“Yes, Lord,” said Alicia in a low but enthusiastic voice.
Madeline did not sense any difference except for the crackers in the grass and purple blotches on the sidewalk. She doubted that any of this commotion changed anything about what may or may not have been going on in that particular house.
The three of them walked on and passed a dozen more homes. In front of each home, Jared crushed crackers and spread them out in an arc like lofted debris spiraling down out of a storm. He followed it up by sprinkling some drops of wine on the driveway. Some homes received prayer while others did not. Not once did anybody come out of their homes and meet with them despite the command to “go forth and conquer”.
Madeline then spotted a pair of pigeons walking behind them. The pigeons pecked at the crackers and stopped when they stopped. She looked at her watch.
“You look disappointed,” Jared said to her.
“I’m looking at the time. Besides, you’re kind of littering,” Madeline said.
“Littering? That’s a worldly thing to say. When the Lord commands us, it’s our job to act. Not sit around a study a book all night.”
“Did he say anything about littering? What about the pigeons? They’re eating the crackers.”
Jared turned around and lunged at the birds. He got them to scatter only by yelling at them. “See what I mean, Alicia? This is exactly what I was talking about earlier. This town is full of people afraid to let God out of the box.”
Madeline stared at Jared hard enough to ignite his camouflage hunting cap. “Who says I’m afraid? I’m here aren’t I?”
He looked over at Alicia and laughed. Alicia reached out and tried to brush Madeline’s shoulder with her hand. Madeline pulled away.
He shook his head and pointed toward the sky with his half-empty bottle of wine. “If it was me, I’d hit this whole town from the air.”
“How would you do that?” Alicia said in a bubbly voice.
Madeline stepped back several paces. Her breathing became shallow as her heart rate accelerated. Although the night was still and cool, she could feel beads of sweat forming on her hands. She knew the church parking lot was only minutes away and now was as good of a time as any to depart.
Jared turned to the side and took a long drink off of the wine bottle before continuing the conversation. “If I knew a pilot I bet we could hit it with balloons full of holy water.” He laughed it off as if he was making a joke and then put an arm around Alicia.
Madeline wondered if he was already intoxicated before he even started the Bible study. She turned away and quickened her pace to her car. When she reached her car, she heard them call out to her and wish her a good night. She did not turn around. During the drive home she came to the conclusion that no one’s life in the neighborhoods they walked through had changed and if anything, it felt as if the town was on the verge of slipping into oblivion.
Chapter Four
John lounged in front of his desktop computer screen with the keyboard on his lap and a road atlas on the table next to him. He paused and let his fingers hover over the keys. Then he continued to fill in the details of his chase log from the storm that collapsed before hitting Flatfoot.
Strange storm, he began to type. All the parameters were right: 3000 j/kg of CAPE, nice clockwise hodographs, 62 degree dew point, a decent forcing mechanism, and decent EHI. Jamie and I were on course to intercept from the south, but we had a slip-up and ended up in a ditch. Drill-bit tornado dissipated at 6:44pm just before it reached Flatfoot. A couple of barns destroyed and a few power flashes. Ferganut sensor data inconclusive, although it did show a strengthening mesocyclone inside the target thunderstorm. The meso suddenly collapsed due to unknown causes, but likely due to interference from RFD. See photos, radar images, and graphs below.
He stopped typing and looked up from the screen. He scanned around his office and then looked out the window. His home was a small, two-bedroom rambler with one of the bedrooms converted into a combination library and workspace. His workspace consisted of two bookcases, a desk, a desktop computer, two laptop computers, and a table reserved for electronics and rocket work. The room was orderly and brought him a sense of peace. If there was one place he could always retreat, it was into his software or electronics work. Even though there were always setbacks in his work, the conquering of technological obstacles had a way of reinvigorating his confidence and his sense of wonder.
He gazed back at the screen. Taped to the right side of his monitor was the yellow sticky note with Madeline’s name and phone number on it. Several times over the past few days he thought about her and debated if he would ever see her again. He picked up his cell phone and dialed her number. He hesitated before punching in the last number because he had no idea what he was going to say.
She answered on the third ring. “Hello?”
“Madeline? This is John. The guy you met back at the China House Restaurant the other night.”
“Oh, hi,” she said with a notable enthusiasm in her voice. “I didn’t think you’d call.”
John tried to imagine what her facial expression looked like at this moment. “You said something about wanting to hear stories from people. I mentioned that I had a friend who used to go to that church you talked about.”
“Oh, right, right.” The sounds of shuffling papers came through the line. “You know what? I have an idea. I was just on my way over to meet with my friend again. Remember the one I told you about that lives in Flatfoot? The one who prays for the towns in the area?”
John’s shoulders deflated. “Sure, I remember.”
“Okay. Let’s meet there. If you want we can meet out in front of her house.”
John sighed as he drew the paper atlas closer to himself. He searched the map to remind himself where the town was located. His gaze soon drifted away. “Okay. What’s the address?”
“110 Lincoln Street. Just past the fire station. I think if we both leave now we can make it there by four o’clock.”
After the call ended, John stood up and went to his closet to find a different shirt to wear. So many times over the past year he talked himself out of opportunities to meet someone new, but now a part of him was tired of that. As he pulled out a shirt, he noticed a cardboard box in the back corner. It was a box he had almost forgotten about and it was now covered in dust. Inside were photos and letters from his friend from when she was alive. He had not opened the box since the day after her funeral and he doubted he would ever open it again. He switched off the closet light, changed his shirt, and steeled himself for the road trip ahead.
* * *
Flatfoot was a small town with a population of about 3,000 people surrounded by flat farmland. It was the kind of area where one could see storms coming in hours ahead of time and at night headlights coming down the highway would take forever to reach you. On the drive into town, John passed a few dairy farms, a high school, and a Coborn’s grocery store. Like many other towns in the region, it also had a bar, a gas station, and a handful of churches. Although he saw multiple signs for the “World’s Largest Bale of Hay” display he resisted the urge to check it out and take pictures.
He turned onto Lincoln Street and pulled up to a two-story pale green house with dark green trim. The yard was immaculate and a bed of fiery-orange tiger lilies in front of the living room window drew his attention. He parked on the street and watched Madeline walk over to him. This time she was not carrying any books, notepads, or laptop computers, and it lifted his mood.
“Aren’t you taking notes this time?” He said in a playful manner.
She gave him a coy look. “Why would I? It’s not like everything I do is related to research.”
Together they walked up to the front door of the house. After a press of the doorbell button, a woman in her late sixties with short white hair and a compelling smile opened the door. She was dressed in a white blouse with black pants and said, “Hi there, Maddie. How are you?”
“Good,” Madeline sai
d.
“And who’s this?” The woman extended a hand toward John to shake. “My name is Janet.”
“I’m John. Madeline and I met the other day at a restaurant.”
Janet backed away from the door and welcomed them both inside. John followed Madeline’s lead and before long all three of them were seated in the living room around a polished oak coffee table inlaid with miniature owl designs. The walls were cluttered with pictures of family, friends, and of the ocean. Numerous knickknack shelves around them held miniature wooden, ceramic, and glass owls and other birds.
“So what brings you out here?” Janet said as she offered them cups of hot coffee.
“I’ve hit another wall at the church,” Madeline said as she took one of the cups. “I went to a study the other night and the church doctor was there again.”
“Jared?”
Madeline nodded. “He got everybody to abandon the study and took them through the town to pray.”
Janet just listened but John could tell she did not seem too concerned yet.
“Then he started breaking crackers and sprinkling wine everywhere. At the end he took a couple of drinks off of the bottle.”
Janet’s eyes widened.
Madeline carried on. “Maybe I’m overreacting, but I swear it’s like everybody over there has blinders on.” She turned to address John. “Janet used to go to church there.”
“I never went to church there but I thought about it,” Janet said. She sipped her coffee. “I don’t know how much Maddie told you, but Jared used to visit Flatfoot all the time. And about ten years ago or so ol’ Jared came to town sellin’ his books by the truckload. When he came to our church everybody thought it was the greatest thing. He claimed he was some kind of church doctor and that he’d seen churches like ours before. Said he knew how to fix it. The pastor took his word for it and the next thing you know ol’ Jared started doing sermons. Not like our pastor was all that great at them anyway.”
John took a drink of his coffee and almost choked on the taste. He dumped a couple of packets of sugar into the cup and poured half of a bottle of creamer into it.
Janet continued. “But then it started getting weird. People talked about having visions. Strange ones, really. Then everybody started goin’ around sayin’ they had a word from the Lord. The Lord told me this, the Lord told me that. That sort of thing.” She waved her right hand through the air as if to dismiss the experience.
Janet took another sip of coffee and lowered her voice. She looked down at the table. “Then the storm hit. Wrecked half the town. But Jared made everyone feel like it was their fault. Eventually they drove him out of town.”
“And now he’s in Wick,” John added.
“Right. But you know what? After he skipped town, the most amazing thing happened. People cleaned up, opened up their Bibles, and prayed. You wouldn’t believe how much this town turned around after he left.”
By now Madeline was beaming. She pointed at Janet. “She prays all the time for the towns around here.”
“And prays for an end to the tornadoes, right?” John said.
Janet gave him a big smile. “Sometimes I do that, too. But I wasn’t always like that.”
“John’s a researcher and a chaser,” Madeline said. “He said the other night one of the storms lifted right before it came into Flatfoot.”
“I saw that. Wasn’t that amazing? I don’t mean to pry, but do you go to church, John?”
He leaned forward to put his elbows on his knees. He put his hands together and began to spin his thumbs around one another in a slow circle. “No.”
Janet gave him a knowing smile. “I was once in that place. Church was kind of boring up until Jared came to town. But times changed. It changed even more after the storm came through. That’s when I lost Al.” She glanced over at a picture on one of the knickknack shelves.
John looked, too, and noticed it was a picture of Janet next to a man in his mid-fifties with a receding hairline and a sharp dark blue suit. He assumed it must have been her late husband.
She paused and looked away toward the floor before continuing on. “But I learned a lot about the value of things that year. Replaceable vs. irreplaceable things.”
John looked again at one of the knickknack shelves full of birds. Each bird was made of glass, stone, or metal and seemed to be placed as if to create the illusion of social activity. Some birds rested, while others fed, and still others were taking flight. Was she using them to mark off the years or months of isolation? Maybe like himself and his workspace, she surrounded herself with hedges against lonely nights. He spoke up. “Sorry for your loss. I’ve seen a lot of damage over the years, but those kinds of losses I can’t fathom. How’d you get through it?”
“A lot of people helped me through. Maybe it was my own stubbornness. But now that I think about it, underneath it all was my belief in God. There wasn’t much of anything left of it at first. But in time, like the town, God rebuilt that, too.”
John slammed the rest of his coffee.
Janet turned to face Madeline. “I’ve been meaning to ask, how’s your Mom doing?”
“She’s still going to Jared’s church if that’s what you mean. I can’t get her to go anywhere else,” Madeline said.
“Give her time.”
“I’ve tried. She listens to his sermons and podcasts over and over. She repeats lines from them like it’s the Gospel.”
Madeline took a drink of coffee and continued. “I listened to one of his podcasts a couple of weeks ago. He started rambling on about signs and wonders again. I turned it off at the part where he told the congregation not to be afraid because God would hit back at their enemies.”
John felt his blood pressure rise. “Really? And how would He do that? Hit ‘em with lightning bolts?”
“He didn’t say.”
John stood up and put his hands into his pants pockets. “I think what really happened the other night was that the computer models overdid the moisture return from the south. Maybe there was even a bad sounding thrown in. Besides, that storm wasn’t all that impressive. It was probably going to break up anyway. Like Captain says, it happens.”
He shrugged his shoulders and pulled out his cell phone to check the time. “Sorry to cut it short everyone, but I’ve got somewhere else to be.”
Without another word he made for the door. He passed by a photo that showed Janet and her husband on a beach. He turned back toward Janet and said, “Sorry again for your loss, ma’am.” Then he opened the front door, let himself out, and brooded in silence all the way back to his truck.
Madeline burst through the front door and ran up to the driver side window of his truck. “Are you okay? Was it something we said?”
John struggled to look her in the eye. “I’m running late. I overcommitted myself today. Sorry.” He fired up the truck and before she could respond he put it into gear.
She backed away and crossed her arms. He could tell by the look in her eyes that no matter what he said or did she was going to take his departure the wrong way. As he drove off, he felt his chest tighten up. He chugged his bottle of Mountain Dew until it was empty and whipped the bottle onto the floor of the passenger side.
The sky was overcast now with a threat of rain. The heavy weather that was expected in the country today and tomorrow was going to be in southeastern Texas. If not for a lack of funds he would have kept driving all the way to the Gulf of Mexico to chase his personal phantoms into the night.
Chapter Five
The following afternoon John dragged the rocket launcher out of the bed of his pickup truck and set the device onto his driveway. He unscrewed the servomotors that allowed the launch rails to be aimed in three dimensions via remote control. The motors were underpowered at best and not as accurate as he hoped. The results from the last launch of the Ferganut sensors yielded less than impressive results and he knew the ballistics system was partly to blame. Once he finished detaching the last motor, the cell phon
e in his pocket rang out.
“Hi…John? It’s Madeline. I’m…sorry about yesterday.” Her voice was calm, distant, and mouse-like.
He tried to sound disinterested. “Okay.”
“Sometimes I get caught up in a conversation and lose track of time.”
He opened up a new package of motors and set the first one into place. He then unpacked the mounting screws and began to tighten the first motor into place. “I thought you wanted me to come over and talk about my friend.”
“I did. I wanted to hear about what happened to your friend. Things got kind of carried away at Janet’s house. She wanted to apologize to you but you left so fast.”
John took out another motor and dropped it into place. After tightening it down he set the third motor into position and used a tape measure to double-check his work.
“John? Are you still there?” She asked.
“Huh? Sure.”
“So tell me about your friend.”
Once the last motor was locked into place, he reconnected all the wires. Again, he used a tape measure to make sure each motor would have adequate clearance. “What do you want to know?”
“Whatever you’re comfortable sharing.”
He set his screwdriver down and examined his work. He verified that all the color-coded wires were connected properly and then plugged them into his laptop computer. He fired up his computer, took a deep breath, and waited for the system to boot up. “Where do I begin,” he said. “Let’s see. I was dating this girl for about a year and we started talking about marriage. One day she went to Spirit of Grace in Wick. Then she started buying all these strange books. She even claimed to have a vision or two. This went on for a few weeks and suddenly she stopped going. Said it crept her out too much. So then she began digging around on this guy…what’s his name? Jared? A couple of weeks go by and she breaks up with me. No explanation. Nothing. About a week later she killed herself.”
Race the Sky Page 3
