The Warning

by Patterson, James

  “Jordan, you did recently have a concussion. You did breathe in a lot of smoke while committing acts of true bravery. You did not see a man on fire running out of your house and into the woods.”

  I couldn’t believe we were having this argument, but a sudden roaring in the sky effectively ended it. I put my fingers to my ears to make sure this wasn’t some noise inside my head, but, nope: In a moment, a bright light shone from above the trees, and the rumbling intensified. It was a Black Hawk helicopter, which circled around the neighborhood, looking for a good place to land. Avoiding downed power lines and debris, it finally set down in the Allens’ soybean field. Its rotors were still turning when three Humvees sped into the neighborhood.

  Medics ran from the helicopter to the ambulance in the Carters’ yard, and army personnel from the Humvees rounded up everyone to get a head count. Violet and her dad huddled in the cab of the ambulance, and Mom lay on a stretcher outside it, her chest and shoulder wrapped in bandages. Charlie sat on the step of a fire engine and breathed oxygen from a mask while a firefighter sat next to him. The guys from the helicopter ran to the ambulance, and one climbed up inside to look at the patient in there.

  “Who’s that?” I asked Maggie.

  “One of the Allen kids,” she said. “Whichever one is fourteen.”

  “Henry,” I said, feeling shaky and nauseated. “Charlie calls him Hennie. What’s wrong with him?”

  “Burns,” Maggie said, and didn’t elaborate. But a moment later, the army medics were pulling his stretcher out of the ambulance and carrying him to the helicopter. A third soldier was inspecting my mom, which prompted me to spring to my feet and jog to the ambulance.

  A soldier hopped out of one of the Humvees and intercepted me before I reached my mother. “Are you injured?” he asked.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “That’s my mom they’re working on.”

  “You’re bleeding,” he said.

  “What?” I asked. “Where?”

  “Your cheek,” he said, and called up to the soldier on top of the vehicle. “Can we get some light?”

  I touched my cheek, and my fingers came away wet. A moment later we were in the glow of a spotlight, and I saw how much blood was on my hands.

  The soldier touched my face, inspecting the cut, and said I would need some stitches.

  “There isn’t room in the helicopter,” a paramedic called out before leaving the ambulance to come look at me. “Lucky for you, chicks dig scars.”

  “Chicks don’t dig infections, though,” Maggie said sharply. “Look at it—it’s full of dirt.”

  “We’ll clean you up and stitch it,” the medic said to me. “But I’ve got five people who need to be on that helicopter.”

  “I think he’s in shock,” Maggie barreled ahead. “He’s seeing things that aren’t there.”

  I shot her an annoyed look, and she returned it with steel.

  “Any head trauma?” the medic asked.

  “I had a concussion several days ago playing football.”

  “He said he saw a flaming skeleton running into the woods,” Maggie chimed in.

  The medic turned from Maggie to me. “I don’t have room in the chopper. You’re going to have to get help from the EMTs.”

  It was then that I realized the ambulance wasn’t there to take anyone anywhere. It didn’t have anywhere to go. It was just a big van full of medical supplies and a couple of paramedics.

  “Are you taking my mom in the helicopter?” I asked. I wanted to go with her and Charlie to make sure they were okay.

  “Her?” he asked, pointing at her on the stretcher. “Yeah. We think some glass broke off in her wound, so she needs surgery to fish it out. We’re taking her to the evac camp.”

  “What about my little brother?” I said.

  “Him too.”

  “Why?”

  “Are you his mom?” the medic asked.

  “No, I’m his brother.”

  “Well,” he said, “that’s his mom.”

  “My house just blew up, and you’re taking my family without me? I’m still a minor, no?”

  “Your mom says your dad is at the nuclear plant and can take care of you.”

  “He comes home like every five days,” I argued.

  Maggie stepped up and took my hand. “He can stay with me and my mom in the meantime,” she said.

  “We’ll need confirmation from an adult,” the soldier said matter-of-factly.

  Maggie’s face fell, but then I spotted Maggie’s mom running toward us, her face as pale as the snowflake ashes still fluttering down. She had heard the explosion, saw the smoke, and was in tears as she embraced Maggie and then me. Maggie explained the situation to her, and Dr. Gooding told the soldier, “Of course,” and gave him her name and address so he could have it for the military’s records.

  I knelt down beside my mom’s stretcher. “Are you okay?” I asked as I knelt down beside her.

  “I’m fine,” she said, as though she just had a cold. Then she looked up at Maggie. “Nice toss!”

  “Thanks!” Maggie responded with a sheepish smile.

  “What did you throw?” Dr. Gooding asked her.

  “I’ll tell you all about it later,” Maggie said.

  Dr. Gooding crouched down beside me and my mom. “I’m so sorry you’re hurt,” she told my mom. “We’ll take good care of this guy.”

  “I appreciate that,” Mom said, and gave Maggie’s mom’s hand a squeeze.

  “So Charlie’s going with you,” I said to my mom.

  “That’s what they told me. We’re getting a helicopter ride—he’ll love that.” She closed and opened her eyes, wide. “Get word to your father, and until then, be a good guest at Maggie’s.”

  I nodded to reassure her but couldn’t keep up the pretense. “Mom,” I said, “I think something very wrong is going on here.”

  “You’ve been through a lot, sweetie. Our house …” She looked over at the wreckage, her eyes welling up. “This house was in your father’s family for generations. This will be tough for him. He’ll need you, you know.”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “You will.”

  I told Mom and Charlie I loved them, and then the EMTs took me aside and cleaned and stitched up my cheek. It didn’t take much, just four sutures below my right eye. By the time I was done, they had loaded the helicopter with six of the injured, including my mom and brother, and lifted off, headed somewhere I couldn’t go, with no assurance that I’d see them again anytime soon.

  Maggie’s shoulders were touching mine as we watched my family flying away. This just felt wrong. Where was my dad in this picture? Why didn’t he come home every night? It made no sense to me. Surely he’d return now—except there was no home to return to.

  I squeezed Maggie’s hand. She squeezed back.

  “I’m not crazy, you know,” I muttered.

  I approached the nearest cop and asked whether I could help with anything further. He said no, but an aid station was being set up in the First Baptist Church basement if I needed a cot. I told him I didn’t.

  Maggie, her mom, and I got into the pickup truck that Dr. Gooding used for her veterinary practice, with its cheerful logo of a grinning dog and cow.

  “Let’s go home,” Dr. Gooding said.

  Home.

  CHAPTER 20

  Maggie

  THE START OF school was postponed yet again. They probably didn’t want to welcome us back with grief counselors. Everyone knew the Carters and the Moores. In this town, everyone knew everyone.

  As I walked around Mount Hope, the flags were at half-mast, and people seemed in a daze. There were too many rumors and wild theories about the meltdown and this explosion for anyone to feel completely safe, and Mayor Tinkerton appeared to be AWOL. A jowly sixty-something guy with perpetual armpit stains, the mayor considered himself a modern leader by sending out emails to the community with the latest on pothole repairs and library acquisitions. But such communicat
ions weren’t an option now, and from what I could tell, no one had seen him walking around, reassuring the populace and doing whatever stuff you might expect a small-town mayor to do.

  The fact that we couldn’t leave town didn’t help. People habitually pulled their phones out of their pockets, punched a few buttons, and then scowled. The lack of cell service was messing everyone up. We’d grown so used to having the world at our fingertips that we felt crazily vulnerable without such access.

  Over the next few days, there was no word from either of Jordan’s parents. Did his dad know where he was? The soldier had taken down our address and contact information, but still …

  Jordan tried calling the power plant from our house but couldn’t get through. He also had no information about how to contact his mom and brother. I loved having him around, but I missed that guy who was always lifting my spirits. I didn’t blame him at all, but he was preoccupied, to say the least.

  The fact that I didn’t believe him about the flaming guy didn’t help. It was like he didn’t totally trust me anymore; I could feel a barrier where there wasn’t one before.

  But even with everything that had happened since we returned to town, there couldn’t have been a running skeleton with bits of flaming flesh falling off his body. That’s just bananas. I worried about him and that battered noggin of his.

  Jordan and I went back to his house the day after the explosion so he could leave a note for his father to say he was staying with us. Jordan’s face fell as we approached the smoldering, blackened mess that used to be a large nineteenth-century house.

  “This is where my granddaddy was born,” Jordan said, his voice still scratchy from the smoke, as was mine. “He was a servant, ‘never a slave.’ He always reminded us of that. His parents had been slaves, and when the masters lost their workforce and plantation, my granddaddy left the house and worked on a ship out of Charleston. He returned in 1928 and bought this house. He said he did it for his parents and all the people who came before them. And here it is.”

  We stood there, smelled the ashy air, and took in the sight of a once-majestic house now missing its second floor and charred everywhere else.

  “My uncle once was in such bad straits that he tore up the hardwood floors for firewood,” Jordan said. “My dad eventually replaced every single plank. If he’s still the man he used to be, this will devastate him. None of this house will survive. It’ll all be taken apart by backhoes and bulldozers.”

  “But he’ll be grateful you’re all okay,” I said.

  Jordan looked me intensely in the eyes. “Charlie would’ve died if not for you, Maggie. I’ll always remember that.”

  “Oh,” I said, turning away, “he was fine.”

  We stepped up to the front door, and, with what was meant to be a gentle tug, Jordan pulled it off its hinges. Glass was strewn inside and outside where the windows had been. The air was like a steam bath with the overwhelming smell of burnt wet wood. He began to step inside before I said, “Wait, are you sure this is a good idea? The air seems terrible, and who knows how stable what’s left of the second story is?”

  “There is no second story.”

  “Exactly.”

  Jordan stood there in the doorway, looking at the stairway that now led to nowhere.

  “Thought I’d go up and grab my old magazines. They aren’t flammable, are they?” he asked with a straight face. He’d shown me his collection of 1960s- and 1970s-era Mad, Rolling Stone, Life, and National Lampoon issues, while above his bed had loomed a now-ironic The Towering Inferno poster: “One tiny spark becomes a night of blazing suspense.”

  “I’m sorry, Jordan,” I said, and gave his hand a squeeze. He squeezed back without much feeling, then turned around to head out, kicking a little pile of rubble that was at his feet.

  “Oh, jeez,” he said, picking up a half-melted plastic eyeball. “This is from Charlie’s stuffed animal, Froggy.”

  He flicked it into the house.

  “What a waste of time this was,” he said.

  Jordan pulled a folded piece of paper out of his pocket, scrawled a note for his dad, and left it under a stone on a still-solid part of the front landing. We left without another word.

  We walked back along Main Street, not holding hands, our smoky, soot-speckled shirts sticking to our increasingly sweaty bodies.

  “Oh, shit,”I said.

  “What?”

  “Bud Winkle.”

  There he was, hobnobbing with a couple of old-timers in front of Lammy’s Hardware. I placed my hand on Jordan’s elbow to redirect him across the street, but it was too late.

  “Maggie Gooding, as I live and breathe!” Bud exclaimed, and excused himself from his friends to step over to us.

  He was tall and fit, with pronounced cheekbones and a full head of blond hair combed back slickly. His eyes were the palest blue I’d ever seen, and his resting face was a kindly smile. I should’ve considered him a handsome man—many women in town did—but every time I saw him, I just wanted to get away.

  “Hello, Mr. Winkle,” I said softly.

  “I’m Bud!” he responded, sticking out his hand to shake Jordan’s before giving me a big pat on the shoulder. “No formalities here. I hear you two are heroes.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” I replied.

  Bud looked over at Jordan. “You think she’s a hero, don’t you, Jordan?”

  “I do,” Jordan said.

  “And I bet you are, too,” Bud said. “Terrible tragedy. Terrible.” He shook his head as if needing to display physically just how terrible this tragedy was. “I represent the folks down at the plant, and I can’t tell you how broken up they are about this.”

  “That’s good to know,” I said evenly.

  An awkward pause hung among us.

  “Well, anyway,” Bud said, slapping me on the shoulder again, “tell your pretty mama I said hi. Bye, y’all.”

  “Bye,” Jordan and I said in unison as he turned to chat with more people on the sidewalk as if he were a politician working a cocktail party.

  “Well, you were a cool breeze on a hot day,” Jordan said to me as we walked away. “What was up with that?”

  “‘Pretty mama.’ Ugh,” I said.

  “I hear you, but he had you at hello.”

  “I hate that guy. He gives me the creeps.”

  “He is a bit slippery,” Jordan acknowledged.

  “What gave you that impression? The ads on benches telling you that if someone gave you a painful hangnail, you should call 1-800-BUD-WINKLE?”

  “Actually, I haven’t seen those benches since we got back.”

  “It’s too many numbers, anyway. It should be 1-800-BUD-WINK.”

  “Aw, those extra two letters don’t make any difference. Maybe he thought ‘Bud Wink’ sounded too much like ‘Hoodwink.’”

  “Exactly. Anyway, he’s dating my mom.”

  “Oh.”

  Aside from a car cruising down Main Street and some chit-chat up the block, the silence between us lingered for a few moments. Jordan finally broke it.

  “What do you think he meant about representing the folks down at the plant?” he asked.

  “He’s the plant’s lawyer, I guess?”

  “Curious,” Jordan said. “Not sure why those people in particular should be all broken up about the explosion in our neighborhood.”

  I realized we both were looking down at the sidewalk as we walked. This was a cheerful non-date.

  “Would it be entirely inappropriate,” I asked, “if I suggested we redeem our ice-cream rain check?”

  “Sure.”

  “Sure, it would be inappropriate?”

  “Shut up and let’s get some ice cream,” he said with the hint of a smile.

  The Tastee Freeze was just a few blocks out of our way, and other people had seized upon the same idea. Jordan’s buddy Tico was in front of us in line chatting up my friend Suzanne, a curvy, chirpy girl with a photographic memory and some occasionally startling a
nger-management issues. Had they arrived together?

  Jordan and Tico exchanged one of those bro-handshake/pat-on-the-back hugs. Suzanne and I said, “Hey.”

  “You guys okay?” she asked. “We heard.”

  “Jordan, man, trouble is following you around,” Tico added with a smile.

  Jordan smiled back unconvincingly.

  “His house is destroyed,” I said. “And you heard about the Carters and the Moores …”

  Tico and Suzanne nodded grimly in unison.

  “I was actually looking forward to school,” Suzanne said. “Now everyone’s off coming up with their own conspiracy theories. We need to come together at last.”

  “Yeah, and all decide on one conspiracy theory,” Tico said.

  “What’s the best one you’ve heard?” I asked.

  “That there was no meltdown,” Tico said. “That the government wanted us out so they could do some crazy stuff to us and this town. It’s like a big reality show, with secret cameras everywhere, and we can’t get out.”

  “Like The Truman Show,” Jordan said.

  “The what?” Tico asked.

  “Forget it.”

  “I was thinking more like Big Brother if it were an entire town.”

  “Tomato, to-mah-to,” Jordan said.

  Tico gave me a puzzled look. “You taking care of this guy?”

  “Doing my best,” I said.

  The ice cream tasted especially good, though we had to race to eat it before it melted off the cone and dripped onto our shirts and sandals. Jordan and Tico chatted some more, and I could see Jordan’s body relaxing.

  “Is it terrible that I miss math class?” Suzanne asked me. “I really do. I’m looking forward to algebra because I like cracking formulas.”

  “Well, I’m more of a word gal, but I get it for sure,” I responded. “Something normal would be nice.”

  “Yes. Normal,” she said in her sweet voice. “I’m a little stressed out because I have a low tolerance for fucking bullshit.” A dark cloud passed over her face, then gave way to sunshine again.