Brad felt himself blushing again, this time with a comforting warmth.
“Please, call me Brad.”
“Only if you don’t call me Sylvia,” she replied. “I’ve always hated that name, more so now that my hair color seems determined to become my namesake. If I had any friends, they would call me Vi. My enemies would call me ‘Syllie’, but they’re all dead now,” she said, another sly smile spreading across her face.
“Well, I wouldn’t want to join their ranks, so Vi it is,” Brad said. “And by the way, there’s nothing wrong with silver hair. I think it shows a certain dignity, like a badge of victory against the years.”
“That’s very kind of you to say, Brad.”
“And if I was your typical insurance guy, this would be the part where I tell you that you don’t look a day over 55,” Brad continued. “Fortunately, I skipped that section in the state exam.”
“Then if that’s not a salesman’s ploy, I’ll pretend that you’re hitting on me,” Vi countered. “I thought you were a married man.”
And that quickly, all the wit and verbal repartee collapsed into the chasm of grief that Brad had briefly left unguarded. The silence in the room was louder than an alarm clanging the warning of a coming tornado, with the insurance man’s soul being battered around the vortex.
“I’m sorry, Brad,” Vi said, leaning forward. “I’ve said something hurtful.”
“No, not at all,” he said, turning as if to grab a paper from the credenza behind him.
Fingers reached across the desk and grabbed Brad’s left hand, the one still bearing a wedding ring, which continued holding the dealer invoice. Startled, he quickly turned toward the lady, forgetting the tears that had begun streaming down his face.
“My mouth may need a year of remedial sensitivity training, but my eyes don’t have any problem recognizing a bloody wound,” she said.
With his free hand, Brad quickly wiped the dampness from his eyes and cheeks.
“It’s nothing,” he said, staring at the nearly empty desktop. “I’m sorry, this is totally unprofessional of me.”
“Nothing to apologize for,” she said, studying the insurance man's face with direct, piercing eyes. “I’ve seen it before. My son went through this, so I know what it looks like. How many days has it been since the divorce went final?”
Brad now looked her in the eyes, stunned at her acumen.
“H-how could you possibly know that?” he asked.
Sylvia Enderrin knew a thing or two about pain and loss. She knew what it smelled like, how it could fill a soul until the soul became unrecognizable. She had answers that could only be bought with the currency of experience. But she had the motherly tenderness to want to spend that currency if it meant someone else could sidestep the grief.
“If it was more than a week or two, you would already have your cover-up lines in place, the skin-thickening that covers the holes during the day that the liquor usually fills at night,” Vi said.
Brad was in uncharted territory. He believed he had done a passable job of concealing his marital miseries and nightly drinking from the office staff for the last few months. Now this one-legged woman had cut through the curtains in less time than it takes to brew a cup of coffee.
“I really can’t talk about it,” he said, but his eyes admitted that for the first time, this burden needed to be shared.
“I don’t know you from Adam,” Vi said without taking her eyes from his. “And you don’t know me from Adam’s rib. But I’m telling you that this is not something you can do by yourself. I just happened to be the one who knocked the hole in the dam. Now I’m up to my ankles in water, so don’t hide behind some bullshit about propriety.”
Brad struggled with the moment, all reason lost to emotion. He opened his mouth to say that he would be okay, but instead, the one-word confession erupted from his lips.
“Monday.”
Mrs. Enderrin nodded her head knowingly and sat back in her chair.
“My son’s divorce had been final for 48 hours before I even knew his marriage was in trouble. He’s like you. Wanted to hide it, believed he could handle it without anybody’s help. I don’t know how he thought he could keep it from me. We weren’t close at the time, but every boy wants his mother after he’s had a bad dream. It was the dreams that finally got him to pick up the phone. The dreams finding you yet?”
This time, Brad was shocked. “How did you know about that?”
She just looked at him.
He waited for an empty moment, then nodded. “About a month now.”
“There’s something about losing a mate that makes a person start contemplating the idea of dying alone,” she said. “Funny how people never consider it when they’re single, before they get married. But once they’ve been with someone for a while, the hole left behind when they’re gone leaves too much space for the dreams to fill. Then add alcohol, and it’s like nightmare fuel.”
“I’ll be okay,” he said. “I just need to work through it.”
“Well, that may be,” she answered, “but you won’t be working through it tomorrow. Tomorrow you’ll be shoving turkey down your neck in Easerly.”
Brad was confused, unsure what she was talking about.
“I’m going to need your address if I’m going to pick you up. Write it down for me. I’ll be there at 11 in the morning. And don’t make me wait, because I get cranky when I’m behind schedule.”
The man who was usually in charge, accustomed to explaining and counseling and reassuring others against the potential demons of fire, hurricanes, car wrecks, and spiny lawyers, was suddenly at the mercy of another. The list machine in his head started spinning through a figurative Rolodex of potential excuses and ploys to dodge the backhanded invitation that felt more like a draft notice. All of the cards on that Rolodex were blank.
“I can’t tomorrow,” he started. “I’ve…got plans.”
“You know, for an insurance salesman, you’re a shitty liar,” she said. “You’re just going to have to break your date with Mr. Walker, Mr. Daniels, or Mr. Beam because tomorrow you’re having dinner with me and my husband and my son.”
“That’s very kind of you, Vi, but-“
“No, it isn’t,” she replied. “It’s flat out meddling for selfish reasons. I won’t be able to enjoy my dinner if I know my insurance man is wandering around solo for the first time on one of those dangerous holidays.”
There was a comfort in the woman’s strength, a determination that didn’t feel like pity. Had it been an overt pretense of charity, he would have found the resolve to deflect the offer. Instead, he waited less than two beats before taking a business card from its place in a holder on his desk and writing out his address.
She took the card and put it in her purse, then took a second card from the same holder and began writing her phone number on the back of it. “In case the dream comes back tonight.”
She left the card on his desk, gathered the dealer invoice, and stood to leave.
“You may not understand this right now, Brad, but I’m glad we met. I think you and my son have a lot in common." She paused, repositioning her aluminum assistants after stuffing the invoice into her purse. "There were some things I didn’t do right when he needed me, but I’m older and wiser now. Besides, I could use the company for the ride up to the cabin tomorrow.”
She offered her softest smile, twinned with a conspiratorial wink, then spun on the rubber heel of her left crutch and was gone.
Brad sat in his office another half hour before taking his notes to his CSR, Sue Boreck.
“Sue, could you add this to Mrs. Enderrin’s account when the computers come back up?”
“A new auto policy?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he replied. “Just use the same coverages, driver info, and other stuff from her current policy. She didn’t give me the information on her husband and son, but go ahead and add them as drivers anyway, just to be safe. I appreciate it.”
Sue loo
ked up, confusion clouding her face, but Brad had already gone, confident in the abilities of the extremely knowledgeable Ms. Boreck.
Sue never complained, content in her chosen lot as a mid-level functionary. In her view, she had accomplished much for a small-town girl without a high school diploma. Now in her mid forties, she had reached a position of respect in a profession instead of punching a time clock on a mere job, and had gotten there through nothing less than hard work and competence.
She had been with the firm for more than a decade, first as an assistant to Mr. Cowher himself, and later for the list-oriented upstart Connerman. Like most of the people in the office, she found Brad to be pleasant and personable, although he always seemed to keep his distance when it came to personal matters. She liked working for him. He went out of his way to show his respect for her abilities and made a visible effort not to take her for granted. He also exhibited none of the arrogance so often displayed by some of the other agents in the office. He treated her as an equal, not an underling.
While he never talked about it, his divorce was no secret in the office.
Neither was his ongoing battle with alcohol.
Certainly there was a small element among the staff who wagged their tongues over his drinking, but not a single one of them could find fault with his production or work, which at times seemed superhuman considering the increasing number of days he missed due to hangovers or sheer inconsolable depression.
One of the reasons Sue suspected he was so good at his job was the fact that he saw and treated his clients like people, not as sales quotas. People responded to that, and wanted to do business with someone who would look them in the eye and tell them the truth.
And on the rare occasion when one of his local clients had a fire or a fender bender, Brad would often show up on the scene to offer his own personal help, whether it was volunteering his strong back to move salvaged furniture into storage or driving the person home from the accident scene.
After one particularly sad fire that de-housed a local family with two toddlers, Sue knew that he had even paid for a night or two at the Best Western out of his own pocket for the family until the adjusters showed up with bigger checks, telling the shell-shocked father that the room was actually being paid for by the agency.
It wasn’t an act, or a sales gimmick. Brad once explained to Sue that he felt it was part of his calling.
She believed that Brad was able to keep up the quality and quantity of work in spite of his drinking and divorce because, sadly, his work was now all that he had left in his life.
So she didn’t mind when he asked her to take care of the changes on the Enderrin policy.
Without looking at the sheet of paper with the information now on her desk, something nagged at her. She had developed an uncanny ability to call up facts in her head faster than the company’s computer system about most of the accounts she serviced.
A half hour later, the capable assistant became even more confused once the computers sputtered back to life. In less than 60 seconds, her recollection of the Enderrin account was confirmed.
“Got time for a cuppa?”
Sue looked up to see Shianne standing at the edge of her cubicle, the disconnected telephone headset wire dangling from her left ear.
“In a minute,” Sue replied, her fingers dancing across the computer keys like an accomplished concert pianist. “I’ve got to finish this change for Brad.”
“I didn’t think he was going to make it in this morning,” Shianne said, casually looking over Sue’s shoulder at the multi-colored screen of the database. “Mrs. Enderrin sounded like a hard case on the phone. I don’t think he would have wanted to stand her up.”
“He was okay,” Sue said, her mind still tossing around the troubling information she had just read. “So was she.”
“Something wrong?” Shianne asked, noticing that her friend seemed unusually distracted.
“I’m not sure. Brad wanted me to add Mrs. Enderrin’s husband and son to her car policy, but the system doesn’t show anybody but her on the account. I don’t remember anything about a husband in all the time I’ve been here.”
“Well did you search the computer for any other Enderrins?” Shianne asked, leaning on the corner of the desk to get a better look at the screen.
“I did,” Sue replied. “I found a James Enderrin on a previous life insurance policy, but it’s really old. More than 20 years, so there’s no detail in the system.”
“Doesn’t sound right,” Shianne said. “If it was the same family, it should have been in with the rest of the account.”
“Yeah, but remember, all the life insurance stuff was originally kept on a different system until 2004, before we started putting it all on the same computer.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I’ll ask Brad when we get back from break.”
“Brad just headed out to Banff’s Hardware in Norwood to deliver a policy,” Shianne said. “He won’t be back today. You want to call him on his cell phone and ask?”
Sue gave one last look at the screen, then clicked the little “X” in the upper right corner.
“Nah, it can wait until Monday. Let’s go grab that cuppa coffee.”
Chapter Thirteen
Wednesday
November 21, 2012
Micah looked from his window seat through the two plastic panes at the threatening bank of clouds below the plane. Looking down on clouds was one of his two favorite things about air travel, the other being the rapid acceleration during takeoff, including the sense of tilting upward as the metal bird climbed into the sky. As it was for most people who used to look forward to being on an airplane, these two joys were now smothered by the long list of intrusive and distasteful facets of flying in the post-9/11 world which now made the experience about as much fun as toenail surgery.
The angry clouds he currently observed made him wonder for the thousandth time in the last 18 hours about Old Joe's story. He again tried to pinpoint exactly what part of the tale had taken him in, what had been so convincing that an agnostic like himself would be willing to consider for even a moment that some sort of snow monster could actually exist. But the harder he tried, the more he realized that it wasn't just the medicine man's intriguing monologue. There was Stevie Reever.
On the way home from meeting with Old Joe, Micah had stopped by Charlie Reever's house as he had promised during a call back to the man yesterday afternoon. Afterwards, he had gone back to his apartment and gone through Stevie Reever's autopsy report with a new eye, armed with the information Charlie had confirmed. During that review, questions arose that before had been just dull data. Micah had wanted to call the medical examiner's office to get an explanation for the ruptured bronchial tube and water in the chest cavity, but had left the living Reever's house too late to make that call. Now, it looked like the call would have to wait until after he got back from the East Coast.
Upon arrival at Baltimore Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, a mouthful that included a geographic misnomer since the airport was in neither Baltimore nor Washington, Micah went to the rental car lot to pick up the economy car he had reserved. Unfortunately, through the kind of screw-up usually reserved for the airport's baggage handling facilities, there were no economy cars available. The company made good on the error by giving him the keys to a Jeep Grand Cherokee at the Chevy Aveo price.
From there, Micah drove the 35 miles to the NOAA headquarters in Silver Spring. It was a pleasant drive under a sunny sky, a condition that was slated to change tomorrow if NOAA's meteorology staff was to be believed. After pulling into the government complex parking lot, he checked in at the reception counter.
"Micah Roaz, Associated Press, to meet with Dr. Trevor Dane," Micah told the uniformed man at the desk. A call and a handshake later, Micah was in the office of NOAA's top scientist in the study of severe winter storms.
"I appreciate you meeting with me," Micah said, opening his report
er pad and twisting his pen in anticipation of what he expected to be a very technical conversation.
"My pleasure. A lot of people like to talk about the weather, just not with meteorologists," Dr. Dane said, relaxing in his black imitation leather high back chair. "Any trouble finding the place?"
"No, pretty easy," Micah answered. "Not a lot of roads named 'East West Highway.'"
"I always blame our proximity to Washington," Dr. Dane explained with a smile. "Only our federal government could come up with a name that is not only uninspired, but that contradicts itself at the same time."
Unlike a lot of scientists Micah had encountered during his career, Dane seemed a lot more laid back and comfortable in his own skin. He sensed this interview was going to go better than he originally expected.
"So let's talk snowstorms," Micah said.
"My favorite subject," Dane said, and began explaining the basics on storm theory, jet streams, and El Ninos.
Eventually the discussion turned to the more violent elements of winter storms.
"Dr. Dane, something I've always wondered about," Micah said. "Rain storms and snow storms both involve clouds and precipitation, yet while thunder and lightning are frequently part of a rain storm, we rarely experience thunder and lightning during snow storms. Why is that?"
"Good question," Dr. Dane replied. "Believe it or not, with all the high tech gadgetry and billions of dollars in research, we don't know a whole lot more about lightning than Ben Franklin did. But there are plenty of theories that sound pretty logical and even one or two that might be right. First you have to understand that lightning is actually a result and not a component of storms. According to the most popular theory, it's a powerful discharge of static electricity. The best guess is that the friction of frozen water particles in the moist atmosphere of a cloud creates the static electricity. It eventually builds up and reaches a magnitude where it is drawn to a ground, which in nature is basically anything that is attached to land, including land itself. That's where the term 'ground' comes from in electrical parlance.
Howl of a Thousand Winds Page 8
