Unfolding

by Jonathan Friesen

  UNFOLDING

  Other books by Jonathan Friesen

  Aquifer

  Both of Me

  Middle-grade novels

  The Last Martin

  Aldo’s Fantastical Movie Palace

  BLINK

  Unfolding

  Copyright © 2017 by Jonathan Friesen

  This title is also available as a Blink ebook.

  Requests for information should be addressed to: Blink, 3900 Sparks Drive SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546

  ISBN 978-0-310-74833-5

  Epub Edition January 2017 ISBN 9780310748304

  Any internet addresses (websites, blogs, etc.) and telephone numbers in this book are offered as a resource. They are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement by the publisher, nor does the publisher vouch for the content of these sites and numbers for the life of this book.

  This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, events, and situations are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  BLINK™ is a registered trademark of the Zondervan Corporation.

  Cover design: Ron Huizinga

  Interior design: Denise Froehlich

  Printed in the United States of America

  171819202122/DCI/2019181716151413121110987654321

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  BONUS CONTENT

  PROLOGUE

  She dropped from the Oklahoma sky.

  A gift. Proof of the Almighty’s existence.

  But the Miracle Baby could not have descended with less fanfare. The citizens of Gullary, huddled in bathtubs and hidden in shelters, missed her arrival. Their collective heads were face-to-floor as seven tornadoes danced through the night.

  The tornadoes traveled over five hundred miles. They teased and jabbed their twisty fingers toward the earth, only to rear back and punch through the green with a fury rarely seen previous, and only once since. And on one such strike, heaven—or hell, depending which side you’re on—opened its fist and gently stole a child before pulling back up into the angry sky.

  How far the swirling clouds carried the child is anyone’s guess. But that she was set down with the care of a new mother is a fact, one my parents emerged to when the wind paused and the rain fell straight. She was wide-eyed and peaceful, still in her cradle, calm beneath soaked pink swaddling.

  Ma found her first. Ms. Pickering, our neighbor, was a close second, though this detail contains some wriggle room. She joined Ma in leaning over the baby girl, and in the moment of that child’s deepest distress . . .

  “Martha Pickering, get on inside and see to your own!” Ma muscled Ms. P out of the way. “I’m caring for this babe.”

  “No. The rights to her are mine. She landed on my property.” Ms. P paused and looked to heaven and whispered, “He has seen my sadness and sent me a replacement child.”

  As was customary, their argument raged until Dad intervened. He eyeballed the cradle. Our neighbor had a point: Everything but the child’s feet rested on Ms. P’s unmown front yard.

  “Come on, more storms are comin’,” Dad said, tugging on Ma’s arm. “Martha says she’s gonna deal with her properly. There’s no denying where she landed.”

  Ma pursed her lips and swiped wet from her brow. Her gray-tinged hair, normally kept on the straight and narrow, swept wild and matted across her face. I envision her here an overweight John the Baptist, straight from the wilderness. “Well now, I suppose, as Solomon is not present to solve this dilemma.” She rose and stomped toward our trailer home while Ms. Pickering gently carried the baby next door.

  I’ve often wondered how life would have been different had God’s finger nudged that cradle six inches eastward, had Ma carried the little one into our home, where I lay two months old and sleeping in the bathtub. Would she have shared a tub with me, Jonah Everett III, her first night in town?

  Turns out the girl landed along with a dowry. Morning revealed a living cow and a grandfather clock also settled on the Pickerings’ lawn, cementing Ms. P’s claim on the baby’s care.

  News of the miracle traveled quickly. Hordes of reporters recast our town as more than the hardened home of a Supermax prison. A columnist from The Oklahoman penned it best:

  Here in Gullary, Oklahoma, surrounded by devastation, one can feel the innocence. A word for the ground? Blessed.

  Overly poetic, yeah, but this tiny arrival had that effect. Our trailer park became a campground of news vans and satellite dishes. The story of the airborne baby with raven-black hair hypnotized our state and eclipsed other storm-related news, such as the destruction of the aforementioned prison and the disappearance of several fearsome inmates. But looking back, Gullary got it right. Violent escapees weren’t nearly as unnerving as this one, beautiful girl.

  At least to me.

  Great lengths were taken to discover the child’s rightful home. Claims on a clock, a cow, and a baby girl were few, and the fistful that did come in ended up bogus. Days turned to months, and finally the courthouse spoke. Ms. P was granted rightful guardianship, and added another to her family.

  “Look at that peacock.” Ma hissed the words beneath her breath whenever she saw our neighbor outside with her three-year-old son, Connor, and the dubiously obtained child.

  “I was given the feet of that babe. I should’ve had say in the choice of a decent name.”

  Ma’s opinion never did change. In fact, she blamed the name for much of what followed. But I’d say Ms. Pickering pegged Miracle Baby with the only name that made sense, given her unique arrival.

  Stormi.

  CHAPTER 1

  One week after the storm, Ma planted a cottonwood out front of our trailer. She later explained it as an act of defiance. Ma was sinking roots, declaring that no tornado could dislodge our family from Green Country, the eastern wedge of Oklahoma infiltrated by the Ozark’s mountainous tentacles.

  Defiance or not, the cottonwood was woefully out of place. Gullary nestled in the Henshaw Valley astride Gullary Creek, which flowed easily from Lake Gullary set higher up and on the far side of the Arkansas border. Oak and Black Hickory found the creek and our town to their liking. Aside from Ms. Harrison’s renegade apple tree, Gullary tolerated no other varieties.

  “So why’d you have to plant a cottonwood?” I asked Mom this every spring, when the cottony fluff set my eyes to watering.

  “You understand the principle of sowing and reaping. All these wispy seeds will take flight, take root, and one day change the look of this valley.”

  “You don’t like how it looks?”

  Mom never answered that. She’d eye that cottonwood, and the seeds swirling in the wind. “Sowing and reaping, Jonah, it’s inevitable. A law of God.”

  My first photos of that tree evidenced a slender shoot, aiming straight for the sky. But somewhere along the way, its trunk had second thoughts and took a detour.
The tree twisted, gnarled.

  Bent.

  But the cottonwood still grew leaves, broad leaves that fell green and full and hid the abnormal growth, and Ma called it lovely.

  I have no leaves.

  And it may not be a law of God, but the law of teen-hood is near as unshakable: senior year doesn’t hide anything.

  “This way, folks.” I stepped in front of the mural, beneath the “Gullary’s Glorious History” sign. While the most recent addition to the tornado museum, this display was also the ugliest—Kelli McCann’s best fifth-grade, sidewalk-chalk effort at a prison, a twister, and a little cradle.

  I reached into my back pocket and removed my cheat sheet. It had been so long since we snagged a visitor, I forgot most all of my fancy lines. I cleared my throat, peeked at my notes, and plastered a stupid smile on my face.

  “Our town was once known for more than storms and babies dropping from the sky. Long before that night, Gullary meant lead—lead and zinc, but also chat, the pulverized, toxic leftovers we dug up and then dumped. Like nearby towns, mining placed Gullary on the map, and then blasted a hole beneath it.

  “Sinkholes ate buildings. Slides trapped miners. And a bustling town nestled into the Ozarks gave up its soul. Fifteen thousand mining jobs packed up and left, along with the scratchers willing to drop into that hell.”

  I paused for dramatic effect and gestured around the museum.

  “It happened all over. Treece. Cardin. Picher . . . where sky-blue Tar Creek turned red with iron. Contaminated. Poisoned. Dead. And when people leave, Feds always come. They declared our town a toxic waste site.

  “But here in Gullary, a few hundred people remained. A few hundred very determined people, including my grandparents. A handful of folks and a whole lot of chat.

  “Those two hills, the chat piles you likely saw on your way in, still stand as reminder of what happens when you dig too deep. ‘In Gullary, the past best stay buried.’ Those were my granddad’s words.”

  I moved on and tapped the black-and-white picture of four grim miners, emerging from their hole with their faces covered in grime.

  “Now, I mention Gullary’s mining ghosts because it explains this town’s reaction when the Feds first threw us a lifeline in the form of a new Supermax prison facility, SMX for short. Hundreds of the most violent criminals on earth moved into our neighborhood. You’d think it would cause fear.

  “Not here in Gullary. We saw the promise of jobs, and lots of them. Soon we all relied on SMX—my ma was the cook—and Gullary was reborn on the shoulders of rapists and murderers.” I scratched my head and shrugged. “Strange way to bring life back to a town.”

  My tourist couple exchanged glances, and the wife cleared her throat. “And then the tornadoes came?”

  “Not right away, but yeah, we can’t catch a break.” I gestured toward the next photo, a snapshot of the largest funnel, taken by Greasy Jake while crouched behind his garage’s dumpster. The twister bore down in the background while a hubcap took flight in the fore. Priceless.

  “An F5,” I said. “Nothing survives a direct hit from an F5.”

  “But those chat piles out there did. You did.” Wife let her gaze travel my frame. “Is that how you, I mean, did that tornado bend your . . . oh, I’m not sure how to say it.”

  Husband grabbed her arm and glared. “Then don’t. You don’t ask about personal matters.” He turned to me. “Sorry, your situation’s none of ours.”

  I gritted my teeth, and crumpled up my lines. “No. Storms don’t give kids scoliosis.”

  It was time to conclude this tour.

  “The first of many tiny twisters struck at bedtime eighteen years ago, pushing most of the town underground. Our people survived that night, but the prison didn’t. Usually, F5s take everything. But this one was different. It had . . . mercy. When that monster landed, it seemed bound and determined to claim only one thing, the complex. Once it wiped the foundation clean, it stopped on a dime and turned back the way it came. In the aftermath, the chat piles were undisturbed, but not one stone of this former building was left on another. The crews couldn’t even find the remains of most of the inmates.

  We needed jobs, so we rebuilt it, but the government cut funding, and SMX never reopened. Now here it sits. A fully operational Supermax prison that houses only this small tornado museum, and employs exactly one person: me.” I opened the front door and peeked toward the courtyard. “Well, that’s it.”

  I placed my mouth on autopilot. “If you’ve enjoyed your tour today, please consider a gift to Gullary’s Tornado Gallery.” I gestured toward the plastic, coin-collecting funnel. “Any contribution is mighty appreciated.”

  The gentleman smiled and dug in his pocket, pulling out two twenties. His wife gasped and slapped his shoulder, but he stepped toward me and shook the bills. “Life can’t be easy all bent like that, and I want to tip you, but first, I’ve been curious about something the whole time. This entire joint is white and gray . . .” He pointed over his shoulder. “Except for that. What’s behind the bright red door?”

  I exhaled long and slow. For forty bucks, I’d tell him I wet the bed until twelve years old, and that I spent hours gawking at photos of Stormi. I’d name every drunk in town, and whisper the places they go when the moon is full. For a tip, any tip, I’d spill all of Gullary’s secrets.

  But I couldn’t tell him what was behind the red door.

  “Sorry.” I shook my head and forced a smile. “You now know more about Gullary than some of its residents. Best keep one detail private.”

  He tongued his cheek, and gave the bills a final shake before stuffing them into his pocket. “Fair enough.”

  I stood in the doorway and watched my money walk out the main entrance—past the guardhouse, through the electric fencing—and vanish beneath the wide Oklahoma sky.

  First visitor in a month, and so close to getting a tip for my time.

  I sighed and shook my head. Describing pictures in a one-room tornado museum barely hinted at employment, but in Gullary, few eighteen-year-olds could boast of any income, so I never complained. Final exams and our upcoming graduation did little to brighten the future. Gullary was a house of mirrors. Everyone thought they knew a way out, but decades later, all the same faces remained.

  I spun back into the museum and slammed the door behind me, breathing in the bought air. I peeked at the clock. 12:30.

  “Lunchtime.”

  I lifted a tray from beneath the counter and removed the plastic wrap. Ma went all out today: fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, and cranberries.

  Too bad it wasn’t for me.

  I gentled aside my 35mm camera and grabbed my crushed brown bag, offering an exaggerated eye roll. Likely the usual: knockoff peanut butter and Aunt Josephine’s tangerine jam.

  I carried both lunches toward the red door and paused. This part of my job description never felt right. Stormi always said danger lurked where I was about to go, and I, more than most, knew the folly of ignoring her prophesies.

  But in this matter, I had no choice.

  Though heavy metal, the door swung open easily, and I slipped inside. Leaning into it with my knee, I slid a brick along the floor and propped it open. But that much steel had a will of its own. I stepped away and listened as the weight pushed that brick right out. It closed with a clank, and my shoulders slumped. I wouldn’t be leaving the way I came in. There was no keyhole or handle—not on this side—and I stared down the well-lit hall.

  “Locked in SMX. I don’t get paid enough.”

  “That you, Jonah? You’re late.” Ahead, a pair of hands waved me nearer.

  “Yeah. I got held up. A couple lost tourists wandered into the gallery.” I marched forward, stopping in front of cell 117. Tres’s cell.

  “Boy, you know a geezer like me got needs. If you have visitors, they need to clear out of my house before twelve thirty. I thought we had that straight.”

  “Sometimes prisoners don’t get their way.”


  Tres whistled. “Ain’t that the truth?”

  How do you tell museum visitors that the Gullary town council secretly keeps a guy locked up behind the red door? I’d never found the words to work it into my presentation, especially as I wasn’t sure why myself. I asked Dad my first day; right after Ma handed me two dinners.

  “Jonah, I’m not at liberty to discuss the matter. That’s Circle business. But as the Max’s only employee, your responsibilities include mowing the grass and feeding Tres, its only prisoner.”

  “At least tell me what he did. Am I feeding a serial killer? Some Hannibal Lector/Silence of the Lambs type? You do know I’m there alone with the guy.”

  “Do the job. I don’t expect you to understand.” Dad winced and slapped my back, as if I had a lot of growing up to do. “You’re just a boy.”

  After that first shift at SMX, I locked up the joint and beelined it to Greasy Jake’s Garage. Stormi was there, working late. Without pay.

  “Just a boy, huh?” Stormi handed me her wrench and straightened. “Your dad’s a piece of work.” She folded her arms. “Ever seen such a beauty?”

  “No.”

  I was supposed to be admiring the engine, but as usual my gaze was fixed on Stormi. She was my own age—at least that was our best guess, given her appearance upon arrival—however, similarities stopped there. There was a confidence that animated her words. She was free, free and wild. Gullary had no hold on her. It felt like she was here by choice, which made no sense. Whatever seed grows certainty had taken deep root.

  “Jonah?”

  I blinked free and shifted my gaze toward the hood. “It’s a cheap V6 engine,” I said.

  “Look beyond that. She came to me as a monster. She’s a kitten now.”

  Stormi was Jake’s right hand. In truth, she was both of his hands. No car could hide its mystery ailments from her, and after two years of her dedicated employment, Jake owned the only garage in town and was a very wealthy man. Wealthy enough that he could spend his days with his new shoes kicked up on his new desk playing his newest video game while Stormi ran the place.