Read This Is Only a Test for Free Online

tried capturing some portion of the storm’s destruction. We felt it our obligation for the same reason we chopped trees and moved rubble:
    I have a camera, so I must take this picture
.
    Though we had little control over the relief efforts, we knew how to point and click.
    First, we snapped photos of a lake filled with debris, of car windows shattered. We snapped a few of the downed power lines, too, their coils curled like black snakes along the tree trunks. Never meant to be souvenirs, these pictures were our humble attempt to do something useful. As writers in grad school, we had been trained to believe that stories mattered, that remembering mattered, and that if we did a good enough job recounting these stories then we might matter, too.
    In one instance a police officer asked us to “take it easy” with the pictures, to respect the victims’ privacy. We complied. After all, how were we to explain what we’d convinced ourselves were the subtle differences between exploitation and documentation, particularly to someone who had witnessed so much of the former?
    Twenty-four hours after the storm, I watched as a carnival atmosphere consumed what was left of our town—people clogging the streets in SUVs, the passengers half-hanging out the windows. Everybody clutched iPhones and video cameras, capturing what little remained. They “oohed” and “ahhed” as if watching a fireworks display, took selfies amid the storm-ravaged topography. They gobbled up gigabytes, uploaded all they could.
    Little was salvaged, but everything was saved.
    On May 22, less than a month after our experience, Joplin, Missouri, endured its own disaster. An EF5 tornado decimated the town, and as I watched the news footage over breakfast, I was overcome by a sickening déjà vu. Hadn’t we seen this one before? Hadn’t it already played out?
    Feeling mostly helpless, I thought about all that I still had.
    I have a pen, so I will write a letter to Joplin
.
    My letter ran in a few St. Louis newspapers, warning Joplin residents that as a tornado survivor myself, I knew for certain that “this will get worse before it gets better.” The letter was well received, and for a week I received phone calls from radio stations and journalists throughout Missouri, asking me for interviews about my experiences in Tuscaloosa. I obliged, always willing to open my mouth, though I hardly knew anything. My own house had been spared, after all, and at the storm’s conclusion, when I walked outside to assess the damage, all I found was that there was nothing to assess. We remained wholly intact, right down to the potted plant on the porch.
    Yet the people of Joplin had hardly been so lucky, and my letter to its citizens—gloomy content aside—went momentarily viral, enticing Missourians I’d never met to Facebook me, Follow me, and call upon me for answers. Columnists quoted the letter; pastors, too.
    â€œPeople really love it,” one interviewer informed me. “We’ve gotten all kinds of calls from churches who can’t wait to read it at Sunday service.”
    I was the wrong spokesman, and yet I just kept speaking.
    I told them that the death counts would continue to rise, and that when the cell phone reception returned, it would only bringbad news. I was no prophet—just a guy who couldn’t shut up—and in an attempt at solidarity, I went so far as to assure the people of Joplin that our towns would be “forever wedded by our shared season of misfortune.” But what did I know of misfortune?
    Days later, when the letter reached a producer affiliated with Diane Sawyer’s
World News
, I was asked for an interview yet again. And yet again, I was happy to comply.
    I have a voice, so I must share our story with the world
.
    The film crew situated me in front of a few leveled houses half a mile from my own upright house. For five excruciating minutes as the camera