Vortex

by Kimberly Packard

  Seth crouch walked out of the girl’s line of sight to next to her, watching the store from the same perspective. Light from the descending sun glinted off the new metal roof, casting an ethereal shine from the building. No wonder the girl waited so intently for her angel.

  “I saw an angel once,” he said.

  For the first time Amy’s gaze shifted to his quickly before moving back to the building.

  “I was about your age and I lived down on the coast. I rode my bike too far from my grandparents’ house and a fog rolled in. I was so scared. I didn’t know which way was up and then suddenly out of the fog came this beautiful woman. She held my hand and walked with me back to my street. Once I saw my house, I turned to thank her and she was gone.”

  Amy’s head turned in his direction. “Did you ever see her again?”

  “Nope.”

  Big tears filled her eyes. “But I want to tell her thank you. And that Mr. Bear was okay.” She reached down to touch the bear resting in her handlebar basket.

  Seth looked over his shoulder to make sure Rick was still rolling. “Well, I have it on good authority, that the angels in Heaven watch my show, so why don’t you tell her?”

  When Amy nodded, the tears spilled over and streamed down her face.

  “Tell me about your angel.”

  “She was so pretty and brave. She helped me find my meemaw and she told a fireman to save Mr. Bear for me.”

  “Had you seen your angel before? Here in town?”

  Amy shook her head with such ferocity that the stringy brown hair clung to her face.

  He didn’t want to break the connection, but he scanned the small town with his eyes. With a population barely over a thousand and the remoteness of this town, he couldn’t believe that rescue crews would be on hand so quickly.

  “What else do you remember about your angel?”

  “She had long hair. It was so pretty and kinda curly.” The little girl gnawed on her bottom lip and squeezed her eyelids as if trying to recall everything she’d forgotten about that terrifying day. Suddenly her eyes popped open. Like the sky after a storm passed, her smile was crisp, clean and pure. “I remember! She told me her name.” Dimples pierced her chubby cheeks. “Elaina. That’s the name of an angel, don’t you think?”

  Seth smiled at the girl. No doubt it would piss Elaina off if he ever called her that.

  And, he couldn’t wait to do it.

  16

  One of Elaina’s favorite aspects of meteorology was the equalizing effect. No one controlled the weather. The same rain fell on everyone. The same wind blew dirt into the eyes of the rich as much as the poor. The same sun beat down on the backs of women and men alike.

  After spending a full day watching the weather radar not comply with her predictions, she wished she could control it. Not to prove to herself that she was right. To prove to her research partner that his faith in her was not misplaced.

  Heath sat hunched over his laptop. After several minutes, he groaned a sigh and sat up straight, his popping back making her cringe nearly as much as the few words they’d exchanged since setting up.

  She was mad at him for questioning her prediction models.

  He was mad at her for being mad at him.

  So, Elaina had no choice but to be pissed a her partner for being angry at her for being mad at him.

  She took a deep breath and hopped off the tailgate of her truck. She wound her torso to the right, studying the solitary oak tree among the golden sea of wheat. A twist to the left and her eyes followed the lolling power lines down the road until they vanished onto the blue-white horizon.

  Like a child struggling to ride a bike without training wheels, the atmosphere fought to spin up anything worthy of a tornado.

  Research-wise, the trip wouldn’t be a total bust. They could collect data, compare it against other systems and add it to their dissertation.

  Personally, Elaina felt the all-too-familiar tug of disappointment churning in her gut. “I’m hungry,” she said, needing to fill her gut with something else. “You hungry?”

  Heath stared straight ahead at the computer, but she saw a flash of brown from the side of his glasses.

  “I’ll run into town if you want to stay here,” Elaina added.

  The rustling of the wheat filled the silence between them.

  “My treat. I even promise not to poison it for you.”

  He snorted before a smile broke across his face. “Fried pickles do sound good. With extra ranch. But if I choke on one or burn my tongue, my blood is on your hands.”

  “I’ll make sure to blow on them.” She slammed her tailgate into place. “And cut them into pieces for you.”

  For the first time since they arrived, her shoulders relaxed and her face rested into a smile. Her truck bounced and rattled over the potholes in the country road. The ballerina hanging from her rearview mirror hopped and pirouetted along.

  A few mountainous storm clouds blossomed ahead, but none towered high enough to be an immediate supercell. Those needed a little more heat.

  If the rivulet of sweat running from her temple was any indication, they’d get the much-needed fuel. Eventually.

  The parking lot of the convenience-store-slash-bait-shop-slash-diner was packed. Ham radio antennas quivered in the breeze, like metal wheat. The maroon van she’d seen outside of Stephenville, the one belonging to Tuck’s Tornado Tours, was parked in the ditch at such a steep angle the passengers would have fallen out.

  Juice Newton’s “Angel of the Morning” greeted her when she entered. Elaina smiled at the memory of belting out that song to her mom when she was little; the thought assaulted her before she chided it. Like moss covering a rock, warm and fuzzy threatened to envelope cold and hurt.

  “Afternoon.” The man at the register tipped a non-existent hat in her direction.

  She followed her nose to the back of the store.

  Tile letters clung to a menu board, likely occupying their space long before she was born.

  “I’d like an order of fried pickles, a cheeseburger, medium well, a large order of onion rings and two large sodas,” she said to the woman behind the counter.

  The heat of the fryer combined with the woman’s heavy-handed makeup application made her look like a Picasso painting.

  “You got a wooden leg or something?” A gruff voice spoke behind her. A man sat half-perched, half-standing at a bar stool, his gaze focused on the phone in his hand, but Elaina knew he studied her as much as his screen.

  “Second stomach.” She crossed her arms and widened her stance. “I’m the nasty byproduct of human-bovine gene splicing.”

  One side of the man’s mouth lifted up in a quick smile. “So do they call you Elsie then?”

  “Not if they want to live.”

  The other side of the man’s mouth lifted up adding a touch of symmetry to an otherwise uneven face. His nose was like a mountain highway, zigging right before sagging to the left. Wavy gray hair hung down to his shoulders, the ends a faded brown as if clinging to the last remnants of youth. Salt and pepper hair covered his face, not quite enough to call it a beard, but more than enough growth to call him sloppy.

  He leaned against the chair and finally met her eyes. The maroon Tuck’s Tours T-shirt confirmed what she suspected.

  “We could call you Moo-Moo,” he said, rubbing the stubble on his chin. “I knew a Moo-Moo once. And, despite the name, she was drop-dead gorgeous. She was crazy though, rumors she caught Mad Cow in the nineties…” His words trailed off as his gaze wandered up to the ceiling.

  Elaina sighed and moved to the farthest table to await her order. The hiss and the steam of the deep fryer helped add to the distance she wanted to put between herself and the jerk who’d made callous jokes about women and cows.

  She pulled her laptop out of her backpack and studied the radar. Some green pockets of rain were pulling together, but it would take an incredible amount of instability to shape it into a tornado.

  I
wish I could share some of my instability with the atmosphere.

  A deeper, wistful sigh escaped her lips. What if she didn’t see another tornado for the rest of the season? What if they had to be content with the data they had? Or, what if she did see another tornado and with no new memory?

  What if the seepage of visions from the weakening drugs was suddenly stopped, as if psychotropic caulk filled the gaps?

  “You’re a chaser,” the man said.

  Elaina looked at him from the corner of her eye.

  He was back to studying his phone. Every ounce of her being told her to ignore him, but the ember of curiosity was fanned by his hot air.

  “I’m a scientist,” she said. “I take it you must be Tuck.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  “That I’m a scientist or that you’re Tuck?”

  This time a full-force belly laugh escaped the man’s lungs. “You know, those science guys are usually pretty dull, but you, you’re different.”

  She opened her mouth to make room for a smart-ass comment but he cut her off.

  “And I ain’t talking about the lady parts.”

  “Tuck, your order’s ready.” The melted make-up lady screeched over a microphone, even though she could’ve just called out his name.

  He propelled himself off the barstool and picked up the white paper bag, the bottom of it already saturated with grease. “You’ll want to set up on FM 586,” he said as he gathered three handfuls of napkins. “It’ll drop to the southwest.”

  Elaina flipped over to the online map as he carefully filled his bag with condiments. “That’s the wrong way, the tornado would move away from it.”

  Tuck walked in her direction. His gunmetal blue eyes studied her.

  Tested her.

  “It’s going to turn. Backdoor twister. You drop your stuff and get the hell out of there.” He took a long pull from the Styrofoam cup. “Anyway, he who follows conventional rules won’t see the end of the day.”

  The odd man brushed past her, and Elaina felt her heart freeze. The certainty with which he spoke. Familiarity mingled with the foreign. Tuck spoke a truth that lived deep inside of her.

  “So if I can’t call you Elsie, what can I call you?” Tuck spoke from behind her.

  She was still absorbing everything he’d said, and his words drifted by her. Could she convince Heath to decamp, move and set up again? How would she explain her conviction? Some storm chasing tour operator told her?

  “Elaina,” the woman spoke over the microphone.

  What if he was wrong? What if she was wrong to trust him? They could completely miss everything.

  No, she had to follow science. Science never let her down.

  “Elaina, honey, your food’s ready.”

  She turned, remembering she owed Tuck an answer, but he was gone.

  17

  During the entire ten-minute drive back to Heath, she contemplated following Tuck’s advice and moving positions, but to go where he suggested was a forty minute drive out of the way.

  The sky had grown dark while she’d been waiting for the food. Dark clouds swirled like a boiling soup. When she turned onto the dirt road, the hair on her arms was standing at attention. The air was thick, electric, ready for something to happen.

  “You got back just in time, I think we’ll have genesis in no time.” Heath shouted over the lifting wind. “Are those my pickles?”

  Elaina handed him the bag with her cold, forgotten hamburger and now chewy onion rings. Indecision gnawed at her stomach and stole her appetite.

  Science said they were right where they needed to be for tornado genesis.

  Her gut said there was something different in the air. Perhaps Tuck was right.

  Science argued Tuck wanted the “science guys” out of the way for his paying customers.

  Gut countered, if that were the case he would’ve told her nothing was going to happen.

  Science pouted and said this guy was nothing more than a carnival barker.

  Gut agreed and said maybe, but this guy had spent more time in the field than she had, and nothing beat experience.

  Science stuck its tongue out and said shut up.

  Movement up the road to her left caught her attention. The blue Forecast Channel trucks moved into position to the northeast. The large antenna rolled into position and Seth hopped out.

  As his cameraman got the equipment ready, he studied the sky and twirled a golf club in his fingers.

  Tuck’s Tours flew past them, heading to the southwest. Elaina’s feet shifted, as if they wanted to chase after the van.

  “I’m starting to see a bow,” Heath shouted over the rising wind. “Seriously, I think something’s going to happen right here. Are the pods ready?”

  She pulled the equipment out of the back of the van and worked as quickly as her shaking fingers allowed. Storms never scared her, mostly because she always knew with absolute certainty where it was going. But Tuck got into her head. Made her question if she really knew what she was doing.

  Seth’s blue jacket drew her gaze like a moth to a light. He spoke and gestured to his colleague, the man’s head covered by the camera on his shoulder. The jacket billowed in the wind.

  “Are you ready?” Her partner’s voice was insistent, and reminded her she was nowhere near ready.

  “Um, almost.”

  “Not almost, now.”

  A piece of the cloud broke off and fell to the ground. Still tethered it sucked and syphoned energy from above. Like a foal learning to walk, the tornado wobbled slightly but then stretched and took its first strong steps.

  Elaina’s ears popped and her braided ponytail thumped against her back. She reached out to the side of her truck to steady herself. The unmooring, reality slipped away like a naughty child hiding from punishment. Something else waited to move into its place. She begged for it, wanted to see what hid in the darkness.

  Then, the storm turned.

  “It’s turning,” Heath shouted. “This is fantastic.”

  Aside from having to squint against the flying dust, they were safe. Her eyes followed the new path of the tornado to its target.

  The Forecast Channel van.

  “Shit.” She ran around to the driver’s side and hopped in, ignoring her partner’s shouts. She could make it there in thirty seconds. In about fifteen, the storm would hit the Forecast Channel crew.

  If her past experiences with Seth were any indication, she’d need that entire time to convince him to move.

  Elaina popped the truck into park before it came to a full stop, and ran the short distance to the two men.

  Seth’s back was to the storm, his blond hair whipping up in one large gelled piece.

  She couldn’t hear what he was shouting into the microphone over the rising wind, but she was certain he was reveling in his positioning.

  “It turned,” she shouted as she got within earshot. She was on the cameraman’s right side. “You have to move, it turned.”

  The man couldn’t hear her through the wind and camera.

  Elaina ran to his other side, but an earpiece clogged his other ear. “Seth, you have to move,” she shouted.

  His eyes drifted in her direction, but he kept on talking. “This tornado just touched down moments ago. Folks if you’re in the town of Pecan Pass, this is heading in your direction. Take cover immediately.”

  “No it’s not,” she shouted. She glanced in the direction of the storm and felt as if the ground was rolling beneath her. Darkness blended with the gray, the image of a pitch black highway merged with the field in front of her, like the after burn of a picture.

  A flashback threatened the present.

  “No,” Elaina said to the image.

  The tornado grew larger behind Seth. If he turned and saw it, he might think the storm grew, rather than turned toward him.

  She tugged at the cameraman’s sleeve, but he just waved her off.

  A large piece of sheet metal flew s
everal feet behind him, taking flight as easily as a bird.

  “It turned, Seth,” she took a step in his direction, but the cameraman pulled her back. “Dammit, listen to me!” She broke free of his grasp and strode toward Seth. She could hear him speaking clearer now.

  “The winds are really kicking up and my ears are popping.” His eyes widened as they focused on her face. “Again, if you are in northwestern Oklahoma take immediate coverage, storm shelter, interior room… Elaina what’re you doing?”

  “I said the storm turned, you idiot.”

  All of her frustration, the embarrassing date with Harry, missing the turn of the storm, the lost flashback that might’ve held the final clue to what was hiding; all of that traveled from her heart to her right fist, which balled into a tight knot, begging for release. When it collided with Seth’s cheekbone, there was a gratifying pop and a sting and numbness traveled back down to her heart.

  Then everything went still. The air, the wind, Elaina’s heart. Had they been sucked into the vortex? She’d been too late.

  The field behind them was empty. The storm had vanished back into the sky.

  Seth held his cheek, the microphone dangled in his left hand.

  “Um, we’re still live,” the camera guy ducked his head away from his equipment.

  18

  “You’ve gone viral,” Heath said. His thin shoulders rounded as he sat hunched over his phone.

  Elaina’s stomach twisted. What an appropriate word. Viral. She felt sick. Contagious.

  If Dr. Pierce caught wind of what she’d done on live TV, on live national TV, he’d kick her out of school.

  She’d be done. DOA.

  “Ugh.” She slumped deeper over her untouched beer, her nose practically in the foam of the pint glass.

  After the sky had cleared, literally, the reality of what she’d done washed over her. Shock rained down on her, Seth, Rick the camera guy…and the viewing audience of the entire country.

  An apology bounced around her mouth but never managed to materialize. Tears threatened but rather than let them fall in front of him, she’d run to her truck and sped down the soggy road back to Heath.