“I was getting gas at the Conoco,” says [Charles] , “when somebody ran out and told everybody to get inside. I left my car there and ran next door to the apartment. I got inside right before it hit. Brother, I never seen nothing like it.” He stares at my dad, and I see fear welling up in his eyes, about to burst out at any moment. “I got nothin’,” he says. “I got nothin’!”
“Now that’s not true,” Dad tells him. He puts both hands on Charles’s shoulders. “You’re family’s OK. You’ve got everything. It’s just all in front of you now.”
Witnessing apartment residents emerging from the rubble of the Joplin tornado, Hailey Kelly describes the scene. She writes that trucks "pickup trucks sail through the underpass with their hazard lights flashing. People in the beds of the trucks hold on to injured people. Most are wrapped in blankets or towels." She says the people "parade out like zombies." Then, Hailey recognizes one of the zombies, Charles: Based on a true story, Out of the Wind is a novel about the 2011 tornado in Joplin, Missouri, available from Amazon and for your Kindle device.
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AuthorD. Ed. Hoggatt is an award-winning fourth grade teacher. Click Titles to Order Now
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