Page 19 of Baker (Bastian Brothers #1)

“Maybe you should plan on sleeping here tonight,” I said to Hanley and got a nod in agreement.

The rain was pelting the house now, sheets of it, as lightning flashed brightly.

The lights flickered. We all looked at the lamps as if by staring at them we could use our willpower on them to stay lit.

Waylon Jennings was interrupted by a series of short, sharp blasts that sent Granny and me to our feet.

The wind outside was howling now. Everyone looked up at us, coffee or sodas in hand, questioningly.

The tornado warning alarm grew faster. Sharper.

And then the announcement of a tornado on the ground moving southwest of Bastian Grange got us moving.

“Everyone down into the cellar,” Granny barked as she waved her arms for the stunned folks to get moving. “Get on now! Move it.”

I took Granny by the arm and led her through the kitchen, grabbing a flashlight from atop the fridge as I moved her along.

I pulled with all my might to get the back door open, but the wind ripped it from my hand, sending it crashing into the side of the house.

Once outside, I looked in the direction of the twister but could only see small white and blue-green flashes.

“Shit,” I muttered and hustled my grandmother along as fast as we could hustle. We’d just cleared the corner when the roar hit my ears. I’d grown up in this part of the country, and I knew all too well what the tumble of a tornado sounded like. “Move! Move!”

The storm cellar doors were closed. Linc and Dodge yanked them open as small bits of debris accosted us, twigs and dirt hitting our faces felt like sandpaper.

I passed my grandmother off to Linc, as he was the biggest, and yelled at him to get her and the others inside.

He shouted something that was lost in the wind as I broke away to dash to the stables.

“Baker!” I thought I heard Hanley bellowing as I raced to the barn.

The horses were nervous as I rushed in and started throwing open stall doors.

Prissy ran past, knowing instinctively somehow to seek shelter, which is why we generally turned them out when a twister was rolling at us.

While the barn might offer some shelter, it could also collapse on them, trapping the horses inside.

The last one out sped past me. I turned and ran into Hanley as he came around the corner.

A flash of lightning lit up the sky behind him. I wanted to yell at him for risking himself like this, but I didn’t have time to scold him.

“Goats!” I shouted. He ran along with me to the goat barn.

Thankfully, we had put collars on the goats so that if they did wander off, people would know they belonged to us.

That was a good call on Ford’s part. We had to nudge a few of the big white and red caprines along.

The pregnant ones did not want to venture out into the rain.

That was one big difference between goats and cattle that I was learning.

Cows will stand out in the hardest, harshest weather and contentedly chew their cuds.

Goats, as I now understood, hated the rain.

So instead of them darting out like the horses had, we had to herd them along.

The buck was the worst, but once we got him and the herd matriarch moving, we managed to drive them out into the pasture.

A branch the size of a bat snapped off the oak beside Granny’s shooting range. I threw up an arm to keep it from hitting my head. The impact nearly sent me to my knees, the pain white hot. I pressed my right arm to my side and moved on. I’d deal with it later.

The howling winds were so loud I couldn’t hear the goats’ blats or the shouts of my half-brothers.

The goats heard them, though, and they galloped—do goats gallop?

—at full goat speed toward the moving lights.

Two of them. Two of my dumb brothers risking themselves when I told them to stay safe. Did no one ever listen?

Hanley gave me a push. My forearm was throbbing.

The shutters on the house were shaking as the wind started pushing us around like tin soldiers.

We followed the goats. Hanley tripped over something as we neared the storm cellar.

The roar of the twister was deafening now.

I righted him, gave him a shove forward, and then ran behind him.

Dodge and Linc reached out for us, their eyes round as dinner plates.

A crash nearby gave us the extra energy we needed to lunge at the men waving their cellphones around as if they were trying to land a plane.

We ducked into the cellar. I spun around to see Linc battling valiantly with the storm doors to get them shut.

They closed with a clatter. Soaked to the skin, breathless, heart pounding, I turned to look at the crowd packed into the small space.

“Blah!” Willy said as the foundation of the house shuddered. Bella was seated on a cot with Granny, her arm around my grandmother’s shoulders, her eyes big and filled with frightened tears.

I stepped around a goat, kneeled by Granny, and took her hands in mine.

Goats and people all seemed to be stuck in a time hole.

The dust from the rafters holding the house drifted down on us as we all sat, or kneeled, surrounded by goats.

Then, the noise began to lessen, that terrifying roar of a twister moving off.

We all stayed put, quietly listening as the rain continued to pound down and the thunder rolled.

Clasping Granny’s small hands, I gave her knuckles a peck, then turned to come face to face with Willy.

He made this odd blubbery lip sound in my face and pooped.

“I think I just did the same thing,” Hanley commented from the other side of the goat buck.

Everyone laughed nervously.

“So yeah, welcome to Tornado Alley,” I called out. As much as I wanted this bunch of city boys to learn about life in Oklahoma, we could have done without that life lesson.

“Does that happen a lot?” Bella shakily asked.

“More than I wished,” I replied, patting Granny’s hands before standing.

She was fine. Lord only knows how many twisters the old gal had lived through on this patch of land.

More than I was old, I would wager. I glanced around at the scared faces illuminated with cellphone flashlights. “Everyone okay?”

A mumble of shaky yeahs and two goat blats. Cool.

“What about your arm?” Hanley asked, wiggling around goats to touch my shoulder gently.

“It’s fine.” The rain still pounded down on the metal doors.

I looked at Hanley eyeing me with a touch of disbelief.

“Really. It’s fine. Hairline at worst. I’ve had worse.

” Granny began clucking about getting my arm into a splint.

“See what you did?” I whispered to him before assuring my grandmother that no splint was required.

“We’ll just sit here a bit longer, catch our breaths, and then poke our heads out to see how things are. ”

Conversation was light for the most part.

I hunkered down beside Willy. Hanley sat on my right.

The others were whispering about how scared they had been and how they never seen anything like that back home.

I bet they didn’t. I wouldn’t wish a damn twister on my worst enemy.

My thoughts went to my horses. I hoped they had done what their instincts had told them to do and race away from the storm.

“You were pretty ballsy to come out in that to find me,” I said to Hanley as I petted Willy. The goat seemed happy enough and just stood there after burping up a cud to chew.

“I thought you might need help. I’ve been through some damn nasty storms in my time.”

“Tell us about them,” Bella called from the cot.

Hanley crossed his long legs as thunder boomed overhead. Loud yes, but slightly further away, thank God.

“Well, about five years ago, I was down in the bayou of Louisiana doing a photo essay for a magazine about the Louisiana black bears and their shrinking habitat when a hurricane blew in…”

I sat back a bit, resting my spine on the edge of the cot, holding my arm to my middle, as Hanley began his tale.

If he had lived in medieval times, he would have made a fine bard.

He could spin a yarn with the best of them.

The steady throb in my forearm was unpleasant and a little worrisome, but there was little to do for it now.

If it was fractured, all they would do for it was tell me to rest, ice, compress, and elevate.

I’d been through that routine a few times, most from having cows or horses step on a foot.

When he concluded his tale of wind, rain, and flooded swamps, the rain outside had lessened into a pleasant little shower tempo. I pushed to my feet, using my left arm, and made the announcement.

“Okay, let’s see what we have to deal with,” I said, nodding at Linc to open the doors.

He did and exited first, with Dodge on his heels.

Bella and Granny went next, and Hanley and I followed behind them in case Granny tumbled backward on the old stone stairs.

They needed to be made into new ones. Another job for the never-ending list.

Prissy stood at the cellar doors, throwing her head up and down, soaking wet but hale and hearty.

A few other horses were milling about. The yard, from what we could see with only the light from our phones, was littered with limbs.

I turned to gaze at the house. Using the flashlight, I could see that a few shutters were hanging loose and some shingles littered the ground, but the oak tree was a goner.

It lay on its side, thankfully falling away from the house, the root ball as big as a pachyderm and showing thick, rich dirt and rocks that the roots had been clinging to.

The hole it left in the yard could be filled in with cement and made into a swimming pool.

I sighed at the thought of all that extra work.

Still, it could have been much worse. Prissy came over to me, poked me with her wet nose, and got some praise and a pat or ten.

The air was cool, moist, and calm. Raindrops sprinkled down on us as we all encircled the goats and led them back to their barn.

A barn that stood untouched as did the horse barn.

Scanning the roofs with my flashlight, I saw a few strips of steel roofing that looked to be loose, but overall things had fared well.

I moved the beam of light to the springhouse.

That, too, seemed to be fine. Bella sighed in relief.

“Well, no point standing out here in the rain gawking. Whoever wants to lend a hand, let’s get them goats and horses inside.

We’ll start looking for any horses that haven’t come back tomorrow morning,” I said and got some nods from the others.

We’d probably be in the dark for the rest of the night, perhaps even days, depending on how many lines the twister had snapped.

We had kerosene lamps in the house. We’d manage.

This wasn’t the first time Mother Nature had dropped by for a rowdy visit. Wouldn’t be the last either.

“You good?” Dodge asked, jerking his head at my arm nestled into my side.

“Yep.” I ambled off over the muddy ground behind a pregnant goat that seemed to think being free meant she could nibble Granny’s rhododendron bush.

I’d be fine. Sometimes a man had no other option.