This installment of the serial in one of the last issues of the Relief Society Magazine is crazy long, no doubt in order to get the whole story printed before the Magazine ceased publication. I’ve divided it into the parts I think the author intended, and will post them as Chapters 4-A, 4-B, and 4-C.

The Secret of Blueberry Hill

By Rosa Lee Lloyd

Previous Chapter

Chapter 4-A

Synopsis: Lila and Norman go for a walk and Norman indicates deep feeling for Lila, but refrains from speaking of his love because of respect for Aunt Lucinda. Elizabeth is afraid that Lila may be hurt because of Scott’s attentions to Elizabeth. The funeral is one of grace and dignity with friends coming many miles to pay tribute. Norman boards his plane just as an approaching tornado threatens the town of Skylark.

The black funnel-shaped cloud roared toward them as they ran to the parking lot. Johnny had parked his car near the entrance so they were among the first to swing out onto the highway.

“We’ll be lucky if we beat it home!”Johnny muttered. “That old cellar will feel mighty cosy.”

“Lila, take your key out of your purse. Every second counts,” Steven advised.

Cars crowded so close to each other Lila was almost more afraid of an accident than she was of the grinding roar behind them as the wooden bridge across the river was torn from its foundation.

She covered her ears with her hands, but the noise grew wilder as railroad cars were sucked up from their tracks. Their own car swayed as the dark funnel sped toward them like a relentless beast. Closer. Closer. It was gaining momentum.

“Take the lower road,” Steven called from the back eat. His voice was calm, his manner at once professional with an outward demeanor of fortitude.

I’m just a scared sissy, Lila thought. I’m so scared I can’t breathe.

Johnny turned offf the highway onto the lower road but they were still in the path of the black funnel. They had barely whisked by the tall grain elevator when it smashed to the ground with a thunderous wail that echoed throughout the valley.

“There goes the clubhouse,” Elizabeth said, as another crash followed.

“Don’t take your eyes from the road, Johnny,” Steven advised him. “We’re still in its path. Our house is in the path this time.”

Lila looked at the speedometer. One hundred miles an hour. But the tornado was catching up to them!

“Faster, Johnny,” Steven said through clenched teeth. “We’ll have to go all out to beat it!”

Johnny let the car out to its full speed. The landscape was a blur. Lila closed her eyes. One bump in this old road, she thought, and we’ll all go up like splinters in the wind. But Johnny’s car was new and powerful and he drove it like a master.

At last, and not one moment too soon, he swung ono Clover Street, slowed the car and they tumbled out into the house and down the cellar stairs.

There wasn’t time to catch their breath before the tornado struck. The old frame house trembled and cracked under its terrific force; even the ceiling of the cellar creaked and moaned.

Johnny said, “If that ceiling doesn’t hold, we’re done for!”

“I think it will hold,” Steven assured him as the tornado swooped over them leaving a wild black wave of destruction in its path.

“Our house!” Lila sobbed. “Our house is gone. Blown away!” She was so terrified she reached out to Elizabeth, who held her tenderly.

“We’re safe down here,” she said. “Aunt Lucinda said this old cellar was one of the best in Skylark.”

“Yes,” Steven agreed. “It’s deep enough to hold.”

“But look at the ceiling!” Johnny yelled. “It’s sagging!”

Lila straightened up.

“Get the lumber beams,” she told them. “They’re far back on the cement ledge. They will brace the ceiling. Aunt Lucinda had them made – a long time ago.”

Steven and Johnny hauled them out and put them in place.

“That did it,” Johnny said. “It won’t tumble in for a while anyway.”

“There isn’t anything left up there to tumble in,” Elizabeth said with a wry smile. “The McIntyre home has literally gone with the wind.”

“We’re just waifs,” Lila moaned. “No home, No Aunt Lucinda.”

Johnny said fiercely, “I’m glad she isn’t here to see everything she owned and treasured blown to bits.”

Lila’s head came up with a little jerk. “The letter,” she said, over a little sob. “The letter she left for us – where has it gone? We don’t’ know what she wanted us to do.”

Elizabeth lifted her shoulders the way Aunt Lucinda had done when there was a difficult job to be done. “She would want us to act bravely,” she said. “We’re not the only people in this neighborhood whose house was hit. We should thank Heavenly Father right this minute that we’re alive and not hurt. We’re able to go out there and help others who didn’t reach their cellars or didn’t have one to go to. A tornado is the craziest, most perverse thing in the world. it will skip some things and rip others wide apart and leave nothing but rubble in its path. This time, after all these years, we are part of the rubble.”

Her voice tightened: “But we still have each other – and a cellar.”

“You’re right, Sis,” Steven said in his quiet way. “We still have each other. Let’s have family prayers.” They placed the wooden chairs around the old table and knelt together as they had always done before they went to bed.

Steven asked Heavenly Father for strength and wisdom in helping others and thanked him for their present blessings. “Dear Lord,” he added, “I know I am asking for a little miracle, but help us find the letter our dear Aunt Lucinda left for us so that we can fulfill any request she made.”

Even as they prayed the howl and roar of the tornado faded into the distance.

“It’s gone where the bad winds go,” Johnny said. ‘Boy! That was the wildest one I ever listened to. And the only time I have ever really been in one.” A grin tipped his mouth. “My red beauty brought us through. What speed! What a car!”

Steven’s mouth was a grim line. he put his hands on Johnny’s shoulders.

“Little Brother, that was an emergency. We had to go that fast to beat the tornado. But don’t try it again. I mean it. Believe me, I have seen the results of speeding. I don’t want that to happen to you. Don’t do it again, Johnny.”

There was a tone in Steven’s voice that Johnny didn’t argue with. He turned his head and smiled at Lila. “Anything to eat down here?” he asked. “A fried doorknob would taste good to me.”

“Aunt Lucinda was always prepared,” Lila answered. “I’ll find something while the three of you go outside. I’m worried about the Wilkins. They don’t have a cellar.”

“You’ll be okay here, Lila,” Steven told her.

“I want to see upstairs,” she insisted. “Then I’ll come back while you go out to look.”

Steven was the first one to venture up the stairway. The others followed, one at a time because the steps trembled and creaked with each pound of weight put on them.

Lila cried out when she saw the jumbled mass of lumber and plaster; only the old upright piano stood in its usual place like a forgotten sentinel. The roof was gone, the walls were tumbled and everything else was blown away. The marble mantel where she had put the letter behind the clock was under the debris of plaster and wood and bricks from the fireplace.

“Maybe the letter is under this pile of stuff,” Lila said. So they lifted each piece of lumber and sifted the rubble with their fingers, searching each pile but finding nothing.

“Go easy,” Steven cautioned them. “There are weak spots in the floor. I can feel it shake when I walk on it. We don’t want to break through. We have to use that cellar until we find out what happened to the town.”

“It hit the North River Clubhouse,”Johnny reminded them. “That’s not far from Main Street. Maybe the bank went, too.”

Lila noticed Elizabeth wet her lip. No doubt she was wondering what had happened to Scott. He had been on the road home from the funeral, but he had not gone to the airport, so he would have been ahead of the tornado.

“Norman was the lucky one,” Johnny said. “He got up there out of it.”

Steven frowned. “I hope so,” he said. “There would be a crackup if the tornado caught a wing.”

Lila’s heart beat up into her throat. Norman could be hurt somewhere and they wouldn’t even hear about it. Telephone wires were down, electricity was off. Radio and television were dead.

“We mustn’t think his plane is down, Steven. Don’t say that!” Her voice was brittle

“Facts are facts, Lila. You have to learn to face reality. We hope he didn’t crash, but we won’t know for a while.”

Lila tugged at Steven’s arm. “But I can’t bear it, Steven. What will this world be for me without Norman? He has always been here when I needed him. Now he might be alone and hurt – even dying. Find him for me, Steven.”

She stood pale and trembling before them. They looked at her in amazement, but they did not speak.

“I have to know what’s happened to Norman,” she repeated. “Find out for me, Johnny. Someone uptown will know if his plane crashed. Oh, Elizabeth –” Her hands went out toward her sister. “Why didn’t I know what he means to me? Why! Why didn’t I know?”

Elizabeth put her arms around her and let her cry against her shoulder. “I don’t know the answer, Baby,” she crooned. “Sometimes we look for happiness in faraway places when it’s right in our own backyard. But the tornado was quite low. I watched it from the car window. It seemed to skim the ground. So let’s hope his plane got above it. It would have been destroyed if they hadn’t taken off. In the meantime we have to remember something Aunt Lucinda told us a long time ago. No matter what happens you have to go on. So be a good girl. Go back downstairs and fix us something to eat. We’ll be back after we search the neighborhood.”

At that moment Johnny called from the front yard. “My car! My car is gone!”

They hurried out to him. There was no trace of Johnny’s new car.

“Sucked up in the funnel,” Steven said. “I hope you have insurance, Johnny.”

“Of course I do. But I want that car. It was the best car I ever had. I’ll find it piece by piece and have it put together.”

“Oh, Johnny,” Lila called out. “Look over there where the Wilkins lived. Their whole house is gone1 Where are those dear people? They didn’t have a cellar. Their house was only a shell!”

They ran across the yard to the Wilkins place. The sunflowers were whipped to the ground, and lay like naked stalks.

“I saw Casey on his bicycle after the funeral,” Johnny said.

“Little Pearl and Mrs. Wilkins got in the Brysons’ car,” Elizabeth added. “Let’s hope they took the upper road – maybe stayed with friends.”

“They got home,” Steven said. He had gone ahead and was stooping over the silent forms of little Pearl clasped in her mother’s arms. A heavy beam had struck them, killing them both.

“The car that brought them home must have got away,” Elizabeth whispered.

“Casey –” Lila breathed. “Where is Casey? He hasn’t anyone but a distant relative – Australia, I think. What can we do?”

“We can take him in,” Steven said. “We can be his family.”

“Oh, let’s do that,” Lila said. “He will need courage.”

“Look – over there!” Johnny pointed toward the McIntyre front yard.”That old oak tree is our symbol of courage. Its leaves are gone, its branches are twisted and broken, but its roots are still down deep and solid.”

Steven nodded. “It’s ready to send up whatever it needs to make branches and leaves grow again.”

A gleam of memory sparked Lila’s heart. “Casey told me only a day ago that the oak tree made him think of Aunt Lucinda and what she stood for. Something to cling to.”

Steven’s eyes gentled as he looked down the highway. “I think that is a boy on a bicycle,” he observed as his eyes narrowed.

He took off his coat and put it gently over Mrs. Wilkins and little Pearl. Johnny did the same thing.

“Now we’ll go together to meet the boy,” he said. “He will need our love and our help.”

(To be continued)