Storm

by George R. Stewart

  So today he doubly checked all the possibilities. He quickly studied the chart of upper-air winds and temperatures, and the maps showing rise and fall of pressure and temperature. Then he returned to his own map.

  The telephone rang. “It’s the Register for the forecast,” said Mr. Ragan.

  “Hn-n? Tell ’em to wait ten minutes.”

  The Chief sighed, and thought of the Old Master’s favorite quotation: “The duties of this office permit little rest and less hesitation.” Well, ten minutes was enough.

  From his point of view on the California coast, the Chief saw himself on neutral ground at the center of four great forces. What happened would depend upon their relative strength and the resulting way in which they shoved one another around. Just to his south, the Pacific High still stood; it was probably the weakest of the four and was retreating, but it still possessed much capacity for passive resistance. Far to the north the great mass of polar air was rushing southeasterly across the prairies. Its most southerly isobar, however, bent around Seattle, and formed a disturbing southwesterly point. If it spread farther, this bulge might block the storm away from the coast. The third force was the storm over Winnipeg; its indications were definitely favorable. The fourth force was the storm which was approaching the coast; it too seemed to have plenty of energy and to be moving in the right direction.

  With a slight exception, all the immediate forces thus seemed to be working for rain. But the Chief knew that more distant forces could have their influence—the new storm on the Texas coast, for instance. It too happened to be a favorable indication. There must be many forces even beyond the range of his map. Something happening anywhere in the temperate zone, in the northern hemisphere, or for that matter anywhere in the world, might falsify his forecast. But that was only a possibility, and a man must forecast probable, not possible, weather.

  He made his decisions, and his actions suddenly came to have a continental, almost a god-like, sweep.

  “Hey, Whitey,” he called, “get on the telephone, and order up storm-warnings on the coast—Point Arena to North Head.” He turned to his typewriter.

  But the nearest telephone rang before Whitey could get to it. “It’s the Register again,” he said. The Chief committed himself to the inevitable.

  “Complete forecast in five minutes. But tell ’em to set the headlines and get ready—it’s RAIN.”

  4

  In the engraving-room Whitey worked rapidly at the chalk-plate for the daily weather map. The room was sticky and acrid with the smell of the type-metal already melted for the casting. But the map would not reach many of the subscribers until the afternoon delivery, and already its news would be old.

  •

  “Sure—radio says there’s a rain comin’. I better be gettin’ the sheep sheltered. There’s quite a few young lambs.”

  (From the Register. Page one.)

  RAIN PREDICTED. Large Storm Nears Coast. The U.S. Weather Bureau this morning forecast that rain would fall generally throughout the central and northern parts of the state beginning late Sunday afternoon. A storm of large proportions is now centered a thousand miles west of Cape Mendocino and is advancing rapidly. Officials of the Weather Bureau declined to state what would be the duration of the storm and the amount of precipitation, other than to say that it would be considerable.

  Valley farmers in those regions which have been suffering heavily from drought are jubilant. Snow-sports enthusiasts were today preparing to return to their favorite haunts.

  In the meantime, while California enjoyed its accustomed sun, reports from Montana indicated widespread suffering in the wake of a cold wave. Thermometers were tumbling, with lowest temperature in the United States reported from Havre at twenty-nine below zero. Three people were lost and feared dead in a blizzard near Wolf Point, Montana. (For details, see Page A-4, Col. 3.)

  EXTRY! EXTRY! EXTRY! ! ! Well, folks, this is Ye Old-Time Newsy calling you the headlines over KTEY.

  And the first big news this morning for all you folks in California is that there’s goin’ to be rain. Yessir, rain. I’ll spell it—R-A-I-N. Those little drops of water coming down—“little” maybe, but plenty of ’em. That’s what the old Weatherman says. So get out the umbrella and the old gum shoes. But you people in the South, don’t get too excited —just showers down your way. Now, of course, Your Old-Time Newsy doesn’t guarantee this rain; he’s just bringing you the report. But what I say is any report in a storm! Ha, ha, folks! Don’t mind me; it’s just a way I have.

  •

  “O.K., oil’s O.K. Say, how about lettin’ me make you a deal on some new front tires; those old ones are pretty smooth. There’s a rain comin’.”

  “Sure, so is Fourth of July.”

  “Naw, I mean it. Just got the news on the radio.”

  “Say, is that right? Well, in that case I better be movin’. Got a roofin’ job on my hands. Thanks.”

  •

  “Gimme a beer. Say, what’s this about it goin’ to rain?”

  •

  “No, Billy, you cannot plan to go with Bob tomorrow. They say it’s going to rain.”

  •

  “It’s going to rain.”

  •

  “Going to rain.”

  •

  “RAIN!”

  5

  There was a story, the L. D. remembered, about a chief-of-staff so well prepared in advance that when awakened with news of war he merely said, “Look in Drawer B,” and went back to sleep. The L. D. felt much the same that morning, after he had read the forecasts from both the Weather Bureau and the company’s own meteorologist. Somewhere in his maze of high-voltage wires, his power-houses, and his dams there would be trouble, but everything was ready.

  Just to be doing something he called up French Bar. Johnny Martley’s slow-spoken voice, transmitted along two hundred miles of wire, assured the L. D. that in that region machines and equipment were ready, and men mobilized.

  “A couple of the boys was down to the City, but they just got back. We may need ’em too. Say, they said they saw you down there, goin’ into the building.”

  “Yeh?— You talk as if I were the two-headed man or something. Why didn’t they speak to me? I like to see the boys. Come to think of it, I’ve never even seen you, Johnny.”

  “Hell, this system is so big you couldn’t meet everybody in it if that was your full-time job.”

  “Well, O.K., Johnny. Just wanted to see how things were.”

  But the L. D. was thinking he would really like to meet Johnny. It was crazy knowing so many people by telephone only. Johnny’s record was good, and the L. D. liked his slow-spoken manner, suggestive of reserve power.

  •

  Air-Lines depended principally upon its own meteorologists, and their forecast too was for rain. The Chief Service Officer called up the Commercial Department and told them that cancellation must be considered likely for all flights scheduled after two P.M. on Sunday, and purchasers of tickets should be so informed.

  •

  The Railroad considered its schedules inviolable, no matter what the weather. “There comes a time,” the white-haired General Manager liked to say, “when the buses are blocked and the planes can’t fly—but we go through just the same.” The Railroad had weathered so many storms that one more meant nothing further in the way of preparation. But as staff officers move to their posts before a battle, so the Assistant Divisional Engineer and the Chief Trainmaster went up by Number 77 out of Sacramento that morning and dropped off at Emigrant Gap and Norden to take charge of track-clearance.

  •

  The District Traffic Superintendent always got a little nervous when a big storm was coming and he thought of all his long-distance wires out there exposed to whatever hit. This morning he called Chicago, but Chicago had the news already of course, and there was nothing to talk about. Then, mostly
out of nervousness, he called the Plant office. Plant said that they were sending some extra men up along U.S. 40 to be ready in case things went bad on the Pass.

  6

  The little green truck with the telephone insignia on its side hummed merrily up U.S. 40, past the two-thousand-foot elevation marker, and on. Inside, it gave a paradoxical impression of cluttered neatness, everywhere all kinds of diverse things lay ready at hand in a little space—coils of wire jostled spare insulators, and tools touched skis and snow-shoes.

  Rick, driving the truck, was happy. He was going up to play what he knew was a man’s game, and in the next few days he would play it lone-handed. He liked the deep snow country on the Pass, and working on the Transcontinental Lead meant more than just mending local wires in some foothill town.

  And also Rick was happy because he had fallen in love, or dangerously close to it. He kept thinking of the girl he had danced with the night before. Sometimes he felt almost as if he had a few drinks in him, and he swung the curves a little absent-mindedly so that the outside tires went off the pavement and he could hear the gravel fly.

  It was good to be a man, and to work on a job that called on you to do things that were a little dangerous, and to have “blue eyes in a dark-tanned face” to think about, and to breathe the clean mountain air sweeping in from the pine woods, feeling cooler and snappier the closer you got to the Pass.

  7

  The General was not exactly making a tour of inspection, but in his capacity as Flood-Control Co-ordinator he found himself unable to drive anywhere in the Sacramento Valley without observing river-channels and levees. So he stopped his car at the Landing, and went out on the bridge. He walked a little stiff-jointedly, and he limped with his right leg. He stopped at the middle of the bridge and looked out up-stream. The water stood at nine-point-seven on the gauge. None of the gauge-readings had varied much in the last three weeks; a certain amount of snow-melting in the mountains was compensating for the lack of rain. The General let his eyes follow along the bridge to the other side of the river where from the slope of the levee in big black letters GABLE CROSSING stared back at him. In its shrunken stage the river was only about sixty yards wide, and the levees sloped up like high natural ridges. Their crests, as the General well knew, were at the thirty-two-foot level, more than twenty-two feet above the present water surface. Penned in between the levees the river seemed puny, as if flowing in a canyon. But the General wasted no pity on the river—not when the forecast was RAIN.

  8

  The manager of the Palace Department Store read the forecast in the morning paper and immediately went into action. For the coming week he had planned an emphasis upon hats, baby-carriages, and bed-sheeting. He shifted it to ski-clothing, rain-equipment, and blankets.

  •

  The Director of the Observatory gave up his plans for some lunar photography.

  •

  The proprietor of the Gaiety Amusement Park shrugged his shoulders. He had gambled his last dollar on a fair week-end. Rain would break him. He called up his lawyer, and said he would probably have to make an assignment on Monday.

  •

  In the Eagle Lumber Yard the owner kept his men working over-time on Saturday afternoon, and picked up two extra helpers. He had a lot of finished lumber in the yard, and to save it from getting wet and warping was hundreds of dollars in his pocket.

  •

  When the advertising manager of the Register checked up the results he decided that the paper had broken about even as far as the rain was concerned. The real-estate companies had called off most of the advertising because they knew how cold and gloomy empty houses seemed in the rain, even if you could get people out to look at them. But he had five new ads from resorts in the snow-country, and a tire company had broken out with a half-page announcing a new non-skid tread.

  •

  The effects of the forecast tended to spread out link by link until they formed long chains. The shrewd proprietors of several restaurants called up the factory, and reduced their orders for ice-cream. The manager of the factory found his needs for milk and cream lessened, and passed on his word to the dairy. Since the cows could not be forced to co-operate, the dairy company diverted the surplus to its subsidiary corporation which manufactured butter and cheese. The manager then hired two extra men, whose wives on the strength of the prospective jobs spent more freely than usual at one of the smaller retail stores. The retailer optimistically imagined an up-swing of business, and said he would take the new car over which he had been hesitating. At this point, however, the chain of effects turned back upon itself and ended. For the store-keeper, later in the day, read the forecast, and believing that his retail business always suffered in rainy weather, he called up the automobile salesman and cancelled the order.

  9

  The great banners above the City hung at their poles, or flapped languidly, now this way, now that way. No longer did they ripple out bravely before the northwest wind, for in the night that wind, dominant through many weeks, had faltered and then died. Blue and white, red and yellow, maroon, crimson and black, they no longer flaunted proudly above the pearl-gray city against the clean blue of the sky. Now from west and south and southeast in uncertain puffs the shifting airs served only to wrap the banners around the poles and tangle them with the halyards. Caught at the calm center among far-off mighty actions, the banners flapped and fell, symbols of interregnum and coming change.

  10

  If there had been a moderately high range of mountains running east and west along the Canadian border the cold wave would largely have spent itself at that barrier or been diverted; the existence of such a mountain wall would have been a more potent factor in American history than the institution of slavery. But the isolated Black Hills only impeded the advance slightly; the polar air swept around them, reunited its front, and went on.

  By noon of Saturday temperatures had fallen far below zero over all the northern plains. Five persons, foolish or unlucky, had been caught in the open and frozen to death; more than fifty others had been killed or injured in accidents attributable to the blizzard.

  Rushing toward the south and southeast, along a front of a thousand miles, all through Saturday afternoon the polar air swept onward. About one o’clock Duluth went under, along with Pierre, and Casper; within an hour, Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Cheyenne. As the sun grew low, the blizzard hurtled upon Sioux City, North Platte, and Denver. In the winter twilight the lights came on in Milwaukee, Des Moines, and Omaha; they shone for a few minutes and then in the flying snow were blotted out. Next in line before the fury of the North lay Chicago, Kansas City, and Pueblo.

  Throughout the day the polar air had advanced more than eight hundred miles southeastward. It had warmed slightly, and because of mixing with the more southerly air its line of demarcation was not quite so sharp. But still its temperature was below zero, and its northwest winds at forty miles an hour whirled before them a blinding and cutting blast of snow.

  Of old time, that broad country of the plains knew raiders, but none more furious than this. Swifter than Sioux, more terrible than Assiniboine, more pitiless than Arapaho, it swept upon town and farmstead.

  SIXTH DAY

  1

  Man is of the air, but through dim ages that-which-was-to-be-man lived not in the ocean of the air but in the ocean of the water. And even yet the saltness of blood is as the saltness of the sea.

  Natural man, living in the air, is unconscious of the air, as the fish of the water. But man having left the ocean behind grows conscious of water, and acknowledges his dependence. Also, perhaps, in racial memory he strains backward through mythology and religion toward that time when water, as in the womb, was his all-surrounding element.

  In the Christian Bible the theme of water runs from the second verse of Genesis to the last chapter of Revelation. As symbol it is multiform—water of purification, water of separation, water of bapti
sm, water of life.

  Even more is water the theme of that ancient religion of nature which pervades so many lands—of Tammuz pierced and dying, of Adonis lamented, of the Freeing of the Waters, of the Waste Land and the wounded Fisher King. For if Adonis come not again or if King Pelles be not healed of his wound in the thighs, then the rains fall not and the waters flow not, neither do the tamarisks blossom nor the heads form on the barley, nor the cattle bow themselves and bring forth. Nay, if the waters be not freed, no man has power to beget the child within the womb. Then man is afraid of his own weakness, and the land of the Dolorous Stroke lies waste; there is no rain, and only far off the crackle of dry thunder.

  But if the waters are freed, then the land shall flourish. That which was withered and laid low shall again stand on high; the seed is shed in fertile ground, and the earth no longer lies parched and dry; and children play by the door-steps.

  The land lies tense, awaiting water and release. If only the rain come, then shall all be whole.

  2

  “Well, Jen, Jen! I thought I heard a car, and I came right out.”

  The sisters fell into each other’s arms, and kissed.

  “And this is Max Arnim, I guess. (Jen never thinks of introducing anyone.) Was it a nice drive down from Reno?”

  “Yes, fine, thanks. Where’ll I put Jen’s suitcase?”