Since with all my soul I behold the face of my beloved,
therefore all the beauty of his form is seen in me.
—Gregory of Nyssa
I opened the bolt of my door to my beloved, but he had
turned aside, and was gone.... I sought him, and found him not:
I called, and he did not answer me.
—Song of Solomon
The tornado that scoured nearly two-thirds of the town of Croy off the map passed into legend almost before its last deadly tendril snaked back into the roiling Oklahoma skies. It was given many names: The Wild Herd or The Wild Horse Tornado, named for a herd of horses said to have been scooped up by the winds and then flung down upon the hapless village of Heald in a bloody bombardment moments before the town itself was flattened. Some contend that "Wild Horse" is just a mishearing of "White Horse," since most of the towns leveled by the twister were along the White Horse River or its tributaries: Heald, Dibble City, Croy, Pesogi, and the western half of Tyrola, where the White Horse empties into the South Canadian River. But towns miles from the river and spanning over three counties were also savaged: Midland, Nelson, Vamoosa, Hisua, and, its northernmost victim, Daggs Valley. It was reported in the Croy Evening Call that local Indians were calling it Crazy Woman Wind, but later investigation revealed that "crazy woman weather" was simply how Osage Indians described the weather in their part of the world, with its tendency to turn everything inside out on a moment's notice.
A group of graduate students from the University of Oklahoma at Norman studied the debris trail and mistakenly concluded that a single tornado could not have wrecked so much or such wide-spread havoc. They declared there must have been at least five and possibly seven separate funnel clouds, and dubbed the phenomenon the Cross Timbers Outbreak of 1935, since the damage path stayed entirely within the cross timbers country of Oklahoma. The Oklahoma cross timbers were renowned for their dense, shrubby woods, where a single tree could take more than a day to fell and wear out ten men and two axes in the process. The Cross Timbers Outbreak cut through the copses and woods of the region like a fire ax through butter. More than forty years later, reanalysis of the data would reverse the earlier interpretation and conclude there had been but a single vortex, at times stretching nearly a mile wide and reaching wind speeds of up to 278 miles per hour. By then, the storm had settled into people's memories as the TriCounty Twister. But however they named or described it, using science or legend, they all aimed for the same goal: to cap the unimaginable with something the human mind could grasp. No one who lived through the events of that day was ever comforted by these efforts, or ever doubted that they had been in the grip of a malevolent and implacable entity. They knew, deep in the blood of their bones and the wire of their nerves, that their escape had had nothing to do with belief, or understanding, or goodness at heart. They had been lucky, that's all.
Some of the towns along the twister's path never recovered; even the foundations of their once-proud buildings have disappeared into the Oklahoma red clay. But the town of Croy held on. Within days, as the outside world gradually became aware of their plight and aid trickled in, the stunned townspeople began scraping their community back together. The tornado left deep wounds. In some cases, whole families had been reduced to a roster of the dead pasted to the county courthouse wall; for many, a life's worth of work was reduced to rubble. All the evidence that Croy had been a busy and productive town, if not overly prosperous (few towns at that time were)—the homes, schools, meeting halls, churches, and stores that made up a community—all had been torn apart and twisted into unrecognizable debris: splinters of wood and glass and shattered bricks, all needing to be disposed of, hauled off to a huge dump constructed with blunt efficiency for that purpose by the Army Corps of Engineers and manned by troops from the 45th Infantry, many of them local boys with relatives of their own to bury. A bonfire burned on the site for ten weeks, consuming felled trees, broken walls, dead livestock. In town, construction and repairs slowly began closing the gaps in the rows of homes and businesses, but many empty lots would never be filled, many families never again be whole.
Peculiarly, the Negro quarter, shabby and flimsy on the far side of the White Horse River, had been untouched by the storm, its salvation an irritating puzzlement most folks didn't care to think about. Aid came from there first, traveling by cart over the footbridge near the Oldfield farm. On the near side of the White Horse, the town's main brick and stone buildings had escaped mostly intact: the county courthouse was still there, though its belvedere was gone; the Alquist mansion, rising like a beached ship among the flotsam of its shattered neighbors; St. Elizabeth's, the Catholic church, with its steeple miraculously intact; the squat but sturdy Santa Fe depot, a Romanesque dwarf fortress done in native Oklahoma sandstone. People took some comfort in the survival of these markers of the town's existence. They rose above the ruins like a promise, proof that Croy was still alive and would grow again to fill the valley of the White Horse. As the ruined past went into the dirt or coiled its way into the smoky sky, the lucky survivors buried their grief and the unbearable shame of their good fortune and got on with their lives.
But not all the wounds could be healed, nor all the wreckage cleared away. For decades, the sycamore and magnolia trees lining the streets had a peculiar, sheared-off look, as if the entire town had been pollarded at once. The perceptive child who asked about this was answered with silence as his elders turned and looked away to the southwest, their gaze fixed and unfocused, lost in a time when the sky turned green and a wedge of black darker than pitch had boiled up out of the earth itself and filled the horizon, devouring the hopes and dreams of a generation in less time than it took to cook an egg.
And there were other scars, too. Lerner Alquist never did get the dirt out of his skin. Running wild through the streets of Croy at the height of the horror, shrieking the name of his already lost wife, he had been sandblasted by the frenzied sky as it overtook and nearly swallowed him. He emerged in the dead calm aftermath so thoroughly covered in mud and debris that the first person to come across him mistook him for one of the Negroes from over the river, blown clear across town by the storm. From that day forward, blue-black specks peppered his face, making it hard for people to look him in the eye. But that was nothing new to the redoubtable Alquist, who glared at the world as if it were a construction project about to fail inspection. To him, the twister had been further proof of the inadequacy of God's grace. The death of his beloved Ada was an insult, a grievance as much as a grief. He vowed he would make it up to her.
And so he showed up at the first meeting of the Town Council after the devastation with plans in hand and a strategy for making sure they were adopted. The Council was not particularly glad to see him.
Bennett Pautler leaned over and hissed loudly into the Mayor's right ear, "Are we going to have to go through this again?"
The Mayor sighed. "He's on the agenda, Bennett. He has a right to speak."
"We have a shit-load of work to do here, Mayor."
"I am aware— "
"I agree with Councilman Pautler," Lisle Armbruster piped up, loud enough for Lerner Alquist to hear him plainly. Nevertheless, Lerner stood patiently before them, rolled-up plans tucked under one arm, the faintest hint of a smile creeping up the left side of his face.
"Mr. Alquist is next on the agenda," the Mayor said firmly to the members on either side of him, "and Mr. Alquist has the floor." He gestured to the tall, gaunt man whose face was a map of what the town had been through.
"Thank you, Mr. Mayor," Lerner said, letting the smile drop. "I'll make this brief." He shifted the papers to his hands and looked down at them a moment, then said, "Gentlemen, where are we?"
There was a pause. The Mayor said, "I beg your pardon?"
Lerner shrugged. "Where are we?"
"You call this brief?" Pautler muttered aloud. Even the Mayor's patience was tested. "Lerner, you know perfectly well where we are. We're in the city records store room."
"Correction, if you please, Mr. Mayor," Lerner said. "You are in what is now the city records store room. But that was not its original purpose."
"Oh, here we go," Pautler said.
"You all know this basement was originally dug as the foundation for the town's library," Lerner went on.
"Yes, yes," the Mayor said. "Lerner, this is old history. We all know how disappointed you were when that New York outfit decided not to fund the library after all, due to," he glanced right and left around the table, "a certain lack of financial commitment on the part of the town, and," here he leveled his gaze at Alquist himself, "what the good folks in New York called 'excessive and extravagant decoration unsuited for a free library in a town of this size.'"
"We're not some charity case just because we nearly got blown off the map!" Pautler declared.
"We're not going to be slapped down like that again," Armbruster chimed in.
"Gentlemen, please, order," the Mayor insisted. "Lerner, a library is a fine thing, and I suppose someday Croy will have one, but— "
"But what good is an encyclopedia if you can’t eat it?" Pautler said abruptly. The Mayor raised his gavel but Pautler charged ahead. "I'm sorry, Mayor, but we've got bigger fish to fry. We can't be talking about stocking up on children's books and ladies' journals and building monuments to our great success when our own citizens, our neighbors, and, yes, even some of our family and kin are without food or water or a fit place to live. And some of them don't even know what's become of their own sons and daughters, their parents or their wives." He stopped then, aware he may have crossed a line, and looked quickly at Lerner. Everyone knew what had become of Ada Alquist.
But there was not the burst of fury everyone expected from the town's fiery citizen. Instead, he nodded calmly and said, "Exactly." The council was completely silent. He had their attention now and he knew it. "Food is on the way, thanks to the kind folks and help nearby." The councilmen did not look at each other. Victuals were showing up at church halls and the VFW on a regular basis; no one ever mentioned where they came from. "Nearby" was as close as anyone would ever get to saying, "from over the river, from the Negro quarter." Alquist continued. "The Corps has the water system nearly repaired. And bricks and plaster, walls and windows can be replaced. But people cannot."
He swept his arms around him to encompass the entire room, the huge basement that was the only part of the elaborate library that was ever built, now nearly full of crates and boxes, filing cabinets, broken office furniture, and, for the moment, the Town Council.
"Gentlemen, we are in one of maybe half a dozen below-ground shelters in the entire city of Croy, perhaps the entire county, and the only one on municipal property. Look around you. How many people could have safely sheltered here? How many could have ridden out the storm and emerged unscathed to rebuild the town? And how many did?"
He looked from face to face, and now his own face darkened. "You know the answer. None. And you know why. Because the building above it was never built. Because it had been turned into a warehouse, a dumping ground for fading records and broken typewriters, commodities we deemed so precious that we locked them up lest someone creep in and steal them. For what? For scrap? I don't know. But I do know many good people in this town, those with sense enough to seek shelter, came pounding on those doors above us, and when they did, they found them chained and shut. And some of them, many of them, have not been seen since."
Pautler sat silent, his face red with fury, but speechless. Armbruster was ashen. The Mayor wiped his mouth. "Lerner, what are you saying? How would a library— "
"An ark," Lyle Armbruster said, gazing bleakly before him. Lerner was the first to grasp the metaphor and immediately saw its advantage. "Yes," he said, "an ark. To weather the storm."
"That's... that's preposterous,” sputtered Pautler. "You couldn't fit the whole town in here.”
"No," Lerner admitted, "not the whole town..."
"A hundred," the Mayor said thoughtfully. "Maybe a hundred fifty."
"Closer to two," said Armbruster, breaking his reverie. "They wouldn't have to sit or lie down. Most could stand. It wouldn't be for long."
"And how are we going to pay for this?" Pautler said. "Those New York fellers ain't gonna give us a second crack."
"Who needs New York?" Lerner said. They all turned to him.
"I beg your pardon?" the Mayor said for a second time.
"Who needs New York?" Lerner said. And he stepped forward to the table where the Council sat and laid out the rolls of paper before them, and along with them, his plan to finance the main construction with his own money, and how subscription and fund raising would finance the rest once the building was up.
There was haggling. The stumbling block before had been Alquist's insistence on a grand scale and elegant ornamentation: two stories of stacks and reading rooms, columns out front and in the central rotunda, iron scroll work, a dome with skylight, fireplaces and mosaic tile floors, all things that had led the eastern Foundation to reject the original plan. Would he accept the Council's decisions on reducing the scale? He would. Would he hire only local workers for the construction? He would. Could he guarantee an independent foundation with sufficient funds to see the project through to completion? He could, if he had to mortgage his own home to do it.
In the end, the Council seemed to be satisfied.
"So," Bennett Pautler said, "instead of an Andrew Carnegie Library, we get the Lerner Alquist Library."
"No!" The vehemence of Alquist's denial took them by surprise. There was thunder in his face. "Not mine! Not my name!" He looked at each of them in turn, furious, but saw only bewilderment and incomprehension. "Not mine," he repeated again, softer. Surely they could see why. When they still said nothing, he said, "It's meant to be a memorial. A memorial to..." And suddenly, he could not go on. He had meant this to be the clinching argument, knowing what sentimental old fools these men were at heart. But when it came to saying it out loud, he suddenly found he had no voice. To speak her name would be to admit what he could not face.
The Mayor nodded slowly, understanding. "A memorial to all those who lost their lives in the storm. A fitting tribute that both honors their memory and looks to a brighter future. Lerner, this is just what the town needs." But Alquist was shaking his head, his jaw working but no words coming out. "Is that not what you meant, Lerner?" Bennett Pautler asked. "A memorial for all the town?"
And then the Council saw something they had never seen before and would never see again. They saw doubt on the face of Lerner Alquist. He seemed to be staring right through them, and when he spoke, there was a hollowness in his eyes and voice as if he weren't speaking to them at all. "If that's the way you want it," he said. And then nodded as if hearing a reply, though none of them had spoken.
The Council proceeded with what other business was urgent, but Lerner Alquist left, gathering up his papers and walking up the stairs to the devastated world outside without saying another word. As soon as the sound of the outside doors echoed down the stairwell to the basement of what was now the Croy Memorial Library, the council members ceased their talking and looked in the direction Lerner had gone.
"I don't think that man is long for this world," the Mayor said.
"He's losing it," Pautler agreed. “We'd better be sure that foundation is established before there's a single contract signed or a single brick laid."
Lisle Armbruster giggled. "'Who needs New York?' I guess no one does. Not if you're Lerner Alquist, you don't. He's New York enough for anyone."
And for once everyone on the Council agreed that Lisle Armbruster had said something sensible. From then on, Lerner Alquist was known as "New York" Alquist—not to his face, of course, but since few people could look him in the face, the problem rarely came up.
Outside, the chill evening air seemed to fill Lerner's lungs and bring him back to life, as if upon emerging from that cellar he had inhaled for the first time in weeks. In truth, the air was unusually cold. The day after the tornado had ripped through town, the temperature had dropped so rapidly the rubble had been dusted with snow. It felt tonight like it might snow again.
But that was not what had brought him back to life. For one brief instant, as he was about to beat it into their thick skulls that it was Ada's Memorial—Ada's, not the whole sorry town's—she was suddenly there before him. Her face was as real and palpable as the last day he had seen her alive. And he had spoken to her, and she had nodded. And for that moment, while her face still hung before him, he was not alone.
The damp that cooled his cheeks now must be more snow. He wiped it away savagely. He would complete this project. The Council could do what it damned well pleased, it would always be Ada's Memorial. The town would see her in what he built. He would make sure of that.
It wasn't easy. Construction went in fits and starts. There was the war and the shortage of men and materials. There was the constant meddling by the Council as it cut corners, reduced ornamentation to mere function, and in general chipped away at the plan with all the tact and ruthlessness of a committee. There were the constant fund raisers as Lerner did his best to demonstrate his civic philanthropy to his fellow townspeople and cajole, glad-hand, and shame them into matching it. All the while, the land deals that funded his part of the bargain made evictees and tenant farmers of the town's rural neighbors. The steel in Alquist's eyes reflected the iron of his will, which inevitably and relentlessly replaced what was left of his heart.
In the process, he lost sight of his daughter, Virginia, who was not yet two years old when her mother was borne off by the wind and her father plunged deep into his dreams. Left much to herself, she grew up with just as strong a will as he, but pointed in a very different direction. The library project dragged on as she grew from neglected childhood, through overlooked adolescence, and into headstrong young womanhood. By the time Alquist noticed he had other resources to protect than his county-wide land holdings and other projects to oversee than the building of a library, it was too late.
Almost eighteen years to the day that the TriCounty Twister tore the heart out of Croy, a second funnel cloud touched down, but this one was a feeble cousin to the first. It did only minor damage, and most of that in the Negro quarter on the far side of the river (leading some folks to feel a misplaced sense of "natural balance"). And true to New York Alquist's prophetic vision, a hundred and thirty-five citizens took shelter in the basement of the new Memorial Library, most of them getting a look at the inside for the first time. They were suitably impressed. Knowing the town was buoyed on a crest of civic elation at having escaped a second scourging, Alquist mounted one final fundraising campaign, this time to restore an ornament that had disappeared early under the Council's artless knife. It would be a fitting crown on what had always been and would always be, in the cold center of his heart, Ada's Memorial.