Defiance

A Great Story by Emily Guzman, ACSTL Member

Getting off of the interstate and onto highway K, I felt like I was looking for something. Destruction. Havoc. Some sort of sign that this was the area that a tornado had come through.

I'm from Florida and honestly I have never had any experiences with tornados...water spouts sure, once or twice, they're pretty cool to see off of the coast. But never a tornado. Watching storm chaser's jackets wiping in the wind as they appear before these massive dark cornucopia of chaos and disorder, raging winds and stolen fence posts...but still it doesn't seem real.

And for miles highway K was fine. Just a regular state highway passing by green ways and super fund sites, and the only high school around. I kept looking at the ground, believing a little too much in the cartoonish idea that I would see a literal path carved out of the dirt.

It was the trees.

Or rather the lack there of that truly showed me what tornados can do.

What were supposed to be tall and wide cypress were but mere candle sticks in the wind, oaks on the ground, pines who's tops were no where to be found. The sides of houses ripped off in the choosiest way, whether it be the section of roof that used to cover wood working materials or the side of the living room revealing the recently decorating Christmas tree that still stood. The random 2x4s staked deep into the earth or several feet through the siding and out of the bedroom closet. Birds and mice crushed under the weight of their now toppled over homes. The one neighbor's chicken coop that was now a tree house, while across the lane the other neighbors chickens were just fine.

No house was the same. No person touched by the storm will be the same.

The thing that held fast were not the 100 year old hand smithed nails, or the concrete dens, or the sheetrock homes.

It was the community. The folks that came out immediately to lend a hand to their neighbors. Who were also hit by the storm, but lent a hand for those that were hit even harder.

So strong and unbending. Unyielding.

Defiant.