by Richard Cox
Evelyn smiled at him. It wasn’t a mean smile. She just wanted to play a game, a different kind of game. The game was wrong, but if they didn’t get caught then maybe it didn’t matter. His parents were in the kitchen breaking rules. Why couldn’t Adam also break rules?
“Okay,” he said to her.
“Okay. But you go first.”
Adam looked at the place between her legs. He wasn’t sure what to do. There wasn’t anything there but a crack. The room seemed to grow quiet as he looked closer. His heart began to beat very fast. He—
And then screaming. Screaming. His mother screaming. Carla screaming. Chuck thundering, his father a tornado that jerked Adam off the ground and carried him upstairs. Screeching and yelling and the medicine smell of his father’s breath and his mother’s scratchy, smoky coughing, and that night they slept in a hotel.
He could understand, cognitively, that what happened with Evelyn wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t Evelyn’s fault. She was five and he was four, and both of them were young, curious children. If you wanted to know where Evelyn’s knowledge of oral sex had come from, you could guess she had seen her parents doing it, or perhaps she’d been molested by someone. In any case, she had not understood the gravity of what she asked Adam to do, and neither had he. If there was human fault to be assigned, it belonged to the parents, who had reacted in a way that frightened the children. And later, as Adam’s parents introduced God into his life, they had made sure he felt guilty about every little transgression they noticed. Adam had grown up in a world where he loved and feared God and assumed the same from his parents. But now his mom and dad were divorced, and both of them were shacked up with lovers and had long ago stopped attending church. God had been a fad for them, the solution to an unpleasant problem, and when that problem left home the fad had been forgotten.
But Adam had been raised to believe in the Word of the Lord. Christian morals were the foundation of his value system, and he could not imagine a world where a man such as himself could reason his way out of the consequences of his poor decisions. At the same time, it was God who had sent Evelyn to tempt him, God who steered the tornado into town, and yes, it was God who placed Joe Henreid at the scene of the Driftwood house when they burned it down. In what kind of world could God be allowed to blame Adam for his decisions when it was God who had put him in these situations to begin with?
Not the kind of world where Adam cared to live.
He put his truck in gear and drove himself to the house in Tanglewood, where the victim of his worst crime had been laid to rest. On that night, years ago, there had been no house. Just a plot of red dirt.
There was a gasoline can in the bed of his pickup. Matches in his glove box. He was parked on Shady Lane, and the sun had just dipped below the horizon of roofs and trees.
In the early 80s these homes had been upscale and trendy and symbols of a temporary upturn in the economy. Now paint had faded and peeled, and cracks had appeared in masonry exteriors. Foundations had settled. Roof shingles were peeling and warped. Many years had passed without an injection of capital and the entire neighborhood was sagging under a burden it had never expected to carry.
When Adam was a kid, on a street like this, there would have been children playing and adults chatting and bicycles passing this way and that. Back then, if a stranger was parked at the curb, especially in an unmarked pickup, someone would have stopped to ask who he was and what he was doing.
Tonight, the street was empty. Everyone was indoors watching cable TV or browsing the Internet or both.
Adam didn’t want to hurt anyone. He would ring the doorbell and warn whoever was in the house, and once they were gone, once the house had burned to its foundation, the slab would be exposed. This would set the stage for Adam to come back and uncover the evidence of his childhood crime. In doing so he would lose his family, and though he could not imagine leaving his daughter behind, Bradie would be better off without him, anyway.
At 9:29 p.m., Adam removed the matchbook from the glove box. He stepped out of the truck and grabbed the gasoline can. If someone were watching from their window, they might come outside now and ask what he was doing.
No one did.
It was a single-story house. The front porch light was on, but the rest of the house was dark. Actually there was one window glowing yellow on the west side of the structure, what appeared to be a bedroom window with the curtains drawn. Adam stepped quietly past the glowing window and into the backyard. No light was on here. A quarter moon cast the trees and house in muted, silvery tones. He lifted the can and slung gasoline onto the brick wall of the house, onto the roof. Wood siding had been used in place of masonry around the back porch, and he splashed plenty of gasoline there. He orbited the house, spilling fuel into shrubs and flowerbeds, but gave the front door and sidewalk a wide berth. Then he walked back to the pickup and replaced the gasoline can. As dark as it was, Adam was still surprised someone hadn’t seen him. He had made no attempt at stealth except to wait for darkness. At any time someone could have looked out their window and confronted him. Or called the police.
No one did.
When Adam approached the house again, the smell of gasoline was choking and humid. He pulled the book of matches from his pants and struck one. He thought perhaps the match would ignite gas fumes and maybe burn him alive (he wouldn’t have minded this) but it didn’t. He kept waiting and nothing happened, so finally he tossed the match against the house. Before the match made contact with anything there was a FLOOMF! and nighttime became daytime. Flames leapt from the ground to the masonry to the roof and raced around the house in the blink of an eye. When Adam had inspected the entire perimeter of his work, he ran to the front door and beat on it as hard as he could. For good measure he rang the bell a few times in rapid succession. Then he walked to his truck, jumped in, and drove carefully away.
75
By the time they returned to the hotel, and David had said goodbye to Jonathan and Alicia, he was solidly drunk. They’d stopped for dinner at a steakhouse that was abysmal by coastal standards and he used the opportunity to publicly order a couple of drinks. On a visit to the bathroom, in private, he choked down what was left in his flask. This had left him too impaired to make any arrangements where Thomas was concerned, but that was okay because he didn’t plan on being awake much longer. Honestly he was pleased to have made it back to the hotel in one piece, and to have fooled Alicia and Jonathan into letting him get behind the wheel.
He discovered a bottle of scotch in the room, still a third full, and poured himself a nightcap. Then he switched on the television and found a documentary about astronomy. Apparently there was a star somewhere nearby that could explode at any time, and if it did, it could wipe out all the modern technology on Earth. That made David think of his iPhone, and how he hadn’t set an alarm to wake him in the morning. But when he reached into his pocket, the phone was nowhere to be found, and he decided to take a little nap before going to look for it.
Sometime later David woke up to the phone ringing. In a haze of sleep he reached around on the floor until he found it against the foot of the bed.
“David Clark,” he croaked.
“Get your shit together,” said a voice in the phone. It sounded like a kid’s voice.
“Who is this?”
“Set your alarm. When you wake up, arrange the plane first thing. I’m expecting you at 11 tomorrow morning. So get your shit together and don’t be late.”
“Who is this?” he asked again. “Thomas?”
“11 o’clock. Don’t be late. And get some rest.”
76
As a child, Alicia had loved to read about the supernatural and the fantastic, especially in novels where the characters seemed like real people. Vividly-rendered details and imagery made the impossible seem possible and could blur the boundaries between what happened on the page and what was real life. In her adult years she had drifted away from high-concept stories in lieu of serious fiction, sin
ce literary novels more closely aligned with her own experience.
Now the boundaries of real life and fiction were being distorted again, this time in reverse. The circumstances surrounding Todd and his son strained credibility, especially the printed page given to them by Pete Willis that suggested disaster tomorrow in Wichita Falls. But her story with Jonathan might have even been more unbelievable. At the moment they were back in his hotel room, buzzing a little after drinks at dinner, and he kept looking at her in a way that left little doubt about his intentions. Alicia wanted to resist him for no other reason than the sheer corniness of the scene itself: two childhood friends reunited because darkness from their past had returned to haunt them again. Could she find any reason to be attracted to him beyond this contrived situation? Like maybe his intelligence? His systematic analysis of their high concept predicament? The lovely, intense curiosity that deepened his eyes whenever he looked at her?
Jonathan was standing at the bar, using his iPhone to Google phrases from the page Pete had given them. Every time he glanced up at her, he was smiling confidently. She was alternatively annoyed and turned on by it.
“It seems this Power of the Cyclone story is a real Caddo Indian legend,” he explained. “And the language of the Wichita is based on Caddoan, so the connection makes sense. But I can’t find where anyone named Tawakoni Jim ever visited Wichita Falls or placed a curse on the city.”
“What about the weather models Thomas mentioned?” she asked him.
Jonathan tapped away on his phone.
“Okay, it looks like that’s called the ECMWF. But I don’t see anything about a terrible weather event. It’s just a bunch of maps I can’t decipher. My weather app says we do have a chance of storms tomorrow, though.”
“Like tornadoes?”
“It says, ‘Windy, mostly cloudy, and turning cooler. Chance of storms in the morning. Some could be severe.”
“I should call my dad,” Alicia said. “He hasn’t chased in a while but I bet he would know what these models are and what they mean.”
“Either way it appears we have a chance of severe storms tomorrow. That’s pretty significant when you consider the page Pete Willis showed us. As if Thomas knew tomorrow’s forecast two years ago.”
“So Thomas is the boy bestowed with the Power of the Cyclone,” Alicia said, “and tomorrow he’s going to wipe out the city with another tornado. Is that what you’ve come up with?”
“It sounds absurd, doesn’t it?” Jonathan approached the couch and sat down next to her. His eyes searched her own. “I don’t want to believe this kind of crap any more than you do. But let’s say it’s true. What would you do if you knew this would be your last night on earth?”
“My last night on earth? That’s your best line?”
Jonathan smiled. He wasn’t even trying to be subtle.
“You don’t seem to be taking this too seriously,” she said.
“It is serious. But it’s also been a rough week and it might be nice to relax a little. Since we have no idea what’s going to happen tomorrow or what we can do about it.”
“I guess you’re right,” she said. “Do you want to go somewhere for a drink?”
He was sitting on her left and facing her directly. His right leg rested against hers. He looked into her eyes and her heart fluttered a little.
“No, I don’t want to go somewhere for a drink. Do you?”
“I suppose not,” she conceded.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, but I don’t want to regret what I didn’t do tonight.”
She might have balked at Jonathan’s earnestness if he hadn’t chosen that moment to lean in and kiss her.
And when he put his hands on her skin, Alicia remembered the red wicker basket, the curious look in his seventh-grade eyes, the sound of his intelligent voice over the phone. She wondered if the years between those childhood moments and tonight could be considered irrelevant space between the pages of her life. As his lips drifted across her face, as they nuzzled into her neck, as she felt the weight of him upon her, Alicia wondered what the next chapter of her life might bring.
The next paragraph.
The next line.
77
Something was wrong with reality. Adam had begun to realize this while he waited for the blaze to be brought under control, while he watched from a distance as the fire trucks packed up their equipment and eventually departed. He wanted to understand why he’d made certain choices over the years, why he had veered so far away from the innocence that was fundamental to every little boy and girl born into the world. But when he closed his eyes and looked back, when he reviewed the anthology of memories that should have composed the story of his life, Adam was alarmed to discover very little in the way of actual content. He could recall several events from the past few days, a few more from the summer when he met Todd Willis, and even the visceral scene of the tornado bearing down upon him in 1979. But the rest of his life, the many days and weeks and moments that should have comprised the bulk of his existence, was nowhere to be found.
He watched the fire trucks drive away, the police cars follow soon after, and eventually Shady Lane returned to its earlier lonely stillness. He waited a little longer to make sure no one had remained behind, like a curious arson investigator or detective. Sure enough, an aging fellow with an impressive beer gut eventually emerged from the trees behind the house. He looked up and down the street, climbed into a government-looking Ford sedan and drove away.
Still, Adam waited another full hour before he moved.
And when he finally walked toward the site of the burned house, carrying an electric demolition tool and an extension cord, Adam began to wonder if the missing scenes of his life could perhaps be uncovered through some archaeological expedition that would reveal heretofore unknown adventures and calamities. Maybe he had once hiked into the Grand Canyon. Or maybe he had taken Rachel on a long-ago vacation to explore the shadowy depths of Carlsbad Caverns. It was even possible, when he was thirteen years old, that Adam had experienced a psychotic break when he realized someone might report him to the police for burning down the house on Driftwood.
If he could not remember most of his life, then it followed that existence itself was nonsensical. Why bother to live each day when only a small fraction of those days could be recalled later? Why worry about the consequences of your actions when you could not be sure what actions you had previously taken?
The pointless nature of things was a kind of liberation.
Adam reached the house, which was a charred ruin, damp and steaming and smoky. He stumbled around the site, hoping for a clue that would help him decide where to dig. But in the end there was no way to locate the exact spot because too many years had passed. Instead, Adam selected a nice, slender crack on the exposed foundation, a spot that could’ve been the right one. Maybe. He put down the tool and strode toward the adjacent house, spooling out his cord. He found an electrical outlet on the porch and pushed in his plug. Then he returned to the exposed slab.
A few hours earlier, this structure had been divided into living rooms and bedrooms and bathrooms, had sheltered a family’s love and life, but now it was reduced to a burnt, hissing skeleton. Adam located again the crack in the concrete and pointed his chisel at it. Threaded his fingers into the grip and pulled the trigger.
The crack opened millimeters at a time. The concrete screamed and squealed.
It sang.
PART SEVEN
June 19–20, 1983
ZONE FORECAST PRODUCT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NORMAN OK
TXZ086-192200-
WICHITA-
INCLUDING THE CITIES OF ... WICHITA FALLS
942 AM CDT SUN JUN 19 1983
.TODAY ... SUNNY AND HOT. HIGH AROUND 111. WINDS SW 15-25 MPH AND GUSTY.
.TONIGHT ... CLEAR. LOW AROUND 82. SW WIND 15-25 MPH.
.MONDAY ... SUNNY AND VERY HOT. HIGH AROUND 112. SOUTH WINDS 20-30 MPH.
&
nbsp; .MONDAY NIGHT ... CLEAR. LOW IN THE LOW 80S. SOUTH WINDS AROUND 25 MPH.
.TUESDAY ... SUNNY AND VERY HOT. HIGH NEAR 113.
.WEDNESDAY ... SUNNY AND VERY HOT. HIGH NEAR 114.
78
On the day after they burned down the Driftwood house, the sky was unreal, like puffy white clouds painted upon fierce blue marble. A day so beautiful was punishment to Adam, a way to remind him of the terrible thing they’d done the night before. With the sun so bright and the wind only a whisper, the black skeleton of the house was rendered in exquisite detail. Adam walked by again and again, unable to resist looking at it, and finally on his last visit he saw Joe Henreid watching him from the edge of the woods. Surely this was not the reason he had been drawn to the ruined house, on the chance he might run into the boy who held Adam’s future in the palm of his hand?
He stopped walking and stared at Joe. Even from this distance he could see a predatory look in the kid’s eyes. At thirteen, Adam was old enough to understand that his entire life would be defined by how he handled this situation, but he was not mature enough to know how to proceed. As he approached Joe, however, he began to hear a voice in his mind. Whispering something to him. Probably he was just imagining this voice, but there was also the chance that someone was trying to direct his actions in this scene, someone offstage that he could hear but couldn’t see.
Finally, Adam reached Joe and they walked into the woods together, as if both of them understood what would happen next.
“Just so you know,” Joe explained, “I went there to help you guys. You told me to do something for you, so that’s what I tried to do. But then you ignored me.”
“We didn’t know you were there until we were leaving. We were caught off guard and didn’t know what to do. How did you even know we would be there?”