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Chapter One

As Told by
Dan Hatch

When I was a, little kid, I thought a red-letter day was when you got a red letter in the mailbox. Pretty dumb, huh? It finally dawned on me that a red-letter day is when something terrific and. wonderful happens to you. Usually something unexpected.

Take that April Saturday when I won five hundred dollars in cash and merchandise. Now that was a red-letter day if I ever saw one! But who'd have guessed? A plain, open space on the calendar, that day started out just like any other, with Frosty Flakes for breakfast and Mom posting my jobs on the kitchen corkboard. "Don't forget to change the kitty litter, Dan," she said, just as she had every Saturday for as long as I could remember.

By noon of April 19, I had entered the Dairy Queen Bike Race because my best friend, Arthur, dared me. By two o'clock I was crossing the finish line seventy-ninth, with only two cyclists behind me. Who'd have guessed a beginner like me would win the racers' raffle afterward?

Besides the one hundred dollars from Grand Island Thrift and Loan, I won a slick new racing bike (Schwinn Voyageur, 26 lbs., with Diacompe 500 G sidepull brakes and a jet-black frame). The prize also included a racing helmet, an aluminum bike pump, and three packages of Fruit-of-the-Loom underwear, which I gave to Arthur because he wears a men's small.

Now that's the kind of day that ought to have a tag on it. It could read:

This Is a Red-Letter Day
1. Dress appropriately
2. Practice looking humble
3. Comb your hair, in caw of photographers

Now that I'm older and more experienced, I knowthere are black-letter days as well as red-letter ones. Those biggees, the real blockbusters that mess up your life, aren't marked on the calendar, either. You never know ahead of time when you're getting one of those. If I had my way--if I were in charge of the world, as Dad sometimes says--the black-letter days would be announced, for sure.

I've thought about this a lot. What if God or some one actually did send out doomsday letters via the postal service? Wouldn't that be something? Say you wake up to a nice, regular day. Everybody's in a good mood, a perfumy breeze is swinging in from the south. La-de-da! Then you go out to bring in. the mail.

"What's this?,* you gasp, staring at a black envelope in your hands.

You rip it open, trembling all the way to the elbows.

"Furnace explosion planned," it says, "two o'clock today."

Or maybe "Head-on collision with a Peterbilt truck. Washington and Fourth Street."

Or . . . "Tornado on Tuesday!"

If People got notices like that in advance, it would save a lot of trouble and grief. it's those black surprises that get to you, those things people call acts of God because they have to blame someone.

My all-time worst black-letter day was June 3 of last summer. There were no notices mailed out on that occasion, for sure. There were no indications at all.

"Twenty percent probability of thunderstorms toward evening" was what the local weatherman said that morning.

"So what's new?" Mom talked back to him, poking another spoonful of cereal in my baby brother's smiling mouth.

To tell you the truth, the weather was the last thing on my mind. Arthur and I had big plans for that Tuesday. Crafts class first, at my Aunt Goldie's place. A couple of hot burritos at Taco John's after. Later, a bike hike out to the Platte River and a swim at Mormon Island. According to my Grandpa Hatch, the best swimming in south-central Nebraska exists right there, where the big island separates the Platte. With school out for good, Arthur and I were planning to get in on some of it.

Unless you count, the long cirrus clouds strung across the morning sky as Arthur and I pedaled off to Aunt Goldie's, there were no warnings at all that day in June. None.

FiveO'clock

Arthur and I rolled over on our backs on the warm sandy beach at Mormon Island State Park. We'd just had our first swim of the summer, and now it was nearing five o'clock.

"You plan to keep going to that crafts class?" Arthur asked, putting his hands beneath his head and gazing up at the sky.

Now I ought to mention right here at the beginning that my friend Arthur is no ordinary human being. He's smart. He studies things. As Arthur himself says, he cogitates. I could tell by the way he was squinting into the sun that he was thinking hard about something.

Miss Stevens, our social studies teacher, pointed out in class one day: "Arthur," she said, standing between him and the window, "you just have to be the Original Gazer. Tell me, honestly now, what are you pining for out there that you don't have in here?"

"Freedom," he said. Not sassy-like or anything, just stating the facts.

Now, lying next to me, he was outlining cloud patterns with his big toe while he gazed. I raised myself on one elbow.

"Don't you like crafts class?" I asked.

"Not much."

I poked finger holes in the sand. "Heck, maybe Aunt Goldie had a stomachache today."

"Ha!"

"Maybe she swallowed a prune."

"Including the pit?"

"Pit, too," I said, "and the hairy green worm curled up next to it. That would give her an awesome bellyache."

"I've never heard of a prune worm."

I rolled back onto the sand. Arthur would probably go home and look up prune worms. He has books on everything-birds, trees, flowers, insects, amphibians, prunes.

Night of the Twisters. Copyright © by Ivy Ruckman. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.