The old man staggered out of his house at dawn to view the wreckage.  The tornado had ripped up the fencing and flattened his barn.  Somehow the silo still stood, an ivory tower in the low light.  He couldn’t account for many of the horses or cattle last night in the darkness and rain, but he hadn’t noticed any lifeless bodies amongst the wreckage.  

***

Most city people would say Earl Jones lived a simple life.  He would harvest winter wheat and sow soybeans in the spring, harvest soybeans and sow winter wheat in the fall, and raise cattle all the while.  Entire life cycles happened on the farm each year, year after year.  It wasn’t as simple as they thought, especially in 1999.  

Mrs. Earl Jones cooked, cleaned, and raised four children for Mr. Earl Jones on his farm since 1970.  But with the encouragement of Oprah and her new-age therapist, Mrs. Jones watched her last child leave for college in August of 1997, and then she took her possessions and left too.  Earl Jones was left with two hundred and twenty head of cattle, eight chickens, four horses, two dogs, and one mean old cat.  

Earl Jones was a fighter, though, and he didn’t miss a season of sewing, reaping, or slaughtering.  His clothes started to grow too baggy, and he brought noticeably fewer cattle at auction in the fall of 1998.  His friends and hired help slowly began to disappear as the man sank into fits of anger and drunkenness.  

By the spring of 1999, Earl Jones was simply boarding his horses, no longer riding.  He let his cattle free range through the freshly burned acreage, unencouraged to plant any crops that year.  The chickens stopped laying, and the dogs fled the farm in search of a reliable food source.  The mean old cat stuck by his side, though, easily dodging whatever Earl Jones threw at him in bursts of rage, and was happy to share the milk when the man sought forgiveness in the morning.  

It was the first week of June in 1999, and Earl Jones was ready to give up on life.  He wasn’t sure how he’d do it yet, but he knew his days were short.  At four o’clock in the afternoon, Earl Jones was finishing his first fifth of whiskey when the skies turned gray.  Then they turned green, a sure sign of hail.  Then the squall came.  

Some say you could hear Earl Jones cursing God through the thunder and lightning.  He managed to throw open the barn doors as the tornado warning blasted through his AM/FM radio.  Then he went back to his recliner, grabbed another fifth of whiskey, and chuckled as the mean old cat crawled under his chair.  

***

Earl Jones staggered out of his house the next morning, and he realized that God had spared his life.  The horses and cattle were wandering back toward the collapsed barn in search of breakfast.  As the smell of damp hay blew across his face, Earl Jones knew it was time for a new beginning.  He’d sell most of the land and all of the animals, except for the cat.  He’d settle down in town, find a way to be of service anywhere that would take him, and love his life with that mean old cat sitting in his lap.