Hypothermia

stupefied voice that seemed to come not from her throat but from somewhere deep inside her.
    What happened? It hit the dorms by the football stadium. I felt a new surge of fear: the university nursery school, which my children attended, was in the same complex of buildings. What time had it happened? I asked her. She wasn’t sure. I’d just come out of psychology class, she said, and they locked us inside the first-floor classrooms. I was on my way to my next class, it must have been about four o’clock, right now they’re rounding everybody up because there’s another one coming. But the rest of the school’s deserted, I told her. They’re underground, she said, they’ve got half the university in the basement.
    Without saying good-bye I ran toward the outer doors. Another volunteer blew his whistle when he saw me go past. I ignored him: Cathy picked up the kids at five o’clock, which meant they would have been evacuated with everybody else.
    I often had to swing by and grab the kids when my wife’s job at that insurance company required her to work into the evening. I also had transportation duty on Fridays, which was my only day off. The nursery school—a low, wide building, with a tornado watchtower on the roof—was located on the flattest, most open part of the campus, between the sports complex and some Soviet-style dorms that provided cramped housing for most of the undergraduates. When there was bad weather—in this country it’s always either too hot or too cold, or it rains or floods or freezes or hails—I’d take the campus loop bus; otherwise, I’d make the half-hour walk, generally arriving late. The principal would greet me with a reproving stare, all her stereotypes about Mexicans confirmed as I came through the door dripping sweat, a good ten or fifteen minutes past closing. In the three years my kids had spent at the school, the only expression I’d ever seen on her, even when I arrived on time, was that of the Protestant matron enraged at the world’s immorality.
    The day of the tornado I covered the last five hundred or thousand yards by cutting across lawns and meadows. The police had all the roads and sidewalks blocked off and I didn’t want them to pick me up for evacuation before finding out if the kids had been taken to a safe location in time. The damage got worse as I neared my destination, going from upsetting to catastrophic. I finally found my way blocked by a massive tangle of uprooted trees and chunks of asphalt; the only way forward was to scramble over it all. An entire lamppost had been plucked from the ground and coiled like a corkscrew around the trunk of an oak tree. The image of that hideously twisted metal is burned into my memory, I fear, forever.
    The street leading to the nursery school’s front entrance was blocked by cars crushed by fallen trees. I was clambering over the debris when I felt someone grip my shoulder. It was a policewoman in full riot gear. She shouted at me that the whole area was off limits. I realized then that I’d managed to tune out the hellish racket of sirens and hammering combined with the sound of the wind, which was starting to pick up again now. I pulled away from the woman without answering, but only made it a few yards before she caught me again. I told her my kids had been inside when the tornado hit. Everybody was very worried, she said, but she could not, unfortunately, let me through. I asked if she’d heard about any victims. She said there were some casualties but didn’t know how many or if any were from the school. The children and teachers had all been evacuated to the sports complex. This time I escaped by scrambling over the roof of a car, but in a few moments she collared me again, twisting my right arm up behind my back. She threatened to arrest me if I tried running again, and in that case I certainly wouldn’t find out about my children any time soon. She frog-marched me away and turned me over to a volunteer with a blond crew cut who weighed at least 450 pounds. Without releasing my arm he more or less carried me into the gymnasium. I remember scanning the scene in desperation and noticing that the whole roof had been peeled off the daycare building. My last sight of the emergency zone was two firefighters cutting open a car to remove the passengers, their only available light cast by the spinning beacons on nearby rescue vehicles.
    Gringos are an obedient sort of people: in full compliance with the