Vortex

by Kimberly Packard

  It had to be a metaphor for something else. Weeks away from finalizing her research, perhaps it was her subconscious telling her that she was leaving childhood behind, moving into the unknown.

  Elaina kicked back into a plank. Loose pebbles dug into her palms as she shifted her hips up and drove the heel of her boots down into a perfect downward facing dog.

  She deviated from the flow of her practice to spend a little more time in her favorite pose, reveling in the floaty feeling of the blood rushing to her head.

  Ready to move to the next pose, she fluttered her eyes open.

  A man leaned on the gate behind her. His wavy blond hair reflected the fiery colors of the sunset. The crystal blue color of his eyes perfectly matched his polo shirt.

  Elaina squinted, trying to make out the logo embroidered in white, frowning when the upside down words ‘Forecast Channel’ came into focus. “It’s rude to just sit there and watch,” she called out before hopping her feet between her hands and finishing the Sun Salutation.

  “Didn’t want to interrupt your yoga.” His smirk morphed into a full smile. “What time is Pilates?”

  Elaina tugged at the hem of her long-sleeved T-shirt and shoved the sleeves back up her arms as she walked toward him. “Studio’s all yours. Enjoy your Kegels.” Elaina reached for the gate, but he didn’t move.

  His hands covered the latch and the fingers of one hand curled around it, holding her hostage in the smelly, algae-infested pool.

  His eyes stayed on hers, but she could tell they wanted to roam.

  Then again, who knew how long he’d been watching her. He’d probably already got an eyeful.

  Pervert.

  “That sounded like an insult.” The congeniality in his words was pulled tight over a challenge.

  “You’re smarter than you look.” Elaina crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes. Challenge accepted. “It was definitely an insult.” She shot her gaze to the latch and back up at him. “Do you mind?”

  “Seth Maddux,” he said, extending his top hand, but still keeping one over the latch. “Forecast Channel. I’m covering the outbreak tomorrow. Which tour group are you with?”

  She scowled at his hand but didn’t reach for it. Typical male MO, to assume she was a passenger, rather than a driver.

  Her momma had taught her about boys like this.

  “The one you need to avoid.” Like a snake striking, her nimble fingers reached under his hand a flicked open the gate.

  He stumbled back, standing aside as she pushed past him.

  She was nearly back to her room when he shouted. “Hey, I never got your name.”

  “Nope,” Elaina said over her shoulder. “You didn’t.”

  9

  The Texas air was tight with electricity. Heavy gray clouds greedily slurped up moisture, and fierce winds blowing from the north stirred a cauldron of hail and energy.

  Elaina and Heath bent their heads over their computers, holding their breath and waiting for the moment of genesis.

  “We may be wasting our time,” his words blew out on an exasperated sigh. “The ingredients are all here, but the pot isn’t boiling.”

  She looked up at the sky. The cold and warm fronts weren’t clashing like angry gods; instead they were gently rolling around each other, like two old friends playing a lingering game of chess.

  A tornado could still drop, but as the air stabilized, their chances of getting another data set dwindled. Along with her hope of getting another glimpse at whatever the last twister had revealed.

  A blast of northerly wind brought with it a cold, hard rain. From the back of Heath’s van, they watched through the open doors as the amateur tornado tourists shrieked and ran for cover in the safety of the various vans and SUVs. Radio static crackled with the lightning.

  “Anything that happens will be rain-wrapped, so these tourists should just go home.” Elaina wrinkled her nose as she muttered. “And the news crew, too.”

  Her partner laughed and shook his head.

  “What?”

  “You think these storms exist just for you, don’t you?” His voice was light, but the words rested on the foundation of hard truth.

  Her gaze left the rolling image of the radar and studied her friend’s face. The storms did exist just for her. Folded into the layers of gray clouds was her future. Lying within positively and negatively charged molecules was the information they needed to finish their research. Spinning in the heart of every tornado was her purpose, to learn its secret so she could whisper it to others.

  “Someone’s going to get hurt.” The words had to squeeze past the tightness in her throat. “If they aren’t watching the radar or the sky. Or if they aren’t paying attention to the road…” The image of her professor’s legs forever locked into a wheelchair flashed across her mind.

  The glow of the computers cast a green-yellow pallor to Heath’s face. A quick tightening of his jaw was his only acknowledgement of her concern.

  Elaina swung her gaze back to the world outside the van. Yellow headlights illuminated the falling rain. The motel sign danced and jerked in the rising wind. Everything was awash in gray; gray skies, gray parking lot, even the other vehicles all managed to look gray.

  Except for the Forecast Channel vehicles. The Hummer and live truck were a beacon of bright blue.

  The obnoxiousness managed to battle the storm.

  As if someone let off the accelerator, the rain eased up and the growing puddles stilled.

  The Forecast Channel reporter got out of his van with a golf club in hand. Holding the ends high overhead, he stretched, first one side then the other before twisting his torso and taking a few practice swings.

  “That idiot is just asking to get struck,” she said.

  Movement on the other side of the parking lot pulled Elaina’s attention away from the potential electrocution.

  A man got out of the driver side of one of the tour vans. Unlike all the other tour vans in black, white or gray, this one was a deep maroon, pock mocked by years of hail dents. The gold lettering on the side, Tuck’s Tornado Tours, made economy of the alliteration with each word sharing an oversized T.

  He walked to the middle of the parking lot, hands in the pockets of his cargo shorts. With his face tilted up to the sky, he closed his eyes and outstretched his arms. The wind kicked up, whipping his shoulder-length gray hair across his face.

  Elaina felt it then.

  Something in the air had shifted.

  Nim lifted his head and let out a soft whimper before sitting upright at her feet and staring hard into her eyes, as if to say, “Get my helmet, let’s go.”

  A shrill whistle cut through the silence as the man made a circular motion with his finger and jogged back to his van.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  “Where? We’re getting some movement but no hook yet.”

  She scooted to the back of the van, not wanting to lose sight of the maroon vehicle. Something deep inside told her to follow the man.

  It came from the same place that told her when the pressure dropped, the humidity rose and the winds shifted. The instinct to follow was born in the same place where Elaina had learned to listen to Nimbus.

  Her gut and her dog never lied to her.

  “I don’t know, just follow that van.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Heath looked at her with disbelief and concern for her sanity. “You want to follow the circus?”

  “Trust me,” she said, slamming the back doors of their van and opening the door of her truck. Nim hopped in first and she scooted in beside him, quickly snapping his helmet on before peeling out of the parking lot.

  It was easy to follow the other van. The weather kept most of the people in this rural part of Texas home and tucked away.

  The difficult part was keeping an eye on the horizon for anything dipping down. On the northern edge of the Texas Hill Country, the land rose and fell more than the plains of Oklahoma.

  A tornado could be just
on the other side of the hill and they wouldn’t know it until they got there.

  The van pulled onto a dirt road abruptly, rocking onto its left side as if the driver never even let off the accelerator.

  Elaina followed a quarter of a mile behind him. She watched as his brake lights brightened.

  “We’ve got something forming, off to our left,” Heath’s voice came over the radio. “If we’re going to get anything, we need to cut north. Looks like we’ve got a crossroad up ahead.”

  The road came into view and she turned. Of course the tour operator wouldn’t take his guests into the heart of the storm, but somewhere safe on the back end.

  “Guess we brought the party with us,” Heath said.

  Elaina looked in the rearview mirror. Behind them she could see the procession of headlights. Some stopped along the southern road to watch, others followed her and Heath to get closer.

  Great.

  Leaning over the steering wheel, she studied the sky. There was no wall cloud, no garish green tint, just a driving rain and debris flying from her left and her right. “Let’s drop here and head back to the southern road,” she told Heath over the radio.

  Afterward, they turned and raced back to the other road. The hair on her arm stood with anticipation. Could she see anything in this weather? Would a rain-wrapped storm have the same affect?

  They found a place along the highway with the rest of the storm chasers.

  The maroon van’s passengers clustered together, all waiting with cameras and recorders poised to capture the storm.

  Seth’s blond hair and bright blue rain jacket was easy to spot as he stood with a microphone in hand.

  Anticipation and excitement, fear and bravery pulsed throughout the group waiting to see a meteorological wonder.

  Like a stage queen waiting until her adoring fans were ready before making an appearance, the large wedge tornado showed itself. As guessed, it was rain-wrapped and faint as it sauntered. The low rumble of the storm was interrupted by whoops and whistles and rapid-fire camera clicks.

  At this safe distance, everyone got out of their cars to watch, including Elaina.

  Her feet pulled her toward it. Mud sloshed beneath her boots and the air was eerily still. Was she too far away? Would it happen again?

  She moved closer to the storm, away from the sounds of the people.

  Elaina closed her eyes, just wanting to feel the storm. Her skin prickled with cold air and warm rain. Her ears popped with the shift in pressure. She took a deep breath, inhaling the musky rain, her nose tickling with the woodsy smell of upturned dirt.

  It’s not going to happen.

  She was still there, on a dirt road among strangers, her friend and her dog watching a lazy wedge tornado.

  Elaina opened her eyes, but she was not staring at the field. She was sitting in a corner of a white room. Names were called over an intercom and a machine beeped an off-tempo rhythm to her racing heart.

  “Mommy,” said a small voice that felt both grounded and disembodied. “I want my mommy.”

  The white room faded into a gray rain cloud. The roar of the storm dissipated and cheers erupted in its place.

  Elaina stood frozen, staring at the empty field. Hot tears heated her chilled face. Panic and confusion swirled around her stomach, but one thought emerged from the vortex deep inside her.

  The mother she cried for wasn’t the woman who’d raised her.

  10

  The tips would’ve been better if it weren’t a wedge tornado. Endorphins made everyone feel generous, but if Tuck could’ve chased a sexier twister, the bills slipped into his hand would’ve been twenties instead of tens.

  Once the air settled around them and the geeks and TV guys got their fill, his tour group was electrified with the find, even if he was utterly bored.

  He’d been the first to call it, before the scientists and Forecast Channel flacks, with their equipment that cost more than his van. Nobody could read the sky better than Robert Tucker. That knowledge almost made the wedge tornado acceptable.

  Almost.

  Tuck looked at the ragtag vacationers and retirees in their sensible shoes and freshly-purchased rain gear. They had no clue that the man who ordered their lunches and held out a helping hand to their wives was a weather god.

  “How much do you reckon we pulled in?” Biscuit asked, pulling out the barstool next to him and whistling for the bartender.

  Biscuit had been his business partner for as long as he could remember. So long, in fact, that he couldn’t recall the drunken night that’d resulted in his friend acquiring the nickname, Biscuit.

  “About two hundred,” Tuck said to his beer. “Cheap bastards.” He was seven hundred short of what he’d lost in the casino, on top of the three hundred he’d hoped to make to pull together his payment to his loan shark.

  Biscuit scratched the stubble on his chubby cheek and wrinkled his nose. “Not bad for beer money, I guess. Stop sulking and let’s go entertain those cheap bastards, and see if we can turn them into drunk bastards.”

  He followed his friend over to the table where his tour group took up residence. Even if the faces changed, nearly every one of his groups looked the same. Father and son bonding team, a few sets of retirees in baseball caps and visors, and the international tourists getting away from the bustle of the city to get the ‘true’ American experience.

  It was a waste of time to remember their names. He focused on the roles they played.

  “Y’all still doing okay?” Tuck asked. The buzz from the alcohol amplified the group’s adrenalin and the collective excitement made him hopeful for another round of tips.

  “There he is,” slurred the man he’d called ‘Father of the Year.’

  This nickname always went to the men who showed up with teenage sons hoping to pull the kids’ eyes off their phones.

  The teenager shyly took a sip of beer.

  This father might actually get the award.

  “Round’s on me. That was so freaking awesome.”

  “What would you say that one was? EF4? Five?” asked New Hobby Retiree.

  These guys were his bread and butter. Retired accountants, lawyers or doctors who had the means and the time to throw themselves into a new hobby. He always made a point to remember their names.

  “Well, Melvin, what do you think?”

  The man beamed back. “That had to be an EF4, at the least.”

  Tuck laughed and nodded. “Man, Melvin, I better be careful or you’re gonna end up being my competition.” The storm had been an EF2, maybe a three, but he was willing to let corrections go to the wayside.

  “Did anyone get good footage?” he asked. A few kind words on someone’s photography could go a long way.

  The cameras came out and Tuck oohed and ahhed like a proud parent. His hand reached into the pocket of his cargo shorts and fondled the change, cupping it in his hand, rolling it between his fingers so much that the metal heated up.

  He chuckled. His old man had always said money burned a hole in young Robert’s pocket.

  “What’s the closest you ever got to a twister?” asked the other New Hobby Retiree.

  What was his name, Clyde? Kirk?

  “Well, sir,” he went with the safe formality. “We’re professionals and we take every precaution to keep y’all safe, so that means we stay on the back end of the storms and watch from a distance.”

  The man waved him off. “Enough with the liability and safety BS. Come on, you had to have gotten close once.”

  Biscuit nudged him. “Show them the scar.”

  Tuck took a long pull from his beer, purely theatrical. He had to make them beg for it. “Nah, man, they don’t want to see that.”

  A chorus of “yes we do’s” filled the air and, Tuck was reaching for the hem of his shirt.

  “Let me start by apologizing to the ladies.” He laid his hand across chest. “I mean no disrespect by showing you this.” Modesty always resulted in a few extra dollars. He lift
ed his shirt and eight heads leaned in close, studying the puckered white scar that ran across his body like a fault line from just above his right hip up to his left nipple.

  One of the wives pulled back, hand covering her mouth; another woman reached forward, one finger following its serpentine path from inches away.

  “Cool!” the teenage boy said what everyone else was thinking. “What happened?”

  He lowered his shirt once everyone got at least a twenty-dollar look. “Tornadoes are like women. There’re the girls you can take home to Momma and make a life with; those are the ones where it’s safe to take you folks out to see. And, then there are the fiery ones, redheads. Those are the ones you stay far away from.”

  Tuck drained the rest of his glass and had another in his hand within seconds. “This had to be a good twenty-five, thirty years ago. The weather was kicking up, and I was out getting some storm chasing practice. I was the only one out there, which was a blessing, believe you me.

  “I was in the Panhandle when I saw the most perfect wall cloud. You could’ve used that cloud to hang a picture it was so straight. Then, she dropped down. All sleek with the perfect curves. If this twister was a woman, she’d be on the runway, no doubt.”

  He paused, letting the picture he was painting soak into everyone’s head. “We spent an afternoon together, this twister and me. I chased her from Hereford into damn-near Oklahoma, until she almost got me. Now, you know the Panhandle is a bunch of cows and grain elevators. Well, this lovely tornado lured me to one of them elevators.”

  “Is that what caused the explosion?” Biscuit asked.

  Their audience gasped.

  Tuck nodded. “Yeah, the air pressure of the tornado ignited those tiny particles of grain and the elevator exploded. Remember the part about the red head? Well wouldn’t you know it, but that tornado sucked up the flames and she became a fire tornado.”

  Another collective gasp.

  “Well, I’ll be,” said Clyde/Kirk. “I’ve heard they can happen, but they’re rare.”