Carefully picking her way through the rubble of the destroyed housse Jane neared a distraught family already surrounded by other reporters. Jane elbowed her way through tand started scribbling notes on her note pad. The father was speaking at the moment, the mother was staring in shock at the rubble that used to be their house. The two young girls were looking around at the police cars, fire engines and ambulances wailing by.
"We came back from our camping trip just in time to see it," the man was saying. "The tree just swayed and toppled over, we were lucky we weren't in there." Here his gaze flicked tot he left and Jane followed it. Lifeless and twitching bodies were being carried out of the rubble on strechers to ambulances.
Jane stepped back out of the crowd of reporters and sought out the chief of police.
"Does anyone know why the tree fell?" Jane asked, scribbling some notes.
He looked up and sighed. "This is it: It wasn't cut, the roots are right there. The ground was soggy from all the rain we've been getting lately, and the roots weren't very deep. And the wind the wind had been buffeting it, one last shove and it was over," the chief looked up and continued. "Four houses and one room were crushed."
Jane stopped scribbling notes for a moment. "What does 'And one room' mean?"
"Well, look at this," the chief made his way over to the base of the tree where the roots were sticking up in the air. "The tree fell at an angle, crushing everything. But this house," he points to a house that had only one back room crushed by the tree. "By the time the tree got to that house, it only got the den."
"Lucky guy huh?"
The chief shook his head. "He was in there, talking on the phone."
"And this house," Jane motioned to a house where only the front was still standing. "Was that a families house?"
Shakes his head. "Nope, a single guy," he said referring to his notes. "I think he's engaged."
"He wasn't there?"
"He was answering the door, some salesman," the chief looked around. "I'd better get back to work."
Jane looked up from her notes and at her surroundings. Had the tree fallen backwards, Jane noticed, it would've fallen on the garage and the extensive backyard. Forward and it would have gotten the house across the street. Had it fallen the other way... here Jane looked behind her at the orderly row of houses stretching away from the rubble and chaos the fallen tree had created.
Jane shivered and pulled her coat closer around her as a wisp of cold wind passed by. She finished the rest of questioning quickly, then hurried to her motorcycle. She threw her notes into the trunk and hopped on. The wind
yeah, it ends there. pretty heinous huh? I couldn't help myself and fixed a bit of the spelling and grammar, I kept in most of the crap. I just couldn't stand seeing the word 'cheif' misspelled constantly. It's all handwritten on that blue lines notebook paper. Neither my spelling nor my writing talent has improved much in the last 10 odd years. a little depressing actually.
