by Sandra Brown
“Wow, just like the movie.” Now that the danger had passed, David was excited. “Do you think it blew our house down? Or picked up our cows and carried ’em off?”
Jack chuckled. “I hope not.”
Anna’s hand found his in the darkness. She bent his fingers back so his palm was flat, then she traced letters against it. “L… i… g…? Light? Light.” He patted her knee, indicating that he understood. “David, is there a light in here?”
“It hangs down from the ceiling.”
Jack stood up and waved his arms around until he connected with a single lightbulb. When he pulled the short chain, he blinked against the sudden glare.
“Wow! Look at that spider!” David exclaimed.
But Jack was looking at Anna, and Anna was looking at him, and although she was as wet and bedraggled as a lost kitten, he thought she had never been more beautiful. He noticed how snugly her wet shirt was clinging to her. It fit like a second skin, hid nothing. With admirable chivalry, his eyes moved back to her face, but staring at it posed no hardship. It was so goddamn beautiful, why would he need to look father? Ragged as he must look, something in her eyes told him he looked pretty good to her, too.
“Hey, Jack? Jack?”
“Leave the spider alone, David,” he replied absently. “This is her house, not ours.”
“I know, but she’s crawling toward Mom.”
His daze interrupted, Jack brushed the harmless spider off the wall behind Anna, then took a look around. The ceiling of the cellar was only about four inches above his head. He estimated the enclosure to be twelve feet long and eight feet wide, with two cots along each wall. It was on one of the cots that Anna was still sitting. David had gotten up to explore.
On the back wall were several shelves stocked with candles and matches, lightbulbs, canned food and a can opener, a jar of peanut butter, a sealed glass canister containing a box of saltine crackers, bottled water, and a heavy-duty flashlight with extra batteries.
At the front end were the steps leading up to the door, which sat at a forty-five-degree angle. Jack went up the steps and put his ear to the door. Turning to Anna, he said, “The worst is past, I think. But it’s raining hard and I hear thunder. I think we should stay awhile longer.”
David interpreted her signs. “Mom says whatever you think, Jack.”
“Okay. We’ll stay awhile.”
“It’s neat in here,” David said, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Can we spend the night in here?”
“That probably won’t be necessary.”
“Darn.” Then, immediately recovering from his disappointment, he asked, “Are you back for good? Why’d you leave with the policemen? Did you miss us?”
Anna clapped her hands and motioned David forward. His exuberance was instantly doused by her stern expression. Suddenly downcast, he shuffled toward the cot until he was standing in front of his mother.
Anna placed her fingers beneath his chin, brought his head up, and began to sign. As she did, her eyes filled with tears.
Jack watched as David’s lower lip began to quiver. “I didn’t mean to scare you half to death, Mom. I just wasn’t sleepy and didn’t want to take a nap and I was thinking about Jack and how I wished he’d come back and that if I went out to the trailer and got some of his stuff and kept it in my room, he’d be sure to come and get it and I’d see him again and ask him to stay with us.”
Anna waited until he finished, then signed another reprimand.
By now David was crying, too. “I know I went past the fence, but I had to, Mom, to get to the trailer. I didn’t know a tornado was gonna come. I didn’t know you’d be waked up and think I was disappeared and maybe kidnapped. Am I gonna get a spanking? I’m sorry.” Covering his eyes with his forearm, he began to sob.
Anna pulled him against her, rocking him slightly and crying silently herself until both their tears subsided. Finally she eased him away and began signing. “Three days!” the boy wailed.
Jack asked him what was going on.
“I can’t watch TV for three whole days.”
“If you ask me, you got off light.” Surprised that Jack wasn’t siding with him, David tilted his head up to look at him. “You broke several rules, David. The worst thing you did was scare your mom. Moms have to know where their kids are. That’s the number one rule.”
“I know,” he mumbled contritely. “She freaks out if she can’t see me.”
“Then you knew not to sneak off, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t do it again.”
“Okay.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
“Now promise your mom.”
David signed a promise to her. Smiling forgiveness, she wiped the salty tear tracks off his cheeks. He said, “Can we have supper now?”
Jack and Anna laughed.
While they were snacking on peanut-butter-cracker sandwiches, the single light went out.
* * *
Ezzy groped his way through the house, moving from room to room, wishing to heaven he could remember where Cora kept a flashlight for emergencies such as this. For a former law enforcement officer, he was shamefully unprepared. He ought to know better.
The only thing that surprised him about the electricity blowing was that it hadn’t blown earlier. As the frontal system moved southeasterly across East Texas, it clashed with warmer, moister Gulf air, creating vicious thunderstorms that spawned funnel clouds and tornadoes. Warnings of large hail, high winds, and torrential rain were issued so fast the weathermen couldn’t keep up with them.
He cursed when he banged his thigh on the corner of the kitchen table. A bolt of lightning illuminated the room long enough for him to see his way clear to the pantry, and he’d just discovered a flashlight on one of the shelves when the telephone rang. The battery in the flashlight was dead. “Dammit!” he swore as he reached for the phone. “Yeah?”
A woman’s voice said, “I’m trying to locate a Sheriff Hardge.”
“I’m Hardge.” He was no longer sheriff but that was a technicality he didn’t correct.
“My daddy was Parker Gee. He died this morning.”
Standing in pitch-black darkness relieved only by blinding lightning flashes that made his kitchen seem surreal, Ezzy needed a moment to sort through his mind’s roster of names to find Parker Gee.
He then recalled the patient in the chest hospital. The former bartender with the nasty disposition and the nicotine-stained fingers, the thready voice, and the wracking cough that produced blood. He was surprised Gee had lasted this long.
“Hate to hear that, ma’am.”
“He brought it on himself. Craved a cigarette right up till the last. Can you believe it?” Apparently there’d been no love lost between father and daughter. She sounded more bitter than bereaved.
Rubbing his bruised thigh, Ezzy asked, “How can I help you?”
“He gave me a message to pass along to you, but I have to tell you it makes no sense.”
“I’m listening.”
“Do you know somebody named Flint?”
Ezzy stuck his finger in his ear so he could hear her above the thunder that rattled the windows of the house. “Flint, you say? That the first or last name?”
“I don’t know. Daddy said, ‘Tell Hardge find Flint.’ That’s what I’m doing. The last few days they were giving him high doses of pain medication. He was loony as a goon. Didn’t know me or my kids. So I wouldn’t lose sleep trying to figure out what it means. Probably doesn’t mean anything. The funeral’s day after tomorrow, in case you’re interested.”
She gave Ezzy the time and place of the burial then said good-bye and hung up. Ezzy wouldn’t attend the funeral. He didn’t like the man. The only thing he had in common with him was the McCorkle case. The strange message must relate to it. But how? Was there ever any mention of someone named Flint in his notes? Not that he recalled. Just before dying had Gee remembered another customer in the bar th
at night? A man named Flint?
At least Ezzy assumed it was a man. Could have been a woman.
The phone rang a second time. “Hello?”
“Ezzy?”
He could barely hear through the crackling static, but it wasn’t Parker’s daughter calling back. “Yeah, who’s this?”
“Ron Foster. Your offer still good to help out? We could sure as hell use you down here tonight. Could you—”
The line went dead, cutting off the new sheriff in midsentence, but that was okay. They didn’t have to ask him twice.
As though suddenly endowed with excellent night vision, Ezzy facilely navigated his way into the den and unlocked the gun cabinet, from which he took a rifle and his pistol and holster, and boxes of ammunition for each.
In the garage he located his slicker where it had been hanging since the last time he’d used it. He tossed it into the front seat of the Lincoln along with the guns. He disengaged the automatic garage door opener and raised the door manually. Lashing winds and rain nearly knocked him down.
By the time he had backed his car into the street and pointed it toward town, it had begun to hail. The stones pounding the car were the size of lemons and made a horrible racket as they beat the Lincoln all to hell. He didn’t bother to turn on his windshield wipers. They would have been totally useless against such meteorological fury.
When he turned on his headlights, they reflected off the falling hail and rain, making a glaring curtain out of the barrage. Lights off, barely able to see beyond the hood ornament, he drove at a snail’s pace, straddling the center stripe because the gutters were flooded.
He was still several blocks away from the sheriff’s office when he heard the sirens. At first he couldn’t distinguish them from the howling wind, but once he realized what that keening sound signified, he stopped his car in the middle of the street. The fire department didn’t sound the warning sirens unless a funnel had been sighted.
“Lord, Cora, you ought to see your old boy now.”
He pulled on his slicker, which, considering the severity of the storm, would be about as effectual as a rubber with a hole in it. Then, taking a deep breath, he opened his car door and stepped out into nature’s temper tantrum.
He raised his arm to provide some protection for his eyes. Hail stones hammered him. One struck him in the temple and he yowled in pain. Half staggering, half running, he headed for the ditch that ran parallel to the street. The bottom of it was already flowing like a river, but it wasn’t out of bounds yet. He needed only a slight depression…
He had no longer to think about it. In all his seventy-two years, he had never experienced a tornado, but he’d seen the documentaries about them. He recognized the sound.
He threw himself into the ditch and, barely keeping his head above the churning water, covered it with his hands.
The next several minutes seemed to last for a hundred years.
At first Ezzy kept his head down, but curiosity got the best of him. Just as he looked up, the steeple of the church at the end of the block splintered into a million flying fragments of wood and steel. Its bell was sucked into the vortex of the funnel and clanged like it was heralding the end of the world.
The county tax office was demolished before his eyes.
A car was picked up and spun around several times before being hurled back down to earth. It crumpled like a tin can.
Trees were pulled out of the ground as though a giant were weeding his garden.
Windows shattered with explosive force, and Ezzy hoped to God that if any people were inside those structures they had protection from flying glass.
Then he saw the Dumpster, the kind contractors kept at construction sites. It was tumbling down the street. Ezzy’s first thought was What a ridiculous way to die. Big as a boxcar, it rolled end-over-end directly toward him with the velocity of a speeding freight train.
He uttered an unmanly scream and plunged his head into the water.
The damn thing rolled right over him. Only the slight depression in which he lay had saved him.
He didn’t know this for several minutes, however. Not until the tornado had cut a destructive swath through his town did he crawl out of the ditch like a primitive life-form. Sitting on the sloping ground, he gazed at the devastation around him.
The Dumpster had crashed into a live oak about twenty yards from him. It was wrapped around the trunk like a tight sleeve. Nothing but piles of debris remained where buildings had stood. Graceful old trees lay toppled with their roots obscenely exposed. The church bell had landed in the parking lot of a florist shop, crushing the neon sign.
Slowly Ezzy came to his feet. His knees were wobbly. Bracing his hands on them, he bent at the waist and took several deep breaths. Tentatively, he touched the sore spot on his temple and pulled away bloody fingers. The hail stone had broken the skin and raised a knot as big as an egg. Otherwise, he seemed not too much the worse for wear.
Assessing the damage on this street alone, he realized that the people of his county were going to need him. The sooner he got on the job the better. He hobbled back to his car, which, in the quirky way of tornadoes, had escaped with only the rear windshield being busted out. As he slid behind the wheel and shut the door, he glanced back at the Dumpster and shook his head with dismay.
He ought to be dead.
He thanked God that he wasn’t and wondered why he had been spared.
He wasn’t a particularly religious man. In fact, he harbored a lot of theological doubts that gave Cora fits and kept her constantly praying for his doubtful afterlife.
But he thought he had this one figured. Whoever or whatever God was, he was merciful. He had spared Ezzy’s life tonight. And Ezzy knew why—he hadn’t fulfilled his purpose for being here in the first place. His time wasn’t up. His job on earth wasn’t finished.
Tonight, he’d been given another chance.
And another clue.
Chapter Forty-Two
Jack worked his feet out of his wet, mud- and manure-caked boots and left them on the floor of the utility room along with his socks.
When the lights went out in the cellar, he had groped along the shelf where he’d earlier seen a flashlight. Using it, he’d lighted candles. They’d huddled in the cellar for another half hour, until he determined that the winds had subsided noticeably and all he could hear against the door was heavy rain.
When he had opened the door, rain had showered down on him, but what he noticed most was the change in temperature. It had dropped by twenty degrees. In spite of the rain, the air felt and smelled fresh. The storm had migrated toward Louisiana. Frequent lightning flashed in the eastern sky.
As they came out of the cellar, he and Anna were relieved to see that the house was still standing. “It looks intact. Let’s go check.” He carried David as they ran through the downpour, dodging the deepest puddles. On the way, they all caught a case of the giggles, an outlet for other emotions that were more difficult to deal with. By the time they reached the house, they staggered up the front porch steps, wet through to the skin and weak with laughter.
Inside they did a quick inspection of rooms. A tree limb had broken out a living room window, exposing the furniture to rain. Shingles had been ripped off the roof above the second-story hallway, creating several leaks. The electricity was still off and the telephone was dead, but there appeared to be no substantial damage to the structure.
The leaks were easily handled by placing kitchen pans beneath them. Jack picked up the largest pieces of broken window glass, then tacked a Hefty bag over the open casement to prevent more rain from coming into the living room. Leaving Anna and David with plenty of candles burning, he’d gone back outside to the corral to see if the horses had been injured. One had a gash on his flank, but it didn’t look too deep. Miraculously, the others seemed to have escaped being struck by flying debris. He couldn’t check on the fate of the cattle or the remainder of the property until daylight.
Now, leavin
g his footwear behind, he went into the kitchen and relit the candle he’d left on the table when he went out. Upstairs, he saw flickering candlelight coming through the partially opened bathroom door and heard David’s voice. He knocked on the doorjamb and poked his head around.
“It’s okay, Jack, you can come in.”
The boy had just gotten out of the tub. The floor was strewn with wet towels. He was putting on his pajamas. “I got to take my bath with candles.” Two were burning on the dressing table, one on the tank of the commode. They cast dancing shadows on the walls and ceiling. “It was cool. The candles make the bathroom look like a cave, don’t they?”
David would think back on this entire evening as one big adventure. It had probably been as much fun for him as the postponed trip to Six Flags would have been. He was naive to the danger he’d been in while inside the trailer. Jack shuddered to think about what might have happened to David if he had been only one minute later arriving.
“Where’s your mom?”
“Waiting for me to say my prayers.”
“Then you best get to them.”
“Will you come?”
“If you want me to.”
He and David entered the boy’s bedroom together. Anna was turning down the bed and looked at Jack inquisitively as he followed David into the room. She also looked fresh from a bath. She was dressed, but her hair was wet. Not from rain. A shampoo. She smelled like flowers, which only made it more noticeable that he smelled like the corral.
He shrugged self-consciously and pointed at David. “He, uh, wanted me to hear his prayers.”
David climbed into bed, adjusted his pillow, arranged the stuffed animals he had chosen to sleep with, checked to make sure his dinosaur book was within reach on his nightstand, then folded his hands beneath his chin, closed his eyes, and began reciting his prayers.
Jack bowed his head and closed his eyes. He wished Anna could hear the sweet purity of her child’s voice as he asked God’s blessing on those he loved. Of all the things she missed hearing—music and crashing waves and the wind through cottonwood trees—this was perhaps the thing she would most love to hear, and Jack’s heart broke for her that she couldn’t.