Tornado Breakers Don’t Cry

Ethel lassoes the twister but can’t break the beast. It whips her off the ground, carries her a hundred miles before spitting her up.

Edgar, her brother, finds her hours later among a heap of splintered telephone poles and tattered cattle. He offers happy tears at first because she’s alive, stomping about, berating herself for letting the town down.

But then comes the gut hurt and the stammering, because her heart, Edgar sees, has been pierced by a weathervane, the bronze arrowhead stabbing through her jean jacket. Though her eyes are red, no tears fall, because Ethel chews on their father’s words—tornado breakers don’t cry—to dull the pain.

Their eyes meet. Edgar approaches slowly. He tentatively touches the weathervane’s rooster, which perches on her shoulder. There’s no weakness in hurting, he wants to say, but all he offers instead is a whispered question.

“Does it hurt?”

She grins like their father’s ghost is watching. “Nope,” she says. Then she’s off, heading home, complaining about how the twister stole her boots.

All Edgar can do is follow, and smile, carefully.

* * *

The metal rooster crows, every morning, filling Edgar and Ethel’s home with a screeching serenade that’s always the same.

Your father would’ve broken that twister, the rooster says. Would’ve kept it from ruining those homes.

Edgar makes breakfast. Changes Ethel’s bandages. He wants that rooster gone. He offers to call the doctor.

“I got it,” she says, waving him off. And the rooster on her shoulder happily steals hash browns off her plate.

When the town knocks, Ethel answers the door, ignoring the way they all stare at the weathervane. They beg her to get back to breaking, to save their homes. The sky’s madder than ever, it won’t be long before the next one comes.

She reassures them politely; says she’ll be healed real soon.

But when the door closes, Ethel crawls to bed.

Edgar hears the metal bird pecking at her heart, hears it say that their father fell too.

But he always got back up. Always.

Days slip past. Ethel hides under the covers, won’t let Edgar touch the weathervane.

One night Edgar hears the rooster whispering to Ethel.

The disappointment will end, the bird clucks in the dark of her bedroom. If you let yourself die.

And Edgar drops a dinner plate.

* * *

Edgar never could catch a twister.

As a child, he fell ten thousand times, snapping every single bone, because cooking and gardening called to him, not breaking.

So his father ignored him, and focused on Ethel, because she showed a hunger for the thrashing ride—she lassoed dust devils blindfolded, won blue ribbons riding zephyrs at the fair, broke sandstorms to kill time, and all while beaming, shouting, and calling for her brother to watch, please watch.

But somber soldiers, not rodeo clowns, save lives and make parents proud. Their father set about taming Ethel: Boisterous laughter and joyful cursing became—after exhaustive week-long rides, shredded hands, and burst saddle sores—the expressionless, diligent quiet. She gripped that lasso tight, let her father do the talking, and she waited, mostly in vain, for that nod of approval.

But when the moon hung high, Ethel snuck into her brother’s room to tell him worry kept stealing her sleep.

“What if I’m not fearless?” she’d ask.

And Edgar would always reply, “Do you want this?”

If she’d said no, he would’ve run off with her.

But she never did.

So he stayed.

When her doubts screamed, he shushed them down. He cooked, cleaned, and cared because he wanted their home, the one their father built, to be a reminder of genuine good.

And not their father’s words.

* * *

Tornado sirens wail.

Edgar can’t find Ethel. He runs to the basement, and there’s his sister, hiding.

“I can’t do it,” she says, shaking.

Of course, the rooster clucks.

Edgar holds Ethel tightly. He asks, “What’s wrong?”

She goes still. Her mouth works silently, like she’s close to spilling her fear, but she only whimpers. Edgar rocks her. He recalls Ethel as she was, and his stomach sinks: She once rode, roared, and cursed so eagerly that she caused the sky to blush sunset-red, bison to low-laugh, and her father to clench his fists. Edgar wants his sister to become unbroken again, to grin just for herself, but she stays quiet.

The rooster, however, knows her fear.

“Because she’s nothing like him.”

Edgar silences it with a glare.

Then he looks to Ethel. He smiles, warmly, like he’s done a million times before, and he shares the truth that he’s carried in his heart—the truth that has kept him breathing all these years. 

“That’s why I love you,” he says.

Ethel stops shaking.

“You lived to ride once,” he says. “Before that bastard broke your love.”

She smirks, remembering.

“So ride,” Edgar says. “Not for him, not for me. Just for you.”

* * *

The twister was the biggest the town had ever seen.

Most scurried into their basements, but a few were caught aboveground.

They were the ones who saw Ethel return.

Later, while drunkenly standing atop barstools, they’ll say that there was something different about Ethel.

Before, she’d roped like a stony, subdued shade.

But this time, she wore a wolf smile and howled happily, hungrily. The storm clouds, they’ll swear, evaporated, and the wind-whipped prairie grass went respectfully still. She hollered with hurt, or happiness, maybe both, and the twister, stunned by her torrent, knelt like a show pony.

She hopped on its back and rode away from town, singing like some love-sick coyote, yipping so shrilly that every eardrum popped, every window cracked, and every heart stampeded with adoration, all at once.

* * *

Everyone watched Ethel, so no one saw Edgar that day.

No one watched as he left his house for the first in a long while.

He limped to the curb and tossed a broken weathervane in the trash.

“Bastard,” he said, spitting.

Then he went back inside to make dinner.

* * *

Ⓒ Stefan Alcalá Slater