Saturday, Kenny Carver had just returned from a church mission trip to Honduras and was looking forward to dinner with his family and a relaxing evening to unwind.
After dining out, Carver, his wife, Brendia, and two of their children returned home and began settling in for the evening. The weather was threatening, and Carver's wife opened the front door of their home, located on Humphrey Highway just south of Greenwood, to take a quick look.
Carver recalled what happened next. "She yelled, 'There's a tornado!'" he said. "By the time I got to the door to see for myself, it was already in the front yard. I grabbed her and the kids and we all got in that little half bath."
Carver gestured toward the remains of what had once been his family's home. In the tiny area that had served as their refuge - just steps from the front door - twisted copper pipes sticking up out of the floor are all that remain. The rest of the house lies in utter ruin. Not even the walls have been left standing.
The Carvers, however, were unhurt. He considers that nothing less than a miracle.
"God took over, man," Carver said, making no attempt to disguise the emotion in his voice. "Nothing but God, that's all it was."
Carver kicked at a piece of rubble with his toe and chuckled to himself. "It's funny," he said. "I got in from the mission trip at 6 o'clock and the tornado hit around 8:40. Talk about excitement! You ride a plane all day, and then come home and ride a tornado!"
A friend who had been sifting through the rubble came up and handed Carver a small plastic bag. It contained a few soggy Honduran bills and coins, mementoes from his mission trip.
Other friends and neighbors have fanned out over the site, clearing debris, salvaging anything that can still be used. They started coming as soon as they got the news. Their cars and trucks line the driveway all the way to the road and beyond. Some merely wave as they walk straight from their cars and begin immediately to help clear the debris - no need to ask what needs to be done. Others bring offers of a place to stay until the Carvers can get back on their feet.
Carver watched them in silence for a few moments. Again, the emotion welled up. At last, he said, "This is what it means to be a Christian. All these people you see here are my Christian friends and brothers."
He rolled up his sleeve and indicated a small scratch on his forearm. "See this?" he asked. "That's the only scratch I got."
Waving his arm toward the rubble that just hours before had been his home, he added, "I ain't worried about that. It looks sad, but it'll work. It'll work."
Just across Humphrey Highway, Ann Banks watched as volunteers set about clearing the debris from the yard of her battered home. Her husband, Leflore County Sheriff Ricky Banks, walked among the volunteers, surveying the damage, shaking his head.
"I saw it coming," Mrs. Banks said. "It was over in just a matter of seconds. After it hit, I told Ricky, 'We're OK, go see about the Carvers. Because their house was just rubble."
Neither Banks, his wife nor her 87-year-old mother who lives with them was injured.
Plastic sheeting covers a section of the house where the roof was damaged. As Mrs. Banks watched, volunteers were busy making sure the carport, which had been heavily damaged, was no longer in danger of collapsing.
"They started coming as soon as they heard," Mrs. Banks said. "It's a wonderful thing. They stayed with us till we got the roof covered. We've always been blessed to have lots of good friends, and the Lord has blessed us in all this, too."
Just two houses over, Janet Edwards was dragging downed tree limbs from the yard of her mother and father, Lealon and Clarice Thompson.
She pointed to a row of once stout pine trees, all snapped neatly in half, as if by some petulant child grown tired of his playthings.
"My dad planted every one of those trees," Edwards said. "He's 77 years old and he's worked all his life. Now, he's got to start all over."
The Thompsons had just finished supper when Clarice Thompson heard a tremendous roar.
"I was in the kitchen, cleaning up," Mrs. Thompson said. "When I heard that noise, I knew something was happening. I ran to the bedroom where Lealon was. It happened so quick you don't have time for anything to go through your mind. You just pray the Good Lord will take care of you."
The Thompsons were unhurt. Their daughter, who drove up from Jackson when she got word of the storm, said the kitchen where her mother had been just moments before the tornado hit was virtually demolished.
"It hit the kitchen so hard," Edwards said, "it even tore out the window casing."
Had her mother stayed in the kitchen, she said, it's very likely she would have been killed. Still, amidst all the damage, the tornado left her mother's prize china cabinet untouched.
"It's amazing," Edwards said. "We call it the family's prize possession. It's all her dishes. It didn't break a single one."
A few miles to the northeast, in the Johnson subdivision just off Kay Lane, Virginia Dew was out on her back porch when the storm hit.
Her husband and elderly father, David Peden, 94, were inside.
"I heard this whistling noise," Dew said. "I always heard to get in the hallway. So I called for my husband to get my dad and get in the hallway. When I opened the door to go inside, Buddy, our dog, went flying out through the yard. My dad was in the bedroom, but he's old and uses a walker and couldn't move very fast. All we could do was just roll him on the floor and cover him up with our bodies.
"And then that was it. It was over just that quick. I called to my husband to go see how bad the house was damaged. He came back and said, 'We don't have no house.'"
The hallway - or what was left of it - that they had tried so hard to reach was littered with chunks of heavy debris. "If we hadn't went back for my dad," Dew said, "we'd have been seriously hurt."
Recounting the unspeakable horror of that night, Dew appeared to be on the verge of tears.
"I've seen this kind of thing before on TV," she said, "but this is the closest I've ever been to one. I always wondered how the people could bear it who had lost so much. …"
Her voice trailed away as she surveyed her own losses. Her house is totaled. The family's two cars sit in the front yard, windshields battered and broken by debris. The belongings of a lifetime lie scattered helter-skelter about the mud-caked yard, exposed to the elements.
Even amidst such devastation, Dew has found cause for thanksgiving. George and Peggy Jennings, whose house escaped largely unscathed, are just two of the friends, neighbors and complete strangers who have stepped forward to share the load.
"Thank God for people like Mister and Missus Jennings," Dew said, wiping away the tears. "They offered us one of their apartments to stay in, and they're taking care of daddy while we sort out this mess. We stayed at their house last night. Their children have been a wonderful help, too. And my sister came up from Flora. …"
Even Buddy, whom they thought had been killed, was later found to be alive.
Three doors down, O.B. "Red" Anderson and his wife, Jimmie, surveyed the damage to their home of 35 years.
"We were watching television," Mrs. Anderson said. "I looked out the door and told Red there was a storm coming. He didn't believe me. Well, in about 10 minutes it hit.
"When it hit, I hollered. You know how you do when you're scared."
In the immediate aftermath of the tornado, the Andersons' thoughts turned not to the destruction all around them, but to finding a flashlight. "It was so dark," Anderson explained, "you couldn't see."
Slowly, they began to assess the situation. Neighbors began going door to door to make sure they were not injured.
"We're not hurt too bad," Anderson said, jerking a thumb toward the battered house behind him. Even as he speaks, one corner of the house lies covered in plastic where the roof has been blown away.
"Now, some of these other people," he added, pointing down the street where several houses have been nearly leveled by the storm, "they had real damage."
His wife followed his gaze, taking in the nearly total devastation that marks a number of their neighbors' houses. "The only thing I can say," she said, "is the Lord is some powerful."
Neighbor Tommy Loftin would probably agree with that sentiment wholeheartedly.
Loftin is a self-described "weather watcher."
"I'm one of these guys that go out and look when there's storm warnings. You know what I mean?" he said.
Loftin described the storm that left his home in shambles and tore off half his roof as "10 seconds of holy terror."
"We were watching the weather on TV," he said. "I knew that coming from the south like it was that we had a chance of getting hit. Sure enough, we did."
Loftin and his wife and son escaped injury by cowering in a back bedroom. "All we heard was glass breaking and stuff flying all over the place," he said. "You can see, it blew so hard it blew bricks clear into this closet."
After the storm had passed, Loftin emerged to assess what had happened. As bad as the damage to his own home was, what he saw next door left him stunned.
The place where just moments before the home of R.B. and Loyce Overbey had stood was empty, replaced by a haphazard pile of rubble.
"I just knew R.B. and Loyce were dead," Loftin said, still visibly shaken by the experience. "That scared the fire out of me."
Overbey and his wife had been tracking the weather on TV, too. Still, they had just seconds of warning before the storm struck their home - heralded by a noise like a dozen freight trains.
"When we heard that noise," Overbey said, "we ran and got in the tub. It made an awful racket, but I really couldn't tell you what it sounded like. It was, just, boom! It was over just that quick.
"We were still laying in the tub and Loyce said, 'It's raining on us.' That's when I looked up and told her, 'That's cause they ain't no roof.'"
Overbey looked at all that was left of his home and shook his head.
"I'll tell you this much," he said. "We were durn lucky. Durn lucky."
