The Brilliant Blue Elephant

        It was only June, and already the temperatures were in the nineties,
the humidity high enough to make you gasp for air.  My overnight bag sat beside
me on the front seat.  The shoulder strap flapped in the moist, stiff breeze
cutting through the car windows as I sped along Interstate 70, bound for Ohio.
Ahead, the sky was bruised with storm clouds leading the charge of an
approaching cold front.  I drove through flat countryside, peppered with
Baltimore's outlying housing developments.  Ahead, the first ridge of the
Appalachians stood dark and misted on the horizon.
        The sky's bruises spread into a black, boiling mass of thunderheads,
and I switched on the headlights.  The first drop of rain was so big that I 
jumped when it smacked the windshield.  More drops followed, so I cut my speed
and turned the wipers to intermittent.  I was practically alone on the
interstate this early on a Saturday morning, and the sky was changing again,
from charcoal to black-green, the clouds losing definition through veils of
rain ahead.  The news on the radio crackled and hissed to claws of electricity
raking the mountaintops.  My fingers danced across the presets, stopping when
I found a weather report in progress.  Tornado watches had been posted in the 
current and surrounding counties, and there had been unofficial reports of a
funnel cloud spotted only ten miles to the west.
        I rolled up the windows just in time.  Rain poured fiercely, obscuring
the road.  The brakes were sluggish, and I felt the terror of being unable to
stop when you can't see more than ten feet in front of yourself.  I pulled off
to the shoulder and switched on the flashers, rain hammering the roof loudly,
wind rocking the car.  Hail stones mingled with the rain, bolts of lightning
shearing branches from a tree, orange sparks spit outward and fallen to the
ground.  The hail stones became huge, and I shielded my face as chunks of
knobby, milk-white ice deflected from the glass.  A baseball-sized stone
appeared from nowhere and cracked the windshield, inches from my face.  I
prayed, to the God I hardly knew until things turned from bad to awful.  This
time was different, though.  The sky's energy was malevolent, taking aim and
destroying the trees around me.  I asked God to spare me, to let the storm
pass and leave me uninjured.  The shattering hail ended more suddenly than it
had begun.  Rain fell in sheets, rippling in driving gusts of wind, and I
lowered my trembling arms, clearing my face enough to see out the window.
Crisp tears of thunder marked more lightning strikes, some of them occurring
three at a time, as visibility improved and I could see at least a quarter
mile ahead.  As with the hail, the rain stopped in an instant, and the wind
fell from a gale to a whisper.  I opened my eyes, and I'll never forget that
moment for the rest of my life.
    A huge, long thin object, bright white, smooth-sided, hurtled through
the black sky.  My first thought was that an airplane had fallen in the storm,
but my vision found the squarish corners, the lack of wings and tail.  No, it
wasn't an airplane.  I recognized it, about a half second before it struck
the road and exploded into a thousand pieces -- a mobile home.  And above the
thud, the shattering of windows, the scraping of aluminum on asphalt, the
splintering of fiberglass, an immense cloud of debris filled the sky.  To my
right, just beyond a small hill, a thick column of black soot and dust churned
across the ground.  It was a massive tornado, probably a half-mile wide at its
base, the surrounding cloud twisting madly, cracks of electricity pocking the
earth.  The ground shook gently, the air humming, rumbling with power, but not
so loudly as I had expected.  A veil of rain obscured the cyclone as it veered
further off to the right and behind the hill.
        The pulverized mobile home lay before me, lampshades taking flight
from the wreckage into the wind-ripped sky.  Chunks of wood, perhaps window
frames, pieces of a table and chairs, skidded across the road and came to a
stop in the grass.  A china cabinet was the tallest thing left standing, its
sculpted wooden top proclaiming dominion of the crumbled home like a church
tower above a town.  I unbelted myself, my trembling hands unlocking the door
and opening it slowly.  Several more huge, swirling thunderheads bore down
from the west, and I wondered if more cyclones were approaching.  I ran along
the shoulder, toward the pile of smashed wreckage.  There was a couch stripped
of upholstery, one armrest pulverized to splinters.  An old television lay
beside it, the pale olive screen punctured by a wall stud.  Ceramic fragments
lay about the china cabinet, the broken glass of one hinged door tinged with
red.  I touched the edge gently and brought the stained fingertip to my tongue,
tasting the salted metal of blood.  The cracked walls of the mobile home
dominated the wreckage, fiberglass insulation poking from inside like pink
cotton candy.
        A Fisher Price phonograph lay at the far end of what was once the
living room.  Brightly colored record albums lay scattered about it.  I knelt
down and found Mary Poppins, Sesame Street, Mother Goose Fairy Tales.  These
toys were old, the record albums collectibles in today's digital age.  Then
the bedroom, with a single twin bed with a Smurfs blanket, half a dozen toys,
including Barbie dolls stripped of hair and clothing, lying on the floor
amongst wet leaves and tree branches.
        Another car skidded on the wet pavement, a door opening and closing as
I stood above the shattered remains and fought back tears.  I wondered whose
blood had edged the china cabinet glass, and my search became frantic, as I
grabbed onto sharp edged chunks of debris and lifted them free in a search for
a child amidst the remains.  A young man dressed in a checkered shirt and
coveralls joined me.  Without a word, we lifted sections of wall, cleared
blankets, magazines, tabletops, chairs, rain-matted clothing, but we didn't
find anyone.  More vehicles arrived at the scene, and soon a dozen of us dug
through the wreckage, working free the morbid curiosity that one or more
bodies lay within the mobile home.  By the time emergency vehicles arrived,
consisting of several State Police cruisers and a large ambulance, I was numb
with rain and cold, the sky gone from black to gray.  The police reported that
the threat of serious storms had passed.
        The tornado was the most severe ever recorded in this part of Maryland.
It had cut a swath of destruction through half the county.  There were
confirmed deaths, at least ten in a mobile home park where the tornado had
plucked trailers from the earth.  I told the police what I had seen, and by
then I was a raw nerve, hungry, thirsty, in need of the restroom and a hot
meal.  The windshield was covered with leaves, so I went for the trunk where I
kept a roll of paper towels.  That's when I saw the toy, sitting just below
the back bumper.  It was a stuffed animal, a brilliant blue elephant, face
hidden beneath the rear of my car.   I lifted it from the ground and noted its
water-logged heaviness, the black button eyes, the smile curled to the right.
The baby blue trunk was twisted into an "s", the elephant's tail velvety, legs
stiff despite being covered with plush fur, footpads textured with pink fabric.
For some reason, I felt the need to keep the toy.  I dropped the animal into
the trunk and cleaned the windows with paper towels and a snow scraper brush.
The engine started without a hitch, and I reversed my course, joining the
caravan of vehicles switching from westbound to eastbound at a turnaround very
near the wreckage.
        Once on the interstate, I noticed a Channel 5 News Van, its roof covered
with satellite dishes and antennae.  The van was a hundred feet in front of me
and preparing to exit the highway.  I'm no disaster chaser, nor someone 
fascinated with the morbid, but I couldn't resist following the van.  They
were most certainly heading toward the areas most heavily damaged in the
tornado.
        High winds had torn free tree branches, and the power company was busy
with saws and men on cherry-pickers restoring downed lines.  Around a sharp
turn in the  road, we both dodged a huge fallen tree, blackened branches still
smoldering from lightning.  Just past that, a huge swath of woods was covered
with four-foot-tall tree trunks, snapped like matchsticks in the middle, all
branches and leaves sheared off.  The swath meandered across the hills,
continuing for miles into the distance.  It looked like a gigantic lawnmower
had just razed the forest on its path of destruction.
        Trees ahead flickered with red, white, and blue lights, and I pulled
over, a policeman up ahead directing the news van to park in the grass.  I
locked the car and set off on foot, then remembered the blue stuffed elephant.
Something told me to bring it along, so I did.  The policeman up ahead stood
between two large firetrucks, lights flashing, white strobe lights flickering
to the roar of diesel engines.  I walked on the opposite side of the firetruck,
and he never saw me.  Ambulances, rescue vehicles, and police cars covered the
road ahead, as well as the shoulders and the grass on either side.
        The scene I confronted was chilling, my stomach churning with anxiety.
Dozens of large homes had exploded ferociously from the inside out.  Walls and
parts of walls lay on the ground, blown outward from intact foundations.
The tornado had removed roofs from houses, some torn to splinters, others
lain gently to the ground, all shingles intact.
        Life seemed surreal, as neighborhood residents and rescue workers picked
through the debris.  The sounds of chainsaws throughout the neighborhood 
reminded me of a hive of angry bees.  People wept as loved ones were carted
off on stretchers toward waiting ambulances.  I continued down the road in
search of the damaged trailer park, threading my way between parked emergency
vehicles, their radios squawking.
        A German Shepherd was running along the road, a torn leash trailing
behind it.  The dog sniffed the roadside, whimpered, barked at vehicles when
the radio suddenly came alive with beeps or human voices.  He appeared to
be searching for someone or something.  I followed him and listened to his
breathing, the rapid sniffs, the sudden snorts.  The wind blew against my back,
and the dog stopped suddenly in his tracks.  He spun around and raised his
muzzle, folds of moist black muzzle flesh analyzing the air.  He yelped and
charged me.  I froze, my legs stiff as the dog pawed me, licked me, then began
to tousle with the brilliant blue elephant.  He was a huge dog, a strong
animal, thick tail snapping back and forth as he yelped and drooled over the
stuffed animal.  He sniffed every square inch of the toy, then stood down and
barked.  The dog spun in a circle, then trotted off, watching back over his
shoulder as he went, stopping every so often, turning back and spinning round
again, trotting some more.  He was enticing me to follow.
        "Come on boy!" I said, and the dog trotted more quickly, swollen pink
tongue quivering along the right side of his mouth.  We plunged into the woods,
tree branches shedding cold raindrops upon us as we slipped into the green
glove of leaves.  Then a path of debris became evident, some shreds of clothing 
and wood fragments.  A rushing stream sounded above wind whistling through
tree branches, leaves sighing, pine needles slicing across each other.  The
dog stopped up ahead, and I drew up beside him, before a swollen stream,
overflowing its banks and laiden with brown silt.  The stream cut against the
top edge of a ravine.  An oak tree, stripped of all but a couple of branches,
had fallen in the storm, its huge black root ball crawling with insects beside
me.  The trunk was lying horizontally above the stream.  A child was crying,
screaming, so I spread the pine branches which obscured the far side of the
stream.  There, a foot above the mad, foaming water, a little girl dangled
from a tree branch.  She looked to be two or three years old, her small
coveralls tangled in a branch which had nearly torn from the tree trunk.  She
struggled to free herself from the branch straining against her weight.  Her
tiny feet kicked frantically, inches above the rushing water.
        The branch was about to tear free, and the child would plunge into and
perish in the swift current.  I thought of running back for help, and just
then the branch bent further to the sound of splitting wood.  In another minute,
she would be gone.  As the dog hopped back and forth along the shore, I climbed
onto the tree trunk and slowly stood up.  Balance was difficult, the tree trunk
wet and slippery.  I placed each foothold carefully placed, but I didn't have
much time.  The girl saw me approaching, and she reached out, her face pink and
soaked with tears, coveralls and underlying clothing torn and soaked with
water.  Blonde hair was matted to her forehead and right cheek.  Her wide, dark
eyes were glued to me, and she kicked harder, wailed more loudly.  I had never
felt such a sense of urgency in my entire life.  Despite the swollen stream
and the slippery trunk, her life was all that mattered to me.
        When I got within a few feet of her, I knelt down and wrapped my 
outstretched hands around her belly.  Lifting her was tricky, because of how
my balance changed with her weight in my hands.  The tone of her crying
changed, now less frantic as I stood erect and brought her to my chest.  She
wrapped her trembling, cold arms around my neck, her cries loud and
disorienting.  I turned around and walked calmly along the tree, at last
reaching solid ground.  The little girl released her grip and stood on her
own, the dog nuzzling her, licking her face, jumping, hopping as if in
rejoicing.
        She found the brilliant blue stuffed elephant, which I had dropped
to the bank without a second thought upon seeing her near death above the
rushing waters.  She hugged the animal and smiled, her face warming as we
started back through the woods.  She didn't appear to be injured, but I took
her at once to the nearest ambulance, where a woman with minor injuries was
being loaded onboard.  I explained what had happened to the medic, and suddenly
I heard a woman cry out behind me.  Turning, I saw her, patched with bandages,
her hand wrapped in gauze as she rushed toward the little girl.  They embraced,
the girl crying, the woman closing her eyes and holding the child tightly
against herself, tears streaking her face.
        "Thank God you're okay," she repeated.  "I thought we lost you, baby.
Thank God!"  The child reached down toward the stuffed animal, and the woman
picked up the toy for her.  "Where did you find Sammy the Elephant?"
        I stepped forward and introduced myself to the woman, who I learned
was the girl's mother.  The child's name was Christina.  She thanked me for
rescuing her daughter, and then told me what had happened.  The two of them,
along with the family dog, had been watching television together when a severe
thunderstorm struck the neighborhood.  The house began to shake violently, and
the roof was torn free, sucked into a huge tornado.  The funnel sucked
her daughter from her grasp and into the tornado.  I realized that it was by
incredible coincidence or the grace of God that she had landed in a tree,
which had then fallen, slowly and gently enough to not crush her beneath the
trunk.
        "I found the stuffed animal over a mile from here, on the interstate.
Your mobile home came crashing down in front of my car, and the animal landed
next to my bumper."
        The woman looked puzzled.  "We weren't in a mobile home," she said.
"We lived in a two story house."  The tornado must have dropped both the
mobile home and other sundry debris on and about the interstate.
        The woman stroked the stuffed elephant's trunk.  "Sammy is her favorite
toy," she said.  "How did you find Christina?"
        "Your dog led me to her."  It was then that the awesome synchronicity
of events both of us, the forces of fate and chance which had brought us
together.  In another minute, her daughter would have been swept to her death.
The dog, the stuffed toy, the smashed mobile home had all played a part in her
rescue.
        I hugged Christina and bade them farewell, then returned to my car and
drove until I found the mobile trailer park.  More than fifty mobile homes had
once stood here, homes for dozens of families.  Now, upon the wet, flat ground,
all that remained were fifty rectangular concrete pads, marked only with broken
water and sewer pipes.  The destruction here was so complete, and I had to
leave, fearful that I was being disrespectful of those who had died.
        I knew I would remember this as the summer of destruction, of death,
of a new chance at life.  It was the summer of the brilliant blue elephant.