What Stands in a Storm (8 page)

A supercell was born.

11:30 A.M., APRIL 27, 2011—TUSCALOOSA, ALABAMA

On Fifteenth Street, inside a small brick building that contained a thrift store, a few offices, and a tiny lobby with a sliding glass window, Danielle Downs took the last decorations off the gray walls of her cubicle, one of two squeezed into the office she shared with a graduate student from Huntsville. Without the Mardi Gras beads and the banner of purple, green, and gold fleurs-de-lis, the cube felt empty and soulless. Today was her last day of work at Temporary Emergency Services (TES), the field placement requirement to graduate.

The last semester of her college years had ticked away here, from eight to five, four days a week. TES was a small nonprofit that served the poor, providing bread, clothes, diapers, and occasional help with the power bill. Of all the jobs Danielle had held in unbroken succession since high school, this was by far her favorite. An unpaid internship required by her program, this was the last stop before graduation. She had fallen behind the rest of her class, which had completed field placement last semester, but her professors had granted Danielle a special extension to help her graduate with the others.

In these four months Danielle had found her element at last and flourished exactly as her professors had hoped. Her confidence bloomed as she proved to them—and more important, to herself—that she had every bit of what it took to be a great social worker, even
if that didn't translate to her GPA. At last, a test she could pass with honors. Danielle felt relieved and a little sad.

When the morning storms rattled through, they came loud and hard, and the skies above 31 Beverly Heights had shuddered with awful thunder. Danielle had bolted awake at 5:13 a.m., emerging from the fog of sleep with the distinct thought that someone had put a strobe light in her room. She blinked into the flashes until her eyes adjusted.

Nah, just a ton of lightning,
she thought.
I am soo tired of these stupid storms!
The thunder even woke up Loryn, who on top of being a very sound sleeper was worn out from a four-to-midnight shift waiting tables at Baumhower's Restaurant. The sky was still flashing at 5:20 a.m. when Loryn realized she was hungry. Danielle, within hollering distance down the hall, happened to be trolling Facebook, too.

Even though Loryn had a good weather app, she usually forgot to plug in her phone at night, and now the battery was so low that the app didn't work. She felt scared enough to call her mother and wake her up around 5:30 a.m. Her mother was always the first one she called, and they spoke at least once a day.

“Mama, pull up your weather app and see what the weather's like.”

Ashley Mims woke up in Wetumpka, Alabama, looked at the radar on her phone, and saw a small polygon—the area of possible danger for this tornado warning—passing over Tuscaloosa.

“Baby, it's just a little triangle,” she said. “It should be over in just a few minutes.”

Danielle had always enjoyed the symphony of a thunderstorm. When she was younger, she would sit on the front porch and watch
the light show dance across the sky while her sister, Michelle, ran inside and cried. Something about today was different, though. When she went to work at 8:00 a.m. as usual, she obsessively watched the weather.

She had also checked on others all day. She called her mother, who was working at a part-time job with the Army Corps of Engineers in Huntsville. Terri Downs was an air force wife—independent, capable, and not easily scared. Her voice was low and raspy, with a hint of a Cajun accent and a matter-of-factness that some people mistook for gruffness.

“Are you safe?” Danielle said.

“Yeah, we're in the Federal Building,” her mother said. “They built it pretty good.”

In truth, the building felt downright flimsy and Terri swore she could feel the walls shake every time a colleague walked down the hall. But Terri didn't want her daughter to worry. That was her job.

“I want you to be safe, too,” Terri said. “Go to the library—you said you always felt safe there.”

But the sky outside looked innocuous, and Danielle's boss did not seem worried. Clients were streaming into TES at the regular pace. So Danielle just kept an eye on the TV in the lobby, where James Spann was making noises about more storms coming.

Early in her internship, Danielle had been browsing in the TES thrift store when she had found a poster of Rosie the Riveter that she couldn't pass up. It assured her: “We can do it!” She kept the framed eight-by-ten on her desk, with its good message to remember on the hard days. And there were many hard days.

Life had taught Danielle that no situation is ever as simple as others think, and she was cut out for this job better than most. Understanding other people's problems was her special talent. Some days she felt like a therapist, nodding into the phone as a single mother
unloaded her burdens on the other end. With others who were more reserved, Danielle could tease out pertinent details by asking the right questions. Helping others made her happy, which everyone noticed.

Danielle had an innate talent for bridging the gaps of race and education to connect with her clients. And she knew what it felt like to struggle, especially with money and the limits of minimum wage. She had watched her parents stretch their military salaries to care for their aging parents, and she understood that even when you work hard, life throws curveballs that can set you back.

As noon approached, a coworker suggested going out for a farewell lunch to celebrate Danielle's last day. So they drove the twenty minutes to Southland Restaurant, a Cottondale meat-and-three not far from the Wingate hotel. On the drive, the sky was leaden and brooding, with sudden gusts that whipped the trees.

At the house, Loryn Brown was cramming for the Spanish final she was taking at 6:00 p.m. It would be her last exam at Shelton State, capping off her associate's degree in time to transfer to the University of Alabama in the fall. Her father, Shannon Brown, was an Alabama football hero, and with her looks, bubbly personality, and Crimson Tide pedigree, she had a potent package for a career in sports broadcasting. Her dream job was to work for ESPN. A little more than a week ago, she had launched her own personal sports blog, the Lo Down. The blog's icon was a hot-pink sequined football, which matched the color of her room.

The youngest of the three girls who shared the house, Loryn had just turned twenty-one a few weeks ago in March. For her birthday, she and a group of friends had taken the train to New Orleans to spend St. Patrick's Day in the French Quarter. They had paraded her down Bourbon Street in a rhinestone tiara and a pink pageant sash that announced
BIRTHDAY GIRL
.

The weathermen were talking about afternoon storms in a way
that made Loryn nervous, so she called her mom again. It was lunchtime, and the weather wasn't due to get bad for another couple of hours. Ashley Mims had begun to pack a bag and told Loryn she'd gather her younger sisters and brother and they'd all come to Tuscaloosa. But Loryn, watching TV, was afraid of all those storms forming across the state line.

“It's already getting bad in Mississippi,” she said. “I don't want you driving.”

“Baby, it's not that bad,” Ashley said. “I'll get to Tuscaloosa before it gets bad.”

“No, I don't want you on the road.”

“Okay, we'll wait here. But I'll come later if you want me to.”

“No, Mama!”

This went on for twenty minutes. Loryn won.

“Just call me if you hear anything else,” Loryn said before they hung up.

“I'm gonna run to town,” her mother replied. “I'll call you back.”

Ashley stepped outside the house and felt sunshine on her face as she walked to the car. In Wetumpka, the weather was beautiful, but about a hundred miles northwest, in Tuscaloosa, the muggy air seemed ominous. The wind felt shifty, as if it couldn't decide which way to blow. Loryn hoped her Spanish exam would get canceled, because she did not want to leave the house in this weather.

On the bright side, Will Stevens would be coming over soon.

Danielle's good friend from high school, Will was tall and athletic, with a strong jaw and dark brown hair that hung just above his hazel eyes. A small-town boy raised on a farm next door to his grandparents, he was quiet at first meeting, but when he finally opened his mouth, he usually made people laugh. At twenty-two years old, a senior in college, he was not embarrassed to admit that he called his mama every day at 1:15 p.m., right after she got off work.

Will had been a three-sport athlete at Priceville High: quarterback, forward, and pitcher. Six-foot-two and 170 pounds, he didn't
have enough meat on him to play college football, and he looked custom-built for basketball, but it was his pitching arm that won him a full-ride baseball scholarship to Stillman College in Tuscaloosa. At the historically black college, he found himself a minority for the first time in his life, a new but not unpleasant experience that only enlarged his ample circle of friends. Some of the guys there referred to him fondly as Mr. Quiet Optimism.

Will would graduate in ten days with a history degree and move back to Priceville to coach high school baseball. He would move back in, temporarily, with his parents, who managed around five dozen beef cattle on the family farm. On a recent visit home he had told his high school coach, only half joking, “I'm coming home to take your job.” This was not a surprise to anyone, least of all the coach. When Will was a high school freshman, that same coach had asked his team to write on a sheet of paper where they saw themselves in ten years. Will wrote:

Probably teaching and coaching a sport
.
Or being a broadcaster on TV, or hopefully on ESPN.

Will was the same age as Danielle's sister, Michelle, who had been his homecoming date the year before she met Clay, her fiancé. In the formal photo Will wore black trousers, a Hawaiian shirt with black and tan palm fronds, and an oddly serious expression. He had been trying to hide the jawbreaker in his mouth.

Danielle had poor luck with boys herself, but she loved matchmaking and considered Will perfect for Loryn, given their farm upbringings and ESPN dreams. They would make a good-looking couple as well, with their dark hair, tanned skin, and hazel eyes. One rode a tractor; the other a horse. Will had helped deliver his first calf when he was two years old. Loryn loved barrel racing.

Will regularly came over to fix Danielle's car and always turned down their offers to pay him for the work. Instead, they fed him and let him do laundry. They would play Xbox games and eat pizza while the drier rumbled. Not long ago, Danielle had called him to help a
guest at the Wingate, a young lady whose car would not go. After fixing her car, he pumped her gas, and the three of them went out to dinner. When the young woman asked how she could pay him back, he said, “Let me take you out.” She said yes.

But that was before Loryn. There was something special about this girl. Even his family remarked that she was just the kind of girl who would have caught his eye.

“They just looked like they went together,” Will's mother would tell her friends.

They had been out on a date but were taking things slow. As pretty as she was, Loryn had not had a serious boyfriend yet. She was waiting for the right one to come along rather than suffer dates with fools. Will had felt the sting of heartbreak and was in no rush. But Will had mentioned Loryn to his younger sister. And Loryn had told her mom about Will.

Will joined the girls often for movie night—he loved popcorn and Harry Potter—and he had been spending more time lately over at the house. After her last-day-at-work lunch, Danielle glanced at her phone and saw his text.