The Stormchasers: A Novel

by Jenna Blum

  “Oh my God,” says Karena. She shakes her head. How could she have been so stupid? How could she not have seen it before? This is how she’ll find her brother. She clicks on the Whirlwind link.

  6

  Although she has excellent reason to be, Karena doesn’t consider herself phobic about storms. Like every native Minnesotan, she has more than a nodding acquaintance with them. She’s accustomed to lightning, thunder, hail. She knows how to recognize a wall cloud, the lowered part of a rotating storm from which a tornado might come. She’s used to her summer evening programming being interrupted by the network meteorologists using Doppler radar to show her where the dangerous weather will be. If the sky turns green, if the sirens crank up, Karena goes to the basement.

  That’s it. No screaming meemies. No flashbacks, no hysterics. Karena simply takes precautions, as any prudent person would, to stay out of harm’s way.

  Which leads her to question, as she slips into the back of Conference Room B in Oklahoma City’s Gateway Hotel: Who are these people?

  The room is full of Whirlwind chasers and their clients, in the middle of orientation. As she takes the nearest seat, smiling an apology at the woman beside her, Karena looks at the guides with special curiosity. These three men, designated by their Whirlwind T-shirts as the tour’s leaders and protectors for the next week, are some of the most respected chasers in the field. They might know Charles, might have had contact with him as recently as a few days ago. They are Charles’s peers. But what makes them dedicate their lives to launching themselves into weather everyone else is running away from? Why would anyone do that, unless he was crazy? And speaking of which, the tourists. Karena looks at the pleasant-faced people sitting around the conference table, listening attentively to the tour director, Dan Mitchell. Karena counts seven guests, a mixed bag of men and women—which surprises her, as she’d expected mostly adolescent males would sign up for this kind of adrenaline ride. And some of them are middle-aged too. Why have they paid two thousand dollars a pop to get close to a muscular, roving column of air that could easily kill them? Don’t you know this is real? Karena wants to ask them. Why don’t you stay home where it’s safe?

  As unobtrusively as possible, she takes out her steno pad and sets her little recorder on the table. She is officially here on assignment, having persuaded her editor to let her write a feature on stormchase tours. And early this morning, on standby at the Wichita airport, Karena talked the Whirlwind president, Tim Tarrant, into letting her tag along on this one. You know the van’s all booked up, right? Tim had said. You’ll have to follow along in your own vehicle. Can you do that? You have experience driving in bad weather? Karena had hesitated for a second, then said yes. Then go rent yourself a rugged vehicle with four-wheel drive and high clearance, Tim told her. And for the love of Pete, get full-coverage insurance. Karena has accomplished all this in the past hour since landing in Oklahoma City, but still, she is late. Orientation is halfway over.

  “All right,” says Dan Mitchell, having dispensed with introductions and moved on to logistics. He is a huge, blond, snub-nosed guy with freckles, consummately ordinary in appearance, nobody Karena would turn to look at on the street. Same with the two guides flanking him: One is gray-bearded and wearing a floppy fishing hat; the other is a guy about Karena’s age, short and stocky like a bouncer with a face as round as a pancake pan. Not what Karena would expect from some of the wizards of the chasing world, as they are regarded on Stormtrack.

  “Let’s talk about what you can expect from this next week on your big weather safari,” Dan Mitchell says in a monotone, leafing through a three-ring binder. “How many of you have come on this tour expecting to see flying cows?”

  Some chuckles from the tourists at this reference to the airborne livestock in the movie Twister. The heavy young man across from Karena raises his hand.

  “How about a couple of tornadoes?” Dan asks.

  More laughter, and now all hands go up, including, belatedly and reluctantly, Karena’s.

  “Good,” says Dan. “And we’re going to try to make that happen for you. But unlike what you might have seen in the movies and on TV, tornadoes don’t usually fall from the sky one after the other. They’re a lot harder to find. Most tornadoes last about thirty seconds and touch down over rural areas. And that can happen anywhere in Tornado Alley, from North Dakota to Texas. So guess what we’re going to be spending a lot of our time doing?”

  “A bloody lot of driving,” mutters the young woman next to Karena in a British accent.

  “A whole lot of driving,” says Dan Mitchell. “Basically, we’re going to be playing a game of chess with the atmosphere. Instead of chasing the storms, we want to put ourselves in position to catch them as they go up.”

  He leafs through the binder. “Some days the atmosphere may not cooperate,” he says, sounding as though he’s reading, “and we’ll go see local attractions, like Carhenge, or the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota, or the World’s Largest Ball of Twine. . . .”

  “You know, I’ve been chasing nineteen years and I’ve never seen that damned thing,” interjects the gray-haired guide. “What’s it look like?”

  The pancake-face guide leans past Dan. “Twiney,” he says.

  “Thanks, Kevin,” says the gray-bearded guide.

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “Okay, since you guys are obviously in talkative moods,” says Dan, “maybe you want to take it from here. Dennis?”

  “Happy to,” says the gray-bearded guide. He steps forward and flashes a peace sign. “Greetings,” he says. “As your driver on this tour, not only do I have the privilege of transporting you hundreds of miles and getting you as close to storms as possible, I’ll also be watching out for your personal safety—as will we all,” he adds, looking at his fellow guides. “Who can tell me what the biggest danger is while chasing?”

  “Uh, tornadoes?” says a maroon-haired woman in cat’s-eye glasses.

  “Wah,” says Dennis, holding up his arms in an X. “Wrong.”

  “Lightning?”

  “Second most dangerous. One more.”

  “Driving,” says Karena despite herself.

  Dennis points at her. “Bingo,” he says. “Bad drivers. Like Dan said, most of the storms we’ll see will be in the middle of nowhere, like in Farmer John’s field, but we’ll probably be sharing that field with a hundred other chasers. And believe it or not, not all chasers are responsible, traffic-law-abiding citizens like myself. Some of them get a leetle too excited when those tubes start to drop from the sky, and they’re not watching what they’re doing. So please, people, when we let you out of the van to take pictures, don’t wander into the road. We like you the way you are, with your entrails on the inside.”

  “Entrails,” says the husky teenager across from Karena, and hoots softly.

  “Also there’s wildlife,” Dennis continues, counting on his fingers, “wasps and rattlesnakes. Don’t wander into the high grass. And yes, lightning, if you’re close enough to feel rain you’re close enough to be struck, so don’t hug any telephone poles or trees. Barbed wire, try not to run into any. And wind—if you’re the last person out of the van, make sure you close the door. Otherwise it can slam shut and take somebody’s arm off.”

  He turns to the pancake-face guide, Kevin. “What’d I miss?” he says.

  “Hail,” says Kevin. “As a rule we stay away from it, since some of those suckers can get up to softball size, and you don’t want to see what that does to a windshield. But if we get in a situation where hail’s unavoidable, wad up your jacket or fleece or whatever and put it between yourself and the window. You’ll have to remember to do this on your own,” he adds, “since once hail really gets going it’ll be too loud in the van for you to hear us.”

  Karena shudders. She has forgotten about this until now. Kevin looks at her quizzically, and she shrugs and smiles.

  “Thank you, Kevin,” says Dan Mitchell, deadpan. “I think that about cover
s it—”

  “Wait, hold up,” says Kevin. He has a rich, pattery voice, like a big-city DJ’s. “Liquid intake,” he warns, “don’t intake too much, because we try to make a pit stop every couple of hours, but if we’re on a storm, that’s not always possible.”

  Groans from the female guests. “That’s when you make the Magic Stall,” murmurs the woman next to Karena.

  “What’s the Magic Stall?” Karena asks from the side of her mouth.

  “It’s when you wait ’til everyone’s across the road looking at the storm, then you pop ’round the other side of the van, open two doors, and cop a squat. Voilà, Magic Stall.”

  “Got it,” Karena whispers.

  “Ladies,” says Kevin. He stops talking to fix them with a stern gaze. “Do we need to separate you?”

  Karena’s seatmate claps a hand over her mouth, while Karena sits up very straight and shakes her head and says, “No. No, sir. We’re done.”

  “I think we’re all done, actually,” says Dan Mitchell. “Unless anyone has any questions . . .”

  The tourists look around at one another and smile.

  “Okay,” says Dan, “then let’s grab a quick lunch at the Panera next door and be back at the van in half an hour. Go.”

  As everyone stretches and stands and shuts off camcorders, Karena turns to the woman next to her. She is in her mid-twenties, Karena guesses, with hair dyed so sooty black it has a purple sheen and two piercings in her right eyebrow, but there is something winsome about her thin, foxy face.

  “Karena Jorge,” says Karena, “Minneapolis Ledger. I’ll be following you on this tour.”

  “Yeah?” says the woman. “Cool. I’m Fern. Fern Michaels.”

  “Northern England?” Karena guesses.

  “Yeah,” says Fern, corkscrewing the word up at the end to indicate surprise. “How’d you guess? Most Yanks think I’m bloody Australian.”

  “I was married to a Brit,” says Karena. “He was a Souf Londoner, though.”

  “Good on ya, mate,” says Fern. “So you a virgin then?”

  “Pardon?” says Karena.

  Fern grins. “Is this your first tour?”

  “Oh. Yes. Is it that obvious?”

  “Yeah,” says Fern. “No offense.”

  “None taken. I’ve got a lot to learn, that’s for sure. Thanks for the Magic Stall tip.”

  “No problem,” says Fern. “And that’s nothing. Wait’ll you meet your first shower pet.”

  “Shower pet,” Karena repeats to herself as Fern stands up.

  “Speaking of stalls,” she says, “I’m off to the loo. See you at Panera then?” and she walks quickly across the conference room.

  Karena gathers her things and catches up with Dan Mitchell outside the Gateway’s revolving door, where he is overseeing the other two guides as they wrestle a mountain of luggage into a big white van. It is like watching a Tetris game, Karena thinks. The van bristles with antennas and has a longhorn skull wired to its grille.

  She says, “Dan? Hi, I’m Karena Jorge, Minneapolis Ledger, your media escort on this tour. My editor threw me on this story last-minute—I hope Tim Tarrant had a chance to warn you I was coming?”

  Dan nods. “Welcome aboard,” he says, in exactly the same tone he might use to say, Walk the plank.

  “I’m sorry I was late,” Karena says. “It took a while to find the right rental at the airport.”

  “What’re you driving?” Dan asks.

  “The red Jeep,” says Karena, pointing, “that Grand Cherokee Laredo.”

  “That’s good,” says Dan. “I don’t suppose you have a ham in it.”

  “A what?”

  “We communicate by ham radio,” says Dan, “but lacking that, you’ll have to rely on your cell phone, and in most areas we’ll be in, the coverage is pretty poor. You’ll have to stay right behind us if you can so we can keep an eye on you.”

  “Okay,” says Karena, offering her brightest smile, “I can do that.”

  “You might want to pick up a scanner at a truck stop too,” Dan says. “That way at least you’ll be able to hear us.”

  “Scanner,” says Karena, writing this down. Is Dan always this taciturn, or is he annoyed by the additional responsibility of having to watch out for a green reporter tailing his van? Karena doesn’t want to burden the tour, but she is on assignment. Not to mention her ulterior motive.

  “By the way,” she begins, and is about to ask if by any chance Dan knows a chaser named Charles Hallingdahl when Dan overrides her.

  “If you want lunch,” he says, “you’d better go get it now. We’ve got a long drive ahead.”

  “Oh,” says Karena, realizing she missed this part of orientation too. “Where are we going?”

  “Kansas,” says Dan, “to get in position for tomorrow.”

  Karena laughs, and Dan glances at her for the first time. “What’s funny?” he asks.

  “I just came from Kansas,” says Karena. “I’ll be totally retracing my steps.”

  “Welcome to stormchasing,” Dan says. He nods at Karena and walks off across the lot.

  7

  At first, this is fun. After arriving late and spending the night in Hays, Kansas, the Whirlwind Tour continues north the next morning, toward Nebraska. During briefing Dan tells them he’s optimistic about the severe weather potential that afternoon near Ogallala, which means Karena is hopeful about finding Charles there. Meanwhile, as the drive wears on, she allows herself to forget why she’s on this trip at all. She feels as though she’s playing hooky, a sense reinforced by the fact that she’s not even wearing her regular clothes. She didn’t pack enough for a week’s trip when leaving Minneapolis, so this morning at the Hays Walmart, while the rest of the tour was at breakfast, Karena picked up a new wardrobe in addition to a scanner. Her pink madras shirt, a country cowgirl item Karena would never wear at home, exudes the sour smell of cheap new cotton. She drives along behind the van in a blissful dream, watching the colors of the land bleach as the sun climbs, listening to the guides’ chatter on her scanner.

  They cross into Nebraska and turn west on Interstate 80. There is nothing to look at out here but green corn, the faded highway, and the denim-blue sky. The sun shimmers off the van. The towns are an hour apart, trying their best to lure tourists with attractions like Harold G. Warp’s Pioneer Village or the birthplace of Kool-Aid in Hastings. The Platte River sometimes runs alongside the Interstate, invisible behind a line of glistening cottonwoods.

  Karena knows a lot of people who hate this part of the country, who get agoraphobic just thinking about all this nothingness beneath the immense sky. Karena loves it. She loves everything about it. She loves the ruler flatness of the land, which makes her want to gallop across it on a horse, singing at the top of her lungs. She loves that 80 percent of her vision is sky. She loves that she can see everything around her in every direction. This is probably a trait inherited from Karena’s pioneering ancestors, who would have wanted to see whatever danger was coming at them, blizzard, prairie fire, locust cloud, tornado. When they pass the Great Platte River Road Archway Monument in Kearney, Karena cheers and honks her horn. She chants from memory the verse featured on a plaque in the museum, which she and Charles were made to memorize on their third-grade field trip here:

  The cowards never leftway

  The weak died along the way

  Only the strong survived

  They were the pioneers!

  8

  By four o’clock, when they stop at the Sapp Bros travel plaza in Ogallala, some of the novelty has worn off. Karena is tired, rumpled, and cranky. Her face is oily from hours in the Jeep. Stumbling through the convenience store toward the ladies’ room, she feels as though she hasn’t blinked in hours. And this is only the first day. Karena wants to groan. Maybe it is the onset of the Dreads, but this whole trip suddenly feels ridiculous.

  After washing her face and blotting it with a paper towel Karena feels a little better, and she walks back throu
gh the store to show Charles’s mullet photo to the clerks. As usual, nobody has seen him, and Karena starts to wonder if this is a case of the hair wearing the person. Maybe the mullet is just too distracting. She strolls through the aisles, past the atlases and cans of refried beans, the snack food and automotive parts and Huskers memorabilia, comparing the photo with the men she sees. She’ll start in here and work her way out. She rules out any guy under six feet, since Charles won’t have shrunk, and the overweight, because Dr. Brewster said Charles is in good shape. Other than that, any male about Karena’s age is fair game, and she stands by the ATM, the lottery ticket machine, even the men’s room, subtracting a baseball cap and glasses from this guy, a beard and mustache from that. She has the strong sense that Charles is nearby—what Charles used to call their twindar. She just can’t see him.

  Once she’s covered the convenience store, Karena buys a pair of awful white sunglasses from the spinning stand and wanders back outside. There she stops. The travel plaza has become a stormchasers’ tailgate party. The parking lot is a maze of vehicles with radio and radar antennas, Skywarn stickers, orange bubble lights on their roofs. Chasers wander among them, drinking Big Gulps and eating microwave pizza. Karena often hears single women ask where all the men are. Now she knows the answer. She thinks she might propose a second article, this one for the Ledger’s “Lifestyle” section. Every unattached woman in Minneapolis will be taking stormchase tours.

  Karena stands on tiptoe, scanning the lot for a slender six-footer with golden-blond hair. Charles is nowhere in sight, so Karena looks for her guides, figuring it’s best to start close to home. But the Whirlwind team is busy. Dan is in the driver’s seat of the White Whale, as Karena has nicknamed the van, watching the radar. Dennis is lecturing some of the tourists, gesturing animatedly to the sky. And Kevin is pacing the periphery, talking on a cell phone. Karena sighs, then plunges into the chasers, systematically working the lot from left to right. She doesn’t bother with the photo this time, just asks if anyone knows a chaser named Charles Hallingdahl. Many say they do—they refer to him as Chuck—and look at her curiously or impassively from beneath baseball caps and behind sunglasses. But nobody has seen Chuck Hallingdahl, not this season, sorry. Good luck, though. The Stormtrack party line.