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The Tornado

Charles Wiegand

    Robbie crawled on his hands and knees through the damp grass in the backyard, and then he stopped. He gazed intently at something in the grass. The knees of his white dress pants stained green. The toes of his best shoes also turned green. Whatever it was that had his attention had all of it and nothing was going to distract him from it.
    “Robbie! Where are you? We have to get going!” His mother, Abby, shouted as she hurried to get everything ready for the big day—his cousin’s wedding.
    “Robbie! Robbie! Come on! Let’s get going!” She rushed from room to room in the house and didn’t find Robbie anywhere.
    “Mom, let’s go! We’ll be late,” Julia stood at the front door, impatient, tapping her toes, “Where’s the little turd?” Robbie’s older sister yelled, “Come on!” She didn’t want to be late for her cousin’s wedding; this was something she’d been looking forward to for months.
    “We will, sweetie, where’s your brother? I can’t find him,” Abby said as she looked in the pantry.
    “I don’t know, was it my turn to keep an eye on him?” Julia spat back unintentionally harshly.
    “Julia, that wasn’t necessary, look in the backyard, please,” Abby said as she looked in the garage.
    “Oh, jeez! Mom! He’s in the backyard crawling around in the grass! And his pants are all dirty and stained! Great! I can’t believe it! Now we’ll be late, for sure! Hey! Robbie, get your little butt in here right now!” Julia shouted at him, but he ignored his big sister as he usually did. “Robbie!” Julia walked out to him, grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, yanked him up onto his feet, and dragged him into the house.
    Abby couldn’t believe what she saw when she saw Julia drag him into the house, “Robby! Look at your clothes! You’ve probably ruined your pants! Dear lord, Robby, what were you doing? Now go into your room and change your pants. Put on the other white pants, do you hear me?”
    Robbie walked nonchalantly down the hall and into his room, “Yes, Mom, I hear you.”
    Julia yelled at him, “Hurry up, you little urchin!”
    A minute later Robbie made it to the front door to his waiting mother and sister, wearing black jeans.
    Abby looked at him and threw her hands up, “I give up, Robbie, you’re impossible! Now go get in the car, and don’t touch anything on your way there.”
    Robbie bounced down the three steps and across the yard dragging his hands through the hedge on his way to the car. Then he wiped his hands on his shirt, smearing dirt across the front of his white shirt. He got into the car and the others hadn’t yet noticed this new mess.
    When they arrived at their cousin’s house and got out of the car Robbie’s Aunt Mary met them at the curb and the first thing she noticed was Robbie’s shirt, “Robbie, what do you have all over your shirt?”
    “Oh, nothing much,” was all he said as he ran to the house to find his cousins to play with.
    Abby was about to say something but Aunt Mary wrapped her arms around her and said, “I’m so glad you could make it, come in! I’ve missed you guys so much!”
    Abby replied, “We’ve missed you, too, Mary. We’re here, it wasn’t easy, though.”
    The wedding was to be a small ceremony in the backyard. Everything was set up and ready—the chairs, covered in white linen, were in neat rows, and decorations and colorful lights hung over the yard. It was beautiful and perfect.
    The yard was decorated for the wedding. The gazebo was for the nuptials and behind them, the wedding cake, wine, punch, and glasses were on a white-linen-covered table. There were light curtains on the sides of the gazebo, and more flowers hanging down the sides and lining the floor. At the opposite end of the white runner was an arbor fully enveloped in white and red flowers.
    Aunt Mary sent the children to the basement to play video games and stay out of trouble. But the kids decided it would be more fun to play in the backyard. The backyard was quite large, but with 11 kids, it wasn’t large enough. And with all those colorful decorations...
    While the adults were busy mingling in the house, the teens talked and caught up on one another’s lives in the guest bedroom. The children got busy doing what children do, generally causing mayhem, and this particular environment gave them many opportunities to do just that.
    Angus, one of Robbie’s cousins, suggested, “Hey, let’s play hide-n-seek!” Angus was the first to be ‘it,’ so he started counting to 50. The other children found hiding places among the chairs, under the table, and a couple of them tried to crawl under the gazebo. They didn’t all fit under there.
    Angus yelled, “Here I come!” and away he went! Chasing after the other kids, pushing aside a side table with a white cloth and dishes of candies and found one little girl, then he ran through the chairs, like a bull in a china shop. He found another of the youngsters trying to hide under two chairs. He pushed the chairs aside and tagged him. One of the children under the gazebo jumped out and ran for safety but in avoiding being caught, he managed to knock down the arbor. It crashed over some nearby chairs. Before long, the last of the kids were either found or safe back at the base.
    This time it was Rosa’s turn to be ‘it’. She counted to 50. The others quickly found hiding places, most of which were within the wedding area. It wasn’t long before just about every row of chairs was no longer in straight rows. The curtains were laying on the ground around the gazebo, and most of the flowers were scattered all over the yard.
    Rosa gave up and yelled out, “Tag! Let’s play tag!”
    Then the others came running out of their hiding places and started running around Rosa. They teased her and tempted her to tag them, and in the process scattered chairs in every direction.
    One of the parents inside thought he heard some noise coming from the backyard so he excused himself from the others and went to look out the kitchen window. He stood there in shock at the sight of 11 children running amok making a shambles of the chairs and, well, everything.
    He called out to the other parents, “Hey, you guys, you gotta see this!”
    He swung open the dining room French doors and all the parents stepped outside, then stopped and stared at the disaster that looked like a tornado had blown through the backyard.
    Abby immediately yelled, “Angus! Angus! Get over here, right now!”
    Angus said, “Mommy, I didn’t do anything.”
    Ron yelled, “Rosa! Rosa, get your little butt over here!” Rosa walked up to her father, her head hanging down in shame.
    Another parent yelled for her kid, and another, and another, until they had all of the children rounded up and corralled in the living room.
    By then, the teens had gotten wind of something exciting happening in the backyard. They went to see what the ruckus was about. When they saw the backyard a couple of the younger teens couldn’t help but laugh, then immediately stopped when they received some very bad looks from their parents. One mother slapped her kid on the side of his head.
    Aunt Mary started to cry. Julia’s cousin Deborah, the blushing bride, was now the color best described as furious red and had tears streaming down her cheeks.
    The men walked out into the yard and started untangling chairs, strings of lights, strings of flowers, and the runner. Several of the mothers also went out to help. Two of the teenage boys picked up the arbor and managed to Gerry-rig it so it would stay standing.
    Two moms and one dad took the children to an unused room and stayed there to watch over them. The room was empty, the kids had nothing to play with, no TV, no videos, nothing. They sat on the floor in a circle with only one thing to do—look at each other and think about what they had all done. In total silence. There wasn’t a smile to be seen.
    It took only an hour or so and the men and a couple of the women had the disaster returned to some semblance of what it was supposed to be.
    Aunt Mary took a deep breath and announced, “It’ll have to do.” She gazed at the rows of chairs, many of which were not exactly in their original shape; the arbor was missing its strings of flowers; the gazebo with only about half of the light strings left hanging on the sides, and no curtains. The runner was not in the best of condition but one of the women straightened it out and put it back in position for the nuptials to walk on.
    Cousin Deborah cried, “Mom, it’s a disaster! My wedding is a disaster!” She cried on her mother’s shoulder.
    “I know it’s not perfect, sweetheart, but what can we do?”
    Julia hugged her cousin and said, “Those kids are monsters, we know that, but it’s going to be a beautiful wedding anyway. Don’t let those little shits ruin your day, okay? We need to focus on you, make this the best day possible for you.”
    “I love you, Julia,” said Deborah, “You’re better than a best friend.”
    About twenty minutes later, the groom, Richard, arrived with his father. His mother and sister were already at the house and had helped in setting everything up in the morning, and again after the tornado.
    Deborah ran out into the front yard to meet Richard. She wrapped her arms around him, cried, and said, “Oh Richard! I’m so glad you’re here!” She kissed him many times and held onto him so tight he almost couldn’t breathe.
    “What’s the matter, babe? Are you okay? Did something happen?”
    Richard’s sister, Anne, blurted out, “Did something happen? Damn yes, something happened! Those stupid brats! They ruined everything!” Right then their mother took Anne by the hand and led her back into the house where they sat down and Anne cried on her mother’s shoulder.
    “What happened? The kids did what?” Asked Michael, Richard’s father.
    “Come on, we’ll show you,” said Julia.
    On the way to the backyard, Julia and Aunt Mary brought the two men up to date on the happenings.
    Upon seeing the carnage that used to be the wedding ceremony Michael asked, “Wasn’t anybody out here with the children?”
    “All the younger children were downstairs playing video games. Well, they were supposed to be down there. The teens were in the guest bedroom, talking. We all thought the older kids were with the younger ones, and the teens thought some adults were watching the kids, and it turns out nobody was with them,” said one of the other mothers.
    Richard said, “Wow, um, it looks like you cleaned it up pretty good, considering it looks like it was hit by a tornado.”
    There was a moment of silence among the little group standing together looking at the scene before them, and then they all broke out in laughter.
    The women inside the house looked at them as if they were crazy, “What’s so funny? There’s nothing funny about what happened! How can you laugh at that? Look at it! It’s a disaster!”
    One of them replied, “Yeah, looks like a tornado of kids passed through.”
    The women started to take that in, the image of those children going wild out there in all that white, all those flowers and lights, and what they must have thought.
    Eventually, the wedding proceeded and it went perfectly. Well, almost perfectly, two chairs collapsed under the people who sat in them, one of which was the bride’s mother, Aunt Mary. She hit the ground with a thud, the minister stopped, everyone looked at her, and she did the only thing she could do—cross her legs, rest her hands on her knees, smile, chuckle, and give the minister a nod.
    And of course, throughout the entire afternoon of fun and frolicking, the photographer had been quietly snapping photos of everything that happened. When they reviewed the photos, they found a few included scenes through windows and the French doors, and the children in the backyard.
    When it was all over someone asked, “Hey, where’re the children?”
    Panic suddenly hit them all with thoughts of a house destroyed from the inside. Two of the moms ran into the house, it was clean and in order. They hurried down the hall and opened the door into the room where the children had been jailed. They found the kids still in a circle, asleep.

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