"Perspective"

by: Scot A. Westlake Sr. ( Black Horse )

copyright 1989

     "Oh Dear God, just let my family be all right! Let all this have passed right over them unharmed! Please let them be safe and warm!" I pleaded as I headed down the highway. The same highway I have traveled to and from work for three years was now a horrible scene of destruction. Trucks tossed like forgotten toys lying on their sides, tires still spinning, as if in a feeble attempt to right themselves. Cars flipped over onto their roofs rapping the terrified passengers in the blackness of the moments of terror. The highway was gone, covered with limbs, pine needles and debris from what minutes before had been a trailer park. Traffic stood still, as if frozen in the panic of not knowing what to do. So, I pulled into the emergency lane to get past, with my exit in sight. Police cars, ambulances, and fire trucks everywhere sorting through the madness. "Has the world gone crazy, this cant be happening," I thought to myself. It had only minutes before I was at work laughing with my co-workers about closing the store early because the power had gone out. It knocked out the phones also, but when the power came back on, so did the phones. "Im gonna call home and make sure everything is all right," I said, feeling confident since everything seemed to be back to normal. But, when I called home I got a fast busy signal. It didnt sound quite right, so I called my neighbor across the street. I got the same fast busy signal. "Thats it," I thought, "something must be wrong out there. Ive got to go." I called out as I ran out the door, my throat tightened with fear. "Be careful, dont have a wreck," they called out after me, "theyre probably fine."

    "Should I take the highway or back roads home?" I wondered as I jumped in the car. But, there was no decision to be made. The highway would have to be a faster way to my family and could be the difference between life and death if indeed the worst had happened.

     It had been the fist time I can remember in my life hearing the weatherman say we had dangerous weather headed our way. Storm warnings, tornado watches, and warnings, but never dangerous weather. My heart was in my throat as minutes passed like hours. It was a mile before my exit when the highway just stopped and the devastation began. "How powerless we humans are," I realized, in a way as never before, "and how small." It was both exciting and terrifying. It was no longer true that we humans rule the earth, the truth was all around me. The earth only tolerates our presence. All that we are, and think we are. All we accomplish the monoliths we build to last forever simply fade and crumble to dust in our earths infinite aspect of time. The love that beckons me home to my family, is the one true worth we humans have and hold.

     Men stood by the side of a car across the median. It must have flipped over several times only to come to rest on its crushed roof, no escape for those inside. Their whole world turned upside down without a moments notice by a grinding rendezvous with death. Down on their hands and knees illuminated by hundreds of car lights the men strained to see through the twisted metal that was the cars roof.

     I could see beams of light going up into the clouds and treetops from a half dozen vehicles thrown off the highway into ditches. And, now, just up ahead, another truck laid on its side as if broken and wounded. As I passed the cab of the truck cautiously, I saw its windshield smashed and spilled out. Bundles of something half in and half out of the windshield finally came into focus as my brain realized it was the driver of the truck. My eyes didnt want to admit to what they saw. One lone man stood above him doing nothing. There was nothing to be done. The driver was half in the truck and half under it.

     At the edge of this theatre of war stood what was left of the pines that thickly engulf the highway. Sheared off as if by cannon fire, six foot from the ground, one and all. Sentinels of shelter and beauty for the mobile home Park, blown off the face of the earth to protect no more.

      The ramp of my exit was filled with emergency vehicles of all kinds. The same exit as the mobile home Park. I rolled down the window in the driving rain on the passenger side. "Ive got to get off at this exit." I said, knowing my only alternative was a twenty-mile detour and God only knew how much time. "We got a bad fire and a lot of power lines down up there, and trees everywhere," he confided. "You have to take exit ten."

      As I drove, all I could think was that this murdering storm could have cut a path anywhere it wanted at random. The mayhem I had already witnessed was a mere mile away from my family and now I had to drive ten miles in the wrong direction and ten miles back. I could only see twenty feet in front of the car. The darkness of the storm seemed to absorb the cars headlights. Lightning was flashing like a slow strobe light, flashbulbs illuminating the highway and the cloud choked sky. I knew it was coming again. I could feel it in some forgotten primal way, and I knew there wasnt much time.

    Finally, as I got to my detoured exit, a feeling of relief came over me as I noticed the power was on at the highway-side gas stations. A quick trip down an access road, and I was back on my way towards home. The lights in the houses were aglow reassuringly as I said to myself "Well, the powers on here, maybe its on at home and everyones all right." But, visions of the terror I had seen minutes before stuck in my mind, and deep down I believe I expected the worse. Then, five miles from the house, all the power was out again. "This looks bad," I thought. "The tornado must have passed right through our neighborhood."

     I realized, suddenly, that I hadnt seen any other cars on the road for miles, no sign of life anywhere. Not even a barking dog. "Where the hell is everybody hiding?" I questioned. But, as soon as the words left my lips, I knew the answer in the pit of my stomach. I had been so concerned with whether or not the power was on at home. I had completely forgotten the storm. Everyone was indeed hiding and the reason swirled angrily above me. Everything seemed so unreal. The charcoal black clouds were boiling, frothing, and moving as if in a time lapsed film. "Oh, Great God Almighty," I screamed, as I looked up. I had never seen such a torrent as this. It was trying to reach out and grab me. I thought about putting the car in the ditch alongside the road, getting out and jumping into a ditch myself. But, I was only a few miles from getting home, and this monster was following me there. My foot hit the floorboard before my mind had time to think. Barreling down the road at seventy-five miles an hour, and looking out the rearview mirror nearly the whole way home. The storm chewing up the road behind me. I didnt see or hear the ambulance til it was right on top of me, hurtling down the road as fast as me, only from the other direction. Lights flashing, and sirens whaling it appeared from nowhere and was gone in an instant, headed toward what I was running from. "Good luck," I thought, "youll need it."

      My neighborhood was fine as my headlights searched the darkness with every turn. Not even leaves were blown out of the autumn trees. Just dead quiet, dry streets without a soul in sight. As I pulled up into the driveway, safe, but frightened faces peered through the open window. "Daddys home!" was my greeting from my two eldest gave in unison, and my wifes face appeared in the window.

       The storm is over now, the highway cleared, and the rebuilding has already begun. Like a fire that sweeps through the forest burning down the old and making way for the new. After living through it, its difficult to believe so much will come from something so terrible. But, the greatest of all renewing is that which takes place in the heart. The material things which become more and more important to us just fade away as you pull up your driveway in the dark, and you realize the most beautiful thing youve ever seen is three smiling faces in a candlelit window.