I climbed the steps of the Hart Building, debating whether to return to my apartment or go inside and wait out the approaching storm. The quad, usually alive with students, was eerily empty. Only the soft rumble of thunder and the rustle of leaves in the oak trees in the square broke the silence.
“I don’t like the looks of this, Mrs. Fletcher.” Professor Wesley Newmark, chairman of the English department, stood on the top step studying the darkening sky. The wind elevated the few strands of sandy hair he’d carefully combed over his bald pate.
I followed his gaze. “What do you see?” I asked.
“You ever been in a tornado?”
“I thought we were north of Tornado Alley.”
“Those borders are very flexible in Indiana. Wind is coming from the southwest. From the back of the building. Probably why we aren’t seeing anything.” He squinted at me as a gust of wind spit droplets on the lenses of his glasses. He pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of his gray tweed jacket with leather elbow patches. “You’d better get inside. If the alarm goes off, take shelter in the basement.” He wiped his glasses and replaced them on his nose. “I’ve got to get to my appointment. I’m late already.” He started down the steps, hugging his bulging leather briefcase with both arms to keep the wind from catching it. A strong gust pulled the sides of his jacket back, exposing a wrinkled white shirt flapping over his generous stomach.
“Where are you going?” I called out, but the wind carried my voice in another direction. He didn’t answer, or if he did, I didn’t hear him. He hurried down the stairs and ran across the quadrangle in the direction of Kammerer House, where the English department had its offices.
I opened the door to the Hart Building. It was Saturday morning and most classes had finished for the week. A few students sat cross-legged on the floor of the hall, their books piled beside them, half-empty coffee cups in their hands. I recognized two of them and smiled as I passed. Across the hall from my classroom, a television set played to an empty faculty lounge. A message flashed on the screen:
Tornado Watch till Four p.m. This Afternoon.”
Oh, my.
A tornado was not the kind of stimulation I’d had in mind when I’d agreed to come for the fall term.
It had been cloudy, but not threatening, when I’d left my small but cheerfully decorated one-bedroom apartment to walk to campus. One of four carved from a large Victorian house, the apartment was a model of efficiency, every piece of furniture in the combination living room/dining room serving a multiple purpose. The sofa could pull out to a guest bed, the side tables contained drawers or cupboards for storage, and the chairs were on wheels so they could be easily moved to wherever they were needed. The table by the bay window would make a lovely place to serve dinner, but it functioned as a desk for now. Usually I would have worked from home, but I’d been driven out by the sounds of a rock band practicing next door, an occurrence, my neighbor assured me, that happened only once a month, when it was his turn to host the musicians.
The classroom offered a quiet sanctuary in which to work on my next manuscript; at least it would have if my thoughts didn’t keep drifting to the impending storm. After an hour of fussing with my outline and trying to dictate notes into my minicassette recorder, I decided the time had come to leave. Perhaps the band had gone home by now. Outside my window the rain had stopped, but a charcoal-gray sky promised more to come. I packed up my papers and mentally calculated how long it would take to reach my off-campus quarters. I hurried down the empty hall, pushed open the doors, and stepped outside.
A pinging noise and the sharp feel of hail hitting my scalp made me shrink back under the narrow overhang and raise my briefcase over my head. This was a novel experience. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been in a hailstorm, and certainly not one with golf ball—size ice pellets. I watched fascinated as the hailstones bounced down the stairs and rolled onto the path. Across the quad, between two buildings, was a small parking lot, and I heard the hail strike the hoods of the cars. The unmusical percussion jarred me from my reverie.
Oh, dear,
I thought.
There’s going to be a lot of damage from this storm.
The door opened behind me, and Frank, a maintenance man at the college, grabbed my elbow.
“Professor Fletcher, you can’t stay out here,” he said, tugging me back into the building. “Everyone’s already in the shelter. Come quickly. There’s not a lot of time. I’ll take you to the—”
A series of short horn blasts interrupted his instructions. Spurred by the alarm, I ran after him down the deserted hall to the emergency staircase. The thunder was louder now. Or was it the wind? I was having trouble distinguishing the source of the sound. The loud roar was deafening, punctuated by the clatter of breaking glass and crashing debris. I felt the building shake, and the hairs rose on the back of my neck.
We raced down the flight of stairs to the basement and through an open door into a concrete bunker illuminated by bare lightbulbs screwed into wall fixtures. A dozen people were huddled on benches or sitting on the floor.
“Oh, good, you found her,” someone called out. “What about Professor Newmark?”
“Couldn’t locate him,” Frank called back as he and another man hauled the iron door closed and shot three dead bolts just as something massive slammed into the metal from the other side.
“I saw him over an hour ago,” I said. “He said he was late for an appointment across campus.”
I felt a hand on my arm and turned.
“Come. There’s room on this bench.” A woman slid over to make space for me to sit.
The concrete walls muffled the blast of wind, but the iron door creaked and rattled on its hinges as if a giant were throwing his weight against the panel to break it down. A moment later the lights went out. Only a red bulb above the door remained illuminated, casting a feeble light. The rest of the shelter was steeped in darkness.
“Talk about just in time,” yelled a voice I recognized as one of my students, Eli Hemminger. “Like to keep us in suspense, huh, Professor?”
“I prefer to save these kinds of hairbreadth escapes for my novels, Eli,” I said, shivering as I realized the danger I’d been in. “But this is more like a thriller than a mystery.”
We lapsed into silence, awed by the demonstration of power beyond our concrete walls. In the dim light, there was nothing to do but concentrate on the fury of the storm and wait for it to subside. Eventually the bellowing wind passed over us, and the door, dented but still locked, stopped creaking. I heard the faint static of a radio as someone attempted to pull in a signal.
“Frank, don’t you have a flashlight?” a voice from the back of the bunker called out in the dark.
“Yeah. Hang on a minute. I’ll find it.”
He flicked on the flashlight and panned the beam around the confined quarters. “Everyone okay?”
A chorus of assents came back to him. The simultaneous response seemed to break the tension, and a buzz of conversation filled the close quarters.
“I’m Rebecca McAllister, by the way,” said the woman next to me as she put out her hand. “I teach the American Lit class.”
From what I could see in the dim light, she was a tall woman, probably in her early thirties, with the pale looks of someone who spent a lot of time indoors. She had gathered her long brown hair into a twist on the top of her head, held by a plastic comb, and wore jeans and a suit jacket that didn’t quite fit. The jacket was too large.
“How do you do? I’m Jessica Fletcher.”
“Oh, I know all about you. There was a write-up in the student paper about your coming. I have a copy if you haven’t seen it.”
“I haven’t and I’d like to.”
“I heard the department had a reception for you. I’m sorry I missed it. I just got back on campus.”
“I’m sorry you missed it, too,” I said. “It was lovely.”
“Why were you so late getting down here?” she asked. “Didn’t you know the tornado was coming?”
“No,” I replied. “When I came in today, I saw a message on the TV in the faculty lounge that a tornado watch was in effect till four. But a watch only means the possibility of a storm, not that one is imminent.”
“The watch was changed to a tornado warning half an hour ago.”
“Was there an announcement? I didn’t hear anything.”
“The public-address system is down, but the warning must have been flashing on the TV screen.”
“I’m afraid I didn’t see it. I was working in my classroom and didn’t realize anything was wrong until I stepped outside.”
“How horrible. You could have been killed.” She turned to Frank, who was working to get the door open. “Frank, why didn’t the alarm go off earlier?”
“There’s a short in the system somewhere and I couldn’t get it going. Finally gave up and went to search for stragglers. The wind must’ve jiggled the wires and set it off.”
“That should have been fixed a long time ago, along with the PA system,” Rebecca said.
“Tell that to President Needler,” Frank said, grunting as he pulled on the dead bolts. “He’s the one holds the purse strings. George, take over for me here.”
Turning back to us, Frank raised his voice to be heard above the noisy chatter. “Okay. Listen up, folks. Please keep your seats. I’m going to ask you to pretend we’re on an airplane, and I’m the flight attendant.”
“You don’t have the legs for the job, Frank,” Eli shouted.
“I don’t know, Eli: I look pretty good in tights,” Frank replied over giggles around the room.
“Cool! We can’t wait to see.”
“Kidding aside, there was no all-clear siren, so I’m guessing the tornado tore it down,” said Frank. He pulled a pamphlet from his hip pocket and held it up. “Once the door is open,” he continued, speaking loud enough to be heard in the back, “we’re going to follow the safety manual to the letter. Understood? I’ll go ahead to make sure there’s nothing dangerous on the way out of the building. There may be a lot of damage, so prepare yourselves. I have to report in to the Campus Security Office and could be a while. I’m counting on you not to move from your seats until I come back and say it’s okay to leave. Once we’re outside, you can try your cell phones, but keep in mind the towers may be down. Be patient. We’re uninjured. We’ll need to look for those who haven’t been as lucky. I know you want to help, but the best way to help right now is to sit tight till I get back.”
Rebecca, who’d been watching George wrestle with the bolts, leaned forward. “Frank, what happens if you can’t open the door?” she asked in a loud whisper.
“It may take a bit of time if there’s debris blocking it, and I may need some extra muscles to help out. But we’ll get it open.”
“But if you can’t?”
“Don’t panic
now,”
Frank said, laughing. “The storm is over. Everyone in the state knows we had a tornado out here, and they’ll send help. Campus security will be counting heads and they’ll find us. Okay?”
“Okay,” she said, not sounding as though she meant it.
After a short tussle, Frank and George managed to draw back the bolts that held the dented door closed and pushed it open. Faint light from above seeped into the concrete chamber, accompanied by the drum-beat of rain hitting a hard surface. There was a collective sigh of relief. The two men disappeared into the stairwell and we waited. At first everyone was quiet. But as the realization that we’d escaped harm percolated around the room, people began to talk. I heard some chuckles from the back and knew that Eli was cracking jokes again.
I turned to Rebecca. “Aren’t we lucky this room was here?” I said. “Was it built as a tornado shelter?”
“It looks that way, doesn’t it?” she replied.
“If you’ll excuse my interrupting your conversation,” said an elderly gentleman sitting across from us, “I couldn’t help overhearing your question, Professor Fletcher. I’m Archibald Constantine, by the way.” He pulled himself forward, leaned on his cane, and thrust out his hand to me. “I teach sociology.”
“How do you do?” I said, shaking his hand.
He winked at Rebecca. “Professor McAllister, I hope you had a good summer. Did you get your paper finished?”
“I did, Archie.”
“Nice to make your acquaintance,” he said to me, sitting down again. “This bunker you were asking about was not originally intended as a tornado shelter.”
“It wasn’t?” Rebecca said.
“No. The Hart Building was built in the late fifties at the height of the Cold War. This was supposed to be a fallout shelter.” He peered into the gloom at the back of the room, squinting over his half glasses. “There are cupboards down there for food and emergency supplies,” he said, pointing a gnarled finger. “Several years ago I found some olive-green canisters that had been left behind—saltines, I think they were.”
“What did you do with them?” Rebecca asked.
“Gave them to Needler. He likes old things. I imagine he has them stashed away somewhere.”
“Old crackers. Yuck! I hope he didn’t try eating them.”
“Those containers must be collectors’ items these days,” I said.
“He could probably get a good price for them on eBay,” Rebecca said. “I’ll have to mention it to him. Of course, if Harriet Schoolman Bennett hears about it, she’ll confiscate them and put them up for auction herself.”
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
“Dean Bennett’s been conducting a fire sale ever since she came back, getting rid of old textbooks and supplies. She’s got plenty of money for a brand-new gymnasium, but every time I turn around, something else has been sold out from under me. It’s worse than the time my husband had his tag sale, and roamed through the house looking for things to add to his dollar table. For months I was looking for my bread-baking stone, only to learn that my neighbor, Lillian Kaplan, bought it from Ed for fifty cents.”
“Yes, but she’s putting us back on the map,” Professor Constantine said, running a hand through his thatch of white hair. “We were about to go under.” He looked at me. “She’s got a good head for numbers, Harriet does. And her idea to bring attention to the college with celebrity professors seems to be working, too. I like her.” He smiled.