We Five

by Mark Dunn

  We Six didn’t know this. The only thing they knew at this moment was that no one seemed to be surveilling their getaway Duster-Twister as it headed out of town in the torrential rain. And even if they had been accidentally observed by the cops driving around in the middle of a major early spring thunderstorm, it wouldn’t have elicited suspicion—only the possibility of an offhanded comment by one of the wisecracking officers that “somebody in that Duster sure picked a fine time to run out of Marlboros.”

  Lyle was waiting. He took the wheel and drove the six of them in the direction of Bienville National Forest in the middle of the state.

  Herb and Lucille Mobry, standing side by side looking out one of their living room windows, watched their rainswept departure. “Our Ruthie-girl’s leaving the nest,” Lucille had sniffled.

  “It was only a matter of time before she’d want to try her wings, Sister.”

  “I hope California treats her nice.”

  “Ruth can take care of herself. She’ll do just fine.”

  “Do you think she’ll call us now and then, Brother?”

  “Of course she will.” Herb paused. “But regardless, we should probably go ahead and rent out that old trailer. Ruth’s boss at the casino, Ms. Colthurst, said one of her new cocktail waitresses is looking for a place. A real nice girl. Kind of quiet.”

  “Quiet? Well, we can’t have that, Herb.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Ruth has spoiled me for girls who speak up for themselves. We’ll have to pull this new one out of her shell.”

  “If you say so, Lucille.”

  “Jane, honey, do you have any more of those little prepackaged cheese and crackers?” asked Carrie. “I’ve got the munchy-belly.”

  “Check the snack sack. I think it’s up there with you.”

  “Here it is,” said Carrie. “Molly’s using it for a footrest. Molly, pick up your feet and let me look in the snack sack.”

  “What’s that smell?” asked Ruth. “All of a sudden the car smells like old bananas.”

  “It’s old bananas,” said Carrie. “I was gonna bake us some banana bread when we got to the woods. They always say the riper the banana the better the bread.”

  “Well, they’re stinking up the whole car,” concluded Ruth. “Lyle, how can see anything through that windshield?”

  “It ain’t easy,” admitted Lyle. Lyle turned on the radio and skittered around the dial to find a weather report.

  “Oh stop it right there—please, please, please,” said Molly. “I love that song. It’s from Ghost—it’s what they played when Patrick Swayze was trying to help Demi Moore turn her pot.”

  “Not turn her pot—throw her pot,” corrected Ruth from the backseat. Ruth turned to Maggie and said, “But let’s give her the benefit of the doubt since she’s on industrial-strength tranquilizers.”

  Molly didn’t hear this. “And—and—and—all the clay got all over the place because she was hungering for his touch.”

  “Lonely river flow to the sea, to the sea,” sang Carrie pensively.

  “Like us,” said Ruth. “All this rain is gonna take us right out to sea. Are you sure we shouldn’t pull over for a few minutes?”

  “Sure,” said Lyle. “Let me just find a place.”

  “Lonely rivers say ‘wait for me, yes for me,’” paraphrased Carrie tunefully.

  “I cannot believe LeAnn Rimes was only four when she sang this,” marveled Molly.

  Ruth muttered, “Fourteen. Not four.”

  Molly went on, “Only four years old and singing this very adult song about rivers and love and shit.”

  “She was fourteen,” muttered Ruth.

  “Indulge her,” whispered Maggie. “It’s just nice to see her finally calmed down.”

  “I could use a Valium right now,” said Jane, looking apprehensively out the window. “I don’t like this. I don’t like this one bit.” Jane, who was sitting directly behind her brother, leaned forward. “Lyle, really now, honey, find a place to pull over.”

  “I’m trying to. It’s just farms and fields—I mean, from what I can see, and I can’t see much.”

  LeAnn Rimes was gone. She had been replaced by a man giving a dire weather report. “The National Weather Bureau has issued a tornado warning for the following counties in northern Mississippi—”

  “Well, we can’t just pull off to the side of the road,” said Ruth. “Not if there are tornadoes all around.”

  Lyle groaned. “Well, what do ya’ll want me to do—pull over or not pull over?”

  Several opinions went up at once, while Molly said, “Do you think Patrick Swayze has soft and supple girl hands? Some say this, but I never noticed.”

  Jane raised her voice above everyone else’s: “Everybody shut up and help Lyle find some safe place to pull off. The wind’s picking up. This isn’t normal wind. It’s blowing sideways.”

  Jane was correct in her observation. The car was being slammed in the side by forty- and fifty-mile-an-hour wind gusts. Lyle was having a difficult time keeping the Duster on the road.

  “On second thought, Carrie,” said Jane, nervously, “why don’t you keep on singing?”

  “And help take our minds off the fact that we’re all about to die,” commented Ruth in an equally nervous voice.

  “I’ve never been in a tornado,” admitted Molly, peering calmly through the passenger window. “I’ve never even seen one except in the movies. Like—like Twister, with all the cows and tractors and stuff flying around. But maybe there are also tornadoes like the one in The Wizard of Oz that picked up Dorothy’s house and set it down all nice and easy in that place where all the midgets lived.”

  The wind was wailing now. The wind had begun to sound angry and human.

  Ruth groaned. “I don’t think real tornadoes ever do that, Molly. I believe they’re much more violent than that.”

  “Holy shit, this looks bad, Lyle!” cried Jane from the backseat. She was bent all the way forward now, her fingers curled around Lyle’s headrest. “Just pull off anywhere.”

  “I think that’s a farm up there. Doesn’t that look like a barn?”

  “Whatever it is, it’s got to be a lot better than this death-trap-on-wheels we’re sitting in right now.”

  “I think one of the tornadoes in Twister was tossing around tanker trucks like they were Tinkertoys,” said Molly.

  “That was an F-5,” said Ruth. “F-5s are very rare, as I understand it.” Then to Maggie: “Molly needs to shut the fuck up, okay?”

  “What number tornado is this one?” asked Carrie nervously.

  “What makes you think we’re in the middle of a tornado?” asked Maggie.

  “Because my ears just popped and I can hardly hear myself think.”

  “Do you hear a freight train?” asked Jane. “They say approaching tornadoes make a sound just like a freight train.”

  Carrie shook her head. “No. It just sounds like wind.”

  “Then we’re probably all right for the moment,” offered Maggie.

  Lyle squinted through the windshield. “That gate looks locked.”

  “Well, we weren’t gonna stay in the car anyway,” said Jane. “Let’s just get out and climb that fence and go inside that barn.”

  “In the rain?” asked Molly.

  Ruth snorted. “Molly, you need to get out of the car. Everybody out of the car. Anybody who objects is gonna get knocked unconscious and thrown over that fence like a hay bale.”

  Molly said in her poutiest voice, “Would you please stop being such a meanie?”

  “It’s tough love, baby. Back me up, Jane.”

  “One hundred percent. Everybody move your asses,” said Jane. “Carrie, baby-honey, that umbrella isn’t gonna do you much good. It’ll just carry you away like Mary Poppins.”

  “I’m scared,” said Carrie.

  “I’m right here,” said Lyle, squeezing her hand.

  We Six spilled out of the Duster-Twister and onto the shoulder of the state
highway and then trudged, heads down, into the driving wind and the driving rain toward the old barn, which sat at some distance from a small darkened farm shack whose electricity had already gone out.

  Molly tried to remember what happened to Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton when they fled into a barn at the end of the tornado movie. She couldn’t quite recall, and then in an instant she did recall and a great chill went down her spine, even though she had thoroughly tranquilized herself.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Tutti

  Ruth and Carrie were going to America. It had been decided that each would create new lives for themselves on the other side of the Atlantic pond. This made perfect sense, given their present situations. Ruth knew not a soul upon the earth to whom she was connected by blood, and with the exception of her absent and itinerate father, Carrie could make the same claim for herself. And who was to say that Ruth and Carrie’s long friendship didn’t create a bond which surpassed in steadfastness and affinity that of familial attachment? For has it not been stated time and again (in this story most markedly) that the link which joins female friends may be most sisterly in its strength and complexion?

  The plan was made. And then the plan was altered in the best way possible when Lyle Higgins confessed upon the heels of its disclosure that he must be with the woman who had captured his heart, whither she might wish to go.

  Would Ruth have it?

  Yes, Ruth would have it.

  And how would the three of them take themselves from the Isle of Anglesey in Wales to New York City? They would stop in the cottage by the sea for a few weeks and then make their way down to Cardiff, because leaving Great Britain from Southampton could pose difficulties for Higgins, especially if at the time of their sailing he was still being sought for the murder of Tom Catts.

  It was a practicable plan, although it first required transportation to Liverpool and then transit through northern Wales. It was decided that they should take the horse and waggon Lyle used for his deliveries, with Lyle safely concealed in the back—that is, until they passed into Wales, where his anonymity would afford safe passage even with him situated upon the driver’s box with reins in hand. As for Maggie and Molly and Carrie, they would go by hired carriage, which would be secured in Liverpool.

  And where would all six spend those final hours before departure? The women would stop in the emporium and Jane’s brother would drowse beneath the hay of the small area stable behind the shop.

  Yet Lyle Higgins did not drowse that night, nor, in fact, did any of the others.

  At first, thoughts of their impending journey kept each of the travellers from drifting into untroubled slumber. Then later, in the small hours of the night, there came something of a much more compelling nature to rob them of their needed rest—something of such grave importance and consequence that all thoughts of the morning journey were superseded.

  It began with cries and shouts in the lane of sudden advent and without explanation. Jane looked out the front window of the family shop and saw that the street was glowing, as if from the light of a great many torches or lanterns, and there was a hazy cast to the luminosity, which made the picture seem not real at all.

  Jane stepped out the front door and looked up at the sky. To her great surprise what she saw above the rooftops and treetops was a magnificent display of northern lights—brilliant unfurled curtains and squiggles and swirls of red and green and yellow and purple, the auroras glowing and shimmering with dazzling brilliance. It was the sky itself that lighted the street, and the light that shone down seemed to be growing brighter and brighter as if daylight were coming in accelerated prematurity. There were townspeople wandering about, many of them still dressed in their nightshirts and sleeping gowns, some in bare feet. They had emerged from their homes, just as had Jane, and were staring skyward in rapt wonderment, some clearly delighted and enchanted by the beauty to be found in this unexpected empyreal presentation. Yet others wore looks upon their faces that betrayed a quizzical pondering over what should be the reason behind it all.

  Jane was soon joined by her sisters, whose faces were gleaming and radiant in the multihued illumination. “It’s so beautiful!” Carrie whispered in a reverent, awestruck tone, as if the phenomenon had been handed down by God Himself for the pleasure of His terrestrial children.

  But Molly wasn’t smiling. She countered with a violent shake of the head and said in a low, fearful voice, “It is exactly what she said would happen.”

  “Who? What?” asked Ruth.

  “My cousin Jemma. This is how Jemma said it would begin.”

  “How what would begin?” pursued Ruth.

  “I cannot even put words to it.”

  The shouts and screams that had punctured the night had not suspended, but instead were now increasing in volume and intensity. These were not cries of awe and wonder. There was a more fearful, even sinister, tenor to them.

  For there were those in the town of Tulleford who took the celestial array as an evil omen and expressed their horror at the tops of their lungs.

  Ruth shifted uncomfortably from one leg to the other. “I’m going to ask Mr. Prowse what he thinks this is,” she announced. She looked down at the nightgown she was wearing. “First, I’m going to get myself dressed. I suggest you all do the same.”

  “Mr. Prowse will tell you the same as me,” said Molly, up-gazing apprehensively. “Because he was there the day Jemma made her prediction for all the town to hear.”

  Maggie took Molly by the arm. She addressed her sisters on Molly’s behalf. “She’s still asleep, you see. Molly has yet to waken from whatever nightmare still possesses her.”

  Molly turned to look directly at Maggie, the dread evinced upon her face holding fast. “Maggie, you must come with me to see Jemma. I wager she’ll have much more to say about this.”

  “I’ll take you to your aunt and uncle’s house, Molly,” returned Maggie, “but only to disabuse you of this ridiculous notion that what fills the sky has aught whatsoever to do with Jemma’s foolish notions.”

  We Five went inside as others who lived in the lane continued to move about without seeming to know just what to do. Was one to stand and enjoy the incredible beauty of a sky filled with glimmering auroral colour, as if the display were some grand pageant to be attended and applauded? Or was there some other purpose to what was happening in the sky—some purpose requiring serious immediate action or reaction of some sort?

  No one knew anything. Except that on the other side of town there were people screaming, people shouting, and they would not desist.

  The night, as it was becoming quite evident, was fast unraveling.

  Ruth and Jane dressed quickly and then were off and away to the Prowses’ house, which was affixed to the back of Reginald Prowse’s telegraphy office. Carrie slipped into a loose frock and rushed out to the stable to inform Lyle—should he not yet know—what was happening in the sky. Molly and Maggie were the last to finish dressing, for Molly’s hands were trembling and she could not button herself and lace her stays without assistance. Finally, in a great hurry and flutter of spirits, the two set off for the Spaldings’ cottage at the other end of town, Maggie attempting to calm a greatly agitated Molly all the while and to assuage her fear by continuing to aver that the unusual display of auroras was nothing but a harmless astronomical anomaly, for consider how often the Scandinavians witnessed such exhibitions from their Hyperborean precincts and thought nothing of it.

  Molly nodded.

  “I know this to be true,” she said groggily. “I know that San Francisco rattles and shakes as its wont, but it still woke me.”

  “And now you’ve woken me,” moaned Maggie in nearly inarticulate protest. “So do us both the favor of going back to sleep.” Maggie rolled over upon the sleeping mat she shared with Molly on the floor of the little Chinese room.

  But Maggie had scarcely gotten the words out of her mouth when the foreshock which was its preamble gave way to the great quake itself. The roo
m shook with terrific violence, the crockery and glassware on the room’s sideboard falling and shattering upon the floor, the walls shifting and juddering up and down and from side to side as if rattled by a giant hand.

  In the next room Ruth and Jane tried to pick themselves up from the floor and could not. Nor could they even see one another through the thick cloud of atomized plaster dust, as strips and chunks and pellets of white plaster began to drop from the shuddering ceiling.

  The same was occurring in the next room over, as Carrie, who had been sleeping alone, screamed out in terror, and Lyle, who was in the room on the other side, heard her even above the din and rose to his feet, only to be knocked back down again, and then was forced to crawl like a baby toward the door.

  Now the walls and ceilings began to open up, to tear themselves into discrete planks and studs and beams, which snapped and cracked and fell this way and that, and one large beam came crashing down upon Lyle, pinning him flat to the floor, the boards beneath him continuing to undulate like the waves of an angry sea.

  And all was a riot of noise from the tremendous quaking, and things throughout the tea house were crackling and fracturing into myriad pieces. And there was a thunderous rumble underneath it all that told the ear what the body could already feel and the eye could already see.

  Molly tugged at the closed door that had wedged itself into its frame and she could not open it. Conversely, Ruth and Jane’s door flung itself open on its own and, in fact, unhinged itself entirely from its frame, ripping through the drapery hanging in front of it. Through the cloud of dust the two could see the large copper gasolier in the dining room swinging wildly back and forth like a mad pendulum, while beneath it a wooden Buddha rolled its roly-poly self across the rippling, heaving, snapping floorboards like a performing Chinese tumbler.