“Yes sir.”

“How many licks for that?”

“One.”

“Can we agree on three, total?” he asked. He never whipped me when he was angry, so there was usually a little room for negotiation. Three sounded fair, but I always pushed a little. After all, I was on the receiving end. Why not haggle?

“Two’s more fair,” I said.

“It’s three. Now bend over.”

I swallowed hard, gritted my teeth, turned around, bent over, and grabbed my ankles. He smacked my rear three times with the hickory stick. It stung like hell, but his heart wasn’t in it. I’d received far worse.

“Go to bed, right now,” he said, and I ran to the house.

Now that Hank had $250 of Samson’s money in his pocket, he was even less enthusiastic about picking cotton. “Where’s Hank?” Pappy asked Mr. Spruill as we took the sacks and began our work on Monday morning. “Sleepin’, I reckon” was the abrupt response, and nothing else was said at that moment.

He arrived in the fields sometime in the middle of the morning. I didn’t know exactly when because I was at the far end of a row of cotton, but soon I heard voices and knew that the Spruills were once again at war.

An hour or so before lunch, the sky began to darken, and a slight breeze came from the west. When the sun disappeared, I stopped picking and studied the clouds. A hundred yards away I saw Pappy do the same thing-hands on hips, straw hat cocked to one side, face frowning upward. The wind grew stronger and the sky darker, and before long the heat was gone. All of our storms came from Jonesboro, which was known as Tornado Alley.

Hail hit first, hard tiny specks the size of pea gravel, and I headed for the tractor. The sky to the southwest was dark blue, almost black, and the low clouds were bearing down on us. The Spruills were moving quickly down their rows, all heading for the trailer. The Mexicans were running toward the barn.

I began to run, too. The hail stung the back of my neck and prompted me to run even faster. The wind was howling through the trees along the river and pushing the cotton stalks to their sides. Lightning cracked somewhere behind me, and I heard one of the Spruills, Bo, probably, give a yell.

“We don’t need to get near the cotton trailer,” Pappy was saying as I arrived. “Not with that lightnin’.”

“Better get to the house,” my father said.

We loaded onto the flatbed trailer, all of us scrambling in a great hurry, and just as Pappy turned the tractor around, the rain hit with a fury. It was cold and sharp and falling sideways in the fierce wind. We were instantly soaked; I wouldn’t have been wetter if I’d jumped in the creek.

The Spruills huddled together with Tally in the center. Just a few feet away, my father clutched me to his chest, as if the wind might take me away. My mother and Gran had left the fields not long before the storm hit.

The rain beat us in waves. It was so thick I could barely see the rows of cotton just a few feet in front of me. “Hurry up, Pappy!” I kept saying. The storm was so loud I couldn’t hear the familiar knock of the tractor engine. Lightning cracked again, this time much closer, so close that my ears hurt. I thought we were going to die.

It took forever to get to the house, but when we did, the rain suddenly stopped. The sky was even darker, black in every direction. “It’s a funnel!” Mr. Spruill said loudly as we were just getting off the trailer. To the west, far beyond the river and high above the tree line, a slim funnel cloud dipped downward. It was light gray, almost white against the black sky, and it grew larger and louder as it made its way very slowly toward the ground. It was several miles away, and because of the distance it didn’t seem too dangerous.

Tornadoes were common in our part of Arkansas, and I’d heard stories about them all of my life. Decades earlier Gran’s father had supposedly survived a horrible twister, one that had run in circles and struck the same small farm more than once. It was a tall tale, one that Gran told without much conviction. Twisters were a way of life, but I’d not seen one until now.

“Kathleen!” my father yelled toward the house. He didn’t want my mother to miss such a spectacle. I glanced at the barn, where the Mexicans were as still and as amazed as we were. A couple of them were pointing.

We watched the funnel in muted fascination, without fear or terror, because it was nowhere near our farm and going away, to the north and east. It moved slowly, as if it were searching for the perfect place to touch down. Its tail was clearly visible above the horizon, way above the land, and it skipped along in midair, dancing at times while it decided where and when to strike. The bulk of the funnel spun tightly, a perfect upside-down cone whirling in a fierce spiral.

The screen door slammed behind us. My mother and Gran were on the steps, both of them wiping their hands with dish towels.

“It’s headed for town,” Pappy said with great authority, as if he could predict where tornadoes would hit.

“I think so,” my father added, suddenly another expert weatherman.

The twister’s tail sank lower and stopped skipping. It appeared as if it had indeed touched down somewhere far away, because we could no longer see the end of it.

The church, the gin, the movie theater, Pop and Pearl’s grocery– I was tallying the damage when suddenly the twister lifted itself up and seemed to disappear completely.

There was another roar behind us. Across the road, deep into the Jeter property, another tornado had arrived. It had crept up on us while we were watching the first one. It was a mile or two away and seemed headed straight for our house. We watched in horror, unable to move for a second or two.

“Let’s get in the barn!” Pappy shouted. Some of the Spruills were already running toward their camp, as if they’d be safe inside a tent.

“Over here!” Mr. Spruill shouted and pointed to the barn. Suddenly everyone was yelling and pointing and scurrying about. My father grabbed my hand, and we began running. The ground was shaking and the wind was screaming. The Mexicans were scattering in all directions; some thought it best to hide in the fields, others were headed toward our house until they saw us running to the barn. Hank flew past me with Trot on his back. Tally outran us, too.

Before we made it to the barn, the twister left the ground and rose quickly into the sky. Pappy stopped and watched, and then so did everybody else. The funnel went slightly to the east of our farm, and instead of a frontal assault, it left behind only a sprinkling of thick brown rainwater and specks of mud. We watched it jump along in midair, looking for another site to drop down in, just like the first one.

For a few minutes we were too stunned and too frightened to say much.

I studied the clouds in all directions, determined not to be blind-sided again. I wasn’t the only one cutting my eyes around.

Then it started raining once more, and we went to the house.

The storm raged for two hours and threw almost everything in nature’s arsenal at us: gale-force winds and blinding rains, twisters, hail, and lightning so quick and so close that we hid under our beds at times. The Spruills took refuge in our living room, while we cowered throughout the rest of the house. My mother kept me close. She was deathly afraid of storms and that made the entire ordeal even worse. I wasn’t exactly sure how we would die-blown away by the wind or seared by a lightning bolt or swept away by the water-but it was obvious to me that the end had come. My father slept through most of it, though, and his indifference was a great comfort. He’d lived in foxholes and been shot at by the Germans, so nothing frightened him. The three of us lay on the floor of their bedroom-my father snoring, my mother praying, and me in the middle listening to the sounds of the storm. I thought of Noah and his forty days of rain, and I waited for our little house to simply lift up and begin floating.