Several years ago, in that part of Kentucky where Russell and Adair counties meet,1 a little girl named Roberta Simpson was growing up on her daddy’s farm. When she grew old enough to go to school, she walked, for everyone walked to school in that time and in that place.
Now Roberta had a real smart teacher. If her teacher looked out the school window and saw a storm was on its way, she said, “Children, stop everything. A storm is coming. You need to go on home before this storm hits.”
You may be wondering: That was a smart teacher? You see, back when Roberta was a little girl, people believed that if you got caught out in a rainstorm and got soaking wet, you would catch a cold. And if you caught a cold, it could go into pneumonia. And if you came down with pneumonia, who could say how long it would be before you’d be back in school? So, in her own way, Roberta’s teacher made sure most of her students were in school most of the time.
There were children who smiled big whenever the teacher sent them home early, but not Roberta. Little Roberta Simpson was afraid of storms. Nothing scared her more than thunder and lightning.
In a rural area, everybody knows everybody, and most of the time everybody also knows all about everybody. So it’s not surprising that a neighbor of the Simpsons, Jim Cravens, an older semi-retired farmer, soon learned that Roberta was afraid of storms. If he was out on his place and could tell a storm was coming, he’d start walking toward the schoolhouse. He would meet up with Roberta, offer her his hand, and walk her home through the storm. Roberta wasn’t nearly as afraid while holding on to the hand of big Jim Cravens. In fact, she thought of him as her very own stormwalker.
On their way home Roberta and Jim had to cross a clearing. Roberta told me that sometimes the thunder would be so loud she would feel like she was right inside it. She told me that one time lightning struck the fence, and sparks just skittered along the barbed wire. At times like those Roberta would feel so scared, she would start to shake. Jim would say, “Now, Roberta, I feel you trembling. You’re shaking ’cause you’re scared, and it’s reasonable to be scared in a storm like this. Why, if you were out here by yourself, you might get so scared you’d think the smart thing to do would be to run over to that one big tree over yonder and stand under it to hide from the storm. But don’t ever go standing under a tree in a storm. Lightning will strike a tree faster than anything. No, you just keep walking like we do and that will be your best chance for reaching home safe.”
Jim told Roberta many things about traveling safely in storms, and I suppose she heard what he said, but she didn’t really try to take it in. She didn’t figure she needed to. After all, he was there, and he was her stormwalker. Jim walked Roberta home through storms all through first grade. And he walked her home through storms all through the fall of second grade. But in the winter of Roberta’s second year of school Jim Cravens took sick.
He had what folks back in those days called heart dropsy. That meant there was a lot of fluid around his heart, and it made him terribly weak. If he wanted to get up in the morning and eat breakfast, he would have to have someone help him sit up in his bed. Then he would need to rest before he could be helped over to his table, where he would need to rest again before someone could help him eat. Then he would need to rest again before he could be helped back over to his bed.
One day, in the spring of Roberta’s second year of school, her teacher looked out the window. She saw the sky wasn’t blue. It wasn’t gray. It was that strange yellow-green sort of color that sky sometimes turns here in Kentucky when a horrible storm is on its way. Back beyond the yellow-green, the teacher could also see dark clouds tumbling and boiling over each other.
She looked at her students, “Children, stop everything. I know some of you play when I send you home on stormy days, but today do not play. There is a horrible storm coming and you need to run. Run! Get home before this storm hits.”
Roberta went running from the schoolhouse. She had just reached the clearing when the storm broke loose. There was thunder, lightning, and rain. Rain coming down harder and faster than Roberta had ever imagined rain could come down. She was so scared; she did the first thing she could think of. She ran over and stood underneath the one big tall tree, trying to hide from the storm. But even though she was standing under a tree, the rain was coming down so hard and so fast, she was soaking wet. Then there was a huge flash of lightning—the kind that in the middle of the night lights up the whole world like it’s the middle of the day.
In that huge flash of lightning Roberta could see Jim Cravens. He was moving toward her, and moving fast. He was motioning to her like he wanted her to come toward him, and above the roar of the storm she thought she could hear him shouting, “Roberta, Roberta, get out from under that tree.”
He was her stormwalker, so she ran toward him. He moved away from her and led her over to a shallow gully—not deep with water rushing, but a spot a bit lower than most of the land around. Again, he motioned to her, and she thought she heard him saying, “Get down. Get down. Keep your head down.”
Roberta crouched down in the gully. But she was only seven years old; she did not keep her head down. When she lifted it, the first thing she saw was the whirling finger of a tornado drop down out of the storm, and the first thing she saw it hit was the tree she had been standing under.
Then Roberta put her head down, and she did not lift it until she heard, “Ro-o-ber-r-r-ta-a-a!”
“Ro-o-ber-r-r-ta-a-a!”
Voices she knew—her mom and her dad!
She stood up in the gully, and her parents saw her. They came running over, “Oh, Roberta, you are all right! There was a tornado, and we knew you were out here somewhere between school and home, but you are all right! And you were smart, to get down in a low spot like this. That was exactly the right thing to do, caught out in the open in a storm like that. We didn’t know you knew that. You were so smart.”
Roberta looked at her parents, “I wasn’t smart. Jim came. He’s the one who brought me to this gully. Jim was here.”
Her parents just looked at her, and then her mother said, “Roberta, I know you believe what you just said. But honey, Jim couldn’t have brought you to this gully. He died today, around noon. We were going to tell you first thing when you came home from school.”
Roberta Simpson is all grown up now. She married a man named Lonnie Brown and changed her name to Roberta Simpson Brown. I met her because she also tells stories, and she told me this story from her life and allowed me to tell it to others. She also writes stories. Her first book, The Walking Trees, published by August House, contains several stories Roberta Simpson Brown made up, and one true story, “Storm Walker,” where she recollects the events I’ve just told you about.
If you ever meet Roberta Simpson Brown, and I hope you will, you can ask her, and she will admit to you that she still does not consider herself a good stormwalker. For many years Roberta taught sixth grade English at Southern Middle School in Jefferson County, Kentucky. Even in her classroom, when it was thundering and lightning outside, her first thought was always: “Why don’t I just dive under this big old teacher’s desk and wait out this storm?” But she knew if she dove under her desk there would be chaos in her classroom, so even though she was afraid, she held on. But if alarms went off, she took cover right along with her students, because she knew how important taking proper cover could be.
You could also ask her, and she would admit to you that every year, at least once, she gets in her car and she travels the two to three hours it takes to go from her home in Jefferson County down to that part of Kentucky where Russell and Adair counties meet. There, she visits the grave of Jim Cravens, her stormwalker.
“Stormwalker” is a true story from the life of Roberta Simpson Brown. I first learned about these events in Roberta’s life when she told about them at Tale Talk, a gathering of storytellers at the offices of the International Order of E.A.R.S. in Middletown, Kentucky. I found the events intriguing and entrancing, so I asked Roberta for permission to retell the story, not in the first person, as she had told it, but in the third person. Roberta requested that I work on my retelling, then come to her house for dinner and tell it to her so she could determine if she was satisfied with my rendition. On December 19, 1990, I went to the home of Roberta and Lonnie Brown for dinner and told her the story.2 Roberta approved of my retelling, and I’ve been telling the tale ever since.
Ah, what a lovely model for how to ask and receive permission to tell a story! Well, yes; however, Roberta and I skipped a very important step. We failed to put our agreement in writing. Why would that matter? Read on.
In 1992, I created an audiocassette of several Kentucky tales, and wanted to put my retelling of “Stormwalker” on that audiocassette. By then Roberta had sold the rights to her story to August House, who published “Storm Walker” in The Walking Trees and Other Scary Stories.3 Even though I had never read the published story before creating my version of it, the adaptation rights belonged to August House, so it was necessary for me to secure their permission to record my own adaptation.
Nine years later I released “Stormwalker” on my CD Some Dog and Other Kentucky Wonders (it included the stories from the 1992 audiocassette of the same title, plus two additional tales), necessitating another permission agreement for the different format. “Stormwalker” won a 2003 Honor Title, Storytelling World Award, Category 2: Stories for Pre-Adolescent Listeners.4
My brother Jeff found the recording especially useful. Like all teachers, Jeff’s responsibilities included making sure his students could quickly move to a designated storm shelter area in the event of a tornado warning. He noticed his high school students considered storm safety a topic unworthy of their attention. One year, he played “Stormwalker” before talking about where to seek shelter, and his students listened to him—they really wanted to know! After that “Stormwalker” played a recurring role in his classroom.
Bringing my retelling of these events to you in this print format has required yet another round of permission negotiations. So, if I have learned something from my permission experience, it is this: Even if you are given permission to tell a story by a friend, take time to put it in writing. That small step beyond your verbal agreement could eventually save both of you from anxiety and paperwork.
I’ve told this story many times over the years, but at no time has a telling made a bigger difference than it did when I told it at Kentucky Crafted: The Market, 2006.5 You see, when Roberta tells her story, she never mentions Jim Cravens’s last name. She always thought of him as Jim, so that’s what she calls him. But when I tell the story, I say his full name. Attending the Kentucky Craft Market that year were descendants of Jim Cravens. They heard his name, listened to the story, and began to think they might have known the specific fellow the tale talked about. They asked me how to contact Roberta, and they did. It seems the Cravens family left Kentucky shortly after Jim’s death, and Roberta had been out of touch with them all those years. Roberta told me that if she had been there telling the story the connection might never have been made, but because I used Jim’s full name two families who had once been neighbors became reacquainted.