Chapter Forty-Three
Clyde didn’t mind working an extra shift on Sunday. The Lord’s Day. Lynda made it clear she didn’t want to see him, but he hadn’t figured out what to do about it. Throwing himself into his work felt therapeutic, a distraction from his problems. Besides—like she said—he enjoyed cooking. He flipped the switch to darken the Dairy Queen sign, then hurried through his cleaning chores, hoping to make it home before the storm hit.
The water was hot on his skin as he rinsed the sink. Lynda had seen into his heart in more ways than one, and a gentle apprehension settled over him as he thought about how badly he had hurt her. All because of his shack on the Caprock. The place had always pulled at him, but he told himself it was because of his grandpappy and the memories before Clyde went away. If he had been honest with himself, he would have known it was more than that.
Lynda had seen it.
But what she didn’t understand—and Clyde hoped she would let him explain—was that it wasn’t the memory of the sex itself. It wasn’t his feelings for Susan. It certainly wasn’t love or longing for what might have been. The pull of that property hit him deeper, more personally, like a self-inflicted wound. Clyde held on to the house as a means of keeping himself right where he belonged, working at the Dairy Queen, living in a trailer house, sitting on the back pew at worship.
He picked up a case of Fritos and emptied it onto a metal rack by his workstation. Frito pie. He shook his head. If he ever opened a restaurant, he’d serve something that took longer than forty-five seconds to prepare. Several hollow popping sounds came from the dining room, and he looked up to see paper cups and other trash blowing across the parking lot and knocking against the glass door. He paused with his hand on a bag of corn chips as lightning flashed behind the roof of the Allsup’s across the street and, a few seconds later, a crash of thunder boomed. There had been a lot of talk about the weather—customers going on about the forecast and the intensity of the high winds—but the brunt of the storm was due to hit south of Trapp, so he wasn’t overly concerned. Clyde had lived in Texas forty-three years and had never seen a tornado. Most people hadn’t.
He glanced around the kitchen, checking to see if anything else needed tending to before he left, and he realized he didn’t want to go home. He wanted to go by Lynda’s house and explain, make her listen, tell her everything would be all right. See if she would smile again.
He reached for his matches and slipped them into his pocket. Someday he would have to try Lynda’s suggestion of chewing spearmint gum when he was slicing onions. He turned out the lights, picked up the trash bags, and slipped out the back door, letting it lock behind him. The force of the wind surprised him, and he gripped the bags tightly so they wouldn’t slip from his hands.
He was halfway to the Dumpster before he noticed Neil’s truck in the lot. Supposedly the man was armed and dangerous, but obviously he wasn’t halfway to the border yet. Clyde tossed the garbage into the Dumpster, slammed the metal lid, and turned toward his sedan, steeling himself for whatever his old friend might do. Maybe Neil would be angry. Maybe he would pull out a gun and shoot Clyde in the head. Maybe he would simply run him down with his truck. None of those scenarios frightened Clyde nearly as much as the possibility that Neil would go after Lynda.
Lightning shot sideways across the sky and the resulting thunderclap vibrated the ground. The truck was parked three spots past his sedan, so Clyde could have slipped into his car and taken off, but he didn’t. Instead, he leaned into the wind, walked past his own car, and stopped just on the other side. He was near an overhead light, and its glow spread an arc two yards past his feet, but Neil’s truck lay in shadows.
Lightning illuminated the cab, and Clyde could see Neil’s outline, hunkered over the steering wheel. He thought the driver’s window was down on the truck, but if Neil spoke to him, Clyde wouldn’t be able to hear over the wind and thunder. The pickup door opened, and the dome light behind Neil transformed him into a gray silhouette, and Clyde couldn’t see the expression on his face. He could tell Neil’s hands were empty, though.
The rancher slid off the seat and stood with his hand on the door, appearing shorter than usual. Neil’s shoulders slumped uncharacteristically, and when he shut the door, Clyde could tell it didn’t close all the way, as if Neil didn’t have the strength to slam it.
Clyde lifted his hand in a half wave, not knowing what else to do, and Neil took a few steps, bringing himself under the glow of the light. Clyde wasn’t prepared for what he saw. Neil’s hair was mussed, and his clothes were wrinkled, his shirttail wadded behind his belt buckle. He seemed to be wearing some sort of loafers. Outside of football practices years ago, Clyde couldn’t remember ever seeing Neil wear anything other than starched Wranglers and polished boots, but the biggest difference lay in his face. His pale skin contorted beneath the glow of the lamp, and with every crash of thunder, his cheekbones became skeletal. If Clyde hadn’t seen this person get out of Neil’s truck, he might not have recognized him at all.
“About time you got out here.” Even the sound of Neil’s voice was strange, high pitched and warped by the wind, yet still demanding.
Clyde felt as if he were standing in front of a wild stallion that might rear back at any moment, crushing him under his hooves. An unpredictable beast. A jolt of fear raced through Clyde until he realized Neil had always been unpredictable. He’d always been a little bit of a monster. Clyde’s nerves settled. Not only were Neil’s hands empty, but they fell down to his sides—limp. At the moment Neil Blaylock didn’t seem capable of hurting anyone.
“You all right?” Clyde asked.
Neil pointed at him. “You never should have slept with my wife.”
Clyde expected Neil to say something about Hoby, or the investigation, maybe even Fawn or Nathan, but not Susan. Neil rarely mentioned her except in reference to her being Fawn’s mother.
Clyde raised his voice to be heard over the increasing wind. “You’re right. It was wrong of me, and I’m sorry.” Clyde could have argued with him about Susan—It was years ago. She was just as guilty. Susan wasn’t your wife then—but he had long since had the defensiveness sapped out of him. He looked down at a plastic drinking straw bouncing across the asphalt. “I should have apologized before now.”
The temperature suddenly dropped several degrees, and Clyde inhaled deeply, invigorated by the coolness even under the circumstances, but Neil wrapped his arms around himself. He took three steps toward the light pole, then three steps back. “She’s yours now.”
Clyde frowned. “I’ve got no hold on your wife, Neil. She loves you, and she’ll stand by you through this thing.” A bolt of lightning shot down, striking a telephone pole a block away, but Neil didn’t seem to notice.
“You ruined her life, Clyde, and you owe it to her to see she’s taken care of.”
“What about you?” If Clyde hadn’t known better, he would have thought Neil had been drinking. He certainly looked the part, and his reflexes seemed delayed, but Neil had never been one to lean on the bottle, and he didn’t smell like it now.
“Don’t worry about me.” Neil took a step toward his truck. “My dad is meeting me at the border tonight.”
Tension gripped Clyde, but it had nothing to do with the storm and everything to do with the fact that Gerald Blaylock had been dead for years. Clyde bent at the waist, fighting the wind and growing more concerned about Neil.
Neil’s gaze bounced to the Allsup’s, where an RV swerved into the parking lot, and two people bounded out and ran into the store. “Susan’s set with enough money to last the rest of her life, but she’ll need help managing things. She couldn’t run a ranch to save her life, and my foreman’s likely to take advantage of her ignorance. You’ll do well out there. The guest bed is made up.”
Clyde got a sick feeling in his stomach just as the weather siren down at the volunteer fire department went off, sound
ing as though it had to work its way up to full speed.
“So you’re headed south?” Clyde’s gaze roamed the sky. Something felt wrong in the air, and the light from the streetlamps seemed to glow with a greenish tint.
“Take care of Fawn and Nathan, too. You owe it to them.” Neil swayed as he struggled toward his truck, and Clyde followed, trying to get in front of him.
A clatter of thunder echoed and a simultaneous burst of lightning lit up the sky half a mile beyond the Dairy Queen, and as it flashed, Clyde glimpsed a funnel cloud in the distance, so large it looked like a wall of fury. His heart beat hard against his rib cage, and he lunged after Neil, grabbing him by the arm. “We’ve got to get inside. There’s a tornado!”
Neil jerked his arm away. “Get off me. My dad will be furious if I’m late.”
“Neil! Look around you. There’s a storm!” Clyde was shouting now, the only way to be heard over the increasing roar of a hundred jet planes speeding past them.
Neil yelled something Clyde couldn’t hear, and then he reached for the door handle of his truck. On the other side of the street, the lighted sign at the Allsup’s swayed, and the outside trash bins tumbled between the gas pumps and rolled down the street and out of sight.
A sudden surge of wind slammed both men against the truck.
Neil’s eyes grew wide, crazed, and he shoved against Clyde. Another flare in the sky showed the tornado coming closer, and in the second it took Neil and Clyde to turn their heads and look, the Allsup’s sign fell and slammed against the pavement among a flurry of sparks.
Finally Neil yielded to Clyde’s tugging, and both men raced for the back door of the restaurant, Clyde fumbling for his keys. Just as he pulled them from his pocket, the power went out through the whole town, leaving them in violent darkness, broken intermittently by enraged strobe lights.
Neil didn’t wait for Clyde to unlock the door, but reared back and slammed his shoulder against it. The second time, Clyde joined him, and the door broke open, banging against the time clock.
The kitchen alternated from darkness to light as the storm flashed through the dining room windows, and just as the two men scurried through the kitchen, Clyde saw his sedan slide across the lot.
“What can we get under?” Neil called over the moan of the storm.
“Walk-in freezer’s our best bet. Get inside.”
“Don’t be an idiot!” Neil started to crawl beneath the front counter, but just then the windows shattered, and nuggets of glass shot past them. Neil cried out and bolted toward the freezer door.
The kitchen seemed to lift a foot off the ground, hovering around them, and Clyde had a feeling of weightlessness just before something big and heavy slammed against him, pinning him to the back wall. “Help me!”
Neil had fallen, but he lumbered to his feet, and together they shoved the metal appliance far enough for Clyde to slip from behind it.
Neil opened the freezer door and yelled something, but the shrieking of the storm drowned out his voice. Clyde tried to follow, but when he put weight on his left leg, he fell to the ground. He struggled to stand, but the leg wouldn’t hold him, and he ended up crawling.
Hand over hand, Clyde worked his way across the floor, but then Neil grabbed him under the armpits and jerked him the rest of the way into the freezer. Just as the door closed behind them, Clyde heard ripping and pounding as though the kitchen were being trampled by a herd of angry longhorns.
He said a silent prayer.
Chapter Forty-Four
Lynda’s Makeup and Stuff.
The stenciling on my cosmetic case had faded, but I could still make out Velma’s handwriting. When I was fifteen, she had labeled it for me with blue-and-yellow marker so my nieces would leave it be. The case sat high on the shelf above the toilet, and I frowned at it, wondering why I had kept it so long, but even while I wondered, I knew the answer.
As I sat alone in my dry bathtub, fully clothed, I let my mind wander. Velma had presented the plastic bin to me for my birthday, complete with my very own stash of cosmetics. Back then I shared a bedroom with two of my nieces, and at the time, I was proud to have something that belonged solely to me.
But of course, Ansel and Velma’s children didn’t need labels to make them feel secure in their home. Unlike me. Those four words had given me a sense of ownership, because that bin belonged to me and nobody else in the house. It was mine alone, and I could hide anything in it without fearing the other kids would get it. If they had tampered with Lynda’s Stuff, they would’ve had to deal with Velma’s wrath.
I shifted in the tub, trying to find a comfortable position, but the seam of my jeans kept digging into my hip. The wind raged outside the house, and occasionally I could hear the siren wailing from downtown. That siren always went off, though, so I didn’t get alarmed. After pulling myself from the tub, I scurried to the bedroom, grabbed two pillows and a quilt, and resumed my station in the bathroom. This would be a waste of time.
Right before I left her house, Velma had cornered me about taking cover if the storm got bad, hence the bathroom hangout. No windows. No glass. Interior room. When Ruthie had been young, there were a few storms where we actually pulled her twin mattress into the bathroom on top of us, but I didn’t bother this time. Tossing the pillows into the tub, I plopped back down, pleased to discover my backside was a teensy bit more comfortable. I sat on one pillow and leaned back on the other, resting my head against the tile. Lynda’s Makeup and Stuff caught my eye again.
I suppose I had always had a private box. Even after I married, I kept my trinkets and mementos—and letters—in the firebox, where Hoby wouldn’t mess with them. At least I told myself he wouldn’t, but looking back I wondered if he had known about them all along … and if I had added to his insecurity.
Wind shifted through the attic above my head, sounding like air being let out of a tire, and when the lights quietly clicked off, goose bumps tickled across my shoulders like gnats. But it was only darkness. Nothing permanent. I reached over the tub and ran my palms across the cold tile floor, searching for my cell phone, and then I turned on the flashlight app and let its glow warm the room.
A crash of thunder reminded me of the night Clyde took me to see the windmills in the lightning storm, and I wished I were there now instead of stuffed in my tub. The wind in the rafters changed into a howl, matching the eerie shadows created by the dim light, and when a loud crash sounded outside in the yard, my heart raced. The house seemed to be breathing in and out with the storm, the walls creaking as though they might be ripped away from the foundation at any minute. Easing to one hip, I pulled both pillows over my head and squeezed my eyes shut.
This was worse than I’d thought. My family crossed my mind. Velma’s house was jam-packed without enough bathtubs or interior closets to protect everyone. And Dodd and Ruthie would be at the church building with Fawn and JohnScott. I gripped the pillows in hardened fists, trying to imagine where they would all take shelter. Dodd’s mother didn’t live too far from there, so maybe they would go to her house.
And Clyde. He had worked this afternoon. By now he would be at his trailer house, the most dangerous type of structure in high winds. But no, he would be at church with the others. Wouldn’t he?
Another blast shook the house, and the wind howled even louder. A sharp crash two feet away rattled my nerves, and I cried out. But it was only the old makeup kit that had fallen from the shelf and scattered across the floor. I shone my light and saw that the kit’s dry and hardened plastic had broken in pieces. Just as well.
I hugged a pillow against my chest. My family members were clustered in two separate places, but at least they were together. As usual, I was alone. A cramp tightened my stomach, and I wished I had stayed at Velma’s. Why didn’t I? It was just like me to run off by myself. That’s what I preferred … usually. But this time I felt like it would have been better to be w
ith them, smashed into the little ranch house, surrounded by love.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried to block out the vision my imagination had conjured. Clyde crouched in his trailer as it whirled through the air, three hundred feet above the ground. A sob shot from my throat like a volcanic eruption, and I was so caught off guard that I inhaled and sat up straight. Crying wasn’t something I did, but at the moment, it seemed like a very good idea. Another crash shook the house, this time seeming to have come from the back, and when I heard breaking glass, I assumed it was my bedroom window.
I inhaled ragged breaths as I feared for my life and the lives of my family. And Clyde. As the storm intensified, I eased back down to lay on my side in the tub. My knees wanted to habitually curl up to my chest, but the sides of the tub wouldn’t allow it, so I pulled the pillow down over my ears and began to hum. Not a melody, just notes, sounds, something for my lungs to do besides whimper.
The bathroom door rattled as though a monster wanted in, but I didn’t stop humming. Even when the commode gurgled loudly, even when the air seemed to be sucked from the room, even when I could no longer hear the sound of my own vocal cords over the fury of the storm. The oxygen I breathed seemed charged with electricity, and the hairs on my arms stood on end. Then the wind came closer, on the other side of the bathroom wall, as though my bedroom had been opened up and exposed to the rage. My humming turned to crying again, but I no longer held back the tears. My fears had given way to a primal instinct for survival, and I openly sobbed. And prayed.
God, please don’t leave me alone. I don’t want to die.
Something slammed against the opposite side of the bathroom wall and rang slightly as if it were metallic, and I hunkered down even more. But then, suddenly and eerily, I could hear the siren again, rising and falling on the wind, no longer drowned out by the storm’s anger. In fifteen more seconds, the piercing howls had stopped completely, and an unearthly silence fell over the house.
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