Tornado Weather

by Deborah E. Kennedy

  Fikus was clearly on the side of Ruby Rodgers. “Should have leveled this place when they had a chance,” he said.

  Not much had changed since Irv had gone there forty years ago, and as he walked up on it, the days returned to him in sharp snapshots—the snaggletoothed principal telling him he wouldn’t amount to much, a pretty brunette girl who moved away before he even knew her name—and smells: spilled milk left to sour, sawdust poured over vomit, a rich perfume on the brunette girl that Rita sometimes had worn, too, toward the end. Youth-Dew. Irv bought the stuff by the bottle now and put it on his pillows.

  “Dumpster’s in the back,” Fikus said. “Let’s go.”

  Irv could have told Fikus there was no way Daisy would be allowed to decompose in a Dumpster that janitors visited every day, but he kept his thoughts to himself because of Hector and that suspended spoon. Also because Irv had watched a young Fikus, yellow hair standing stiff, shoes losing their soles, get his ass kicked over and over by the big kids right where they were standing and done nothing.

  They took the sidewalk around the school, rain from the eaves dripping down their necks, and stationed themselves in front of a hulking metal can wedged between an air conditioner and a row of plastic chairs arranged in size from biggest to smallest, all of them tipping off their legs. A few desks were dumped there, too, and some shelves. End-of-the-year detritus. The smallest chair looked to be just the right size for Daisy Gonzalez, and Irv imagined her there, a latter-day Goldilocks, trying all the chairs out until she came to the one that fit her best. Fikus was staring at the chairs like a man transfixed. He tried to fluff his hair but it was too damp. It fell against his skull like drowned worms.

  “Well, here we are,” Irv said. “You want to do the honors?”

  “Actually, Irv, would you mind? Suddenly feeling woozy.”

  It was like that stupid summer all over again. Irv had had to do all the hard work, all the heavy lifting, because Fikus was forever feeling woozy or dizzy or “not his best self at the moment.”

  “No problem,” Irv said, raising the Dumpster’s heavy black lid and peering in. The can was, as he’d suspected, empty. “Nothing here save a pink eraser and plastic grocery bag tied around a chicken bone.”

  Fikus sighed with relief. “Thank God.” He turned on his heels and headed back toward the truck, stepping quickly through puddle after puddle. “Next up, the bank.”

  Irv had to hustle to keep up with him. “The bank? Really?”

  “There’s a method to my madness, Irv.”

  “If you say so.”

  So Irv drove Fikus all around town, stopping not only at Colliersville Bank and Trust, but at the American Legion, the recycling center, and the high school. They didn’t talk to anyone, just rooted around in trash cans mostly, and Irv wondered if the day would land him in jail. That or find him jobless.

  The dog rode along cheerfully. His leg had stopped bleeding and his tail wagged almost constantly. Irv thought he’d name him Pooch. It was simple. Manly. And he’d take him to the vet when this horrible day with Fikus was over, get him a cast, some stitches, and a rabies vaccination. Maybe he’d get him a red collar at the pet store and one of those tags: “Hi. My Name is Pooch. I belong to Irv. If you find me, call this number.” I belong to Irv.

  On their fifth Dumpster of the day, Irv, hands full of soggy receipts, finally asked Fikus, “What are we looking for exactly?”

  “Clues,” Fikus said.

  “What kind of clues?”

  “We’ll know them when we see them.”

  “We will?”

  “Just keep digging.”

  And he did. For no reason and with no direction. His phone rang and rang.

  Eventually, Irv insisted that they eat. They went to Tony’s Pizza because it was open and Flying J’s was dead to Fikus. That’s how he put it. “That place is dead to me.”

  “Fine, fine,” Irv said. “Whatever you say.”

  Tony’s Pizza wasn’t good. It wasn’t bad, either. Irv and Fikus split a large cheese and Irv gave the last piece to the mutt, who gobbled it and barked for more. Irv’s phone had rung ten times. On the eleventh, he turned it off.

  “What are you running from, Irv?” Fikus asked.

  “What? No one. Nothing.”

  “All of us are running from something.”

  “Not me.”

  “For instance, I’m running from myself. I’m running from the fire inside.”

  “Must get tiring.”

  “It does. It is. You wouldn’t believe the things I see. The things I hear. I admit it’s often too much for one man.”

  “Sure.”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  They spent some time sitting in Tony’s parking lot, Irv wondering just how long Fikus could keep this up and Fikus staring out the window and fingering his rain slicker, his chewed-up lips a beefy mess. Finally, around four, Irv turned to him and asked, “So what’s our final stop?”

  “The park behind Miss Kitty’s. Off Elm.”

  “Okay,” Irv said.

  The whole day was one piece of futile ridiculousness after another, so what was one more? It was stupid, the search, and it was dumb, to hold out hope in this world, but, his belly finally full, Irv did sort of wonder if they could find Daisy, the three of them, and maybe, in spite of their past track record, find her alive. Wouldn’t that be something? To deliver the pretty little girl into the arms of her grateful father? To just once have the chance to change the story.

  The route to the park took them past the Hair Barn and Breeder’s Laundromat. Fikus didn’t say anything until the steamed-up windows with their trademark fake suds came into view. The now famous bloodstain billowed out from the stoop to the gutter in the shape of a thought cloud.

  “Hey,” Fikus said, wagging his finger and looking alive for the first time all day. “Remember Rita? Rita Washburn? Doesn’t her daughter work there?”

  Irv put on his casual face. “Sure. Shannon. Good kid. And Rita was a good waitress.”

  Fikus whistled. “Good waitress? Great woman. All woman. Fucked her a few times. Years ago now.”

  Irv almost blew through a stop sign. “What? You what?”

  “Oh you know.” Fikus slid his index finger in and out of his fist. “Everybody did. Back then. It was right around when you and me started working together. Rita Washburn. Ass like an onion. Brought tears to my eyes.”

  Elm Street waved in front of Irv like a hair ribbon caught by the wind. I’ll kill him, Irv thought. I have a shovel back there. I’ve got an ax at the house. I’ll kill him and throw him in a hole and no one will know because there isn’t a soul in the world who cares about Fikus Ward. Not a soul.

  “We’re stopping at the dump,” Irv said.

  “That’s not on the list.”

  Irv reached over the dog and grabbed Fikus’s list, crumpling it in his palm. “Enough of that.”

  “But what about the park? You promised.”

  “I promised? What are you, Fikus? Six?” Irv made a U-turn and hit the gas.

  * * *

  The Greater Colliersville Carbon-Based Waste Processing Facility was waiting for them behind a rise of earth that many in town swore was an ancient Indian burial mound. Fikus was one of the believers.

  “You shouldn’t have brought me here,” Fikus said, fists over his ears.

  “What’s the big deal? You’ve been here before.”

  “This place is a sin against history.”

  “Whose history?”

  “Yours. Mine. Everyone’s.”

  “Oh, so you’re an Indian now? Should I start calling you He Who Fluffs His Hair?”

  “That’s racist, Irv, and you know it.”

  Irv punched in his security code at the gate and brought the truck to a stop at the edge of the dump. The three seagulls circling overhead looked like bats against the gray. The dog sniffed the air and growled. Irv’s heart hurt. He felt like it had been replaced with a rock, or spooned out roughly,
the sides of his chest scraped raw and hollow. Why did it matter so much? Rita fucking other guys while she was fucking him? What was fidelity anyway? He pictured her face above his the way it was at the beginning, adoring and blushed up and so beautiful, and he felt his pizza coming back up.

  “You should get out, make sure Daisy’s not here,” Irv said.

  “Why would she be here?”

  “Why the hell would she be in any of the spots we’ve checked today?”

  Fikus had fished his list from the truck floor and smoothed it over his chest like a cloth napkin. “I don’t know what’s come over you.”

  “Save it, Fikus. I’m not in the mood.”

  Irv took a deep breath and looked out over the dump. It wasn’t like a landfill. There was no system, although Irv had developed his own over the years. Big things first, small things last. Heads, tails, heads, tails, a coin flip before a football game. The animals he collected two days ago were still on top, and deer from the past month bloated around everything like saturated cereal flakes.

  “You stay,” Irv said to the dog. “You go,” he said to Fikus, shoving him in the shoulder.

  “Fine. But stop punching me. I’m feeling woozy.” Fikus reluctantly stepped out of the truck and flipped on a flashlight he pulled from under his slicker.

  While Irv dragged the coyote out of the bed and slid him on top of the pile, Fikus wandered around the hole, darting his flashlight beam at an otter, a mole, and finally a tabby cat with slivers of fur on its ribs. Irv followed him to the lip of the hole, imagining what it would be like to just chuck him in and drive off, but he knew he didn’t have the stones, and besides, it wouldn’t solve anything. He couldn’t kill the ache.

  “I’ll find her, you know,” Fikus said.

  “Who?”

  “Daisy. I’ll find her.”

  “I’m sure you will.”

  “And when I do, it will be atonement. For the sins. For all the people killed here for the wrong reasons.”

  “Good for you. Now get in the truck. I want to go home.”

  “I didn’t want to come here anyway.”

  “Just get in.”

  Fikus did so, but slowly and not without growling something under his breath about “that poor dead man, that worse-off dog.”

  * * *

  After he dropped Fikus off, Irv drove. He drove as far as his anemic gas tank would let him, coming to a stop across the road from the now defunct Spencerville Fun Spot. He just needed to think a minute, so he killed the engine and leaned over the steering wheel, looking out on the frozen Ferris wheel and a patch of woods behind it, the tops of the maples like black thread on the horizon. The dog, who’d been sleeping with his head on Irv’s thigh, started to bark and whine, paddling his way out of Rita’s towel before Irv could do anything.

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  The dog howled and the sound hurt Irv’s ears. He hopped out of the cab into the wet, studying the white trail his headlights made through the darkening night, the two beams distinct at first and then blurring to a soft glow. At his feet was a dead rat, its long tail waffled with tire marks. Life was loss, Irv thought. That was it. The big secret. Loss upon loss upon loss until it was hard to know if waking up the next day made any sense at all. He’d left the door open and suddenly a yellow body shot past him and took off toward the Ferris wheel, kicking up leaves and scattering pebbles like there was nothing wrong with him. Rita’s towel lay in a heap on the seat.

  “Pooch!” he called. “Pooch! Stop!”

  Irv shut the truck door and muttered under his breath. Fucking dog. He made his way across the road as the clouds opened up and the rain began to fall hard and steady, like a warning. Like, Give up. Go home. The bottoms of his pants were soaked and stiff.

  “Pooch!” he yelled again, but all he heard was the rain and the growl of a semitruck jack braking on the interstate half a mile south. The braking sound faded, replaced by a high-pitched howl that cut through the night. The cry circled him, echoed and doubled on itself, like a musical note held too long. It became almost human. Irv thought of Hector Gonzalez and his untouched food, of Rita and her pretty legs. Always, always Rita. For a minute Irv couldn’t move. What was Pooch up to? Irv didn’t want to see. Didn’t want to know.

  Then he started running toward that howl. Fikus was a lying sack of shit. Sure he was. That story about Rita was a story. Fiction. Nothing more. And maybe Irv could win this one. Maybe, for once, he wouldn’t be too late.

  Paradise

  (June)

  You decide to sneak out of the house early in the morning before your mother gets up for work because if she knew where you were going, she would laugh at you. She thinks all Christians are cray-cray for all eternity amen and you used to agree with her, but that was before the mermaid necklace she gave you started to glow, to burn. You’ve got a pink, raw spot right above your heart and when you touch it—the necklace, not the spot—your fingers feel like they might catch fire. Fucked up, right? Totes fucked up, and, far as you can figure, your only option is to take the things—the necklace and the spot—right to the source, to God, the man upstairs with the beard and the flowing robes and the booming voice you’ve only recently started talking to on account of the silver mermaid with the ember eyes and Daisy Gone-zalez and this weird sensation you have that the world, which once made a modicum of sense, is now as out of whack as your busted front door hanging from its hinges like a loose tooth.

  You shove all your stuffed animals under the sheets, the tail of your best My Little Pony curling out on the pillow so that your mother will think you’re sleeping in like usual and not sneaking out for Sunday service because a) you need to confess your sins, b) you want to pray for Daisy’s safe return, and c) you overheard your cousin Dora tell your other cousin Bethie that if the devil is doing his work in your near vicinity your best bet is to ask for an exorcism of sorts. “A Devil Get Thee Behind Me” deal, overseen by an expert in such things.

  “Aka,” Dora said the last time you spent the night at her house, “a ministhter.” Dora has buckteeth and spit on her bottom lip. Always. She’s ugly and ashy all over but she’s also older than you so who are you to question her facts? Especially now that the mermaid necklace, so pretty at first, has grown sinister, possessed. You’re terrified of it. Plus, you wouldn’t mind being saved.

  “Better thsaved than thsorry,” Dora said. “If you’re not thsaved before you die, you’ll thspend all eternity up to your thshins in molten lava. Hellths heat is like a billion thonths. It’s like taking a bathth in the microwave.”

  You grab the mermaid necklace from the top of your dresser. You haven’t worn it for five days now and the singed skin over your heart has begun to heal. The minute you touch the chain it grows orange and warm, so you drop it into a small box and put it in your pocket, pausing for a second in your doorway. The purple My Little Pony tail bears no resemblance to your nappy mop and the lumpy assemblage of animals looks less like you and more like shit on a shingle, but it doesn’t matter. Your mom won’t check, not really. She’ll be in too much of a hurry to get to the hospital and anyway she knows you can take care of yourself. You’ve been taking care of yourself for as long as you can remember.

  Which is the same amount of time you’ve lived across the street from Colliersville Baptist Church. Still, you’ve only seen inside it once and even then it was dark because you were there waiting out a power outage and a gas leak. You left before the lights came back on because the minister told your mom that God in his heaven was not on the side of single motherhood. “It marginalizes and emasculates the father who, according to scripture and divine right, deserves the head seat at the family table,” the minister said. “If a man’s home is his castle, you must vouchsafe him his throne.”

  Your mom, her face one big scowl, threw a plastic cup of raspberry lemonade in his face. “Vouchsafe that!”

  God must be on your side this morning because you manage to get out the front door without wak
ing anyone, not your mom, not her boyfriend, Tony, not even Tony’s dog, Ruthless, who, once roused, is not satisfied until he’s terrified the entire goddamned neighborhood, barking and whining and throwing his fat white body against the portable dishwasher. Ruthless is snoring outside the door to your mother’s room, banished but standing guard. You watch him for a second. He’s a sausage with ears, a pig with paws. You don’t push your luck. You wait to put your shoes on until you’re off the stoop and into the grass because the stairs bounce. Tony likes to say “I gotta fix that,” but he says the same about the door and you know how that’s turned out. Yeah, right, Tony. That’ll be the fucking day.

  The church lawn is different from yours and every other Maple Leaf Mobile Home Park yard you’ve ever seen or set foot on. There are no sun-bleached two-liter bottles, no soggy mail, no plastic wrappers or bent nails or broken water guns to contend with. Instead, all is dark green and smooth, like the carpet in the school nurse’s office.

  Dora told you it’d be like this. “I like churchth as much ath Dithney World. I like it more.”

  There are other kids your age climbing the stone steps to the front door, none from the trailer park, though, and they look so clean, their teeth so straight and white and even, that you start to think you might have made a mistake.

  Then the minister, the man your mother still refers to as “Dick Divine Right,” touches your shoulder. “It’s wonderful to have you here,” he says. He is tall and smells like pepper. “I’m Pastor Rush. And you are?”

  “Tiara,” you say.

  “Welcome, Tiara.”

  You stick your hand down your pocket and check for the necklace. Still there. You figure now’s your chance to tell Pastor Rush that Daisy’s disappearance is all your fault because you were more concerned about a fish than a friend. Also that you have been hoarding a clue—Daisy’s beloved mermaid necklace—that might lead to her being found because your mom gave it to you and it’s pretty and your mom doesn’t give you many pretty things. You open your mouth to confess, but before you can say anything more, Dick Divine Right tells you to go on inside.