No. 11

Mrs. Lafayette to Mrs. Quinn (One for the Books)

Mrs. Quinn

908 E Jefferson

Louisville, Kentucky

July 5, 1940

Dear Mrs. Quinn,

After I got my purse, I walked back to Win. I said, “Tell me what direction to walk to, to get help.”

She was still rocking. I walked down the long driveway, praying. Took a closer look at my car. Roof crushed and windows blown, but it would probably run if I could get help to flip it back onto the tires. Men. Need to find men.

At the end of the driveway, I saw barns that I had passed moments ago were now flattened. The tornado took out a line of neighbors. Could they help or be worse off or might share tools and medicine. So dead quiet, no birds, no industry, no traffic. I headed back to Win. Night was coming. We’d need candles.

“Where you keep the candles and matches?” I demanded.

I started to lift the boards to get to the wife. Win looked at me as I took her hands off her sister. I started to drag the sister out and into the yard. This might change the mood. I kept moving. Win stood up. With one arm, she moved things out of the path.

I dropped the body on the grass. Win bent down to the laundry pile, eerily undisturbed, and pulled out a wet tablecloth. She covered her sister’s face and chest, but left her feet exposed. One ankle crushed. Another shoeless.

I walked around the house to see the damage. Win followed me but when she found a place to sit, did so.

Back in the house, I found that we could live under what remained of the second floor in the parlor, which had a fireplace. I found pots and pans and made a place for us to boil water there. I looked up and found Win was there, behind me, coming through with the matches and candles.

After a few long days someone came. We heard him calling out for life one morning, then a car horn! I rushed out as fast as I could.

He was a church elder or deacon. He barely knew the sister, but more so Julien, as he was the organist for the Presbyterian Church in Oxford. But he did not know Win and certainly not me, and there were other church goers that needed tending to, he said, but he promised that he would send the wagon to move the sister’s body, which arrived the next day.

“What about her arm,” I said, and pointed to Win’s now infected arm.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he said. “You’ll have to pay the men to take the body.”

I gave the pastor all my money, promising to give more, if he could find medicine or a doctor, but I did not know where more money would come from. The little I gave him would leave me stranded, but I assumed Win would have some money or provide me with a way out of there in a few days. Surly she would have relatives or something, but I was dumb again about it all. A fool. Remarkable idiot. One for the books.

Mrs. Laura Lafayette

2025 Copyright Christine Friesel