The Stormchasers: A Novel

by Jenna Blum

  Charles, she said. There’s no funnel, Charles. It’s just a storm.

  Charles looked at her and smiled, his face full of love and pity.

  Oh, K, he said, don’t you see it? and then he opened the door and took off running. He sprinted down to the highway first, causing a sedan to honk and swerve, then hooked right into the Elmers’ feed corn and disappeared. In the end, it took Sheriff Cushing and two deputies five hours to find him, all the way out on the Swenson farm having tea and coffee cake with that scary old German lady, Mrs. Swenson, and bring him back.

  Now Karena sits up and rubs her eyes. She is thinking how amazing it is that as mythic as the story quickly grew—Did you hear what that crazy Hallingdahl kid did? Tried to steal his own dad’s car! Ran almost all the way to Iowa!—nobody ever figured out that Charles was manic-depressive, as the diagnosis was called then. They just thought he was a joker, a cutup, a wild card. They were distracted, when Charles came home, by his dislocated shoulder—the Hallingdahls never did learn how he’d done that—and his numerous infected scratches from barbed wire. And Frank and Siri and Karena worked very hard to keep the diagnosis a secret. We don’t talk about this, Frank said, as they drove home from the Mayo, leaving Charles behind in a little room, sedated. And, as a rule, Karena rarely has.

  She hears a scuffle at the door that means one of her roommates is inserting the key, and by the time Fern and Alicia tumble in, laughing, Karena has mustered a smile.

  “Hey,” she says. “How was dinner?”

  “Brilliant,” says Fern. She holds up a Styrofoam box. “We brought you back some chicken-fried steak, in case you’d want food before the party.”

  “What party?”

  “Marla’s fiftieth birthday,” says Alicia. “She specially requested we bring you.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” says Karena. “It sounds great, but I really should . . .”

  “Come on,” says Fern. “All work and no play makes a dull chaser chick.”

  “I wouldn’t mind an early night either,” Alicia says diplomatically. “I’ll go over with you just to say hi, if you want.”

  Karena stands up. She’s tired of sitting around feeling bad. And the calls can wait a little while. If Charles has settled into the vicinity for the night, what difference will an hour make? And if he hasn’t, there’s nothing she can do about it but try again tomorrow.

  “Okay,” she says. “You twisted my arm. One drink.”

  They cross the parking lot under a high, soft purple sky, bats dive-bombing the Sandhills’ pines. Fern knocks on the door to Room 117 and it flies open.

  “Welcome!” Marla says. “So glad you could make it.” In addition to her cat’s-eye glasses, she is wearing sequined red sneakers, a T-shirt that says “Don’t MAKE me get the Flying Monkeys!” and a black trucker cap with flames on it.

  “Wow,” says Karena. “That’s some headgear.”

  “Thank you,” Marla says modestly. “I just thought it said fifty better than anything else.”

  The three women file in, wishing Marla a happy birthday. Pete, her husband, turns from the impromptu bar on the dresser. “Ladies,” he says. “Drink? We’ve got this”—he holds out a bottle of Jägermeister—“or Chuck Norris.”

  “What’s Chuck Norris?” Karena asks.

  “Vodka and Red Bull,” says Pete, swirling a handle of vicious red liquid. “Smooth by night, but it kicks your ass in the morning.”

  “Oh my,” says Alicia, who is, Karena remembers, a fairly devout Christian.

  “Yes please,” says Fern.

  “Karena?”

  “Sure,” says Karena. “It’s research.”

  She accepts a keg cup full of Chuck Norris, thanks Pete, and looks around. Everyone who’s anyone is here—almost. Dennis is holding court in the corner, fishing hat bobbing animatedly, telling war stories. “. . . so I jumped out and scooped some of ’em up,” he is saying, “put ’em in the cooler, and that night we had hail cubes in our drinks. HAH!” Alistair is intently watching Twister on a mini DVD, Scout sitting beside him. Dan Mitchell stops by to wish Marla an unsmiling happy birthday from the doorway. But where is Kevin? Karena has expected to see him here, freshly showered and smelling of Old Spice, mingling like a good guide should. She’s a little annoyed by how disappointed she is that he’s not. She bumps cups with Alicia, who sips her Chuck Norris and hastily sets it on the floor. Karena grins and takes a swallow of her own. The drink tastes like children’s cherry cough syrup and goes down with alarming ease.

  Scout nudges Karena with a foot. “Hey, Mystery Lady,” she says. “Come sit by me,” and she pats the bedspread next to her.

  “Okay,” says Karena, settling in. “Why am I the Mystery Lady?”

  “Because we don’t know anything about you,” says Scout. “You’re always behind us in the caboose.” She smiles. “How’s it going back there, anyway?”

  “Very well, thank you,” says Karena, “especially now that I’ve stopped freaking out and driving away.”

  “Well, you’ve got a good guide now,” says Scout. She winks. “I’d say a smitten one too.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” Karena says. “He has to be nice to me. That’s his job. . . . And how about you?” she asks. “Are you still liking the tour now that nobody’s a stranger anymore? Or is the honeymoon over?”

  “Yup,” Scout says, “let me off, I’m done.” She laughs. With her crinkly blond bob and white smile, she reminds Karena a little of her mom, Siri. Scout has that slightly leathery look too, though hers is from being outdoors instead of marinating in smoke. Back in California, Scout is a professional equestrienne.

  “Just kidding. Actually, I’m loving it,” she says. She swirls her drink, which since it’s clear is either water or straight vodka, and takes a thoughtful sip. “When I came out here I thought it was just this year’s flavor. Every year I try something I haven’t done before, like fly-fishing or dude ranching. But you know, this might be it for me. I think I might be hooked.”

  “Wow, really?” says Karena. “Already? On what?”

  “Oh, I like the rhythm of chasing,” Scout says. “Waking up every morning not knowing where you’re going to land that night or what’s going to happen. Going places you can’t see any other way—places that don’t even exist anywhere else, like this,” she says, and toasts the room. “And the people are so great, and then there’re the storms, of course. I know we haven’t seen a really big one yet, but that one yesterday by Ogallala—that was amazing, wasn’t it?”

  “It was,” says Karena.

  “I’m not religious,” says Scout, “but that storm made me think I could be. It was like . . . communion, to be that small in comparison to something but still a part of it, something so much bigger than yourself.”

  “Now that is a great quote,” says Karena. “Do you mind if I use it?” She has forgotten her recorder—she has to do better—but she uses the Sandhills’ scratch pad from the nightstand. Even as Scout repeats the quote, though, Karena is thinking she’s heard or read something like it before. Where . . . And then she remembers. Charles, Charles saying, It’s so beautiful, K, I swear it’s almost enough to make you believe in God.

  “Okay, everybody,” Marla calls, and the music stops. She beckons them over to the round table. “Come here—you’ve got to see this. Birthday girl’s orders.”

  “What is it?” Alicia asks, craning.

  “Only the funniest video ever taken,” says Marla, “of the very best birthday, by the very best husband,” and she grabs Pete’s cheeks and gives him such a long, passionate kiss that his bald spot glows bright pink.

  “Okay, Marl,” he says when she releases him, “maybe go a little easier on the firewater.”

  “Whatever,” she says and twirls her hands, reeling her guests in. “Everyone ready? Hit play, honey.”

  Pete does, and the screen, which shows a frozen Marla standing next to a convenience store display of hats, comes to life. Karena recognizes the pla
ce as the Chevron station they gassed up in earlier, in Chadron, after Carhenge. Marla winks at the camera. Hi, she announces, I’m Marla Johannssen, and I’m on a mission to find just the right hat for my birthday. She turns, puts on a pink cowgirl hat, shoots her fingers at the camera and says, Peew! Peew! Shakes her head sadly and puts it back. Chooses a mesh and foam feed cap, about which she pronounces in a Barry White voice, Sexy. Then spies the hat with the flames, which she pounces on and holds up and says, Oh, this is it. She crams it on and adjusts the brim.

  What are you, honey? prompts Pete, off camera.

  The new face of fifty! Marla says and throws her head back for a wolf howl.

  Then the rack starts to tremble, and a man pops out from behind the hats. He makes a face of astonishment, throws out his hand, and shakes it at the lens as if to say No no no no no to the paparazzi, then shrinks from view. A few seconds later, he glides into the other side of the frame with a rose between his teeth. He presents it to Marla, says Happy Birthday!, kisses her cheek, and leans forward to grin into the camera. Then he moonwalks smoothly backward until he is off-screen.

  Everyone is in stitches.

  “That is hilarious,” says Alicia. “Where did he come from?”

  “I don’t know,” says Marla, “but don’t you just love him?” She turns to her husband. “Are you sure you didn’t pay him?”

  Pete shakes his head. “I think he came straight from the meth lab, honey.”

  “No way,” says Scout. “He’s too cute for that. Did you save the rose?”

  “No,” says Marla, looking sheepish. “It was chocolate. I ate it.”

  “He’s a bit of all right, isn’t he,” says Fern. “I wouldn’t kick him out of bed for eating biscuits. Could we watch it again?”

  “Sure,” says Marla.

  Alicia leans over to tap Karena, her long dark hair brushing Karena’s arm.

  “Hey,” she says. “Are you all right?”

  Because Karena is staring at the laptop with her hands clamped to her cheeks.

  “Karena,” says Alicia. “Do you want to go? Do you need some air?”

  Karena looks around.

  “What?” she says. “Oh. Sure. That’s a good idea. I am feeling a little woozy.”

  She smiles at Alicia and waves away her offer to help, then gets up to leave. But in the doorway she looks back at the laptop, on which the man is again popping out from behind the hat rack. He is tall, slender, with dark blond hair and skin darker than that. As Karena has imagined, he has a scruff of black beard. Other than that, though, he isn’t much as she’s envisioned him, exhausted and skinny and ragged.

  On the contrary, he appears to be glowing with good health. He leans into the camera, that grin like a slice of white watermelon in his tanned face filling the screen, then starts gliding backward. Charles always did do a good moonwalk, Karena thinks. She bursts from the room, startling Dennis who has stepped out for a smoke, and strides out across the lot.

  14

  For a few minutes she runs around like a chicken with its head cut off—Karena has had the unpleasant privilege of witnessing this on her grandparents’ farm, and now she imagines she knows how it feels. She jogs to the entrance of the lot and looks up and down Highway 20, as if Charles might actually have been at the party and just driven away. Then she turns and scans the Sandhills’ grounds. She is so mad, at Charles and at herself. How could she have missed him at the gas station? Where was she, the ladies’ room, showing Charles’s picture to the checkout girl? And how could Charles have missed her? Karena has always thought, given the childhood accuracy of the twindar, that if she got that close to Charles, she would just know. Apparently not. Either she has had really, really bad luck or Charles is playing some sort of game.

  Karena has checked with the Sandhills receptionist earlier, and Charles isn’t here. But she hasn’t called the rest of the motels yet, nor hospitals or campgrounds, so she hurries back toward her room. Then she sees the lamp on and stops. Alicia has come back early after all and is sitting with her head bent over a thick book, one of her meteorology texts or maybe the Bible she carries in her backpack. Karena reverses direction and heads for the lobby. It’s empty, and as she dings the bell and waits for the receptionist, she watches the TV over the couch. It is showing the Weather Channel, as most televisions seem to be out here. The graphics show a big red blob sliding down from Canada to eclipse Montana, Wyoming, and the Dakotas. Tomorrow’s severe weather.

  “Help you?” says the receptionist, coming out to the desk. She is wearing a shirt that might be a hospital johnny, thin blue material imprinted with teddy bears.

  “Do you have a local phone book?” Karena asks.

  “Yellow Pages in the corner,” the receptionist says. She gazes at the TV for a moment, then wishes Karena a good night and disappears back behind her curtain.

  Karena sits on the couch and makes her calls from a phone with a curly cord on it. Her brother is not registered anywhere. At the campgrounds, she gets mostly recordings. At the hospitals, weary or indifferent voices confirm no Charles, Chuck, or C. Hallingdahl has been checked or brought in. Not that this is a total surprise to Karena. He looked amazing on Marla’s video. But sometimes that antic good humor was a signifier of his mania, of bad things to come, and what if he is nearly full blown? Or already there? Or is careening around doing something awful, then tomorrow will start his descent? Into the Black, he used to call it. Karena puts her head back and shuts her eyes against tears of frustration and fear.

  She must sleep, the vodka and empty stomach and long hours of the road hitting her all at once, because when she wakes the TV is off and the sunburst clock on the opposite wall reads four thirty A.M. Of course, Karena thinks. She gets up, a little dazed, replaces the Yellow Pages, and walks outside. Everyone has gone to bed, and the night is so still Karena can hear the soft patter of moths hitting the lobby, a bright and empty box. Karena knows she should sneak back into her room, since they have another long drive to the Dakotas tomorrow. The more sleep she gets, the better. But now she is wide awake. She wanders to the swing set and sits, pushing herself back and forth with one foot. Karena has always loved swings, but not as much as Charles, who for several summers was obsessed with the double-boat swing in their backyard. Come onnnnn, K, he would whine and wheedle and plead, until Karena agreed to go on it with him, and then he’d make her stay there for hours, jackknifing his body to see how high he could make them go and singing, Ninety-nine bottles of BEER on the wall, ninety-nine bottles of BEER!

  “Hiya,” says somebody behind Karena—it’s Fern, wobbling a bit in her high-heeled cowboy boots and hoodie.

  “Hey, Fern,” says Karena, her hand over her galloping heart. “Jeez. You scared me. What’re you doing?”

  Fern holds up the vodka handle, which now has only about an inch of Chuck Norris swirling around in the bottom.

  “Drinking,” she says. “You?”

  “Swinging,” says Karena.

  “Mind if I join you?”

  “No, please, that’d be nice,” says Karena, and Fern comes around the swing set. She hands the vodka bottle to Karena, lowers herself cautiously onto the swing, then takes it back.

  “Cheers,” she says.

  They swing for a couple of minutes, the chains creaking gently.

  “Can’t you sleep?” Fern asks.

  “Not tonight,” says Karena. “Or most nights, actually. I’ve got pretty bad insomnia.”

  “Me too,” says Fern. “All I do is lie awake thinking about him.”

  “Who—,” Karena begins, then remembers. “Oh, the sexy bastard guy. You mentioned him back at the truck stop, in Ogallala.”

  Fern squints for a second, then says, “Right, right.” She takes a drink and adds, “That’s him, all right. Bloody bastard. It’s bad enough at home, when we’re half a world apart. It’s so much worse when he’s right here.”

  Karena has a sudden unwelcome thought. “Is it—it’s not Kevin, is it?”
/>   Fern gives her a sly smile. “No,” she says, bumping Karena’s swing with hers. “No worries. He’s still free.”

  “I’m not worried, I’m just trying to figure out . . .” Dennis? Karena thinks. Maybe a little old for Fern, but—Then, suddenly, she knows.

  “Dan?” she says. “It’s Dan?”

  Fern nods gloomily. “Told you,” she says. “The best, sexiest, smartest man in the whole world, and he don’t fancy me. I could just die.”

  She starts to cry, a tear trickling down her nose, then another. Karena looks away in case Fern doesn’t want to be watched, but when Fern keeps snuffling Karena plants her feet in the dirt to move her swing closer.

  “Hey,” she says, rubbing Fern’s back. “It’s okay. It’ll be okay.” Dan? Karena is thinking. He’s so scary. He’s like one of those old-school cowboys who talks without hardly moving his mouth. But maybe Fern likes the stern, silent type, and who is Karena to comment on the vagaries of love.

  Fern wipes her eyes with the sleeve of her hoodie. “I love him so much,” she says, her voice wobbly. “I have done ever since I set eyes on him. I’d do anything for him, move to the States, have his children. I’d bloody dip myself in a deep-fat fryer if only he’d have me. But he won’t.”

  “How do you know?” Karena says practically. “Did you tell him? Does he know how you feel?”

  “Oh, he knows,” Fern says savagely. “I made a move on him, didn’t I. Tour Three, 2004, we met up early and chased together a few days before meeting the rest of the gang, and it was pure heaven. But then like an idiot I had to spoil everything by making a play in a Super 8, and he told me no in no uncertain terms.”

  “What’d he say?” says Karena. “Maybe you misunderstood.”

  Fern swipes at her face. “Hardly,” she says. “He said he thought I was a great girl but he just didn’t have those feelings for me, and he liked his life the way it was. Said he was a happy bachelor and likely to remain so, and I should go find somebody my own age who’d treat me right.”