by Jeff Abbott
Mama laughed, ruffled my hair (knowing full well it would mortify me in front of Trey), and said, “Come eat in a few minutes, Jordan. Trey, if your Miss Althea gives you grief and you and your daddy run short of water or food, y’all come see me, okay?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Trey nodded with respect as Mama went back inside. He shook his head. “Jesus, Jordan, your mama sure is pretty.”
I smiled that he thought Mama was pretty, but stopped when I saw the wistful look on Trey’s face. He didn’t even have a mama. (“Cancer took her” was the only explanation he ever offered.)
“They said on the radio the storm’s hittin’ Corpus right now.” Trey continued his gentle cajole. “That means she’ll be here in a few hours. Look, that tree house has been there for twenty years. It’s as solid as a rock. We’ll meet there at four o’clock, okay?”
I hated to disappoint him, but I still wasn’t keen on his plan. “This idea doesn’t sound too swift.”
He shook his head. “Stare it in the face, Jordy. You don’t want to be the only chickenshit that doesn’t show up.” And with a smirk, he straightened his black cowboy hat and sauntered down the street.
Of course I’d shown up. Boys do foolish things, and my friends and I were determined to be junior achievers in the idiot division. I’d told Mama I was going to wait out the storm at Junebug’s and he’d told his mama he was staying with me. Mama’d fretted, but let me go, trusting me not to be stupid. The others told similar lies, and that’s how I found myself crouching in a shuddering tree house, the illicit taste of smoke in my mouth, staring across the dimness at Trey, the burning ember of the cigarette dangling between his fingers.
Rain blew in with increasing force. Davis carefully stashed away his cards, stretched out his long legs (he’d hit his growth spurt first), and fiddled with the transistor radio.
“Hey, put on some music,” Trey demanded. “Some Buck Owens, maybe.”
“I’m trying to find the station in Bavary, see what they say about the storm,” Davis said.
“If their tower’s down, we’re gettin’ the hell out of this tree,” Junebug said, sounding like an old man.
Davis played gently with the controls. Garbled static was all he could summon. The Bavary station seemed to have trouble deciding whether or not it’d stay on the air.
“When do you think the eye’ll get here?” Little Ed asked quietly.
“This is the eye, Little Ed,” Trey teased. “Once that other side of the storm hits, this tree house’ll probably land in Oz.”
“Yeah, Little Ed, and you can be a Munchkin.” Clevey laughed.
Little Ed frowned. “Yeah, and you can be one of those butt-ugly flying monkeys, Heavey.”
Clevey didn’t care much for that particular nickname (bestowed when he’d gotten a real sudden case of stomach flu in second grade and blew his cookies all over Miss Lavinia Duchamp’s school desk while trying to get permission from the old battle-ax to run to the bathroom). He started pummeling Little Ed, but Junebug forced them apart. He was always our peacemaker, our healer of young wounded egos.
“Y’all shut up,” Davis snapped. “KBAV’s back on.”
Intermingled with the static (which was sounding more like wind to me, the longer I listened to it—or perhaps every noise now sounded like wind) were a few words we could make out: Heavy rains reported near Bavary and east Bonaparte County … do not travel unless absolutely … winds gusting to 55 mph with threat of tornadoes forming … a man reported missing in La Grange due to flash-flooding …
“Hmmph.” Junebug frowned at Trey, “This wasn’t so clever of us to do this, now was it? We ought to get on home.”
“You can go out in that if you want, Stinkbug,” Trey said. “I think it’s probably safest for us to stay right here.” He leaned against the trembling wall of the tree house and propped his boots up on the crates we used for a table.
“No, what’s safest is for us all to hike back to my mama’s house and stay there.” Davis Foradory stood and stretched. “I think we’ve proved enough, Trey. Come on, let’s go on back to my mamaw’s. We can have chocolate milk and cookies.”
“Chocolate milk and cookies,” Trey mocked in the overly nasal tone a lounging prince might use. “That just sounds divine, Four Door. I’m sure you and the other ladies will enjoy yourselves.”
“Better than getting our asses blown over to Fayette County,” Davis shot back, He wasn’t easily gulled by Trey. He pulled open the rattly door. The torrent outside roared, wind and rain gusting in over us. Davis gingerly set a foot out on the ladder and paused.
“Jesus, shut the door!” Clevey hollered.
Davis turned back, his eyeglasses already coated with raindrops. “Do you hear that? Sounds like the train’s running.”
Trains. No trains would be running as a hurricane’s totters tore across the Texas coastal plains. I peered out through the window, squinting into the darkness.
Darkness squinted back at me. It was almost as though night had settled on Mirabeau as Althea passed over like some shadowy wraith, eclipsing sun and summer sky. I saw trees bending hard in the wind, and grass in the Foradorys’ pasturelands rippling like waves on the ocean. Then I saw it: a dark, jagged line moving toward the woods. Except this line was spinning, its point in the earth, its top arcing back and forth in a short pendulum swing.
“Tornado!” I screamed. The other boys froze with shock.
“Yeah, right, Jordan—” Trey began, but then he caught sight of my eyes. His face blanched like an old man’s.
“I’m not kidding! Tornado coming! Get out! Get down the ladder!” I hollered.
There was a mad scrabble as boys leaped for the rope ladder we had pulled up behind us, pushing it out into the darkness. It unfurled like a cracking whip.
I yelled at Clevey. “Go down first and hold it steady for the others.”
He nodded, fear in his freckled face. As he moved down each rung his weight brought the ladder back toward earth. I saw Clevey reach the bottom, practically sitting on the last rung to steady it. Gusts tore at his hair like a madwoman, and looking down at him, I saw him staring toward the funnel, eyes wide in shock.
I turned to Little Ed, pushing him out next, followed by Davis. I gestured at Trey. “Go!” I hollered.
“I’m sorry, Jordy,” he said in a whisper that somehow cut through the screams of the storm. He descended into the slashing wind and darkness. Junebug turned from the window, his eyes intense.
“We gotta go now, Jordy, now!” he ordered, shoving me down the ladder, climbing down practically on top of me. Clevey still crouched on the bottom rung; the others were gone, running God knows where. I fell to the ground, the storm shoving me with the force of nature’s worst bully.
“Where are they?” Junebug shouted at Clevey.
“House!” Clevey yelled back. “Four Door’s house!”
Nearly a half mile away. I stumbled, Junebug’s hand gripping my wrist as he pulled me along. He was bigger than me and I didn’t resist. I could hear a roar, like a growl of God. I tried to cry out, but the gale tore my voice from my throat, sending it spinning far above into the dark, rot-colored clouds.
Junebug and I ran across pastureland, toward the Old River Road that snakes along the shores of the Colorado. I risked a glance back and, through a sheet of rain, saw the frees churning in the circular wind. Our boyhood hideout and second home cartwheeled crazily apart like a match-stick house.
“It’s heading this way,” I screamed into Junebug’s ear. “Run! Run!”
We didn’t get much farther. Halfway through the pastureland we fell into a ditch, with water already swirling in it. I tumbled head over heels, Junebug sliding down more gracefully. I landed in muddy, grass-topped water. I froze in terror, thinking a flash flood would sweep us away, but the rain was collecting placidly and was only up to our ankles—for the moment. We were alone.
“Lie down! Cover your head!” Junebug ordered me.
“Where’s Clevey? A
nd Trey and the others?” I hollered, but he shoved me down, forcing me to obey. I went face-first into the cold rainwater, sheltering my head with my thin arms. Junebug pressed down beside me and we waited, listening as the roaring twister approached.
I thought of Daddy and Mama finding my body—and my sister asking if she could have my catcher’s glove. (She fancied herself a better ballplayer than me, which was ridiculous—she couldn’t hit to save her life.) I thought of our friends talking about how stupid we were in braving Althea’s wrath. And I thought of my whole life, left unlived. In heaven, would I forever be a boy, or would I get to grow up?
A noise like God’s own tantrum roared in our ears. I shoved my face into water and mud and grass, trying to burrow into the ground.
I didn’t know how much later it was when I felt Junebug’s weight ease up beside me. I first became conscious of the quiet. It was as penetrating as the noise had been. An eerie stillness settled on the land, and the sky, rather than being dark, shifted to a bilious green—a gigantic dead eye, staring sightlessly down at us.
Junebug and I were coated in mud and twigs. We shook with dampness and shock, our clothes completely soaked. The tornado had passed near us, disintegrating in the storm’s competing winds or as it hit the trees that crowded in on the river.
“Holy God,” I heard myself say in something that didn’t sound like a child’s voice.
“It’s the eye. It’ll be calm for a little while, then it’ll be much worse.” Junebug started crawling out of the ditch. I followed him, my breath catching in my throat when I looked at the land. Trees lay shattered in a swath. A dirty smell hung in the air, even though we’d just been battered with rain. Where the tree house stood not even the tree remained—only a gaping maw where the old roots had vainly clutched. The land lay like a dead thing.
“Clevey!” Junebug brayed at the top of his voice. “Davis! Trey! Where are y’all?”
“Oh, God, don’t let ’em be dead,” I coughed. “We got to find them before the eye passes. Then we got to get to Mrs. Foradory’s. We can’t stay out here again.”
Junebug ran toward the woods, calling for Little Ed and Clevey, his voice slicing through the ominous quiet. I followed him, avoiding even the trees that had survived, seeing too many branches barely hanging on their moorings.
“Here!” I heard Trey’s voice call back hoarsely. “Over here, hurry! Hurry!” His voice broke; shock and fear had replaced coolness and swagger.
Junebug and I didn’t see the others right off; they had fled into a dense copse of loblolly pines that the tornado spared. I finally saw them, in a small clearing: a stone-faced Trey, his arm around a sobbing Little Ed, Clevey shaking, Davis staring at the ground gape-mouthed.
We ran up to them and Junebug saw her before I did, crying out, “Jesus Christ!”
The six of us stood there, silent for once as a group, our eyes riveted on the body of a teenage black girl. I’d thought the sky looked like a dead staring orb, but that girl’s open eyes were the true thing. Blank. Empty. Without a hint of life, staring unflinchingly at the storm. Her skin was brown as rich earth and her face was the kind that just gets prettier with time. But she had no more time left.
She was drenched, her yellow blouse molding to her soft, motionless breasts. I made my eyes look at her face again. I couldn’t see any blood on her, but there was a dent in the side of her long, dark hair, as though someone had dropped her, like a doll, from a great and unforgiving height. Her mouth was open and delicately small white teeth stood in perfect formation. A lank of her straightened hair lay across her throat. She was wearing a navy wind-breaker, torn open by the storm, old jeans, and muddied cowboy boots. She was beautiful.
And we six boys stood, paralyzed, as the giant wheel of the hurricane moved its calm canopy of eye away from us to thunder down more destruction.
But where the path we walked began
To slant the fifth autumnal slope,
As we descended following Hope,
There sat the Shadow feared of man;
Who broke our fair companionship,
And spread his mantle dark and cold,
And wrapped thee formless in the fold,
And dulled the murmur on thy lip, And bore thee where I could not see
Nor follow, though I walk in haste,
And think that somewhere in the waste
The Shadow sits and waits for me.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
In Memoriam
“WHY ON EARTH DOES WANDA DICKENSHEETS think she looks remotely like Elvis?” Junebug asked me, sipping coffee and chewing on a cheese kolache.
“First time I ever saw a woman dressing like a man,” Sister offered, dropping another kolache on Junebug’s plate. She left me unpastried, putting her head near Junebug’s shoulder to get a better look at the latest goings-on in downtown Mirabeau.
Frowning, I watched the spectacle across the street. Ed Dickensheets steadied a sign against the blustery November breeze while his assistant fastened a garish placard to the awning of the old dress shop that the Dickensheets had bought.
Apparently Ed didn’t steady it quite right, as his wife, Wanda, brayed at him from the sidewalk to hold the placard straight. Wanda was dressed like Elvis Presley in his later years, resplendent in a white, high-collared, rhine-stoned jumpsuit. A black pompadour wig covered her head, and her ample breasts were somehow concealed from view. I could see Ed’s lips tighten as Wanda yelled in her finest fake Tupelo accent, her jet-black man’s wig bobbing along with her temper.
“I hope this doesn’t mean Little Ed’s going to start dressing like Priscilla,” I said.
“Oh, my God.” Sister peered out the Sit-a-Spell’s window from the cafe counter. “She’s actually waving a jelly doughnut at him. Quick, Jordy, get my camera. I’ll sell the picture to the National Enquirer.”
I was too busy reading the sign Ed was hanging: WORLD-FAMOUS INSTITUTE OF ELVISOLOGY—where the king still lives. “As soon as the tabloids find out that Elvis is alive in Mirabeau,” I said, “all those inquiring minds are going to leave those Burger Kings in Chattanooga high and dry. We’ll have ourselves a tourist trap. Get out the radar gun, Junebug, and make the town some money.”
“What the hell has gotten into Ed?” Junebug asked, but I didn’t correct him. I still thought of Ed as Little Ed; he’d kept that nickname all through high school, up until his daddy, Big Ed, dropped dead of one chicken-fried steak too many. It’d been hard to keep from calling him Little Ed, since he still wasn’t a big man. I resolved to mend my ways. After all, now Ed was a respected seller of radio ad time for KBAV, in addition to being Mirabeau’s newest businessman.
“I don’t believe it’s as much Ed as Wanda and her mother, Ivalou,” I offered, fighting off the urge for a cigarette to go with my coffee. The stress of the past few weeks had pert near driven me back to the packs. “If Wanda is Elvis, then Ivalou is surely Colonel Parker. Those two conned Ed into that trip to Graceland, and since Wanda saw how much money folks spend on Elvis mementos, she’s been the queen of painted velvet. She thinks there’s enough people sharing her taste to keep a business running.”
“Where’s old Clevey when you need him?” Junebug laughed. “He’d have a field day poking fun at Ed for this one.”
Some things—like Clevey’s teasing Ed until a vein popped out on Ed’s forehead—never changed. Clevey’d been coming in daily to the cafe since it reopened last week, but he hadn’t made an appearance this morning— undoubtedly too busy trying to find more interesting news around town for his stories in The Mirabeau Mirror.
“It’s better he’s not here. He’d probably request a song from Wanda, and I don’t want to hear her warbling ‘Jail-house Rock,’” I said. Sister made a huffing noise and went to wipe her spotless counters.
Junebug shook his head and then glanced around the newly redone cafe. “All these new businesses. Mirabeau’s about to get metropolitan, don’t you think?”
Having left Bosto
n to come home, I couldn’t exactly agree with his assessment of the new Mirabeau. Now, I love Mirabeau; it’s my hometown, and I had willingly moved back close to a year ago to help care for my mother, who’s ailing from Alzheimer’s. Agony was watching Mama’s daily slide down into dementia, but the idea of her in a nursing home was even more painful. I have a horror of those places; they’re the modern-day version of the iceberg, set adrift with the Eskimo elderly. I had no wish to see my mother in an antiseptic-reeking dormitory full of people waiting to die.
In any case, Junebug was plain wrong. The town hadn’t changed that much in the years I’d been up North enjoying my career as a textbook editor. The addition of two new businesses hardly signified an economic boom.
The Institute of Elvisology might cater to its special customer base a whole six weeks, I guessed; the newly bought and refurbished Sit-a-Spell Cafe held (I hoped and prayed) a far brighter prospect. As long as its two proprietresses could agree. Right now the future looked bleak.
Having abandoned their only two customers (Junebug and me), the two intrepid entrepreneurs debated with pinched smiles by the kolache counter, the fragrantly steaming fruit pastries sweeter than their words but no less heated.
