes Dan feel better. Dan starts crying.

After it’s over, Dan speculates that the tornado sat on top of them for several minutes, although it felt like an hour. He knows he and Arthur will never feel that level of fear again. Arthur immediately starts vomiting. It begins to hail on them, and Dan realizes the upstairs level must be gone. They all crawl back under the blanket trying to protect Ryan. Dan starts panicking over his mom, wondering where she is. He begins to cry, and Arthur angrily tells him to be quiet. Dan worries they might be the only survivors. They stay huddled under the blanket as the hail continues to come down. There is water rising in the shower and the temperature is getting colder. Dan knows they must relocate at some point. As Dan is balancing Ryan, holding onto his hands, he realizes he saved Ryan’s life. The thought makes him briefly happy, but he also starts wondering where his cat is and hopes she’s alive. He momentarily throws off the blanket and looks up into the night sky as the hail turns into icy rain.

The rain keeps coming down and everyone is soaking wet. As water continues to rise in the shower, Dan decides it’s time to move. When they get up out of the shower, Arthur shines the flashlight, and they see that the house is totally gone. All that’s left is the cement foundation and the support beams that surround them. There are books and clothes scattered everywhere. They are going to have to find a way to climb out of the wreckage with Ryan. They begin in one direction, only to find a lounger buried under other materials and objects blocking their path. Thunder starts rumbling and Dan gives Ryan to Arthur, determined to find a way out of the debris. He takes the flashlight and heads towards a pile of bricks, stepping on glass along the way. He gets cut and scraped, determining that the basement was “a stupid obstacle course—a death trap!” (65).

Dan is worried that they’re trapped and longs to have his parents with him. He also wants to find his cat, Minerva, but fears she’s gone. As he starts to cry, he hears sirens in the distance. Arthur calls out to him, telling him he thinks he smells gas. Dan rushes back to them and notices Ryan, who starts crying, is turning blue from the cold. He remembers there are towels in the bathroom cabinet and manages to find a dry one. As Arthur holds Ryan, Dan changes him into a dry towel and holds him close to warm him up. He knows they are warming each other. Arthur says he has an idea, but suddenly there are lights overhead, and Arthur starts yelling out for help. A voice calls down telling them it’s Stacey and that everyone is ok. Arthur bursts into tears.

Stacey also starts crying and tells them the Darlingtons all huddled under their big bed. They weren’t all able to fit though and Ronnie Vae was sucked out a window. Fortunately, she was thrown into the neighbors’ bushes and survived. She scopes out the situation with her flashlight and asks if Dan can climb onto the toilet with Ryan. As Stacey holds Dan’s T-shirt to balance him, Dan takes Ryan from Arthur and hands him to Stacey. Stacey directs them to the laundry room where Dan and Arthur climb out. Dan surveys the yard, comparing it to “a World War II battlefield” (71). His dad’s Corvette is upside down. He sees the unfinished dress his mom was sewing for his grandma hanging on the branch of a tree and feels like he’s “seeing unfinished dreams” (72).

Dan says he must find his mom. When Arthur suggests Stacey take Ryan back to their house, Stacey tells them their house is gone, along with the rest of the neighborhood. Dan feels slightly better, only because he knows they are all in the same boat. He isn’t alone in being without a home. Stacey tells them the police are making the rounds taking people away to a safe location, but Dan insists he won’t leave without his mom. They head off for Mrs. Smiley’s house, trying to go as quickly as they can despite all the debris. Dan compares it to a nightmare where he is trying to get away from something but is unable to move. He hopes this is just another nightmare as he observes that absolutely everything has been leveled.

They pass rubble that used to be Aunt Goldie’s house. Only a small portion of the bottom half remains. Dan hopes she wasn’t home when the tornado hit. As he starts calling for his mom again, he spots her battered car next to Aunt Goldie’s house. He runs to the car and finds it empty, although her purse is still inside. He tries to haul objects out from under the car in case she’s trapped, but Arthur and Stacey pull him back, with Arthur telling him he’s sure she made it to Mrs. Smiley’s. Just then, Dan spots his mom running towards him, calling his name. He runs to her, and they cry and embrace. His mom cries more when she holds Ryan. Dan feels that he could do without everything else, including his house, as long as he has his loved ones.

After Arthur, Dan, and Stacey explain what they went through at the Hatch house, Dan’s mom tells them that Mrs. Smiley is trapped downstairs in her house. She explains that she’d taken Mrs. Smiley downstairs and started to go back to her car, but by then the tornado was approaching. She ran back to Mrs. Smiley’s and hid under a table. After the storm passed, she called to Mrs. Smiley but gotten no answer. Just then they all see a school bus and firetruck down the street, as well as people moving around, and hope they might be able to get help. An ambulance and police car also arrive soon after. They find out that the bus is taking people to an emergency shelter set up in a Kmart. They try to tell a police officer about Mrs. Smiley, but with everyone else needing help, it proves difficult.

As they determine it might be some time before the firemen and police officers get to Mrs. Smiley’s—and without her hearing aid she might not hear them anyway—Dan’s mom decides to go back to look for her. Arthur interjects and tells her that he, Dan, and Stacey should go instead. At first, she tells them no, but when the firemen ask for volunteers, she yields. She makes them promise to stick together and head straight to Mrs. Smiley’s. As she gets on the school bus with Ryan and heads off to the Kmart, she tells them all how proud she is of them.