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Anyway, there was this huge crowd at Danny’s, and the conversations amounted to a din that Danny obviously found comforting. And that’s when it happened.
No not that oak, but the tall, apparently healthy poplar that suddenly snapped with a loud crack, crash, and finally a thud that everyone could hear over the driving rain. The tree took down the electric and phone wires on opposite sides of the street, landing as it did on the Pritchards’ house above the candy store, Sugars – the store with its solid brick base being on the street level and the wooden living quarters, or what was now left of them, on the top level.
Now you may think that this is the unluckiest thing that could have happened, and whether the Pritchards were lucky or unlucky was a regular debate between the glass-half-full and half-empty people. But mind you, the Pritchards were sitting in the very back of their house having lunch, and the roof and ceiling collapsed up to about six feet from their table, sending debris everywhere except where they were sitting. But of course, nobody knew where they were at that time. And despite the rain and limited visibility, the diner emptied of all able-bodied people (and some clearly not so able-bodied). Danny immediately thought about people running out on their checks and then he was embarrassed because, of course, the welfare of the Pritchards was more important. It appeared that, other than the front glass window, which shattered, the store was basically intact, but there was no sign of the Pritchards. Everyone thought the worst. Now Murrayville didn’t have any emergency equipment, so some people were considering