Excerpt of March With Me by Rosalie T. Turner

PROLOGUE

Tornado – A violent, whirling wind; a tempest distinguished by a rapid whirling and slow progressive motion

April 1975

THE TORNADO

3:30 p.m.

First there is the storm, pounding the city, stinging rain pelting against trees, buildings, shiny on the asphalt streets, people dashing for cars, doorways. Not unusual for spring time in Birmingham, Alabama.

Next, comes the eerie stillness, the kind that makes the hair on the back of your neck rise up, that gives you goose bumps on your arms.

Gray swirling clouds fill the sky. Behind them is the sound, the rumble of the freight train everyone mentions. The clouds are roiling in, bringing pieces of things – shingles from roofs, branches of trees, hunks of insulation, and throwing everything back at the world.

Finally, the roar as the tornado attacks, comes right at the school. The children are all gone, but some teachers are still there. Blackness fills the sky. The noise, that horrific, shattering noise, is felt deep in their bones. That swirling gray in front of the blackness, spewing signs, corrugated metal. Shaking. Everything is shaking, as if God is very angry, as if the world around them is being destroyed. No place to run. Nothing is safe.

Darkness engulfs the playground. The tornado rushes on, leaving a swath of destruction in its wake. The parking lot is strewn with debris, buses twisted against each other. The cable clangs against the flagpole, lonely and strange in the mist. The school is no longer a fortress but a tangle of bricks and beams. There is no more noise, no more turbulence. The dust finally settles. There is only the rain, gentler now as if washing away the terror.

And under the wreckage of that school – two teachers, Letitia Williams and Martha Ann Reynolds.