What Jim Doe told Agnes when she drove the thirty minutes to his hospital room was that he was dead, the one who shot Tom. That he was dead, and it was over. And that he was still going to pay her back the seventeen hundred.
He’d shown up in the pick-up lane of a nursing home thirty-six hours ago. Because they don’t have cameras, like the emergency lanes of hospitals do. But ambulances are in and out all day, still.
He’d been back in his right clothes, too. Couldn’t begin to tell anybody which lake to drag, for Sarina.
For seventeen years, she’d been taken by the sky, then for a few hours she’d been kidnapped by somebody who was real, somebody Jim Doe hadn’t just dreamed. Now she’d drowned, was down there now, her long hair floating up around her, deeper than sunlight.
Meaning once again the Tin Man had taken her, left him.
It didn’t make any sense.
Jim Doe rubbed at the gauze covering his right ear. The drum in there had exploded in from the firecracker, the doctors had explained to him, and his Eustachian canal didn’t seem to be working the same either. It made the base of his jaw feel strange, but other than that he was supposed to be hearing on that side of his head again soon, for the most part.
The nurse who had come on at shift change in the morning had spoken Spanish to him at first, too.
At least he understood a bit of it.
If she’d have spoken Blackfeet, he would have thought his hearing was really jacked, like the Tin Man had hit some kind of reset button in his blood or something.
The nurse who came on for the afternoon loved his last name.
He didn’t know which was better.
Just not to be here at all, probably.
To be with Sarina.
For Gentry not to have pulled the longhair over for that Driving While Indian stop. But then Sarina would still be . . . however she’d been since 1982. Since that day in the attic.
She’d seemed healthy, though, right?
Maybe the Tin Man had just transplanted her, even, made her forget who she was, then gone back, collected her for this one pow-wow, this one boatride. This one reunion with her brother, whom she probably thought was dead.
Jim Doe opened his eyes, grubbed for the institutional TV remote, had to fish it up with the thick white cable.
Dinner was stroganoff, some flavorless, antiseptic variety.
Jim Doe asked for seconds. It was punishment.
“Anything else?” the afternoon nurse asked, holding onto the doorway, standing up on her tiptoes for some reason. To try to catch her eyebrows, maybe.
Jim Doe shook his head thanks, but no.
“Just ring,” she said, and twirled away.
Jim Doe pawed through the channels.
Agnes had told him he could get ten or fifteen percent disability, she’d guess, and she knew who to talk to, but he wasn’t even sure he was coming back yet. Part of it depended on whether they’d take him back, of course. Another part depended on if the Rangers ever caught up with him.
Jim Doe went up another channel but it was wavery, so he went up again, then two more at once, finally settled on something local. The news.
There was a color-enhanced doppler radar animation on-screen.
Jim Doe sat up, to see it better.
It was swirling, chewing up the sky.
Right above them. Just drilling into the whole south plains, less like a low-pressure front, more like the hurricanes you see from above, out in the ocean. One for the record books.
In the lower left of the screen, the usual: a tornado watch.
The meteorologist explained that that meant seek cover, not just that conditions were right, and then went on with a slideshow of the last tornado to hit Lubbock, in 1971.
Jim Doe left him talking, stood, dragged his tubes and cables to the window.
Outside, the sky was pink, blowing, lightning branching down into the ground. It was like the end of the world.
“Sir?” the nurse said from the doorway, because his alarm was going off. “Mr. Doe?”
“It followed me,” Jim Doe said, letting the curtains fall back over the glass.
“What did?” the girl said, and then something hit the window hard, shattered it, Jim Doe curling away from the explosion, falling into the bed.
The next time he looked up, the nurse had her body cupped over him, was protecting him from anything else that came through the open window.
Jim Doe said to her, “You’ve got a car, don’t you?”
THIRTY23 April 1999, Shallowater, Texas
The Tin Man slipped up into neutral for the stop sign.
The truck was an automatic, but it was so big, too. It felt like something you’d need to shift. It even had the running lights up top, like it had some inferiority complex out on the highway, was having to pretend it was a rig, a tractor, needed to indicate itself that way. Needed to be in that class of vehicle.
In the console was a bubble light, too, with a magnet on the bottom.
And the exempt plate didn’t hurt either.
He didn’t want to drive it for long, but until this system produced, it would do. Nobody would be making traffic stops tonight, anyway.
He hadn’t even meant to come here, either—it’s always better to stake out the big towns, since they’re like hubs, with roads out to all the little towns—but he’d seen an old yellow tornado siren from the road, couldn’t stop thinking about it, had to circle back.
He pulled through the intersection, nosed into the town’s one convenience store and just sat there, watching the classic horn, the sky perfect behind it.
He’d initially thought it was going to be Castro County, maybe Lamb, or Parmer, maybe even into eastern New Mexico, where he’d never been, but this was still Lubbock County, now. And the sky had a hungry sound to it.
He killed the diesel to hear it better, and the truck idling beside him keyed off as well.
The driver was a lineman, it looked like. He nodded across to the Tin Man.
“What do you think?” he said—the sky.
“Hard to say,” the Tin Man lied.
The lineman chuckled, draped himself over the wheel, said, “You’re a chaser, aren’t you?”
The Tin Man looked over, didn’t answer.
“My sis-in-law’s the same,” he said. “I can see it from a mile away.”
“Your sister-in-law?”
“Well, yeah, you can see her from a good ways off too, hear her from longer, but the way you’re watching, man. Same way she does. No offense, I mean, but it’s kind of all hopeful. Like you want it to happen.”
“No offense taken.”
“Happened to her when she was kid, I guess. When she got bit. Storm was coming and her whole big family let the horses loose and dove for the cellar, but she had the measles then, and her aunt was pregnant, so Celia—that’s her name—she had to stand up on top of that metal door while the tornado whipped through, knocked all the houses down, dug this big-ass ditch through their field. Says there was a moment when the wind kind of floated her up, like, and she had to choose, could either grab the door’s cable or not. Been a junky for it ever since.”
The Tin Man nodded, licked his lips, said, “Celia.”
The lineman nodded, re-evaluated the Tin Man.
“So what’s your story?” he said. “Don’t mind my asking. I mean, I noticed you were law and all. Most cops I know got enough trouble, don’t need to run down storms for it, right?”
The Tin Man laughed a fake laugh.
“My father,” he said, “it’s really his fascination, I suppose. Where I—where we grew up, our base, he was the emergency response coordinator. He was the one who called in the very first tornado warning ever. I was standing right there beside him.”
“No shit?”
The Tin Man nodded like it was nothing to be proud of, really.
It felt good, telling the truth.
Still, he’d already flipped the reflection in the glass, of the line
man’s license plate. No loose ends.
But this Celia.
Just saying her name made his chest feel expansive in a new way. And when the body in the long bag on the floorboard behind his seat kind of thunked its head into the back of his seat, well. He had to adjust himself.
“Me, I’m kind of the opposite, I guess,” the lineman went, leaning forward to peer up through his windshield. “All this shit? I’m cleanup, man. Everybody wants their power, their phones, and they want it now.”
“Overtime, though,” the Tin Man said.
“Guess you’ve seen that one building, downtown Lubbock, right? Tornado thirty years ago kind of knocked it silly, but it never fell down.”
“Twenty-eight years,” the Tin Man corrected.
The lineman nodded, kept nodding. Got one of his cigarettes going, inhaled deep and closed his eyes, holding it in.
“You’re a smoker,” the Tin Man said, fascinated.
“Say again?” the lineman said. The wind was whipping through now, pulling gravel off the roof of the convenience store. It pinged against the hoods of their trucks.
The Tin Man just kept looking south, his arms folded over the wheel. “Those’ll kill you, I mean,” he said—the cigarettes.
“Like I’m gonna live that long,” the lineman said, leaning down for his ignition, and the Tin Man nodded, couldn’t agree more, and then, the lineman with his brake in, about to back out of his parking lot, he touched his own ear, to show the Tin Man about his.
The Tin Man reached up, dabbed it.
Blood.
It was running from his head now.
Something was on the ground, and close.
He nodded thanks to the lineman, lifted his hand in farewell when the lineman backed out of his parking slot, then lit his own glow plugs, waited for the big truck to rumble into life, carry him into the heart of the world, into the countless sheep, milling around in the wind.
It was their own fault if they didn’t stop him.
THIRTY-ONE23 April 1999, Texas
Jim Doe punched the nurse’s car for all it was worth. It was a Chevette, though.
The clouds above were rotating slow, immense.
Three times so far he’d seen funnels, had to slow to pick his way through clumps of people, stopped to watch the sky develop.
Two times, a man had stepped out from his truck, to call Jim Doe back.
One of the men had lost his hat for it.
Jim Doe apologized in his head.
The Chevette’s radio was spotty, the station taking a beating wherever it was, so Jim Doe dialed back to AM. The longer wavelengths cut through the clouds better.
The weatherman being patched through was trying to control the panic in his voice and then with no segue was replaced by a reporter in the field, the wind tearing across the fabric of her mic, maybe blowing her hair into it.
She was in Plainview, was closer to Jim Doe now than the Lubbock weatherman had been, even though he was taking backroads up to Nazareth, stabbing up through Hart, knew better than to get stuck on the circus 87 had to be right now.
The reporter-in-the field, she was past the panic, was just trying not to cry now.
Jim Doe could almost see her, standing out in a field, half the field in the air, tumbleweeds whipping past, windmills screaming, the world upside down.
What she was saying was funnels were dropping everywhere, and that one had touched down for a few seconds in west Plainview, but the damage was still uncertain, and there were no reports of lives lost. That everybody was still underground, waiting, andthat—
With no crash of static, no screams, no anything, she was just gone.
There was silence for maybe twenty seconds afterwards, and then the DJ came back on, and he was saying individual names, of people he knew in Plainview, and then he said this was for them, and put on a Buddy Holly song.
Jim Doe reached for the dial but hit a bump, missed the radio with his hand and just left it there, tried to get the pedal to go down farther, the tinny speakers pushing what sounded like a real true crackly record over the airwaves.
What he was going to Nazareth for was . . . it was hard to get at in any kind of direct way.
It was because this was a repeat, mostly. Not because he could save it, the town, but because if the storm took Nazareth and still left him behind—he had to be there, this time. No choice. Especially if he’d dragged the storm here from Nebraska somehow. If it hated him that much. If it had recognized him.
If the sky was going to chew everything he knew up, spit it back out in pieces, he was going to be there to scream at it, he was going to be there to drive into it as hard as he could, blame it for his sister, for everything.
He didn’t know, really.
Just that he was going home, finally, after all these days, all these states, all these bodies. That he had to.
He pushed up through Spade, through Hart Camp, which he never saw through the dirt until he was in it, about to slam into the back of an abandoned Honda, and then he buried the speedometer again, for Olton, the last real place before Nazareth.
The white paint on the passenger side of the nurse’s Chevette was going to be stripped, he knew, was being sandblasted now, but that for was for later. Right now he needed the car.
He tried to tune Buddy Holly back in, but the radio was gone.
He pulled the headlights on, leaned closer to the windshield, straining against the seatbelt, but still, he almost plowed into the cattle walking up the blacktop, leaning on their shoulders like they were exhausted, but still had miles to go.
The Chevette skidded, went sideways a bit but didn’t have enough weight for anything serious, just settled to a stop, the tiny engine chugging in place.
The cattle moved past, brushing the side of the car hard enough to rock it on its ancient springs.
“Go,” Jim Doe said to them, “live,” and when the last calf had caught up with its mom, he straightened back up, got back to speed but had to slow right back down again.
Olton.
It was a mess.
A tornado had already cut through, carving a swath houses wide.
People were just starting to emerge.
It was the same funnel from Plainview, had to be. But it was bigger now, had stayed down longer. Was skipping, probably leaving craters out in the fields, twisting circle systems up into impossible shapes.
On the right side of the road, a boy in a sleeveless shirt and backwards cap stepped out from behind a fence, pulled something out into the open after him. A slender rifle.
He lifted it against the sky, pulling the trigger again and again, against the storm, even though it was gone, and all at once Jim Doe understood the world for a moment, and this boy’s place in it. That this is what you did.
At the dogleg off Main, the short little jag onto 70 to get back onto the road to Nazareth, Jim Doe had to stop.
The world was white, like snow.
The gin had exploded, was in the air all around, was in no hurry to settle.
One of its big corrugated tin tanks or elevators was rolling ponderously in the intersection, as if trying to decide which way to go.
Jim Doe dropped the Chevette quietly into reverse.
The tank was a steamroller, now.
It rocked Jim Doe’s way then back on itself, and then, improbably, it started collapsing. From the inside.
A truck.
A tall pick-up had come from the east, at stupid velocity, was cutting straight through the tank like the tank wasn’t even there.
A king cab dually with a meaty grill guard Jim Doe knew close-up.
The truck never even considered stopping.
For a flash Jim Doe saw the driver, a tall, thin man, his arms locked against the wheel, the side of his head bloody, his mouth open in a scream—he was screaming at the tank, screaming to get through it—and then the debris trailing off the truck fell away, along with a fender, both mirrors and the tailgate.
“You,”
Jim Doe said, and then just had to time to flinch away when the police cruiser came sliding around the side of the exploded tank, the giant bald driver fighting the wheel, hand-over-handing it, the Nebraska State Police car holding on for all it was worth, its light bar only hanging on by one bracket anymore, but still on, flashing red and blue, lighting up the cotton in the air.
The bald passenger had his thick arm out the window, was holding onto the side of the car, his other hand on the dash, the smeary snapshot of his eyes like skunkbit dogs Jim Doe had seen locked out in sheds, to see if they were going to turn. Dogs he’d been called out to put down.
The Nebraska car clipped the front of the Chevette just enough to straighten the Rangers back up, and then they were gone.
Jim Doe reached his shaking hand for the key, to turn the car back on.
The starter ground, ground. The nurse had warned him about this, apologized for it.
Jim Doe swallowed, breathed at last.
Just up the road was Nazareth. Home.
Above him was creation, violent and endless and angry.
Jim Doe started the car, kept his foot on the brake for a long moment, apologized in his head to Sarina and Agnes and Nazareth and turned the timid little car left, made himself part of this suicide carnival, driving into the storm at breakneck speeds, no ticket out, no nothing. Just the sky, hammering into the ground.
It was beautiful.
THIRTY-TWO23 April 1999, Earth, Texas
It was gone, Earth.
That simple.
The roads would still be there after the county came in, bulldozed all the rubble into some pit, but for now the town was a crater, a blight.
The Nebraska State Police Car was parked deadcenter on the blacktop, doors open, lightbar gone now, its push bumper up against where it couldn’t go any deeper.
To the left of the road were the ragged marks where the Ranger’s truck had stepped into the field, powered through, around, found part of the road again with its double set of rear tires.
Jim Doe parked the Chevette alongside the cruiser, left the key in the ignition.
The sky was still heavy, but the air was still. A group of birds were even drifting across now, maybe looking for a powerline to settle on, a tree to rest in.
“Good sign,” Jim Doe said about them, to no one, and then a leftover gust the birds hadn’t known about caught them, flung them out of whatever their path had been.
All the Beautiful Sinners Page 18