by Jenna Blum
Her room is big and clean and cheerful, with the usual multicolored bedspread of abstract floral design, green flecked carpet, maroon curtains. As she sets down her bag and laptop and washes her face, Karena is gripped by a loneliness so profound it squeezes her chest. She thinks of Fern and Alicia, of Marla and Scout and Dennis and Dan. She thinks of the Sandhills Inn & Suites, the Stagecoach, Pierre. She thinks, of course, of Kevin. My summer of motels, she thinks, and pinches the coverlet off the bed nearest the window. Even in this new a place, it’s probably still a petri dish of germs.
She opens the drapes and slides the window back. Instantly the room fills with damp air that smells like home to her: clover, sweet-grass, manure. The light over the back door shows Karena a view of a storage shed, a small electrical plant, and a tornado siren. Do all motels have their own sirens these days? This one is small and yellow and square, and Karena recalls Charles’s story about the friendly siren in Kansas. She has to admit it does look like an entity with a throat.
It may well come in handy tonight. The storms are still visible to the northwest, persistent branches of horizontal lightning. Anvil crawlers, Charles would call them. The lightning is racing along the undersides of the anvils. The local news out of Rochester confirms that Foss County is still under a severe thunderstorm warning, the counties to the north—Fillmore, Olmsted, Sibley, Scott—under tornado watch. The segments at the top of the hour are all about the numerous tornado touchdowns in Minnesota today, including just outside Waterville, where a possible EF-3 killed an elderly man in a trailer home. Karena signs onto the Storm Prediction Center and confirms the EF-3 tornado crossed Highway 13. If she had kept going north, she and Charles would have driven straight into it. She wonders how the yahoos fared, whether they are all right.
She is checking Stormtrack, sighing at the irony, to see if K_WIEBKE has posted anything—he has not—when the room phone rings. Karena hooks it up with a hand, not looking away from her screen. So Charles is checking the reports too and wants to discuss them, or he’s changed his mind about driving out to the Starlite—though Karena has not. “What, Charles?” she says. “I’m beat.”
“Vehicular manslaughter,” says Kevin.
Karena sits up straight and mutes the TV.
“Hello to you too,” she says cautiously.
“That’s what the charge might be,” Kevin says. “Involuntary vehicular manslaughter. Not homicide. Because Chuck didn’t mean to hit the guy, did he?”
“No, of course not,” says Karena.
“Hence involuntary. And he was manic, you said, at the time of the incident? As in full blown? The way he was the other night?”
“That’s right,” says Karena.
“Good,” says Kevin. “Or not good, but you know what I mean. If Chuck was manic at the time of the incident, it means he was operating under something called diminished capacity. He didn’t know what he was doing, ergo there was no intent, ergo it wasn’t homicide. Unless—crap, hold on. The mania was, um, organic, right? Not drug induced, like from pot or coke or meth?”
“Charles doesn’t believe in drugs,” Karena reminds him, deadpan.
“Right, right,” says Kevin. “Then he was operating under diminished capacity, and he can’t be charged with the big boys, the felony murders, like Murder One or Two. Not even vehicular homicide. He could get something light, like failure to report, or even leaving the scene.”
“Okayyyyyyyy,” says Karena, typing frantically. “Hold on, I’m taking this all down. . . . How are you, anyway?”
“So, you want to hear about sentencing?” Kevin asks.
Okay, Kevin, Karena thinks, if that’s the way you want to play it.
“No,” she says and laughs a little. “But I suppose I should. Information trumps fear, right?”
“Exactly,” Kevin says briskly. “Stand by.”
Karena waits, staring at her blinking cursor.
“Okay,” says Kevin, “so there’s good news and not-so-good news. The good news is for Chuck: Because he was suffering diminished capacity, his sentencing might be fairly lenient. He could do a couple of years, he could get probation. Depends on the judge. The not-so-good news is that since you, Karena, were not suffering diminished capacity at the time, you can be held accountable, even though you weren’t driving. I know, I know,” he adds, “there’s no way you could have stopped him. But the law says you could, and since you knew right from wrong, you should have reported the crime.”
“So what does that mean?” Karena says.
“So . . . the lightest charge for you would be leaving the scene. You could get probation. You could get fifteen years. It’s up to the judge. On the other hand, you might be charged with involuntary vehicular manslaughter, and the sentencing for that . . . Um.”
Karena’s skin prickles. “Go on, please,” she says.
“Well,” says Kevin, “a couple of those cases have gotten life.” Karena has been transcribing everything, but at this last fact she stops. Her armpits are damp, her scalp feels too tight.
“Oh boy,” she says.
“I know,” says Kevin. “It’s not pleasant.”
“I’ll say,” says Karena. She sighs and hooks her hair behind her ears. “But better to know than not, I guess . . . Thank you, Kevin. Where did you get this information, anyway?”
“Lawyer buddy of mine,” says Kevin. “I took him to Matt’s and picked his brain over pitchers, and he was like, Sure, Wiebke, your friend hit somebody while he was stormchasing. Right, your friend clipped the guy. You sure there’s nothing you want to tell me?”
Karena laughs.
“Well, thank you again,” she says. “It was very kind of you.”
“No problem,” Kevin says. “I thought you’d want to know, just in case you . . . in case you decide to do something about it.”
Karena stays quiet, trying to assess this remark. What does it mean? Does Kevin think she should? In fact, what does this whole conversation mean? Has he forgiven her? Is he starting to? Or is it just a favor for a hurting friend?
“Welp, that’s all, folks,” Kevin says. “SLM over and out.”
“Okay,” says Karena. “Good night—except, Kevin? How’d you find me?”
“A helpful little tool called information, Laredo,” Kevin says. “You should try it some time, it’d probably be useful in your line of work. You said you were going to New Heidelburg, and there’s only one motel there. It’s not exactly a swingin’ place.”
“You’d be surprised,” Karena tells him.
“Getting some weather down that way, are you?”
Karena looks out the window. “Some,” she says. “Guess what I did today.”
When they hang up a short time later, Karena is restless. She starts to look up Iowa criminal law, then shuts the laptop and sets it aside. She makes sure her room key is in her shorts pocket and goes out. Through the American Inn & Suites lobby. Out into the lot. The night is thick with humidity and insects, flitting and batting at the illuminated motel sign. There are haloes around the halogens. TV light flickers behind the curtain in Charles’s room. Karena walks away from the motel, into the service road behind it. She’s facing the same direction as her room, northwest, but without the safety light. A steady wind blows her hair back from her face. Outflow from the storms.
She can see them, or one of them, anyway, probably the last in the line sweeping the eastern part of the state. What the chasers call a tail-end Charlie. It is fist-sized at this distance, a tight ball of Cu, but it is going absolutely crazy with lightning, stuttering with it every other second. And Karena knows it’s because she’s seeing it through haze on the horizon, the same atmospheric trick that makes some sunsets look red, but this storm has colors. Its lightning is yellow and orange and purple and hot pink. Yet on the other side of the sky, the moon is rising above the highway. It is so clear and bright it outshines even the American Inn & Suites sign.
Karena can’t stop looking at this, the storm on one side, moon o
n the other. She never would have believed such a thing was possible, chaos and calm sharing the same sky. Before this summer, she never would have seen it. She would have been asleep, she would have been working, she would have been on a blind date or out with Tiff. If there had been a storm, she would have viewed it on TV. If it had been a bad one, she would have been in the basement. She never would have known about this wild and violent beauty, would not have experienced it firsthand. She stands in the road, watching, for a long, long time.
54
All night the storms march past to the northwest, shaking the ground like distant artillery. When dawn comes Karena is awake to watch that too. She sits by the window on the side of the bed as the kaleidoscope of the sky turns from white to gold to blue. Then she showers, makes some coffee, makes herself as presentable as she can with the emergency makeup kit in her bag. Even the weak motel brew tastes good to her, and before she leaves her room she presses her face into her towel, inhaling the bleach, feeling the thin scratchy nap.
She goes across the hall to knock on the door, but it swings open before she can. Charles is already up too. The bruises under his eyes testify that he has spent a similarly sleepless night. But he appears calm, serene even. He seems to float over the motel’s carpet in his sandals, a few inches off the floor.
They drive to the Elmwood Café, where they take a corner table among the regulars—mostly farmers and retirees throwing dice for breakfast. Conversation stops when the Hallingdahl twins walk in. Then Leslee Rotman of the realty company raises a hand from her stool at the counter, though she doesn’t look up from her paper.
Karena orders an omelet, and Charles asks for Egg Beaters scrambled with vegetables, two orders of whole wheat toast, hash browns, a large orange juice. He polishes this off with great appetite while Karena drinks cup after cup of coffee from a vacuum-sealed urn, her food untouched. She wishes she still smoked. The sun clears the tree line across Highway 44 and bursts into the café, and the waitress goes around shutting the blinds. In the wake of the storms, it is going to be a beautiful day.
Charles leaves a 200 percent tip and once outside turns his face to the sky. He closes his eyes, breathing deeply. Then he says, without opening them, “Okay, K, let’s roll.”
“Charles . . . ,” says Karena.
Charles puts an arm around her and pulls her close, kissing her hair.
“It’s go-time, sistah,” he says.
Karena drives into town as slowly as she can, holding up traffic like an old farm wife. If this weren’t Minnesota, somebody might honk. Even so, the trip to the courthouse green takes all of five minutes. Karena pulls into a visitor’s spot next to the sheriff’s prowler and cuts the engine. They sit looking at the grass, the war memorial, the intersecting paths beneath the very old trees.
“Oh,” Karena exclaims. “Charles, your car.”
“Just leave it, K,” says Charles, “like I’ll need it anyway.” He tries to smile, but Karena sees him swallowing, his Adam’s apple hitching in his throat.
She looks away. She is so scared. She has never been so scared. She can feel the impending change bearing down on them, something irrevocable and heartless and powerful, like a train. She looks at the courthouse and remembers a ninth-grade class trip inside, the municipal warren of rooms smelling of funk and man sweat, the boxed caseloads rotting in the corners. The jail behind its old-fashioned bank vault door that Sheriff Cushing opened and closed by cranking a wheel. The thud of steel tumblers hitting home.
“Well, sistah,” says Charles, “I guess this is it.”
“Guess so,” Karena says.
They get out. The double slam of the Volvo’s doors—chunk, chunk—sounds very loud. They cross the sidewalk to the steps, passing a pair of birds taking a dirt bath, hearing a woman greet another on Main Street: Well hello there, how are you? The wind sifts through the trees.
“Oh no, that’s okay, K,” says Charles, when Karena follows him up the steps. “You don’t have to go in with me. In fact it’ll be easier on me if you don’t.”
“Well, that’s too bad, Charles,” says Karena. “Because I’m going with you.”
Charles stops and looks at her.
“I’m going with you,” Karena repeats.
She nods, trying to smile, until he understands. Charles’s face works. He turns away for a minute, composing himself. Then he turns back.
“Thank you, K,” he says.
“You’re welcome, Charles.”
They stand looking at each other in the morning light, the breeze playing in Charles’s hair. Then Charles reaches for Karena’s hand.
“You ready?” he says. “On three. One—two—”
He opens the door for her, and they walk through.
EPILOGUE: AUGUST 2009
It is almost a year to the day later when Charles comes to say good-bye. Karena is sleeping on the living room couch—or as close to sleeping as she can come these days. She is bobbing near the surface but still so tired that she doesn’t let on she can hear them when Kevin lets Charles in and says, “Shhh, quiet, man, she was up most of the night, let’s go out on the patio.” She can feel them tiptoeing over to peer at her, though, and when Charles whispers, “Are you sure she has two more weeks? She’s freaking ginormous,” Karena mutters, “I heard that.” But maybe she doesn’t say it aloud after all, because their footsteps creak away, and the refrigerator opens with a clink of bottles, and then the back door, and then they are outside.
Their conversation comes to her in fragments, less what they’re saying than the dueling tenor of their voices. It reminds Karena of lying in the backseat with Charles, coming home from the Starlite or the Hallingdahl farm and listening to Frank and Siri murmur in the front. Karena knows she should push herself up, join the men on the patio. There is so little time left with her brother. But her blood feels leaded, as though she is sinking into the cushions. She lifts a hand onto her stomach, seeking the baby’s head—there. She drifts.
She is thinking about adaptability, its peculiarities and inconsistencies, the elasticity of time. Why, for instance, should it have taken her such a while to acclimate to being home after chasing, to shake the visceral aftershocks, when she has gotten used to other situations as instantly as flicking a switch? And moreover has come to take them for granted. Her pregnancy—Karena can’t remember when her body wasn’t distended, when she didn’t have heartburn, when she was a skinny little runner who threaded through the world with grace and ease, without thinking about it. It seems like a story about somebody else. In this tale Karena was also a reporter, a woman who went to work in an office, wearing blazers and block-heeled shoes. Who was proud of her work. Who felt important because of it. Who drove there every day, singing behind the wheel.
Now Karena is accustomed to Kevin chauffeuring her around and pretending to complain mightily about it, to go to the market, to visit Frank, to run her outreach support groups. All the conditions of Karena’s probation. You, Miss Jorge, the Winneshiek County district court judge had said in Iowa last December, peering at her over his bifocals—a tiny bald eagle of a man. Since you are fortunate enough not to share your brother’s affliction, you do and did know better. You should have come forward, for his benefit and the community’s. You will work with bipolar support groups in the Minneapolis medical system for three years. For leaving the scene of an accident, your driver’s license will be suspended for the same amount of time.
And you, Mr. Hallingdahl, he had continued, you must learn more about your disorder and how to better manage it. You also currently reside in Minneapolis, I see. There is an excellent outpatient program at the Hennepin County Medical Center. You will attend it for one year. Charles, typically, had protested, had petitioned for a more extreme sentence—at least one as severe as Karena’s. But the judge had told him to stop wasting the court’s time and ordered the records sealed.
Perhaps the easiest thing for Karena to get used to, the condition that has felt most natural, has been hav
ing Charles nearby, across the city, in the student neighborhood known, aptly, as The Wedge. So close and yet far away enough. It will take her much, much longer to accept that he’s going again, leaving for Arizona this time, a two-year program at the Southwestern College of Naturopathic Medicine and Health Sciences. It won’t be like before, Karena reminds herself. She’ll know where Charles is. He’ll have a cell phone, e-mail, a fixed address. They’ll be in regular contact. He’ll come for holidays. Yet in the most important respect it will be exactly like before, because Karena will have to go back to waiting for the call, for the phone to ring with the news that something bad has happened to Charles. That he has done something bad to himself. This dread might be familiar, she may have lived with it for the past twenty years, but she will never get used to it. Never.
As if protesting her mother’s sorrow, the way Karena’s heart constricts, the baby rolls—inasmuch as she can in such a cramped space. The movement always makes Karena think of young whales swimming alongside their mothers. She gasps. “Ooouf,” she says, and struggles upright. “Okay, okay.” She bundles her newly shoulder-length hair into an elastic—she is always roasting hot now—and rubs her face. She can’t quite believe the baby will ever come, but she is more than ready to meet this child. She’s had ample time to wonder at the Amazing Levitating Belly, and now she’s done.
She is trying to heave herself off the couch when Kevin and Charles troop back in, and when they see her they come rushing over. “I’m all right,” Karena says crossly as they each seize one arm. She can feel Charles shaking with laughter. But either they have both gone spontaneously deaf or they’re totally ignoring her.
“You got a good grip there, Wieb?” Charles asks.
