Violent storms are common in the Midwest. The one described here actually happened outside a little town I was staying in almost 20 years ago. It sounded like a train, the tornado axiom, if you will, but the straight-line winds cleared a wind row to stumps and killed several cattle (and I'm sure a lot of other critters). Thankfully, unlike in my story, no one was injured that night. One Friday, more recently, I was in the shower, during a storm, when my muse spoke to me, and yes, when I looked out back, she was sitting on our boat. I just had to get this down on paper, or bits, or bytes, or whatever.

The Imperfect Storm - Charles Fornau

I woke, looking up at the underpinning of the boat, the aluminum sheets protecting the underside of the deck, with the pontoons on either side of me. Knowing it had to be a dream, I closed my eyes and went back to sleep.

“We have a pulse. Call it in. Mr. Buckley. Mr. Buckley. We’re here to help. Lie still, sir. Please just lie still.”

As I lay there, and they pulled things away, a pipe, a large shower wall tile, some electric wire, the strap from the front of the boat trailer, it came back to me. I was in the shower and heard a boom. Thinking it was lightning, I tried to hurry to finish shampooing my hair. I’ll bet my hair was still full of Head and Shoulders suds. The boat must have landed on the master bathroom. Oh, God. No!

“My wife? Where is Missy? WHERE IS SHE? WHERE IS MELISSA!?!?” I yelled so loud I hurt my own ears. I guess I went a bit bonkers. I felt a little stab in my leg and the next thing I remembered was waking up in the hospital.

There were some friends of ours there waiting for me to wake up and let me have the bad news. Melissa was gone, as were the neighbors on either side, including the two older children in the house to the east of us. Seven people, gone. Not a trace. The only thing left on the cul-de-sac was the boat lying on our shower enclosure with a huge oak tree on top of it, holding it down. Everything else was gone down to the foundations. With no warning, none whatsoever, a thunderhead, an early season supercell, they called it, collapsed over our neighborhood and the resulting two hundred and fifty mile an hour winds it caused swept the landscape clean. Five houses on ten acres, gone, save the boat, the tree, and me. The Baxters and the Johnsons had gone on a spring break vacation, together, and weren’t at home when it happened. Good. At least eight people lived. Jack Baxter, his wife and their son Johnny, and Bill Johnson and his wife and three girls all lived. Good.

Good, I thought, then collapsed into fits of crying and rage. I felt a little cool rush in my arm where the IV...

I woke again to the friendly face of my secretary from work. She’d only been with us at the company for just under a year now, but she was a nice kid and really organized. Missy thought the world of her and often called on her for help with different events and tasks involving a couple of charities we supported.

“Mr. Buckley, are you feeling any better today?”

“Hi, Mindy. No. Not really. I doubt I ever will.” She reached out for my arm and squeezed it.

“Will you let me know if I can do anything? Please?”

I nodded. “Keep our company in one piece and make sure to let me know of any problems. I can’t ask for much else. My personal life is now an absolute shambles, and I certainly don’t want my company winding up the same way.”

“OK. Please call me if you need anything. Anything at all. Please. I’ll be back tonight. What can I bring you?” I told her where to find a house key on the back patio and asked if it would be too much trouble to bring me some clothes. “Well, shit on me. Sorry, Mindy. That was stupid. They tell me there’s nothing to put the key into, not to mention the key and the rock probably aren’t there anymore. Hang on.” I thought for a second then looked up at her. “Can you go ask someone out there if I’m ever going to be able to leave?” Mindy went out to the nurses’ station to find out what she could. I experienced a wave of cold pass over me that I had only felt when coming down with the flu, like just before I got really, really sick, but I wasn’t sick, just utterly and completely scared. Afraid. Frightened. The world was now a totally unknown entity, and I was alone.

A nurse walked in with Mindy and approached the bed. “Mr. Buckley, you can probably go home as soon as we get a doctor’s clearance, but there’s been a lot of trauma in your life and they want to make sure you have some help, some support, someone, anyone, that can assist. The police stopped by and brought that bag over there. You’ll be happy to know in the corner of the basement between the big gun safe and wall, they found your wallet, a pair of earbuds, a blue paisley handkerchief, and a loaf of bread. All lying together, right there in the corner. They thought it a bit strange, but in any case, they’re over in that bag. Not the bread, but the other things.”

My wallet? A miracle. I had access to quite a bit with that.

“Mindy, get a credit card out of my wallet and if you still want to help, see if you can get me just enough clothes to get me decent and out of here. Shorts, 38 waist, a shirt, extra-large AND long, some boxers, large, and some good size twelve flip flops. I’ll get more on the way to a hotel or something.” I put my head in my hands, elbows on my knees, realizing I had nothing. The wallet being there was an absolute miracle. They can’t find the bodies or the houses, the cars were half a mile away, and my wallet was laying in the corner of the basement. Simply unbelievable. It was in the chair next to our bathroom door when I got in the shower. There’s no chair anymore, or wall it was up against, or floor it was sitting on, but my wallet was in the basement. Wild.

She got a card out, showing it to me, and after a nod from yours truly, laid my wallet on the rolling stand next to the hospital bed.

“I’ll be back in a while, sir. Please hang in there for me. Please?” I nodded again. She took hold of my forearm again and squeezed, then smiled, and left, her clicking high heels walking out the door.

My dinner was brought in, and I was able to get a bit of it down. It wasn’t terrible, just not good. The ice cream was OK, if a bit soft, and the cookie I dipped into it was definitely acceptable. Just like Missy made. Head back into my hands, more tears.

A doctor stopped by letting me know that tomorrow I would be released to leave the hospital, but he had conditions. “Mr. Buckley, you have gone through an enormous loss. Your wife, your friends, your house, your belongings, all of that, gone at once. Just gone. You need to talk to someone. Have someone with you for a while.” Mindy chose that moment to come in. The doctor looked at her, then at me. “Someone needs to be close for a while to make sure you process the loss and to help you work your way through it.”

“Doctor, could you please ask Mr. Buckley if he’ll allow me to help him.” She looked directly at me with the most helpless look.

“Mindy? Are you sure you want to waste your time with this?”

“That’s what I mean, Mr. Buckley.” The doctor was adamant. “You are alive. You need to live. From what I have heard, a lot of families depend on your business. Don’t let them down. It also sounds like this pretty young lady would like to help you through this abomination. Give it a try. Live. Keep going. There is life after tragedy, Mr. Buckley. You aren’t alone here.”

I nodded. “Mindy, if you’re sure.” She smiled and nodded.

“OK. I’ll sign for you to leave tomorrow. Any time after nine or so. I want to make sure you wake up properly one more time, here, then you can do it on your own, somewhere else. You may not have realized it yet, but the reason you went to sleep in the shower was a massive blunt force trauma to the lower left rear quadrant of your skull. The investigators think Mother Nature hit you upside the back of the head with a boat. If you want to act out and be mad and get violent with anyone, take it out on her. It was no one’s fault but hers. Do we understand each other, young man?”

I nodded, again. “Yes, sir. We understand each other. Thank you.” He shook my hand, then Mindy’s, and walked out.

She walked over to me and handed me a bag. Exactly what I wanted. She even had an eye for the colors I would have chosen, had I been choosing. This time, I could have cared less if they were red and green, but the blue shorts, gray shirt, and black and gray leather flip flops, did the trick. And didn’t look bad, either. Neither did the three pack of blue, black, and gray knit boxers. Pretty much what I would have bought for myself.

“Thank you, Mindy. You already know me that well? The colors and all?”

“We’ll see, Mr. Buckley. We’ll see. I just want to help. If you’ll let me, I just want to help as much as I can. Can I sit with you for a while?”

“Don’t you have… A boyfriend or anything to be with, Mindy?” I almost asked her about her family, but thought better of it, just in time. When I hired her as my personal assistant and secretary, Missy and I asked her about her family. Her parents and brother perished in an apartment fire in Iowa. She now lived in a mobile home, all she could find that she could afford, for now, because she’d never set foot in an upper floor apartment. She might visit, but probably not, and she certainly wouldn’t ever live in one. The fire didn’t start in her parents’ apartment, but it was from the floor below and before there was enough of a warning, the apartment was engulfed and incinerated. I thought ‘how eerily similar’. So sudden. So fast. Her tragedy, and now mine; families gone, in an instant.

“No, Mr. Buckley, I don’t. You keep me too busy for that kind of foolishness, and anyway, good men are hard to find. I’m not looking, but even if I were, they are very hard to find. What I really want is to make sure that the person who gave me a chance to succeed in life, finish school, and become something my parents would be proud of, was taken care of after this… This horrific event and comes out on the other side in one piece.”

That was a preview of The Imperfect Storm. To read the rest purchase the book.

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