Supercell

by H W Buzz Bernard

  “Migraine?” he’d asked, a practiced softness in his voice he’d learned from being with his mother when she suffered the devastating headaches.

  Gabi had merely nodded.

  “Meds help?”

  “A couple of Treximets. It’s not so bad now. Just give me some space.”

  Now, eyes closed and her breathing soft and steady, she seemed almost asleep as she sat in the passenger seat with her head tipped back against the headrest.

  Outside, dust and pieces of paper swirled around the lot, riding tiny whirlwinds kicked up by a stiff southerly breeze. The gusts bore a certain edginess, a hint of something Stygian despite the brightness of the sun in a sky dotted with only isolated tall-stacked cumulus.

  Metcalf stuck his head into the Expedition and glanced at Gabi. “Magazine chick have too much to drink last night?” he asked Chuck, his voice almost a whisper. It seemed, perhaps, a compassion triggered by a familiarity with the throbbing headaches of hangovers.

  “Migraine,” Chuck answered.

  “Oh. Well, being around you . . .” Metcalf winked, trying to make light of the comment. He looked up, squinting against the sun. “I gotta say, Chuckie, this doesn’t look much like tornado weather.”

  Not wanting to disturb Gabi, Chuck exited the Expedition. “That model I’ve been looking at, the High-Resolution Rapid Refresh—”

  “Just the no-bullshit bottom line, please.”

  Willie Weston appeared. “Disregard,” he said, “tell me about the model.”

  Metcalf glared at Willie.

  Chuck ignored the tacit put-down and responded to Willie. “The High-Resolution Rapid Refresh model or HRRR—” he pronounced it ‘hur’ “—is new and pretty damn sophisticated. It’s run every hour with fresh data on a scale of resolution small enough to deal with individual thunderstorms.” He reached into the vehicle and swiveled the laptop so Willie could see it.

  “It cranks out extremely detailed forecasts through about 15 hours, but I’m usually looking at only the first six or eight. It’s not a perfect model, no model is, but it’s often a really good guide to thunderstorm development, evolution, and movement.” He pointed at a map on the computer screen. “For instance, here’s the output for three hours from now.”

  Willie stuck his head into the Expedition to get a better look. “You sure you got the right map? That looks like a radar image to me.” He indicated a line of purple- and red-colored thunderstorm cells scattered across northeast Oklahoma. Sculpted and detailed, they appeared exactly like what might be seen on a radar scan.

  “Nope, that’s actually a forecast, a display of precipitation in the future. Here, I can put it into motion.” Willie stepped out of the way, and Chuck reached into the SUV and tapped the computer’s touch pad. The images on the screen sprang into motion with the smoothness of a looping radar presentation.

  “So, bwana, what’s it all mean?” Metcalf asked. “Am I gonna get my EF-5?” He looked again, with skepticism, at the relatively benign skyscape draped over Stillwater.

  “For the last few runs, the model’s been suggesting that the initial storms should erupt somewhere south of Wellington, Kansas, and north of Edmond, Oklahoma. When we see the first cells go up, we’ll be in a good position to go after them.” But on a day like this, they’d hardly be alone. “Along with a few million other chasers,” he added. He knew from experience that on a Sunday around Oklahoma City a tornado traffic jam was a high probability. Anyone with a day off and even a casual interest in severe storms would be on the hunt.

  “Focus, Charlie-O, focus. An EF-5?”

  “The model won’t tell us that. That’ll be a real-time deal. Minute-to-minute radar monitoring. See a tornado signature. Plot its course. Hope it holds together. Calculate an intercept trajectory. Go after it. Set up. Shoot. Yeah, we’ll get our EF-5. Today’s the day. I feel it.” New found confidence. Where’d that come from?

  “Yeah, just like you felt that fuckin’ buffalo riot.” Metcalf, huffy, stomped off toward Ziggy and Boomie.

  Willie remained. “I’ll make sure we get the Panavision up and running in record time,” he said. “Just get us into position.”

  A muted but piercing alarm sounded on a weather radio in the SUV. Gabi stirred and issued a soft moan, but didn’t open her eyes. Chuck reached into the vehicle, switched off the radio, and tapped the computer’s keyboard. A new image appeared on the screen.

  “Yeeesss!” Chuck said. He pointed at the image. “A PDS box.”

  “A what?”

  “A tornado watch, PDS. Particularly Dangerous Situation. Storm Prediction Center’s words, not mine. In storm chasers’ vernacular, Pretty Damn Serious.”

  Willie examined the map on the computer and the red-shaded rectangle outlined over northeast Oklahoma and southeast Kansas. “We’re right here, correct?” He pointed at Stillwater in the southwest corner of the tornado “watch box.”

  “Yes. A good place to launch our pursuit. Jerry said to give him something that looked like Oklahoma, so what better place than Oklahoma?”

  “So now what?”

  “No point in chasing phantoms. We hang tight just a bit longer, watch the radar, and be ready to jet at a moment’s notice. Why don’t you let everyone know what the situation is, that the countdown clock has started.”

  “On it,” Willie said, and left to round up the team.

  Stormy skidded to a stop at Chuck’s feet, snatching up the Frisbee Ty had thrown. Ty trotted over immediately behind the dog.

  “So,” he said, “last day.”

  “This is it,” Chuck responded.

  He met his son’s gaze. Last day. A meaning beyond that of pursuing tornadoes. Something between a father and a son—last day to rebuild a fractured connection. Last day to overcome what had so far been a lost opportunity. But whose fault was that? Neither’s? Both of theirs? Mine—my inflexibility? Ty’s—his hardheadedness? Why is it so damn hard to embrace your own son?

  “Ty . . .” The words wouldn’t come.

  “We tried,” Ty said, a certain wistfulness in his voice. Something that wasn’t there before. The hard edge gone. “Let’s just leave it, not make it any worse. It is what it is. You go your way, I go mine.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Ty folded his arms across his chest. “No, I don’t think you really are. Not for your attitudes anyhow. I understand now, those are genuine. We won’t get past that. So there’s no need to apologize.”

  Stormy dropped the Frisbee at Ty’s feet.

  Ty bent, scooped it up, and tossed it a short distance. Stormy darted after it.

  “I think maybe you are sorry,” Ty continued, “that we didn’t, or don’t, have a traditional father-son pal-sy relationship. But then, I’m not traditional, am I?”

  But still my son. Chuck remained rooted to the ground, unable to reach out to Ty, physically or emotionally. A shattered connection.

  Stormy retuned with the Frisbee, dropped it again. Ty picked it up and flung it toward the edge of the parking lot. Stormy dashed in pursuit, Ty on his tail.

  Last day.

  THE WORDS exchanged between Chuck and Ty penetrated Gabi’s semi-stupor. Her head continued to throb, but the beating within it now seemed more like someone drumming fingers on a table than whacking a bass drum. She opened one eye, then the other. Slowly, carefully. Things slightly out of focus. Her concentration AWOL. It felt as though she were experiencing her surroundings at a distance rather than being embedded within them. Concentrate. A forced effort. Not natural.

  Chuck stuck his head into the Expedition. “You alive?’

  “Barely.”

  “Better?”

  “A little. I feel like a space cadet.”

  “Can I get you anything?”

  “A new head.”

  �
�I’ll check Walmart.”

  She smiled. “Hey . . .”

  “Hey what?”

  “You and Ty. Come on. What’s the deal?” She turned to look at Chuck, but a ribbon of pain tightened over her scalp. She went back to staring straight ahead.

  Chuck slid into the driver’s seat. “The deal?”

  “Don’t play dumb. Why all the drama and tension? Is he on the lam from the law or something?”

  Chuck didn’t answer.

  “Immunity granted. Talk to me.”

  No response. A diesel engine clattered to life somewhere in the lot. A horn beeped. Stormy barked. A gust of wind propelled a spray of grit into the SUV.

  “I’m guessing you could use a woman’s perspective on this. A friend’s.” Maybe a lover’s. But not ready to say that aloud.

  “Ty’s gay.”

  Despite the low-grade pain still burrowing its way through her head, she turned to look at Chuck. “Oh, shit,” she said. “I thought it was something serious.” She would have laughed, but knew it would hurt too much.

  Chuck’s expression remained impassive, maybe slightly puzzled.

  “I mean,” she said, “homosexuality. It’s not a condition. It’s a description. Your son. Your legacy. Look at what he’s made of his life. A soldier. A student. A responsible citizen. Just because he isn’t mainstream doesn’t mean he’s an anomaly.” She leaned her head back against the seat, exhausted from her minimal effort.

  “He’s not normal.”

  “BFD. Ted Williams wasn’t normal. Albert Einstein wasn’t normal. Mother Teresa wasn’t normal. So Ty likes guys instead of girls. So what?”

  “So it contravenes traditional values,” Chuck answered, a touch of anger tinting his words. “Traditional family values.”

  Gabi snorted. “Traditional family values? You mean like traditional marriage? Man and woman? That didn’t exactly pan out for you, did it? Or me. Or about half the folks in this country who get married. If people are afraid of gays destroying traditional marriage, they shouldn’t be. The heterosexuals beat them to it.”

  “Let’s drop it, Gabi.”

  “Avoidance?”

  “Is this our first lover’s quarrel?”

  “No. We aren’t lovers yet.”

  “Good point.” Still some latent anger evident in his voice.

  “Okay, truce,” she said. “Let’s go catch an EF-5.”

  “And some bad guys.”

  In truth, that scared her, just a bit. Chasing bad guys. Not the greatest idea in the world with the vestiges of migraine clinging to her head and a double dose of Treximet jamming her nervous system. Not exactly on top of my game today.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  SUNDAY, MAY 11

  EARLY AFTERNOON

  THREE OR FOUR other chase teams that had been biding their time in the Walmart parking lot pulled out just after two p.m. in pursuit of the first big supercell of the day. The storm had just churned across I-35 near the Kansas-Oklahoma border, 60 miles north of Stillwater.

  “Great structure,” Chuck said, pointing to an intense red- and orange-colored radar echo on his computer screen. “It’ll drop a tornado for sure.” He swiveled the monitor for Gabi to see.

  “Shouldn’t we be going after it?” she asked, her voice subdued, a degree of wooziness still apparent.

  “No. The chasers that just left here will have to haul ass to catch it. It’ll probably be halfway to Missouri before they can run an intercept. And who knows, it might crap out before then.”

  He turned the computer back toward himself.

  “There’ll be others. More intense and closer to us. Guarantee it.”

  Had he really said that? Guarantee it? Yes. Confidence reborn. Skills resharpened. Mojo back. But it wasn’t just magic or voodoo; it wasn’t a mere “feeling” or sixth sense. His confidence sprang from insight honed on years of experience and relentless study. His ability to predict when and where to be in the field, to cozy up to atmospheric violence, had never really abandoned him; it had merely grown rusty.

  He looked west. The sky in the direction of I-35 had grown black, an inky curtain lit from beyond the horizon by sheet lightning.

  Ty leaned forward from the back seat and pointed at the computer screen. “Looks like another cell about ready to cross I-35 near—” he bent closer, attempting to read the name of a town on the background map “—Blackwell.”

  “We’ll take a pass on that one, too,” Chuck responded. “The parameters are looking even more explosive south of there. We might as well hang on for Moby Dick.”

  “Well, I’ll say one thing for you,” Ty said, “you aren’t afraid to put your money where your mouth is.”

  “Potential money,” Chuck corrected.

  “Potential or not, it’s a gamble, isn’t it?”

  “Would you believe me if I told you it wasn’t?”

  Ty shrugged and slid back into his seat.

  The remaining chase teams pulled out of the lot.

  Metcalf strode up to the Expedition. “You guys taking a nap or something?” He gestured at the western horizon. Obsidian. Ominous. “It looks like we got foxes poppin’ up all over the place, the hounds have boogied, and we’re sitting here in a Wally World parking lot in Deadwater, Oklahoma, like we were outta gas. What’s with you, Chuckarino? You just love yankin’ my chain, don’t you? You think the storms are gonna come to us?”

  “If we wait long enough.”

  Metcalf rolled his eyes. “Two weeks wasn’t long enough?”

  Ignoring Metcalf’s dig, Chuck refreshed the image on his computer. He zoomed in on a brilliantly tinted cell, a core of red and magenta, that had blown up east of Enid. He clicked several keys, scrolled through maps displaying esoteric parameters: EHIs, lifted indices, Craven-Brooks. “This is the one,” he said quietly.

  “What?” Metcalf asked, his breath pungent with onions and salami, a dab of mustard clinging to his beard.

  “Saddle up,” Chuck said. “We’re outta here.”

  “’Bout damn time.” Metcalf hitched up his cargo shorts and headed back to his vehicles.

  “Jerry’s gonna love this,” Chuck said after Metcalf departed.

  “What?” Gabi asked, not moving much.

  “You’ll see.”

  CLARENCE AND RALEIGH sat in their GMC Terrain north of Stillwater just off route 177, Clarence monitoring the latest radar images on his laptop. Raleigh leaned over from the passenger seat to take a look.

  “Couple of good cells moving into Kansas,” he said.

  “Yeah, but there’s nothing much up there for them to hit. The southern storm might whack Sedan, but that’s a long way to travel on a ‘maybe’.”

  “There’ll be others, right?” Raleigh fiddled with his glasses; they’d slipped down on his nose.

  Clarence nodded and looked to the west where the sky had become a seething black witches’ brew of storm clouds. He tapped his finger on the computer screen. “There’s a big storm blowing up just east of Enid. That’s the one to watch. It’s on the verge of a supercell already.”

  “We goin’ after it?”

  “I dunno.” On his computer, Clarence examined an image that displayed a projected track for the storm. “Looks like it’s headed toward the Osage Rez. Nuthin’ there but Injuns and grass.” He spit out the window. “We need a twister that’s gonna tear something apart. In a city or town someplace. Let’s cool it for a while longer.”

  Raleigh remained silent. Clarence read the disappointment on his face.

  “Don’t worry, bro’. The outbreak’s just getting started. Before the day is over, there’ll be plenty of wreckage for us to clean up on.”

  Raleigh didn’t respond. He removed his glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose. He placed the
spectacles back on his face and stared out the window, looking in the general direction of the Osage land.

  “Okay, Raleigh, out with it,” Clarence said. “I been around ya enough to know ya got something on your mind.”

  Raleigh turned his gaze toward his brother. “I was thinking about the stories.”

  “What stories?”

  “The ones about the old Indian dude who owns the Gust Front.”

  “Sam Townsend?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You mean those tall tales about his hidden fortune?”

  “You think they’re just tall tales?”

  “They’re rumors, bro’, myths.”

  Raleigh frowned. A scolded puppy.

  “It’s like the legend of the Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine in Arizona,” Clarence continued, trying to pacify his brother. “A story that’s been around for over a hundred years, but no one’s ever found the mine. A fairy tale.”

  “But it’s never been disproven, either. Right?”

  “Well, the fact the mine has never been found kind of disproves its existence, don’t you think?”

  “Well, okay. But no one has ever really searched for the Gust Front fortune, have they? So how do we know it really isn’t hidden around there someplace? Supposedly guarded by Sam’s buddy, whatever his name is.”

  Clarence shrugged and sighed. Get off it, Raleigh.

  But Raleigh persisted. “Millions, Clarence, millions. What if it isn’t a rumor? What if it’s real?”

  The weather radio in the vehicle squealed an alert. Clarence turned up the volume and the brothers listened. A tornado warning had been issued for Noble County, immediately north of them, a portion of which borders the Osage Reservation. The wail of warning sirens, rising and falling—distant banshees—rode the stiffening and ever more insistent wind. Overhead, thick, lowering nimbus, racing toward the core of the storm, cast an evening pall of darkness over the afternoon.

  “So, let’s say the stories are true,” Clarence said. “That there’s money stashed away somewhere around the Grill. What are the odds of a tornado hitting that place?” He made a circle, a zero, with his thumb and forefinger.