The Stormchasers: A Novel Read online

  “Wow,” says Kevin. “That’s fascinating, Laredo. You know this how?”

  “Letters,” says Karena. “Letters Libby wrote to her cousins in New Heidelburg, where she ended up. My dad has them. Or maybe the Foss County Historical Society.”

  “I’m jealous, Laredo,” says Kevin. “My family’s just a bunch of little Polish sausage makers from Chicago.”

  “Well, that’s nice too,” Karena says diplomatically. Then she sighs. “I do romanticize it,” she says. “I know it was a harder life than I can possibly imagine. Just to get water you had to walk miles sometimes, or you could die from something we wouldn’t think twice about now, like childbirth or appendicitis. . . . But sometimes I wish I could be transported back there, just to see what it was like. No TV, no phone, no Internet, just people sitting around and talking in the evenings. Listening to the wind.”

  “You don’t think you’d get bored?”

  “Maybe,” Karena says. “But I think I’d find it . . . peaceful.”

  Kevin nods.

  “That’s nice, Laredo,” he says. “I think peace is underrated.”

  A few miles later they exit onto 83 North at Murdo and stop at the travel plaza off the highway to hurry up and wait. The tourists pinball lazily around the area. Alistair wanders the railroad tracks behind it, taking pictures of the rails. Melody stands to one side to watch him while chatting with Pete. The other women form the usual line at the ladies’ room, so Karena stays outside to eavesdrop on the guides. They have gathered by the driver’s door of the Whale, conferring. The cloud cover is a problem, suppressing the heat necessary for the storms to form, and the debate is whether to drive out from beneath it or wait for it to erode. “I keep thinking we should be farther north and west,” says Dennis, leaning in to tap Dan’s laptop. “There’s already clearing there, and we could catch the cells as they go up.”

  But Dan shakes his head. “Then you’re getting into the Cheyenne River Reservation, and there’s no road network,” he says. “We could get spanked. Here we’ll have our choice of escape options, and given how fast this stuff’s going to move if and when it gets going . . .”

  Dennis massages his beard. “True,” he says. “Still. I just have a feeling—”

  They bring up screen after screen of data, and Karena wanders off. She uses the now-unoccupied ladies’ room, shows the mullet photo to the convenience store clerks, canvasses the chasers. There are a good amount of them, including a vanload of meteorology undergrads eating Bomb Pops and playing Frisbee. But it’s nothing like the tailgate party at the Ogallala Sapp Bros, and as more and more chasers depart, Karena starts to fret. What if Charles is playing a different area too? Karena makes herself a root beer float, Charles’s favorite drink, and carries it outside to where Fern and Alicia and Marla and Scout are sitting on the wall of ice-melt bags piled against the convenience store.

  The women fan themselves and eat candy Marla passes out, Mallo Cups and Nut Goodies and Cherry Mash. They stare at the tall grasses across the highway. Fern smokes and gazes gloomily at Dan. Everyone seems listless and scratchy. The air is sullen beneath the thick gray clouds, so humid that they’re all dripping with sweat.

  “I sure hope we see something today,” Scout says.

  Marla examines the sky from beneath the brim of her flame hat. “Doesn’t look promising, does it?” She leans past Karena to Alicia. “Maybe you could pray us up some, Allie,” she suggests.

  “Oh, I have been trying,” says Alicia, “believe me.”

  She smiles at Karena.

  “I’ve been praying we find your brother too,” she says.

  Karena’s mouth drops open. She turns to Fern, sitting beside her, with a glare of hurt and reproach: Thanks a lot.

  “Bloody hell, Alicia,” Fern says, grimacing and chuffing out smoke, and Alicia looks mortified.

  “Oh no, I’m sorry,” she says. “I forgot I wasn’t supposed to know.”

  Flushing miserably, Fern starts to apologize, but Marla grabs her arm and gives her a shake. “Don’t blame Fern,” she tells Karena. “It’s not her fault. We ganged up on her.”

  “We did,” Scout agrees. “We bullied her mercilessly. After you ran out of the party the other night, Karena. We could tell something was going on.”

  Karena shakes her head. “Never mind,” she says. “It’s fine.”

  “It’s not,” says Fern. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I never betray a trust, as a rule.” She grinds out her cigarette viciously. “I just thought, we’ve so little time, and five sets of eyes are better than two—”

  “We want to help,” says Scout.

  “And we didn’t tell the guys,” says Marla. “Honest. We’re very discreet.”

  Karena can’t help but laugh.

  “I know,” she says. “It’s all right. Really. Thank you. Fern?” Fern hunches her shoulders. “It’s okay,” Karena says. She maintains eye contact and nods until Fern manages a smile.

  Karena stands and slaps off the seat of her shorts, looking at the Whale. She’d better go over there right now and tell Dan what she’s been up to, since it’s only a matter of time until he finds out. What did Karena expect? This is what happens. Information leaks, people play telephone, situations mushroom out of control. Karena doesn’t blame Fern. It’s Karena’s own fault for having opened her mouth in the first place. And while it’s not necessarily bad the ladies know about Charles—in fact, Fern is right, from a logistical standpoint the more lookouts the better—what’s dangerous is the erosion. Karena just cannot afford her new habit of confession, of blabbing things that need to be kept private. Because what if this too spirals out of control? What if Karena blurts something out or starts talking in her sleep? Karena sighs and sets off toward the Whale, but before she can reach it Kevin and Dennis turn, reeling them all in, yelling that it’s time to go.

  20

  Kevin drives again, and despite the sugar from Karena’s float, or maybe because of the crash following it, she falls asleep, for when she wakes up they’re at yet another gas station. This one is in a city, though, a small two-pump operation instead of the travel plazas she’s gotten used to, and Karena is a little discombobulated by the busy intersection alongside it, the series of streetlights marching into the distance and the pickups and muscle cars zooming past. As Karena sits up two beaters cut across the corner of the lot and plunge back into traffic to make the light, rap thumping from their windows. Toto, I guess we’re not in Kadoka anymore, Karena thinks. She feels sticky all over, her mouth from her float, her hair tickling her face in spiderweb strands, attaching itself in the humidity. It must have just rained here, for steam is rising from the pavement.

  And Karena realizes something else: The sun is out. Oil rainbows dance on the tar. But the sky ahead is that dark blue like a bruise, and everything around her glows that saturated Technicolor that happens when a storm is forcing light into one quadrant of the sky.

  Uh-oh, Karena thinks.

  She opens the door and gets out, planning to ask Kevin where they are. But she doesn’t see him. The gas pump is sticking in the tank, and Karena pulls it out, screws on the cap, collects the receipt. She has been covering all her own expenses because the Ledger will reimburse her; now she makes a note to repay Kevin. He comes out of the store toward her, chugging a canned espresso drink.

  “Bruh,” he says and shudders. “I don’t know how you can drink this stuff.”

  “Well, I don’t drink that,” Karena says, peering at the little can with its rattlesnake pattern. “Are we in Pierre?”

  “We are,” says Kevin, “and we’re gassing up one last time before we head into it.”

  He motions Karena into the Jeep and swivels his laptop toward her—back in Valentine he somehow mounted it onto a stand. Karena hooks her hair behind her ears and stares in at the radar. A huge green-and-red pinwheel is eclipsing most of the county just north and west of Pierre.

  “Zoiks,” she says. “That looks like a huge one.”
r />   “It’s healthy all right,” Kevin says. He pulls her back out of the Jeep and points toward the blackening sky. “That’s what we’re seeing over there. And check out the flags. What do you notice?”

  Karena looks at the pennants on the adjoining car dealership, the American flag over a Subway. They are all standing out stiff, flying toward the storm.

  “They’re pointing northwest, right?” Kevin says. “That means the wind is from the southeast, what we call a backed wind. That’s what we like to see, Laredo. That wind’s carrying moisture all the way up from the Gulf to feed our hungry storm. And this thing is ravenous,” he adds, checking the radar again. “In fact I’d guess it’s a beast.”

  Karena shivers despite the heat and rubs her sticky arms. Now that she’s more alert she sees lightning flare on the horizon, hears the corresponding static on somebody’s radio, then the wah-wah-wah of the emergency broadcast signal. Karena’s blood freezes at the sound. Still the traffic flows past, the truck emitting the signal moving through the light. Karena can’t believe these people are just going about their business as if it’s a regular day.

  Dan calls from the parked Whale, “Let’s go, people!” Dennis and Fern, who are smoking out on the sidewalk, quickly snuff their cigarettes and jog over.

  “You ready, Laredo?” Kevin asks.

  “As ready as I’ll ever be, I guess,” Karena says, climbing into the Jeep.

  “Then buckle up,” says Kevin. “Seriously. This is the real deal.”

  They wind through the steep, stepladdered streets of Pierre, careful to stay behind the Whale despite the heavy traffic. Karena has the sense of reaching a new elevation, climbing ever higher. She opens the glove compartment and wipes her face with a wet-nap, ties her hair back, readies her recorder and camera. She is not terrified this time, not with Kevin, but she does have that preternatural feeling of alertness, her skin crawling, her eyes ticking from side to side as if to store up information. As they leave the city Karena’s hair stirs on her arms and tries to stand up, and she wonders if it’s adrenaline, or if she’s reacting to a drop in barometric pressure as animals are said to do before a bad storm, or if the air, which tastes metallic, is electrified.

  They proceed through the suburbs, and Karena looks at the little houses on their neat lawns beneath the now-hissing trees and hopes they will be there later. Amazingly, a woman is out mowing her grass. She waves at the Whirlwind vehicles and shouts something. Karena shakes her head. Then Pierre is behind them, and they are in the grasslands as abruptly as if the capital had never existed. These plains feel different to Karena from the ones outside Kadoka, more desolate, wilder, and again she has the sense of climbing, that they are driving along the roof of the world. Her ears pop. The sky is closer. It’s darker too, shading to black on the horizon. The storm looms before them, the grasses bending toward it, and Karena thinks of Dennis saying, Something about the storms that day. . . . they seemed angry.

  It is almost familiar by now: Karena’s awe at the storm, her wonder and dread; her tiny helplessness in the face of it, the Whirlwind vehicles like ants approaching a carousel. They start to see chasers parked in the turnarounds, setting up tripods and video cameras. Karena waves. The chasers wave back. None of them is Charles. She also notices something new—and her stomach drops—law enforcement. Sheriffs’ prowlers and statie SUVs parked on the shoulder, flashers lit, pointing toward the storm. They must expect it to be bad.

  “How big is it now?” she asks, leaning over to see the laptop, which Kevin has facing him, and she hears her younger self saying, How close is that? and Charles replying cheerfully, Oh, not so far . . . I’d say about five miles.

  Kevin glances at the laptop. “Don’t know,” he says briefly. “No signal. I wish to God we had Threat Net in here,” he mutters, more to himself than to Karena, and she looks at the Whale with its signal-boosting antenna.

  Kevin unhooks the ham handset. “KB1 SLM calling KE5 UIY,” he says.

  “This is UIY,” says Dennis. His voice is smooth and crisp, all jocularity gone.

  “I have no signal, UIY,” says Kevin. “What is Threat Net showing? Do we have a Wheel of Fortune on this storm?”

  “Stand by,” says Dennis. Then he says, “SLM, we have three. One shear marker of a hundred twenty knots. Threat Net’s showing upward of five-inch hail.”

  “Copy that,” says Kevin. “Is there a hook echo? Has the storm been warned?”

  “Affirmative, SLM. There is a classic hook echo, and this storm is tornado warned.”

  “Copy, UIY. Thank you. What’s our ETA?”

  “We’re looking to intercept in about fifteen,” says Dennis. “Dan thinks this storm might be a right-mover, so we’re keeping an eye on our south option. Better to turn tail and face some RFD than try to punch the core of this thing. We’ll keep you posted. Stand by.”

  “KB1 SLM, standing by,” says Kevin and replaces the handset.

  Karena has been scribbling notes on her steno as a backup to her recorder, and now she runs over them. Some of what she’s heard she knows, for instance that a hook echo is a tornadic signature on radar, the little curl showing where the tornado will form beneath the storm. Other facts she’s less clear on.

  “Five-inch hail, is that softball size?” she asks.

  “A little bigger than softballs,” says Kevin.

  “And a right-mover, what does that mean?”

  “It’s when a storm takes a sudden dive east,” says Kevin distractedly. He is leaning forward, hugging the wheel, to peer through the windshield. “When that happens the storm usually encounters warmer air, and it turns into a superbeast.”

  “Oh,” says Karena. “Okay.”

  She writes this information down, then closes her steno pad and sits back. The road has curved slightly and the wind is rushing into the storm from their eight o’clock now, buffeting the Jeep and making the overhead wires shriek like a teakettle coming to boil. The base rounds into view as they approach. This is always a surprise to Karena, how something so huge can have structure as opposed to just encompassing the whole sky. This storm’s base, however, is nearly touching the ground. Karena tries to swallow. Her throat clicks.

  “Kevin,” she says, pointing, “is that a wall cloud? At our eleven o’clock?”

  “If it is,” Kevin says slowly, “it’s the biggest one I’ve ever seen. It must be three miles across, but . . . yup, I think it is. Good eye, Laredo.”

  He unhooks the handset and is transmitting this information to the Whale when they pass a Volvo station wagon parked on the shoulder. It is just like Karena’s at home except it is bright canary-yellow, vibratingly aglow against the storm-blackened sky. A man is standing next to it, beneath a sign that says OWEEO, 10 MI. He is wearing shorts and sandals and a T-shirt, and his clothes and hair ripple in the wind. His dark blond hair. His skin darker beneath it. He has a beard, and as the Whirlwind convoy passes he waves cheerfully, his grin a startling white in his tanned face.

  “Kevin,” Karena cries. She grabs his arm, making him drop the handset. “It’s Charles! That’s Charles back there! Stop the car, go back!”

  The Jeep swerves, and Kevin swears. He guides it back onto the road, then bends to grope for the handset, which bobs on the end of its curly cord near his feet.

  “Excuse me,” he says, “but do not ever ever ever do that again. It’s dangerous under any circumstances but especially right now, and you must never interrupt a ham radio operator when he’s transmitting, okay?”

  “Okay,” says Karena, “but we just passed Charles, Kevin, that was him, I’m sure of it. We have to stop and go back!”

  “SLM, what’s going on?” says Dennis. “Is there a problem?”

  “No, sorry, UIY, we just had a moment here,” Kevin says.

  “Did you copy my last transmission?”

  “Negative. Say again, please.”

  “Dan thinks a funnel is developing at our eleven thirty,” says Dennis. “Stand by.”

  “C
opy,” says Kevin.

  “Please,” Karena says. “Please, Kevin.” She doesn’t dare touch him again, but she implores him with her eyes. She holds her hand up level with the dash to show him how it’s shaking. “Just for a second,” she says. “Just let me say hello and find out where he’s going, then we can catch up with them.”

  Kevin glances at her, his expression flat and tight. Then he swivels to look at the wall cloud, from which a black nub is protruding.

  “Please,” says Karena. “It’s been twenty years!”

  “Fuck,” Kevin says.

  Without slowing significantly, he wheels the Jeep around. The tires squeal and smoke and there is the smell of burnt rubber. Then they’re speeding back toward Pierre, in the direction they’ve come.

  “Oh, thank you,” says Karena, “thank you so much—”

  “I could lose my job for this,” says Kevin. “Not to mention compromising everyone’s safety. You never leave the tour! Never ever ever! So a little silence will be much appreciated.”

  “Okay,” Karena says humbly.

  “One minute, Karena,” says Kevin. “That’s it. If we get back there and don’t see him . . .”

  Karena leans forward in her seat as if to urge the Jeep on faster. The sky is a light gray ahead, black in her wing mirror. The Jeep rocks on its frame. The grasses bend toward them on the diagonal, nearly flattened.

  “SLM, where are you?” says Dennis. “We’ve lost visual. If you’re behind us we can’t see you. Keep up, please.”

  “UIY, we’ll catch up with you,” says Kevin, his face grim.

  “What’s the problem, SLM?”

  “We’ll catch you, UIY,” says Kevin again.

  “This is not good, SLM,” says Dennis. “We’ve got a massive right-mover here with tornado on the ground. Repeat, cone tornado on the ground. We need you to catch up immediately—”