Storm Shelters
By Sarah Watkins
I’m not sure why we ever built our own. There was one already, a weathered and straight-backed haggard beast with two concrete ears inclined toward the swirling heavens like a nine-foot, one-eyed dog. Granddad had built benches into the building, covered them with yellow foam that coughed out its fur when you dropped onto it. We would go there only when we had already lost our power and heard warnings over the hand-crank radio—when we stepped outside and found the air spit-thick under a gray milk sky, found ourselves on a cartoon train track, our neighbors on one parallel, a Big Wide Hand already inching toward the lever. In the sudden chill of the storm, I would cuddle under one of the thin, mildew-scented camo blankets that the shelter owned, cheek against Momma’s shoulder, having a staring contest with the spinning eye above me that let out a slow drip-drip like a lazy slobber stream, the only constant sound aside from the small speaker of the radio saying that there were funnel clouds near us, by us, above us, on the ground. We would all crowd in there—my grandparents, my uncle, my aunt, my cousins, my parents, my brother, me—by the light of a single battery-operated lantern. The small room smelled like sweat, hot breath, storm, mold, mildew, dust, mud, rain, home. Then we built our own. Dad thought it would be a good idea to put one below ground, furnished with a small couch, a few cushions, one that had a ladder first, and then stairs. It was all sound—all echoes, high ceilings, and the smooth kind of concrete without the rocks in it—and we wouldn’t have to slog through mud in thick rain to make it to it during the storms. We sat down there one time, when the storm was away, and talked about how nice it would be: big fluffy blankets, a seat warm under my thighs. But he covered it with a sheet of metal, and we never used it when the tornadoes came. I would ask him why through tears each time we ran across the yard to go to the storm shelter—but I know now. It is the same reason I won’t cut the guitar strings off of my granddad’s guitar; the new metal could never leave the same lingering perfume on my raw fingertips as the old ones did on his calloused fingers.
An Arkansas native, Sarah Watkins is an educator by trade and a writer by necessity. She currently resides in northeast Arkansas with her husband. Her work has been featured in many publications, including The Uncommon GRACkle, The Clayjar Review, and engine(idling. Instagram: @sarahwatkinspoetry
