Damascus Road

by Charlie Cole

  Friend of Grace’s? I didn’t see that I could correct him in front of everyone, not without talking with her first. How would that conversation go? Pardon me, Erik, but I’m her husband, you ass. Not her friend.

  “It’s my pleasure, Erik,” I said. “Thank you for having me.”

  Bud and Duff said goodnight and turned to the counter to go through the paces of checking in.

  “Grace? Can I have a moment?” I asked.

  “Excuse me, Erik,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

  He nodded, smiled, and touched her shoulder. Asshole.

  Grace followed me outside.

  “So, what’s the story with you and Captain America in there?” I asked.

  “Who? Oh, Erik? We’re friends.”

  “Friends?” I asked. “He thinks that you and I are friends.”

  “Jim, I’m not even sure that we’re that.”

  “What are you talking about?” I shot back.

  “What am I talking about? We’ve been separated for years. If you would have died, I never would have known. Let’s be honest here, Jim. You live your life, and I live mine.”

  “You asked me to be here!” I said. “You asked me to chase storms with you!”

  “I never thought you would do it.”

  “So, because I said I would do it, now it suddenly doesn’t mean anything to you, Grace? That’s how it always is, isn’t it?”

  “What?”

  “You want whatever I don’t have to give,” I said. “You lied to me.”

  “I didn’t lie to you. Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “You sure didn’t tell me the truth,” I said. “You know, I finally get it…”

  “Get what, Jim? You finally get what?”

  “It means that you have such an incredible capacity for lies and bullshit and nonsense that I couldn’t begin to keep up with you,” I said.

  “Don’t be a baby, Jim,” she said. “This is no time to pout.”

  “Are you dating him?” I asked.

  She stared at me, caught up short.

  “Are you?”

  “No.”

  “Liar.”

  “I’m not dating him,” she said, but her voice was flat.

  “Yet.”

  “I’m not dating him yet,” she conceded.

  “And when were you planning to start?” I asked.

  She shrugged.

  “You abandoned me, Jim,” she said. “I don’t need to explain myself to you.”

  “No, you never did. You never will.”

  I threw my hands up and stepped back. I hadn’t seen this coming. Perhaps it wasn’t that I didn’t deserve it. Maybe I deserved all of it. Maybe I deserved whatever she had to throw at me.

  She stood watching me. She wasn’t about to commit anything to me. To engage me in any way. Her eyes were narrowed and cold. Her arms were crossed over her chest, and she stood with her body angled to me. It was a defensive posture, ready to fight.

  “What about Tom?” I asked.

  “That’s your problem,” she said. “Not mine. If Tom shows up here, he wants you, not me.”

  “Is this how it’s going to be?” I asked.

  “This is how it is.”

  I chewed on my lower lip while I considered that.

  “I want to stay,” I said.

  Grace looked up at me, the shock genuine on her face.

  “Why?” she asked, anger and confusion mixed in her voice.

  “Would it make a difference if I told you?” I asked.

  She stared at me, eyes reddening, tears building.

  “Good night, Grace,” I said.

  I walked past her back into the hotel, never stopping to look back at her. I shoved the door hard as I entered, and it caught Erik’s attention. I walked right for him and stopped just short.

  “She’s my wife,” I said.

  “I’m sorry, what?” Erik blustered.

  I pasted a smile to my face.

  “Just clearing the air. A friendly little correction,” I said. “You mentioned that any friend of Grace’s was welcome. I’m Grace’s husband. I just wanted to be clear about that.”

  “Uh-hunh,” he nodded. “Okay. Thank you, Jim.”

  “You’re welcome, Erik.”

  I got a room key from the hotel clerk. I ignored Duff and Bud staring at me.

  “Looking forward to seeing you all tomorrow morning,” I said, walking past them.

  “Good night,” they all murmured. I had made an impression.

  I opened the door and Grace still stood there, arms crossed, angry look on her face, but she wouldn’t look at me. She was staring at the ground.

  “You asshole,” she said as I passed.

  “Bitch,” I replied without missing a beat.

  I got in the Cuda and squealed the tires as I pulled out.

  Truth be told, I didn’t know where the hotel room was or if I was even headed in the right direction. I felt vaguely like the guy who tries to walk out of his house only to have forgotten his car keys. I made a lucky guess and found the entrance to the hotel where my room was located. I backed the Cuda into a parking spot that I would be able to see from the building and retrieved my gear bag from the trunk.

  I found my room quickly and let myself in. Something I have to confess… I love hotel rooms. There’s something about the anonymity of them that I can’t resist. I could be anyone, doing anything in that room. I could be on my way to a new life or running away from my old life. The neatly folded towels and the little soaps just made it so tidy, so complete. I checked the shower and threw the curtain open. Clean. Spotless.

  By the bedside, the nightstand was solid and stocked with a Bible from the Gideons. I looked at it in the drawer. I considered taking it out, but saw no point. There was nothing for me there. I closed the drawer.

  I’d spent enough time on the road that I could feel my need for a shower. I pulled clothes from my gear bag, something I could sleep in. I dropped it on the bathroom counter and turned on the shower. I washed up and dried off.

  I saw something then, something that I hadn’t noticed in Wallace’s loft, but under the harsh fluorescent lights became far too obvious to me. My body was covered in scars. I had a healed knife wound that ran along my rib. I had a puncture wound from a nail gun in my shoulder. That guy had been nuts. My knee had the pink scar tissue grown in from a motorcycle crash. I had scrapes and gashes and injuries from a hundred different causes, but that wasn’t really what kept my mind occupied.

  Across my back, from my trapezius muscles that ran along my neck, across my latissimus dorsi muscles in the middle of my back and down to the base of my spine was a tattoo. It was an angel done in the classical style of the great tattoo artists. Instead of the angel face being solely created by the artist’s discretion, it was Grace’s features there under the mane of gorgeous hair. She was still beautiful; no matter how I might try, there was no way that I could ever get away from her.

  Across my shoulders were two words, written in elaborate script.

  Find Grace.

  To me it had always meant that wherever I was in life, I needed to find the better side of it. I got the tattoo when I met my Grace, of course, so it doubly made sense.

  Now, it had become the reminder of what I needed to do.

  Find Grace.

  The tattoo pained me to look at, so I pushed it from my mind.

  I awoke the next morning before the sun rose. Fear can be a great alarm clock. I had to be up and awake before the team decided that I was more trouble than I was worth and left without me. There was no doubt in my mind that after our confrontation last night, Grace would be pushing Erik hard to leave me behind. Something about him though told me that he wouldn’t do that. For all the failings that I wanted to project on him, he seemed to be a relatively decent guy.

  My clothes were laid out the night before, so I dressed quickly. Jeans and boots and black t-shirt. I dropped my knife in my pocket, then picked out the rest of my gear. I
had a SureFire mini-flashlight and GPS built into my phone. I was certain that there would be a hundred other things that I would need in the moment, but I had to go with what I had.

  I hit the door and headed for the car. My bag went in the trunk and I got in, turning over the engine and dropping it into first gear. I cruised quietly around the building, taking solace in the presence of the Suburban and the pickup truck still parked out front. They were still at the hotel.

  I walked in, wearing my jacket, ready to ride at a moment’s notice. The team was grazing on the continental breakfast spread. Bud and Duff had helped themselves to sweet rolls the size of my fist and were bickering about the biggest tornadoes they had ever seen.

  “I’m telling you that tornado was no more than an F3, maybe an F4,” Bud said.

  “Easily an F5, newbie,” Duff said, nonplussed.

  I looked past them to Grace and Erik who were sitting together, but seemed to be in an argument, albeit, fairly civilized. I gave them room. I had no interest in stirring up trouble so early. Trouble would come find me as soon as it was good and ready.

  “What’s an F5?” I asked, interjecting myself into the conversation while pouring myself a cup of coffee.

  “It’s the Fujita scale,” Bud said. “Used to measure the size of tornadoes by how much they eat.”

  “Eat?” I asked, my cup nearly to my lips. “Like an animal?”

  “Sort of, yeah,” Duff said.

  “So, how big do they get?” I asked.

  The coffee was better than I expected for being in a cheap hotel in the middle of podunk nowhere. I guess when you don’t focus on foam and sprinkles in the coffee, it had better just be good.

  “Well, an F2 can get up to speeds between 120-150mph,” Duff said. “That’s bout two football fields across”

  “Oh… sure,” I said. “I saw one of those yesterday.”

  “Nothing to sneeze at, right?” Bud said.

  I grunted my agreement and drank more coffee.

  “An F3 is somewhere up to 200 mph winds and can get as big as 500 yards across,” Bud went on.

  It scared me that the dimensions of these things were getting exponentially larger. I never had a fear of tornados before, but the boys were helping me on my way to a full-grown phobia.

  “An F4 is up to 250 mph give or take and can be up to 900 yards across,” Duff said.

  “900 yards?” I sputtered. I shot a look over their shoulders at Grace and Erik. Grace’s eyes flicked up to me and then away. “That’s half a mile.”

  “You got it buddy,” Duff said.

  “Alright, fine,” I said. “Tell me about the F5 then.”

  “Up to 300 mph winds and it includes everything in excess of 1100 yards,” Bud said.

  I blew out a breath. I had volunteered to stay regardless of what I might face. I just didn’t realize that I was going to be facing a half mile funnel cloud that could pick up cars and blow down houses like the Big Bad Wolf.

  “You ever seen one?” I asked. “An F5?”

  “Never.”

  “Nope, never.”

  “Must be pretty rare, huh?” I had found a thread and was pulling on it.

  “Oh, they are,” Duff said.

  “Probably never been anything like that in these parts,” I continued.

  Duff and Bud looked at one another, then back at me.

  “What?” I asked.

  “The last F5 that hit this area was in 1999 in Bridge Creek,” Bud said.

  “Killed 36 people in one night,” Duff said, lowering his head.

  We all looked at each other for a moment, considering that.

  “Okay, who’s ready to go find one?” I asked, cracking a grin. The mood lightened, and the boys laughed as we headed toward the door.

  “We ready, Grace?” I said.

  Her look was absolutely venomous. I ignored it.

  “Are you riding with me, or am I following you?” I asked, my toned softened a bit.

  Her jaw flexed as she stood.

  “I’ll ride with you,” she conceded.

  She picked up a gear bag by her feet.

  “You want a hand with that?” I offered.

  “No, just get the door, please.”

  It was going to be rough going, and there was no sense in me being antagonistic. We walked to the car together, and I opened the door for her. She dropped in with the bag on her lap and pulled the door shut without saying a word.

  I walked around to my side and opened the driver door to find her pulling out a laptop and plugging it into my cigarette lighter.

  “Good morning, Jim.” I looked up.

  “Hey, Erik,” I said. “Good morning to you.”

  He waved, wary of me. I waved back without being unkind. He got into the Suburban alone, while Duff and Bud jumped up into the pickup truck. They pulled into position, waiting for us to take the lead.

  I sat down in the car to find that Grace had her command station set up in the front seat of my vintage Hemicuda. I shook my head in disbelief without saying a word. She had a Doppler radar map going without any trouble. On her smartphone, she had her GPS running and attached to the dash with a suction cup. She pulled a walkie-talkie and headset from her bag and clipped the unit to her belt before putting the headset in place.

  She caught me watching her and gave me a hard look.

  “What?” she snarled.

  “I’ve never seen you work,” I admitted.

  “You still don’t have to stare.”

  “Okay, fair enough,” I said. “Where to?”

  She studied her map for a moment, then pointed.

  “Out of the lot and take a right,” she said.

  I did what she asked and pegged the speed at a pretty fair clip. The trucks were keeping up with a little effort, but I kind of thought that was the point. I aimed the car down the road and kept my focus there.

  “At the next intersection,” she said. “Take a left.”

  “OK,” I acknowledged.

  We had navigated our way onto a country road lined with trees. Under different circumstances, I would have asked questions, but this was Grace’s show, and if it helped for me to keep my mouth shut for the time being, I was happy not to talk if it wasn’t necessary.

  She seemed to notice that I wasn’t bombarding her with questions, so she shifted a little uncomfortably in the silence.

  “We’re tracking a wall cloud not far from here,” Grace said.

  “And what does that mean?” I asked.

  “There’s a storm out there,” she said. “We would like to intercept it to see if there’s any potential tornado activity going on.”

  “Does it look like that could happen?” I asked.

  “It does,” she said. Her voice betrayed her.

  “You don’t seem happy about that,” I offered.

  “No, no, I’m happy,” she said. “Just surprised.”

  “Why surprised?” I asked. I could see the darkness of the clouds looming ahead. We were getting close.

  “Because typically storm chasing isn’t like in the movies,” she said, more than a little exasperated. “There’s hours worth of research and timing and search time spent before we come across active tornados. This one just came up in front of us.”

  I raised an eyebrow without saying anything out loud.

  “I know, Jim,” she said. “It’s what I wanted, so why complain now, right?”

  “Well, no… I just… yeah, I mean… kind of…” I said.

  “This storm is moving really fast,” she cut in. “We have to catch it. How fast can you get us there?”

  I looked over at her and chuckled.

  “Buckle up.”

  I hit the gas, and the Cuda leapt forward, pressing her back into the seat. The landscape blurred, while the engine howled low and deep. I was only beginning to tap into the car’s potential.

  “There it is,” she said. “Do you see it?”

  She was pointing out the window, and I did my best to follo
w her finger. I saw it then. Bigger than the last storm, it looked like death from the sky. As a boy, I had never been one to imagine shapes in the clouds, but when I looked up at the storm system, I imagined a hundred howling faces staring down at me, morphing into shape long enough for me to see and melting back into winds.

  “We’ve got some major cyclonic winds working here,” she said over the radio.

  “Roger that,” came Bud’s voice back to us.

  “We’re moving to intercept,” she said.

  “Intercept?” I asked. “What are you talking about? Intercept?”

  Grace pulled a video camera from her bag. She snapped open the small monitor and began filming.

  “Get as close to that thing as you can,” she said. “I have to get a better look at it.”

  “Seriously?” I asked.

  “What are you scared?”

  “Oh, I see,” I said.

  I gritted my teeth and accelerated, upshifting as I went. The storm was moving faster than I anticipated. The last tornado that I saw had formed slowly, almost in a dream, until it finally touched down. This storm was moving like a walking, talking nightmare. The clouds were black, and lightning flashed in the sky like the tendrils of some ancient sea beast stretching out across the heavens in almost a purple light. The thunder crashed, and I felt the booming sensation of it punch me in the chest.

  Just then, a hunter green Land Rover flew past me like I was standing still. I hadn’t seen him in the rearview mirror because I had been so focused on the storm. I looked up in time to see his tinted windows, but not the driver. As quickly as he appeared, he vanished in front of us, hidden by a sheet of rain.

  “Did you see that guy?” I asked.

  “Yes, he drove that jeep faster than this old car,” Grace snapped. “You should try to catch up with him.”

  The sarcasm was biting, but not helpful.

  “Did you recognize him?” I asked. “Is he one of your fellow storm chasers?”

  “No, didn’t see him. Could you focus please?” Grace huffed. Then into the radio, “We’ve got a rain-wrapped tornado here boys. I have no idea where this thing is going to set down.”

  I heard a mixed chorus of whoops and curses come back over the radio.

  “What does that mean? You have to tell me these things!” I said.

  The car was being pelted with sheets of rain. They washed across the fields and swept over the car in one pass, one after another. I could feel the winds buffeting the car, but I had lost sight of the tornado. The entire area was blacked out with the storm system. It felt like driving in the clouds.