Sundown was just about upon her. Perri rested against the bumps and twists of the brass headboard and tried to breathe, willing herself into action.
For the second time in one day, she made it out of bed in a stupor. Perri vowed to fight her way through it, intent on another shower. She would let the water pound out the raw hurt and despair.
The answering machine caught her eye. There were seven new messages. “Now what?” Perri muttered. The impact of being out of touch as the sun rode so low in the sky finally registered. She turned the ringer back on and the phone immediately sounded to life.
“Where have you been?” he demanded before she could say hello. The static over the line gave Matt’s voice a desperate edge.
No way was she awake enough for this. “I took a nap after the fridge was delivered,” she replied with dignity. She was not going to mention that she had overslept. “And by the way,” she reminded him in frosty tones, “you said you would have the old one moved—”
“Perri,” Matt went on bullishly, “get in the basement. Now. There’s a heatburst directly overheard. I have to see to the stock and my phone may not work for much longer.”
“A heatburst? What does that mean?” she asked, not really caring.
“It means in about five minutes, there’s gonna be nothin’ between you and hell but barbed wire,” he answered with deadly urgency. “And I don’t have the time to give you a lesson in climatology. Get in the basement,” he repeated. “I’ll call when I can. And I’ll come over as soon as possible. But I have to be here, maybe until it’s over.”
“I’ve never heard of a heatburst,” she muttered. “Is it like a tornado?”
“Woman, if you are trying to drive me crazy, do it later. Now get your funny little butt down into that basement,” Matt ground out the order. “And take the phone along in case they keep on working.”
She could hear the sounds of wind and frenetic horses in the background. “Well, since you put it that—”
“Perri,” he yelled as if trying to reach her over the wind, “don’t make me have to worry for your safety. I’ll come get you as soon as I can. Now git!”
“Okay, Matt,” she replied loudly. “Be careful.” There was a pause on the other end, as if he wanted to say more. She figured he just didn’t trust her compliance.
Perri hung up and the phone rang immediately. In rapid succession she reassured first her mother and then Donnie. That done, she considered her next course of action. Whatever it was that was headed for the hill, those she loved were taking it seriously.
Throwing on some clothes, Perri listened to the television and received a quick course in weather as chaos. Suddenly wakeful and aware of the impending danger, she focused in on the report. Like a tornado, a heatburst was defined as supernatural wind. But a twister, selecting its victims at random, touched down, destroyed and moved on.
A heatburst, she learned, could go on for hours, causing dry, boiling clouds to hover over one area. A hurricane without the water, Perri realized. How delightful. She had never been through a heatburst. She had never mentally steeled herself for 80-to-100-mile-an-hour winds that might blow clear to dawn without abating.
The newscaster announced that an implosion of thunderstorms was causing a huge amount of root, tree and fence damage, and had already downed power lines in three counties. While Perri absorbed that bit of news, the woman went on to say that the collapsing storm had produced wind shears with enough force to bring down an airplane. She then turned matters over to the station’s meteorologist for an update.
With the respectful tones of a church deacon, the weatherman took over. Solemnly, he informed his listeners that the air had become so electrically charged, the temperature had risen from ninety-one degrees to 112 in twenty minutes. Right over Spirit Valley.
“Terrific,” Perri murmured.
The weatherman’s tone was the one often used on Oklahoma television to describe the more lethal aspects of supernatural weather: A calm forbearance laced with an undertone of “Don’t be an idiot. Head for the storm cellar.”
“Very well,” she vowed grimly. Perri grabbed a quilt and, moving quickly down the stairs, raced into the dining room. She took the time to cover the computer, lock up doors and windows, and grab her laptop. That done, she headed for the basement door off the back porch.
As she stepped onto the enclosed porch, the heat and the violence on the other side of the glass took her breath away. She watched as a wind roared onto the hill with the force of a stampede. Perri’s first response was that the air was so hot, there was nothing to breathe. Her nose and ears closed up, and her throat felt sandy. Her involuntary gasping for air did nothing to relieve her speeding heart.
Oh my God, she thought with wonder. It’s like something out of the Old Testament. The pressure of the boiling air was like nothing she had ever experienced. Matt’s comment came back to her. There really was nothing separating her from hell but barbed wire. Perri tried to breathe, tried desperately to think straight. The air was so highly charged, her hair was standing on end.
She felt light-headed, nauseous and panicky. In addition to the usual places, she was instantly pouring sweat from her upper lip and between her shoulder blades. She noted that even the insides of her elbows were slick with pooling moisture. The weight of her T-shirt felt unbearable.
She braced against the refrigerator and willed herself not to faint. The deliverymen had moved the old fridge onto the back porch for her earlier in the day when they had installed the new one. It now stood near the basement door. Matt was supposed to have moved it down there so they would have a second refrigerator near the kitchen. But Matt hadn’t been around.
Suddenly, the ceiling fan began to vibrate fit to come loose. A candy dish danced off the little table by the hot tub and landed on the braided rug. A loud, ripping noise out back just about stopped her heart. She watched in sorrow as a tree swiftly lost the battle and fell, upended at the roots. Then the tin roof on the old barn wailed as it began to lift away on one side.
She bolted for the basement door, hitting the light switches at the top of the stairs. Sweat burned her eyes, yet a sudden chill shivered up the back of her neck. Fear sent her stumbling halfway down the steps and into the basement, the laptop throwing her off balance in her haste.
As she turned back to pull the door shut, something slammed hard against it seconds after it latched. Perri then tried desperately to open it, just to see if she could.
It wouldn’t budge. She was trapped. For now there was no way to go but down. So she took to the stairs.
For long moments, the coolness of the basement only made her feel more heated. But gradually, Perri calmed down. At least she was not going to faint The familiar concrete smell soothed her and helped her get her breath back. Only then did she realize she’d forgotten the blasted phone. “So add that to my list of sins, Matt,” she whispered.
The basement felt safe and protected from the cruel, heated world above. She looked around. Matt bad been right; some of the furnishings stored down there were incredible. One part of her brain registered the fact that a portion of the basement could be made into some sort of family room when they needed it later on.
But then she remembered. They weren’t going to need such a room. They weren’t going to be a family. A wooden rocker by an old chest drew her eye and her heart. That, at least would work beautifully in the nursery. Frightened, lonely and exhausted, she sat down in the roker. Perri tried not to think of how she might well be trapped until help arrived. She turned on a fan to get the air moving.
A ladybug crawled from the arm of the rocker onto the back of her wrist. Perri welcomed the company. As she crooned to her little companion, the two of them settled into a gentle rock. Would Gledhill hold under this proud upheaval of nature? She wondered as she watched the ladybug journey into the valley between her knuckles. And what had hit the door like that?
Thinking straight when the world was turning upside down, was t
he key. She had nothing else to do at the moment but think. And she had nothing particularly pleasant to think about. The destruction of weather or the destruction of her marriage. Now there was a choice.
A low, angry rumble brought Perri back to her surroundings. “A hot, dry wind with enough force to roll a cloud,” she recited. She waited patiently for the ladybug to crawl back onto the arm of the rocker before she stood up.
Perri didn’t have to go out there to know how it felt. It only took once, being caught in a brutal wind to make a lifetime impression. One never forgot the whipping of dirt and grit; or the shock of ordinary objects turned into malevolent projectiles.
Perri rallied enough to find the stepladder and move it under one of the small basement windows. Shivering at the muffled sound of the savage storm, she perched on the ladder to watch wind and earth do battle. It was getting dark now, the backyard illuminated only by the yard lights.
Frozen in place on the stepladder, in a basement filled with cherished treasures of the past, Perri witnessed the upheaval of her ordinary world. Heat lightning fanned out in three directions to illuminate the night. It was something to see.
Fear of storms, discomfort in being confined to small places and the very real possibility she was trapped all melted away inside her. Being caught, unable to run, forced Perri into the wildness and the supernatural beauty of the storm.
Just then, metal screamed as the tin roof on the old barn finally broke loose and rolled itself up, like the lid on a can of sardines. Dazzled to witness heat, wind and lightning clash in the sky, all she could think of was Matt. He was out in that hell, protecting the present!
The tension was going to kill him. Matt yanked the sweat-stained bandanna from around his face and drew in a deep breath. It didn’t help. It didn’t do anything. The wind was rushing by so fast, it wouldn’t stay put long enough for him to grab hold and breathe it in. His shoulders felt as tight as steel cables and just as weighty.
Sometimes it amazed him what he could accept and include just in the daily, ordinary act of living on the Plains. Tonight however, was truly out of the ordinary. Matt paused from taking a drink of water to witness lightning twist viciously through a roll cloud caught in the downdraft It was impossible not to feel awe and wonder at the churning sky.
And the noise alone could drive a person mad. Yet, nothing had actually happened so far. In some ways that made the night more unbearable. Tension so permeated the air, there was no difference between his own tightly coiled soul and the hellish world around him.
Matt felt like kicking out a stall himself and breaking free. It was getting to the point where violence and destruction would have been a benediction. Some kind of a break, even a calamity, wouldn’t get under his skin the way the lethal buildup of wind, dust and electrical charge was doing.
Fortunately, the Ransom place had been built so as not to provoke the temper of a storm. The original intention to crouch over the earth had been carried through from the old house to the stables and the outbuildings. By lying low, the Ransoms had time and again borne the lash of a whipping wind.
Of course, in bearing down into the earth the way they did, Matt reckoned the Ransoms often choked a little on the dust. But they never blew away. Gledhill, however, was poised on a hill and ready to take off.
“I should just go get her,” he muttered desperately. The irony nesting in the fact that he had worked like the very devil to soothe and comfort some horses; and yet had offered his wife nothing but a scolding on the phone came home to him. Not knowing was weighing on him with each and every cry of the wind. He needed to know she was safe. He couldn’t pry himself loose from thinking the worst any more than he could stop swearing at the phone when the answering machine kicked in every time he tried to call her.
Something had to break soon or he was going to go mad. It had been too long a stretch of nerves, noise and heat. And where the devil was his father? Sam had been out-of-pocket since he had driven off in the car.
The night was too raw for clear thinking. Knowing he couldn’t get through did nothing to subdue the pent-up urge to stab at the buttons on his cell phone. “Hell,” he muttered as Gledhill’s answering machine picked up yet again. That did it. Matt swore, killed the phone, and strode into the wind.
Eleven
She would want to be in that basement, he thought as he wiped his stinging eyes. Matt grimly approached the back door. “If not,” he muttered, skirting a downed pecan tree, “she’d better be someplace out of harm’s way. Somewhere ready with an explanation. Someplace,” he decided, “like Arkansas.”
Every bit of foliage had been ransacked. Breathing was futile. And when the wind didn’t beat him down, the heat did. Yet Matt halted, awed by the sight of the rolled-up tin roof on the old barn. It was just this sort of thing he had feared.
A twister was one thing. It was lethal, relentless and mean. But a tornado moved on. Wind shears battering the hill for hours could wear down even the well-built courage of Gledhill.
He was grateful that Perri had left the backyard lights on so he could get the full effect. “At least it didn’t fold,” he reasoned, proud to see Gledhill holding fast. Proud and deeply relieved to see it with his own eyes. It somehow affirmed his hunch that Perri was all right.
Without warning, between one footfall and the next, and in the midst of chaos, it hit him. He loved Perri and he loved this place. And he had, all along. What a time to finally figure that out, he thought ruefully as he leaned into the wind.
Holding hard to the moment and to his own center, Matt understood how he had come to rely upon Perri to be the center for him. She had always made it conceivable for life to coil, uncoil, and spin around him. As he skirted the barn, he accepted the fact that he wasn’t going to let her go. It just wasn’t possible.
He had been a fool. No, he reasoned, he had been a fearful man. He gave thanks that she had thus far held the center for him. And if he had to call upon the parts of his heart that had been seared of all feeling, he would by damn do it. If he had to restore or repair that which had been injured, he would do that too. For Perri. Matt had never in his life been afraid of hard work.
He loved her and he’d just have to tell her and get her to stay with him. That was all. But first, he had to find her and then head on back to the horses. As he reached the back door, his heart stopped.
“Perri!” he cried. He was to the door of the basement before his mind or body registered the move. The blades of the fallen ceiling fan were wedged in between the basement door and the old refrigerator jutting out from the wall. He knew she was in there fighting to get out. She didn’t quit in her attempt to break down the door at the sound of his voice. She kept on.
Matt paused, impressed by the fury with which she attacked the door. Gannie had always kept a claw hatchet mounted on the wall down there for just such an emergency. The way Perri was wielding it seemed personal.
Perri broke through the top half of the door and paused, breathing hard. With the sensitivity he usually reserved only for his horses, Matt remained silent and respectful in the closeness of her rage. He would have sworn he understood why she had paused. It was on her face.
Perri had broken through enough to feel free. She was panting and sweating and was determined. And finally she looked directly at him; including him in the moment. Without a word she carefully handed him the hatchet through the narrow opening, blade down and handle first.
Pulling the fan free with the claw, he quickly threw open what remained of the door. Observing her savage need to break out of the basement had shaken what was left of his restraint. “Why in the blazes didn’t you take the damn phone?” Matt demanded, hauling her out. All the fear naturally funneled right into scolding her.
“I didn’t take the damn phone because I forgot the damn phone,” she responded angrily. “Put me down! You are not to snipe at me, do you understand?” Perri raged, thumping him for emphasis. “Just put me down.”
“A pregnant woman
should not be wielding a hatchet,” he said decisively. Eyeing every possibility and subsequently rejecting each, the conclusion he was forced to draw didn’t improve his mood. There was nowhere safe enough for Perri on the hill.
Matt eyed her cautiously as he gently set her on her feet “Are you all right?” he asked, his hands moving over her to reassure himself.
“I’m fine, thank you,” she replied with all the dignity she could muster. “The baby is fine.”
“Good. Let’s go,” he said, taking her hand.
“Go where?” she asked, shocked at the idea of going anywhere. Perri pulled her hand away and glared at this madman.
“To Ransoms’,” he answered.
She stared at him in disbelief. “You want to go out in that?” she squeaked. “Clouds, Matt, are being rolled upside down by the wind and you want to go out there?” She hitched a thumb m the direction of the old barn to add weight to the words.
“I want you with me,” he said simply.
The reply stunned her. So did the understanding that on such a night she wasn’t safe perched on the hill. The evidence lay at her feet.
“I want you with me,” he repeated, herding her toward the door. “And I have to get back to the stock. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
They didn’t get out fast enough to suit him. Matt was willing to wait while she sensibly traded flimsy sandals for cowboy boots and tucked her sleek little flashlight into one of them. But he was not about to wait while she traded her cutoffs for jeans. He planned to drive her straight to the door of Sam’s place and match her right inside. A rather put-upon Mrs. Matt Ransom climbed into the pickup, regal as a queen.
Matt rounded the cab of the pickup to the driver’s side and quickly got in. He started the engine and glanced at his wife. Matt didn’t even bother to reproach himself for what he was thinking. He couldn’t help but notice how hot she looked in cutoffs and cowboy boots and a light sheen of sweat.
The Bridal Promise Page 18
