The Stormchasers: A Novel Read online

  Contributions to help the tornado’s victims can made through the Red Cross.

  Karena reads her piece over, combs out two hundred words, and sends it in as an attachment. Instantly her phone rings, the Ledger copy desk verifying facts. When she is done going through the story with them, she again calls St. Mary’s, the Gettysburg Medical Center, the Holy Infant. Nobody matching Charles’s description is at the hospitals. Nor in their morgues. This is good, Karena tells herself—right? Empirically, it’s good. Charles isn’t dead. He isn’t critically wounded. But that could mean he is still out there somewhere, injured. He could be trapped in his yellow wagon, pinned beneath an eighteen-wheeler or a refrigerator. He could be lying on the ground, bleeding in the rain, more storms moving in.

  Karena rubs her eyes and checks her phone again. Already four new messages from the copy desk. Then there is a hand on her shoulder, and Karena looks up. Kevin.

  “Hi,” she says. Kevin looks tired, delicate purple patches beneath his eyes.

  “Hi,” he says. “How’s it going?”

  Karena nods, then shakes her head, then shrugs. “It’s going.”

  “No news?”

  “Not of Charles.”

  “Good,” Kevin says. “I’m sure he’s fine. We’ll find him.”

  He puts a hand on the adjoining chair and Karena waits for him to sit, but he remains standing. “Listen,” he says, “I don’t mean to bug you, but do you have a second to talk about something?”

  “Sure,” Karena says. “One sec,” and she rapidly texts a correction to the copy editor. Then she looks up at Kevin inquiringly.

  “Karena,” he says, and now he does sit. “The tour’s leaving.”

  “Okay,” Karena says. “Where’re they going? We can catch up.”

  “No,” says Kevin. “You don’t understand. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, especially right now, but they’re leaving-leaving.”

  Karena shakes her head, not in negation but because this information does not compute. She can’t process it. Her brain won’t take it in.

  “Leaving Pierre?” she says.

  “Yes,” says Kevin, “leaving Pierre, but also the area. Going way south. Dan couldn’t find rooms for this big a group, they’re all booked up, but we would have had to do some driving tonight anyway.”

  “What?” Karena says. “Why?” She stares at Kevin, stumped. “What do you mean? To get away from the storms?”

  “To get back toward Oklahoma City,” says Kevin. “Look, the tour’s only a week long. And the guests have to be in OKC day after tomorrow to catch their flights home. So tomorrow would have been a drive day anyway, but now we’re way, way north. Much farther than we should be. So Dan’s decided to get a head start.”

  “Okkkaaayyyy,” says Karena. “So—where are they going?”

  “Back to Nebraska,” says Kevin. “Dan’s booked rooms all the way down in North Platte, which I personally think is insane, but there you go.”

  Karena just sits there, trying to comprehend all this. It doesn’t quite work. She is tired, so tired she can’t think. The bad food, the late nights, the giant wedge, the injured of Oweeo, Charles. She is trembling slightly, a rocket shaking itself apart as it enters the last stages of the atmosphere.

  “Laredo?” says Kevin. “You still with me?”

  “Sure,” says Karena. “So . . . what happens now? I guess we could switch off driving, if we have a lot of coffee . . .” She looks at her laptop, her phone. “Except no, what am I talking about, I can’t go. The story’s almost put to bed, but I need to be here in case there’s follow-up. And Charles—”

  “I know,” says Kevin. “You need to stay to try and find him. Of course you do.”

  He puts his elbows on his knees and leans forward.

  “Karena,” he says, “I’ll stay with you, if you want.”

  “Oh,” says Karena. “Really?”

  She looks at him. He is blushing slightly. “Kevin, that’s sweet, but I can’t let you do that.”

  “It’s not sweet at all, it’s self-interest. I’m a helluva lot closer to home here than I am in Oklahoma City. I’m from St. Paul, remember? Why would I want to go all the way down there just to yo-yo back up? Besides,” Kevin adds, “no offense, Laredo, but you look beat. I think you could use the help.”

  Karena scoops her hair back and sighs. “That’s true,” she admits. “I probably could.” She can feel her body shutting down, as if somebody’s going around inside and turning off all the unnecessary systems to conserve the main power source.

  “You would really do that?” she asks.

  “I would really do that,” says Kevin.

  “Okay then,” Karena says. “Please do. Stay. With me.” She looks down at her lap, suddenly shy. “Thanks,” she says. “Thank you.”

  “My pleasure,” says Kevin and stands. Dan Mitchell is beckoning him over.

  “Up and at ’em, Laredo,” says Kevin. “Let’s go say good-bye.”

  He holds out a hand to Karena to help her out of the chair, and she lets him pull her up, then glances at her laptop. But it’ll be safe here. There’s nobody else in the Taco Hut. Karena pockets her cell phone and follows Kevin outside.

  The night is humid, the air drenched. Lightning flashes, illuminating towering Cu in the distance. Thunder mutters. The tourists are already gathered by the passenger’s door of the Whale in slickers and sweatshirts. They shuffle, none wanting to be the first to say good-bye. Then Melody leans from inside the van, where she is sitting with Alistair.

  “I guess this is it, then,” she says. “Lovely meeting you. Be safe.”

  “You too,” says Karena, and waves to Alistair, who is intent on his handheld computer game.

  “Bye, Alistair,” she says, and Alistair bobs his head. Then Scout steps forward.

  “I’ll go,” she says, and pulls Karena in for a bone-crushing embrace.

  “Be good, kiddo,” she murmurs. “Hold on to your guide. He’s a keeper.”

  She steps back, smiling, and Pete comes over next. He gives Karena a quick squeeze, then waves to his wife.

  “Come on, Marl,” he says.

  Marla shakes her head. Beneath her flame cap her face is red and swollen with all the tears she didn’t shed back in Oweeo, when she was attaching IV lines, arranging mangled and bleeding people on stretchers. She steps forward, enfolds Karena in a damp hug, starts to say something, chokes, and flees to the van. Pete gives Karena a last apologetic wave and climbs in beside his wife. In the Whale’s dim interior light Karena can see him talking to Marla, Marla’s head bowed.

  Alicia is next. She kisses Kevin, then Karena. “God bless you,” she says to Karena. “Your brother too. I’ll be praying for both of you.”

  “Thank you, sweetheart,” says Karena, “we could use that,” and Alicia gets in the van. And then there’s only one tourist left.

  “C’mere,” says Karena and holds out her arms to Fern, who looks very small and pointy-headed in her enormous hoodie. Fern crushes out her cigarette and walks slowly over. As they embrace Karena can smell smoke and tacos in Fern’s purple-black hair.

  “I think I’m going to miss you most of all,” she says in Fern’s ear, and they both laugh, sniffling a little. “Good luck with that fever breaking.”

  “Bless,” says Fern. “And you get some good rogering. Be in touch, yeah?”

  “I will,” Karena says and means it.

  Fern detaches and shuffles away. A hand reaches out to pull her into the Whale, and the passenger’s door slams behind her. Dennis leans over to buss Karena’s cheek, more a scratch of beard than anything, though he won’t quite meet her eyes. He squeezes Kevin’s shoulder and climbs in the driver’s seat, and Dan Mitchell, opening his own door, shows a crack of teeth that might, Karena thinks, actually be a smile.

  “Nice to have you with us,” he says. “I hope you find your brother.”

  Karena puts a hand on her throat. She can’t speak.

  Then Dan gets in too, an
d Dennis puts the Whale in reverse. The big van backs up, cruises behind the Taco Hut in the drive-through lane, reemerges on the other side. As Karena and Kevin watch, the Whale turns left onto the quiet, rain-slick street. Karena catches a glimpse of Dennis in profile, saying something, Dan leaning toward the glow of a screen. The radar. The Whale glides past, and although Karena can’t see the tourists behind the tinted passenger windows, she waves. Kevin does too. They stand side by side as the Whale accelerates down the street, pauses at a blinking yellow stoplight, speeds up again. Then it vanishes, with one last wink of taillights, beneath the apocalyptic dark sky.

  23

  The Taco Hut manager asks them to leave at midnight, regretfully explaining he’s already stayed open an hour past his usual closing time. Kevin and Karena apologize and drive down, down through Pierre to the motel Kevin has found for them, the Hi-Plains Inn & Suites. Karena stays in the Jeep while he checks in, staring through the windshield. She has progressed to the stage of exhaustion beyond thought or movement—only her right eyelid twitches, a periodic little flutter.

  Kevin returns, jogging past the Jeep’s headlights in the rain, which is coming down hard now. He drives them to the very end of the lot, next to the chain-link fencing, the territory of flatbeds and truck cabs. This looks ominous, Karena thinks, gazing at the encaged lightbulbs in the stairwells, the gray doors dented as though people have tried to kick them in. She has heard the tourists’ horror stories about occasional nightmare rooms, default options when everything else for miles around is booked up. Holes in the walls. Bugs in the beds. Floors that vibrate for no reason. Karena has had good lodging luck on this tour, but maybe it has just run out.

  Kevin frowns through the water-runneled window. “Sorry, Laredo,” he says. “It was the best I could do.”

  “It’s fine,” Karena says. “I appreciate your finding it. Thank you.”

  Kevin hands her a plastic key card advertising a car wash. He appears a bit abashed.

  “I got two rooms,” he says, running a hand over his wet hair. “I didn’t know whether—I mean, given the circumstances—well, it’s been a really long day, and I wasn’t sure if . . .”

  “. . . if I had enough energy to satisfy your perverse animal lusts?” Karena says, a flicker of life returning.

  “Exactly,” says Kevin, looking relieved. “You’re gonna need to eat your Wheaties to do that. Meanwhile, I figured we could both use some sleep.”

  “That was very thoughtful.”

  “However, Laredo, the rooms are adjoining. Separated by just a door. And judging from the looks of this place, it’s probably a very thin and flimsy door. So if you get scared in the night . . .”

  “I’ll come a-knockin’,” Karena says and turns to retrieve her laptop and bag from the backseat.

  “Or if you get cold,” suggests Kevin, “or if you want to play cribbage—I’m a mean cribbage player, Laredo. Or if you start to experience base animal desires . . .”

  “Got it,” says Karena.

  “Because, you know, the rooms are adjoining,” says Kevin in his meathead voice. He flexes a bicep and points between himself and Karena. “That means they’re, like, right next to each other. They’re together.”

  Karena leans over to give him a kiss.

  “Good night, Mr. Wizard,” she says.

  “Good night, Laredo,” he says. “Don’t let the bedbugs bite. Literally.”

  Karena makes a face at him, then runs through the rain to her room. Once inside she flips on a light and stands against the door. It’s not that bad, really. It couldn’t be more bare-bones: forest-green coverlet, carpet, and curtains, two prints of exactly the same painting, an Indian drum, hanging askew over both beds. But it seems clean enough, except for a cloying sweet smell. On her way to the bathroom Karena notices a couple of belly-up beetles. That explains the odor. It’s fumigation.

  She washes her face, pinches the coverlet onto the floor—she doesn’t even want to think about what’s living in the fabric—and settles onto the sheets to make her calls. Her story has been filed, but she needs to check the hospitals again. No Charles. Then the motels. No Charles anywhere. Without undressing, just kicking off her sneakers, Karena shuts off the light and lies down.

  Instantly the room seems to surge forward as if she’s still in the Jeep. Whenever she closes her eyes this happens. Worse, Karena becomes convinced there’s a person in the next bed. She knows this can’t be true, but she’s sure if she looks over, she’ll see the guy there, a gray-faced dead man. She rolls on her side, her back crawling, and stares at the window, which lights up every few seconds like an X-ray plate with lightning. Another storm moving in. Karena counts: one-Mississippi, two—and the giant crump of thunder shakes the motel, setting off car alarms in the lot.

  “Great,” Karena says. She gets up, shoves her feet in her sneakers, and pads to the window, pulling the curtain aside. Lightning and thunder explode simultaneously, like a bomb, making the room phone go ting! The rain gusts sideways, the trees beyond the fence lashing back and forth like undersea creatures in a strong current. Then there is a strange sound: rrrrOOOWWWwww! RRRRoooowWWWW! At first Karena thinks it’s a cat caught out in the storm. It takes her a minute to realize it’s a tornado siren, rotating on its pole. rrrRRROOOOOwwwww! RRROOOwwwwww! “Okay, that’s it,” says Karena, and knocks on the door between the rooms.

  “Kevin,” she calls. “Are you up?”

  The door opens.

  “I am now, Laredo,” says Kevin. He is in his boxers, which, Karena is bemused to see, have fortune cookies on them. “You change your mind about a little Wiebke sugar? Come to Papa.”

  “That sound,” says Karena, ignoring him, “it’s the tornado siren, right? Should we get in the bathroom? Or is it safer to drive away?”

  Kevin reaches out and takes her arm.

  “Come on in here,” he says. “It’s nothing to worry about, just a sheriffnado or something. False alarm.”

  “Are you sure?” Karena says dubiously.

  “Sure. I’ll show you.”

  Kevin guides her over to the dresser, where his laptop glows like a night-light. The radar shows a thick green line sweeping across both of the Dakotas and northern Nebraska. There are red patches embedded in it, and lots of blinking white lightning strikes, but no Wheels of Fortune.

  “See,” says Kevin, “little to no rotation. It’s gone straight-line now, a big linear mess.”

  “Is that bad?”

  Kevin shrugs. “Bad, good, depends on your definition. It means the storms aren’t tornadic.”

  “Okay,” says Karena, and then the wind, which has cranked up to a steady keen, utters a bifurcated shriek that makes it sound like the motel itself is trying to take off. The laptop winks out and Kevin’s cell phone beeps as they lose power. The lights die in the lot.

  “Jeez,” Karena says, wrapping her arms around herself.

  “Why don’t you let me do that, Laredo?” Kevin suggests. “Come lie down.”

  They adjourn to the bed, where Karena faces the window and Kevin fits himself in behind her. The sheer animal comfort of his body against her back is amazing. His skin smells of warm rich bread now since he’s been sleeping, and warmth kindles in Karena’s stomach. But with the wind still screaming and the siren rotating—rrrOOOWWWWW! WWRrrrooooowwwWW!—desire seems far away.

  “Why do you do it?” Karena asks.

  “Hmmm?” Kevin says. He is easing his hand up beneath the back of Karena’s T-shirt. “What’s that?”

  “Chase,” she says. “Why do you chase?”

  Kevin’s hand pauses, a starfish of heat on Karena’s skin.

  “I chase because I love storms, Laredo,” he says. “Simple as that.”

  Karena sighs, and Kevin seems to take this as a challenge, because he adds, “I was born this way. I’ve always loved storms. My first memory is of dragging my mom outside to show her a T-Cu—that’s a thunderhead to you, Laredo. I didn’t know what I was looking at, I just knew I l
oved it. I must have been three, four years old.”

  Karena shakes her head.

  “You and Charles,” she says. “He was the same way. He used to crawl toward lightning. Sleep on the doormat during thunderstorms. Our mom would find him in the morning when she went for the paper. I guess—I just don’t get why, exactly.”

  “Why what?”

  “Why you can’t admire them from a distance. Why you have to put yourselves in harm’s way. I do understand to some degree. The storms are beautiful. And weird and awe-inspiring. But they’re so destructive too.”

  Kevin slides his hand out from under Karena’s shirt and rests it on her waist.

  “First off,” he says, “you know better than that by now. We don’t put ourselves in harm’s way. We stay out of its path—exceptions like today notwithstanding. Who was better off, us or those poor people stuck in Oweeo?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Hold up, Laredo, I’m not finished. Plus, if it weren’t for us, a lot more people could have died. You said it yourself, in your article: The NWS issued a tornado warning seventeen minutes before that thing hit the town. Who do you think called that in? Spotters. Chasers. Dennis and Dan. We do a public service, you know.”

  “I can see that, but—”

  “Wait, Laredo. Sorry, but you’ve hit a nerve here, because these are misapprehensions so many people have, and it just really turns my crank. So finally, the destructive potential of storms—yes, it can be horrific. As we saw today. But today was an anomaly. Do you know how many mile-wide tornadoes there’ve been in the last century? Like, fifty. Over a hundred years. I’ve been chasing twenty years, and I’ve seen only three: Greensburg,” Kevin says, tapping fingers on Karena’s hip as he counts, “and Moore. And today’s. And do you know how many tornadoes are categorized as violent?”

  “No,” says Karena, “but I suspect you’re going to tell me.”

  “Damn straight,” says Kevin. “Less than two percent.”

  He gives her hair a gentle tug.

  “Severe weather,” he says, “it’s really just Nature’s way of correcting an imbalance. It’s wind and moisture rushing from one place to another, and when the imbalances between them get serious enough, there’s a storm. The more extreme the imbalance, the more severe the weather. But the storm corrects the imbalance, Laredo, and afterward the atmosphere is stable again.”