Storm

by George R. Stewart

  It was a big party, and Rick the lineman went to it. He met a girl, and as soon as he met her he knew there was something about her. He saw that she was not as pretty as lots of girls, but she had good blue eyes that looked just a little strange along with her dark hair and skin.

  She was with her sister and her sister’s husband, and Rick made her his girl for the evening. They danced, and got along well. And in some way when he talked to her Rick found that he wasn’t kidding along or trying to get fresh, the way he usually did. He found himself telling her about how it felt climbing poles and mending wire up on the Transcontinental Lead—serious things like that—and what kind of man was good on the job, and just what some of the tricks were to it.

  Once she said, “Isn’t it dangerous?” But the way she looked at him and the way she spoke made him feel that really she meant, “Isn’t it dangerous for you?” When he thought that maybe she meant it that way he felt funny—and not from the whiskeys he’d had.

  He didn’t really even get her name straight until well along in the evening, and when he was dancing with her sister he felt himself thinking of her just as “the girl.”

  When it was time to go, she was wearing a hat that covered up the dark hair, but he could see the good blue eyes and the dark-tanned face. Then he wanted to say something free and easy, like “So long, sister, see you in church!” But all he found himself saying was just, “Good-bye.”

  “Good-bye” was all she said, too.

  Rick wanted to call something after her as she went away, but he felt funny again, and couldn’t remember anything that was important enough to say, and all he could think of was “blue eyes in a dark-tanned face” as if it were a song.

  11

  Before the melting ice disclosed the Pass, there was the River. Once it flowed into the ocean through a canyon. But the land sank and the sea-water flooded in through the hills, drowning that canyon so that it became a strait leading to a land-locked bay. But still the River, drawing its strength from the mountains, running in a hundred loops and reaches, flowed southward through the Valley.

  This was the nature of the River during the long dry season. It was lean and dark, and idled from sand-bar to sand-bar. The banks were high and thickly grown with willows; farther back, lay long reaches of marsh with massed growth of tall reeds: next came grassland, and then park-like stretches where grass grew beneath great oak trees. Elk with branching antlers browsed the willows; huge bears dug among the roots for food. And after several ages came a dark-skinned people, building poor huts, snaring fish, and gathering seeds.

  But in the wet season the River changed its nature. The clouds hung heavy upon the mountains; the rain fell; and—with a gentle swish in the night—the River stirred into life. Where sand-bars had shown yesterday, brown water flowed today. A tree, uprooted somewhere far in the foothills, slid noiselessly by. The bears moved off toward the higher lands, where acorns now lay beneath the oaks. The long-legged elk, good waders and swimmers, were in less hurry, but they too began to move. The dark-skinned people looked out and saw muddy water knee-deep among the willows; then they followed bear and elk. Waist-deep they floundered and splashed through creek and swale and slough toward the oak groves.

  Then, like Father Nile himself, the River swelled and rose. Gently, in a thousand places, it overflowed into the tule-swamps. Mile by mile the shallow waters crept across the grassland; water lapped at the oak-roots. From high above, the flying wild duck saw a paradise of wide-stretching, quiet, inland lake, with here and there a grassy island. In long looping parallel lines, the bare willow-tops showing above water forlornly marked the summer channel.

  At last, more deadly than flood-waters, the gold-seeking white men came to the lands along the River. After a few seasons, the tall elk, the bears, and the dark-skinned people vanished, and were as if they had never been. Even of the River itself, the white men were contemptuous. First of all, they cast into it the debris of gold-mining, so that even the summer channel clogged. After some years, came men called farmers. In disdain and ignorance they plowed the rich valley lands, and then cursed when the river rose and destroyed the new crops.

  But these white men were not like the dark-skinned people who in the old days bowed before the River’s will. They were not even like the pliant Egyptians who made use of the Nile’s flood for their own ends. Instead, these white men made no truce with nature. For, in those days, it might happen that a man rode horseback around the boundaries of his land, and noticed that nowhere was the water more than a foot or two deep. Then he thought craftily that if he scraped up a little berm of dirt three feet high around his land, he might raise crops and market them at high prices when his neighbors’ lands were flooded. So he did, and grew rich. But his neighbors also wished to grow rich; so singly or banding together in companies, they too built dikes.

  Then something unforeseen happened. The waters of the River, shut out from much land, rose higher upon the lands that were left, and so broke over many dikes and again flooded the farms. The white men cursed, thinking that the rains must have been heavier than before; they decided to build levees a little higher, and be safe forever. In those years that followed, a confusion as of a nightmare fell upon the Valley. More and more levees were built, and each one made the water rise so that men had to build up the old ones higher still. The white men would not withdraw from the lands, and neither in their peculiar madness would they all work together against the River. Instead, in the dark rainy nights a man might break his neighbor’s levee to lower the water-level against his own; so, not with shovels, but with loaded guns, men patrolled the levees, like savages brandishing spears against the river-god.

  At last, although the white men hated the very sound of the words, they began to talk more and more of “the government” and “regulation.” Then finally came engineers who looked shrewdly not at one part of the River, but at the whole. They measured snow and rain, and the depth of streams. They surveyed; they calculated with many figures how high the levees must be and how wide the channels between. Gradually even the fiercest fighters among the white men came to see that the River (which was always the whole River) was too great for any man or any company of men. Only the Whole People could hope to match the Whole River. So, after many years of disaster, the white men began to live in a truce with the River.

  The terms of the truce are these. Around the cities and around the best lands shall be the highest levees, and in times of flood men may even pile sand-bags to raise these levees higher. Around other lands shall be lower levees; these lands can be farmed in ordinary years, but in time of high flood they must be overflow-basins and their levees shall not be raised. Finally, broad stretches of land shall have no levees at all; into these great overflow basins the River can pour, exhausting its fury, and through them as by-passes it can reach the Bay. The land of these by-passes may serve as pasture of sheep and cattle which can be driven behind the levees in time of flood.

  It is a truce, but no real peace. Year by year, the white men work upon their levees; also they build dams in the mountains to cut off the full burst of the River’s power. Year by year, too, the River frets openly and in secret against the levees, and sometimes still it pours forth over its ancient flood-plain.

  FIFTH DAY

  1

  To the crew of the Byzantion, clinging to their battered ship, feeling the wind take her and the waves strike like solid masses—to that crew, hour by hour, the storm had been an all-engulfing reality. The Eureka had come and stood by, and the very sight and company of her had cheered them, what with the wind and sea beginning to fall also. Things were patched up now. The old tub was sound and no leaks, the jury rudder-controls were working, the Greek’s shoulder was back in place, and they were heading south for Honolulu and repairs. Best of all, the storm had blown itself out, and there was only a stiff cold breeze from the north and a choppy, tossing sea.

  To the crew the storm h
ad been simple and real, and now was gone. But actually, from hour to hour, what was that storm?

  It cannot well be compared to a mountain or a machine or any physical thing, for they exist continuously of the same materials. But a storm constantly draws into itself new air and casts out the old.

  In this a storm is like a wave or whirlpool which exists in the water but never of the same water. But a storm is vastly more complicated than any wave or whirlpool.

  There is a closer analogy—with a living organism, even with a human being. As a man is conceived in the fierce onset of opposing natures, so also a storm begins in the clash of the dry cold air from the north and the mild moist air of the south. Like a person, a storm is a focus of activities, continuing and varying through a longer or shorter period of time, having a birth, youth, maturity, old age, and death. It moves; in a sense, it reproduces its kind, and even takes in food, exhausts it of energy, and casts out the waste. The storm, to be sure, develops only in a manner determined by its antecedents and environment—but many philosophers think little also of man’s apparent free will. As for sensation and consciousness of which we talk much and know little—a storm seems to sheer off from a high-pressure area much as the human hand shrinks from the touched nettle.

  But a community or a nation yields a still better analogy. Rome or England may endure through centuries although Romans and Englishmen die and are born hourly. The new storms sprung of the old are more like colonies than children; as with Rome and Constantinople there may be doubt as to which maintains the continuity of empire. The life-cycle of a storm is like that of a nation which from apparent decadence is sometimes renewed into full vigor. Finally a storm, like a nation, has an indefinable abstract existence. Men speak of England when they mean neither its land nor its government nor its people, but merely some symbolic centuries-old ideal. And more, when men think thus, tears come to their eyes, and they march with high hearts to battle. So also in every storm exists a something which meteorologists cumbersomely name “a center of low pressure.” This is neither air, nor cloud, nor wind, nor rain—yet, as with a nation, this mere abstraction represents the continuing reality of a storm.

  2

  From the Arctic islands and the ice-floes of Beaufort Sea, from the tundras and pine-barrens and frozen lakes, the polar air swept southward across the plains. Its overwhelming front rushed onward at fifty miles an hour.

  This was the manner of its coming. Before it, there was clear sky, and the sun shining upon new-fallen snow, a soft breeze from the west, moist and not cold. Then to the north was a line of high-banked, slate-gray cloud, and the mutter of thunder. Next, suddenly, the clouds darkened sun and sky, the north wind struck frigidly, and the air was thick with furious snow.

  All day Friday the line of that front had swept southward across Alberta and Saskatchewan. At noon it engulfed Edmonton; just before the winter sunset, Saskatoon and Calgary. In the open, life lost all semblance of pleasure or dignity or even of safety. From the Rockies to Lake Winnipeg animals and men alike sought shelter. The blizzard held sway.

  About midnight the front approached the international boundary just north of Havre, Montana. No immigration officers demanded passports; no customs officials searched for contraband. Although the Weather Bureau had given warning, not even a hastily mobilized regiment of the National Guard held the border. At the very least, the Department of State might have sent a sharp note to Ottawa, warning that the Dominion Government would be held strictly accountable for damage done by the Canadian air. Reasonable expectation could only be that a hundred or more citizens of the United States would lose their lives in the cold wave, and that wreckage of property would reach millions. Indirectly, through pneumonia and other means, the loss of life would run into many hundreds and the sum of such items as increased consumption of fuel, snow-removal, and delays in transportation would total an appalling figure. Yet the United States of America (often called by its citizens the greatest nation of the earth) merely cowered before the Canadian invasion.

  The northern air crossed the border just after midnight on Saturday morning; by daybreak it had occupied much of Montana and North Dakota, and was advancing upon Minnesota, South Dakota and Wyoming.

  3

  Beyond the window-panes was again the blank darkness of the winter morning. From the teletype-room seemed to come, minute by minute, a wilder confusion of staccato clicks and ringing bells.

  Working on the chart, the J. M. felt his throat grow tight with excitement. Maria was driving in hard. He had no need to wait for the Chief’s isobars. Along the southwesterly sea-lane, from San Francisco to Honolulu, the usual string of ships reported. This morning these ships close to either end had fair weather, but those near the middle had rain, and wind running up to forty-mile gales. That could only mean that the edge of the near-by circular storm moving in from the west had cut right across the ship-lane. He could even locate exactly Maria’s single remaining front, for by luck two ships had reported from within a few miles of each other; one had had a northwest, the other a southwest wind, sure sign that the advancing front lay right between.

  Low pressure (1001) at Winnipeg—that would be Cornelia rushing southeast. Low pressure (1009) at Corpus Christi—that meant a weak storm developing on the Texas coast; it had begun to show the day before. Towering high pressure (1044) at Fort Simpson in the Klondike. Clear skies and snappy cold along the usually drenched Alaskan coast. And most startling of all, the sudden fall of temperatures behind Cornelia’s cold front—over all the Canadian plains and south into Montana and North Dakota. Williston reported twenty-five below, Calgary thirty-seven, Edmonton thirty-nine, Dawson fifty-eight.

  Yes, Maria would come driving in hard; even the temperature over the Yukon was an indication.

  Then the J. M. started suddenly, for at his elbow was the Old Master. Wraith-like he had slipped in, and now was looking at the maze of figures which covered the map.

  “Good morning, sir,” he said.

  “Good morning,” said the J. M. Then thinking he had been too abrupt, he added awkwardly: “You’re out early.”

  “I cannot sleep much. I am getting old. I like to see the map.”

  He stood there blinking his old eyes, and the Chief moved in and began to draw fronts.

  •

  Only now and then was the old man’s sight clear enough for him to see the figures. The red, blue, and purple lines which they put on maps nowadays were, he thought, very confusing. Still, he could make out a well-developed storm over Winnipeg.

  “Well, sir, how does it look this morning?” said the Chief.

  “You have not finished the map,” said the old man, and his shaky voice sounded reproachful. Then he went on simply: “There will be rain. I have learned that even the longest droughts come to an end.” He was not looking at the map, but seemed to be staring somewhere far off.

  •

  The Chief looked across the map at the J. M., and they smiled at the way the Old Master talked. The Chief’s pencil was moving deftly; the map was shaping up.

  “And what do you think of it?” said the Chief to the J. M. He was drawing the youngster out, not asking advice; but he saw immediately that the J. M. took the question seriously.

  “I said yesterday it would rain inside forty-eight hours. I say now, rain inside twenty-four hours.”

  The Chief studied the map. As had happened often before, he wished for the moment that he were engaged in some simple line of work such as being a G-man or teaching literature. All very well for the others to predict rain—the one had his inner light, and the other his textbooks. And neither of them was responsible. But the Chief knew what would happen if he went to the typewriter and tapped off RAIN on the forecast blank.

  That single word would be about as big a news-story as could break in California. Thousands of people would change their plans; hundreds of industries, big and little, would mak
e adjustments. Money would be spent, wisely and foolishly. The very process of adjustment to that single word would mean damaged property and jeopardized lives. Then, if the rain did not come, everything would be ridiculous anti-climax, with people blaming the weather-man.

  Say that he wrote FAIR or even UNSETTLED, and the rain came. Then people would go on with their fair-weather plans, and would be caught wide open. His error might mean millions of dollars’ loss of property and the snuffing out of more lives than a man liked to think about.

  There was another point too. In the old days the Weather Bureau made the only forecasts, and people were charitable. But now the air-lines and even some other big corporations had their own meteorologists—bright young fellows trained in technical schools, fresh with all the latest theories, like his own J. M., but with more experience. They talked a jargon about isallobaric ascendents and austausch coefficients; it made the Chief nervous. They referred to a three-day-old polar air-mass as if it were a chick they had seen hatch from an egg. There were even some private agencies selling weather information persuading their clients that it was better than what the Weather Bureau gave away free. Those fellows, it seemed to the Chief, stuck together. When he made a mistake, they pounced on it; when they made mistakes, they argued themselves out. They called him, the Chief knew, “that old fuddy-duddy.” As he looked at the map, he grew hot thinking of it. “Salesmen,” he thought, “not meteorologists!” Then he stopped himself, for he knew that they were meteorologists, and good ones too. He must be a better one, not call them names. He must work to match them in theory, and in the meantime must pit against their equations and diagrams the experience of thirty-five years, which had imprinted upon his memory the pictures of hundreds of weather situations against their dozens. “I can’t maybe remember Grant’s inauguration,” thought the Chief, “but those babies can’t remember Coolidge’s.”