Sing Them Home

by Stephanie Kallos

  Unheard of. Unprecedented. Unfair.

  Gaelan agrees. He knows he skipped to the front of the line. He understands that his sudden ascent into local TV stardom was, and still is, deeply resented by many. There’s really no way to account for it other than this: Someone blabbed to one of the producers the story of the Jones family history, and he was hired for that as much as anything else, as if having a personal tragedy related to the weather somehow made him singularly qualified to predict it.

  It’s a sensational story, as evidenced by the fact that in spite of Gaelan’s best efforts it refuses to die. He still receives sympathetic fan mail. He regularly declines to be interviewed for such TV shows as America’s Wildest Weather Tragedies! and Truth or Fiction: You Be the Judge!

  Gaelan’s professional good luck is one of the many reasons he suffers from a chronic, diffuse, psychological discomfort that he is unable to name, much less alleviate; he’s like a man walking around in stolen, unlaundered socks.

  His predecessor was a compactly built man with a homely face and a charmingly diffident air, a man who—like another fixture of American television, Captain Kangaroo—exuded grandfatherly tenderness even when he was in his thirties. This persona allowed Joe Dinsdale, weatherman, to be wildly inaccurate in his prognostications on a regular basis and yet never incur the wrath or ridicule of his viewing public. Gaelan watched Joe’s weather reports himself as a child, from babyhood until he was thirteen. Joe was more than a polite guest at the dinner table for all that time; he was family, long before Gaelan encountered him years later in nonpixilated form.

  In those days, Joe’s forecast came on at six P.M., before anything else. The information he imparted was that important. The tenor of the weather segment was generally professorial, rarely lighthearted, and certainly never flippant. Folks didn’t expect weather forecasts to be entertaining. In the glory days of independent farming, when crops and livestock constituted Nebraska’s main resources, forecasting the weather was serious business. The family TV was the tribal fire, and Joe Dinsdale—with his honored, top-of-the-hour slot—was the tribal soothsayer. It’s possible that coverage of the Kennedy assassination took precedence over Joe’s weather report, but that’s about the only thing Gaelan can imagine that would have preempted it.

  Joe stood in front of a real map, wearing a plain serge suit and wielding a pointer. He talked about today. He talked about tomorrow. He wasn’t expected to see much farther into the future than that.

  Whenever Gaelan thinks of him, Joe Dinsdale is rendered in shades of black and white. He was the human face of Nebraska weather for over thirty years, from 1955 until 1987, and Gaelan knows that Joe’s exit from television represented the end of an era for many Nebraskans, on a par with losing Walter Cronkite. It’s one of those historical landmarks Gaelan imagines that people still reminisce about and probably rue: Now, when Joe Dinsdale did the weather …

  Joe might not have had the same appeal if he were in the business today. His delivery was famously laconic. The camera was not his friend. But he was a sweetheart. His advice to Gaelan went like this: “They’ll say you’re stupid if you’re wrong, they’ll say you’re lucky if you’re right. You’ll never get any respect being a weatherman, but if you can laugh about it—because after all, think about it, son, how many people in the world get paid to predict the unpredictable?—you’ll have a lot of fun.”

  Did Joe predict the tornado that took Hope? Gaelan doesn’t remember, he’s never been told, he certainly never asked, and it wouldn’t have made a difference anyway because, after all, as far as tornadoes are concerned, the phrase que sera, sera is never more apt.

  Gaelan has often wondered how Joe reported the Gage County tornado of August 1978; these were broadcasts he didn’t see, of course, since the Jones television was one of the material casualties of that event. Gaelan always meant to ask him, over a cup of coffee maybe, sometime after his apprenticeship was over and the two of them could relax, converse about matters besides work, but Joe died of a stroke one week after he went off the air, as if his living existence became superfluous with the cessation of his electronically transmitted one.

  The other commercial station in town (the one with higher ratings and a broader demographic) has Brock Garrison, meteorologist: “First-alert weather brought to you by Brock Garrison, meteorologist! Utilizing the latest tools in forecasting technology, Brock brings twelve years of experience to the people of eastern Nebraska! For state-of-the art weather updates, rely on Brock Garrison, meteorologist, and all the KOLN-KGIN broadcast professionals!”

  Gaelan and Brock Garrison share membership in the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. They go to the same professional dinners. They are frequently invited to be guest speakers at elementary schools all over the state. They are about the same age.

  But Gaelan will never feel as qualified as Brock Garrison, meteorologist, because Brock Garrison earned his job by possessing real qualifications rather than leading-man looks and a sympathy vote; he has an advanced degree in earth sciences, one he received (with honors, surely, and a 4.0 average) from the granddaddy of all university programs, the one that inhabits the symbolic epicenter of severe storm reporting: the University of Oklahoma. Brock Garrison has been trained to interpret computer models. He works with a whole other world of numerical data and statistics. Gaelan imagines him pulling numbers out of the air—like a magician conjuring playing cards, coins, bouquets, bunnies—giving them his full attention and then swiping them aside with kingly disdain, making them vanish, retaining their secrets.

  Gaelan’s forecasts are never entirely wrong. They are never entirely right. They are nonspecific. The data Gaelan relies on, National Weather Service data—which was the only tool available in Joe Dinsdale’s day, the one Gaelan was trained to work with, the one that used to be good enough—addresses average conditions. NWS data measures landscape conditions at twelve-mile intervals—much too far apart to calculate the effects of subtle topographic forces.

  KLAN-KHAM recently changed hands. Word has come down from above that the new owners are considering making changes in the news department. They desire an edgier, less folksy look, an altered program format. They want to pursue a broader demographic. Gaelan anticipates that these vague, politic phrases will soon translate into one-on-one meetings with the producers. Maybe he’ll be asked to adjust his wardrobe, go more casual. He has some ideas along these lines. For one thing, he’d like to forgo suit coats in lieu of short-sleeved shirts; Gaelan Jones is justifiably proud of his biceps.

  He’s on in two minutes. He’s uneasy. Something doesn’t jive with this data, but it’s a feeling that is completely unsupported by NWS statistics. There’s nothing here to indicate anything unusual, certainly not a severe storm. And that’s mostly what the viewing public wants to know about, especially at this time of the year: So tell us, Gaelan, is there a chance of a tornado?

  Gaelan stands up at his desk. The warning light on the camera is on. Just below the lens, the teleprompter scrolls down the text currently being read in another part of the building by one of the news anchors, a story about the health benefits associated with ingesting flaxseed oil.

  Gaelan works up a smile. After this, he’s off for the weekend. He’ll go to the gym and work out, then call Claudia and see if she can get away from work early, fool around, eat dinner, go to a flick. She hasn’t seen Arnold’s new movie yet. Maybe she’ll spend the night. That would be nice.

  The words Toss to Gaelan appear on the teleprompter, and Gaelan hears the lead-in ad-lib: “How ’bout it, Gaelan? Are we gonna be able to grill a few more steaks before the end of the summer?”

  “You bet, Greg! Saturday and Sunday looking pretty good. There might be a few light spots of rain here and there, especially this afternoon in the southeastern part of the state, but I think you can safely put on that ‘Kiss the Cook’ apron for at least one more weekend.”

  There is laughter from the news anchors.

  Gael
an has a skill set, too, whether or not it’s concretely defined by a science degree from an accredited college: He can make people laugh; he looks good on camera, and in a profession that values the way things look, this counts for a great deal. He can bench-press 250 pounds, he can squat 275; beneath his shirt, he is ripped; he adores the company of women and knows himself to be a gifted lover, possessed of an innate, unfailing ability to consistently deliver orgasmic good cheer. And he can say with confidence that it’s unlikely a severe thunderstorm will ruin any lives today in southeastern Nebraska.

  “Here’s what I’m seeing, Greg …”

  Gaelan Jones, the beneficiary of good looks and capricious luck, proceeds to do his best, pretending to have fun predicting the unpredictable.

  This is his last broadcast of the week. In less than an hour, KLAN-KHAM’s weekend forecaster takes over, and then, for the next two and a half days, the only thing that Gaelan Jones, weatherman, will have to prognosticate is how many times he’ll get laid.

  Chapter 3

  The Virgin Interprets

  the Signs

  Bonnie Jones does not identify herself by her livelihood, as Gaelan and Larken do—as do all the folks she has known throughout her life: farmer, physician, nurse, postman, pastor, teacher, mother, mayor. Nor does she equate financial abundance with success.

  Bonnie freely admits to having made a few bad decisions, foolish decisions, when it comes to her work life. She’s been suckered now and then by back-page print ads and late-night infomercials meant to entice self-doubters and insomniacs. So yes, there were those long-distance degree programs in medical transcription, handwriting analysis, and massage therapy—educational investments that were personally enriching but not financially lucrative. In each case, her wages were just enough to pay off the credit card debt she incurred when she signed up for the courses in the first place.

  But apart from this, Bonnie has always been able to meet her financial needs; moreover, she’s a saver. Bonnie’s siblings would be astonished to learn how much money their baby sister has amassed over the years, working at her various low-paying, dead-end jobs:

  Country club caddy, secretary at the farmer’s co-op, clerk at Olson’s drugstore, short-order cook at the Little Cheerful Café, door-to-door representative of Electrolux, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Avon, and Greenpeace. She has strung beads and stuffed envelopes: Stay-at-home Moms! Housewives! Earn $$$ in your spare time! Work from home! Before her truck broke down, she hauled junk to the county dump, mowed lawns, raked leaves. She’s even worked a paper route, arising before dawn (and Gaelan and Larken consider her lazy!), meticulously rolling and rubber-banding the few pages that constitute The Goldenrod Gazette, loading them into the panniers of her bike, and delivering them the old-fashioned way. She tried hard to be an exemplary paper girl, but even after a year of determined practice, her ability to toss and aim with precision did not improve, and more often than not she ended up unintentionally obliterating what news her town saw fit to print by catapulting it into mud puddles, birdbaths, snow drifts, wasp colonies, mosquito-infested roof gutters, treacherous stands of blackberry canes, newly shat dog poop.

  Bonnie’s latest job is as the self-employed owner and operator of a juice and smoothie stand, BJ’s Brews. An entrepreneurial effort suggested and funded by Alvina Closs, the business has been up and running since Memorial Day. The hours of operation vary. Bonnie has four regular customers and averages a daily profit of eighteen dollars and seventy-five cents.

  But none of these occupations constitute her real work. None of them define her.

  If asked to describe her true vocation, the one that gives her purpose and passion, Bonnie would hesitate; there’s not an easy title for her line of work. It’s something like archaeology, a profession for which she is technically untrained but temperamentally suited.

  Generally, she’s involved in seeking, excavating, collecting, and restoring artifacts—seemingly inconsequential items that, to the uninformed, would be regarded as roadside trash. She studies them, assigns them historical significance, preserves and places them in an archival setting. If she were to call herself anything at all besides a failure (on this point, she and her siblings are in perfect agreement, although for different reasons), Bonnie Jones, youngest surviving child of Llewellyn and Hope Jones, born in 1971, would call herself a forensic fictionist.

  She goes out as soon as she can after a storm. She goes out every day, twice a day at least, sometimes more, even when the weather is uneventful. But the best days are those on which the wind has done its job of scouring, unearthing, rearranging. On these days she finds the most meaningful artifacts: scraps of fabric, rusty lids, pill bottles—sometimes with the prescription name almost legible, bleached pale. These are precious. Any bit of handwriting thrills her—typed pages, too. Metal scraps, because who knows where they might have come from? Farm machinery is the most logical answer, but Bonnie’s fervent belief is that any metal she unearths is part of a Singer sewing machine, an IBM Selectric, or a 1977 model Everest and Jennings wheelchair.

  And of course she’s always on the lookout for anything that might have come from a Steinway baby grand.

  It’s not unusual to go through periods when the relics seem to adhere to some mysterious organizing principle. They might center around a theme—lists, for example—or relate exclusively to children: pacifiers; single baby shoes; small, orphaned plastic toys that have been separated from their Happy Meals. Artifacts might be related by their size, weight, material—or shape: for weeks now Bonnie’s field of view has led her to a preponderance of circles: coins, lids, ponytail holders, condoms, CDs, teething rings.

  There is not much litter on country roads. Rural Nebraskans are tidy people for the most part, so the appearance of anything new in the way of roadside debris is easy to spot. Sometimes, rarely, Bonnie finds evidence of carousing teens, young people with new-minted driver’s licenses, just up from the Kansas border where they can buy 3.2 beer: cast-off aluminum cans, deflated bags of corn chips. These are of little interest. Bonnie acquires only those relics that can relate to the narrative she has built over the past twenty-five years, one she continues to construct. It is a living history she is assembling, and if she can form a place for a bit of refuse, then she keeps it.

  Beer cans don’t figure into it, but a scrawled grocery list does.

  Everything of significance will be cataloged and categorized and captioned.

  Bones are what she longs for. Ribs, phalanges, teeth. She imagines the front-page headlines: Decades-Old Mystery Solved: Forensic experts used DNA testing to positively identify the human remains discovered by Bonnie Jones of Emlyn Springs, Nebraska as those of her mother, Aneira Hope Jones, who has been missing since 1978.

  But bones are what she never finds—nor anything else with an unmistakable identity, one she wouldn’t have to invent, but the real thing, a true artifact.

  If only she could find something—one thing—that could be positively, unequivocally linked to Hope. Only then will she know that the time is right, the stage is set for miracles, and the angels are on her side.

  On the morning of her father’s electrocution, Bonnie steps out of her place of residence, a large converted car shed behind the Williamses’ mansion, and checks on the girls. Looking across the expanse of lawn (the grass needs mowing; she’ll get to it tonight before the girls go to bed) she sees that the morning newspaper has been taken in; it would have been deposited with unerring accuracy by the current Emlyn Springs paper carrier, Jim and Joanie Llyr’s boy, Matthew. The porch light is off, the living room drapes have been parted. The Welsh national anthem is being played on the piano; two strong harmonizing voices, soprano and alto, are singing along. All the evidence indicates that the Misses Williams, Hazel and Wauneeta (eighty-eight and eighty-five respectively) aren’t dead yet.

  Bonnie turns her attention to the weather. Her sensitivity to the moving currents of the air is exquisite, often exquisitely painful; there is no momen
t in which she does not associate an awareness of the wind with her mother.

  The day is holding its breath, she thinks. It’s as though the whole of her town is trapped inside a giant, fevered lung that has forgotten the mechanics of respiration.

  Exhale! Bonnie wants to shout, but—not wishing to alarm the girls—mutters instead. Breathe, she whispers, reminding herself as well as the wind: inflation, deflation; inspiration, expiration; in, out; breathe.

  The wind—what little there is—seems beaten down, puny, too pummeled by the relentless summer to put up a fight. Bonnie does not wilt in this stagnant, oppressive heat, the way Larken does, but she finds it depressing. Bonnie prefers a good strong wind—even if all it does is agitate air that is already stale and soggy, like a fan in a steam room. Motion of any kind is preferable to stillness.

  The sun is desperately bright; the sky is clear but brownish, filmy with dust the wind can’t rouse itself to disperse. Bonnie imagines swiping a huge, white-gloved finger across the sky, writing Clean Me You Fucker the way that kids do, the listless, unhappy kids of Emlyn Springs; embittered, small-time, small-town vandals who can’t get their hands on spray cans—and wouldn’t dare to use them even if they could—and so make their mark on the backsides of grimy pickups and vans. Kids whose imaginations have already shriveled, who can’t even register their rebellion in a way that lasts: Clean me. Wash me. Fuck. Cunt. Asshole. Pussy. Penis.

  No sign of rain. Bonnie heads back inside.

  When Dr. Williams died four years ago, Bonnie was twenty-nine years old and still living at her father’s house. Her father was rarely there—for all intents and purposes he lives with Viney—but Bonnie still sensed his disapproval in a million big and little ways. She felt that he was angry and disappointed in her for not going to college like her siblings, for working jobs he considered menial, for staying here instead of moving away, for valuing what she values. For everything, really. She was no longer comfortable being beholden to her dad and wanted her own space.