by Carol Weekes
Weather System
By
Carol Weekes
Weather System
The radio had been predicting a storm all day, and with the heat and humidity that had built up by noon, I was surprised that it hadn’t happened sooner. Normally, I like storms and enjoy sitting out on our deck with the family, watching the clouds approach us across the bay. But I knew, as soon as this system started to move in, there was something different about it, and that it wasn’t good. I couldn’t have begun to fathom the true extent of it until after it was all over.
It was a little after two in the afternoon when the sky deepened to a hint of ash and the wind fell off, making the air sauna-thick. I was in the backyard of our cabin out on Random Lake, a string of lakes that makes up a chunk of cottage country just north of Kingston, trying to dig a trench for a drainage hose. Lenny, my six-year-old son, played in the sandbox not far from me, pushing a Tonka front-end loader through the sand, forming endless rows which he’d then flatten out again. Our golden lab, a nine-year-old female named Honey, lay beside Lenny, always protective and loyal to the kids. I paused for a moment to rub my lower back. Jennifer had gone into town with our nine-year-old daughter, Tia, to get stuff for supper and to get her hair trimmed. They were due home by 4 PM. I glanced up at the sky and noted that first, telltale band of grey peeking across the horizon of the southwest.
“Here it comes,” I said more to myself than Lenny. Maybe we wouldn’t be eating supper out on the deck this evening. I felt a moment of disappointment, followed by the familiar gut-thrill of knowing that storm cells were on their way.
“Here comes what, Daddy?” Lenny asked, not looking up. He used both fists to direct the front-loader through a mountain of sand, sending it spraying in all directions, including down the front of his shirt and through his longish, brown hair. Between the sand and the sticky remnants of a popsicle, the kid would need a bath before dinner.
“Thunderstorm,” I said and the enthusiasm in my voice made him look up. Lenny didn’t like thunder, but he’d tolerate it as long as he was cuddled in either my or Jennifer’s arms.
“I don’t like those, Daddy,” he said. “Make it go away.”
I laughed out loud at the faith system that children carried concerning their parents’ abilities. Kiss the boo-boo and make it better; check under the bed before shutting off the lamp to ensure the monsters are gone; dispel the scary storm.
“I can’t, son,” I said. “Daddy has no control over the weather. No one does. It’s just part of nature.”
“I don’t like them.” He stopped playing and stared at the sky with me. The soft azure of a summer afternoon was, slowly but definitely, eaten up by the weather system moving in.
“Dad will be with you,” I told him. “You don’t have to be scared of storms.”
I felt a little guilty telling him that, thinking of several incidents I’d heard of around here that directly contradicted that statement. Like last summer when a storm created a flash flood and washed out the little bridge that connects Random Lake to its mainland, Loon Bay. A tourist’s car had gone into that watery rampage and the man had drowned. And then there was Mike Mitchell, a local mechanic who got struck by lightning a few years ago while trying to guide his wind surfer back to shore. He lived to tell the tale, but he has a scar as purple as a bruise and the size of an orange on his shoulder where the electricity entered, and on the bottom of his left heel where it exited, that he shows tourists and locals alike whenever we get to jawing about storms around here. Looks like comet impacts onto a planet, those scars do. They always make me shiver a little.
“God must have wanted you around for a while longer,” I told him when he first showed them to me.
“Beats me,” he said, shrugging. We both laughed, but entrails of unease had stayed with me for a good while afterwards.
By three o’clock thunderheads rolled in, their tops billowing white but their undersides a black menace. I finished packing gravel and dirt on top of the drainage hose and hurried to put my tools away in the shed. “Time to get ready to go inside, scout,” I told Lenny. “It’s going to start raining any time now.” The air smelled strongly of lake water and faintly of ozone. I paused for a moment and noted sheet lightning flickering inside clouds, lighting them up the way a faulty bulb can illuminate a dark room. This followed by the first imminent murmur of thunder.
“When’s Mommy coming home?”
I spoke over my shoulder to him as I reached the small board-and-batten tool shed and tossed the shovel and pickax inside. “They should be home in another hour, bud. Daddy’s going to go get dinner started. I can still barbecue, but I think we’ll be eating inside the screened porch tonight. From the look of those clouds, it’s going to pour buckets. Leave your toys, Len. Come on.”
He stood up, reluctant, but I saw his small face turn up to regard the sky. Cloud banks had already blocked out the sun, throwing his visage into shadow. A chill crossed my skin at that moment, a sense of dread so unnerving that I stopped moving. I looked at my son’s face…noted the expression of unadulterated dread in his innocent features and realized the meaning of true fear in the mind of a six-year-old. In his world, the monster was coming, and it wouldn’t be until later that day that I’d realize he was right.
I scooped Lenny up into my arms as the first fat raindrops began to fall, hitting our skin hard like directed bullets. Wind increased, hurling the clouds forward so that the former blue-green of the lake turned black, foamy white tops splashing against the shoreline.
“Time to run,” I said and sprinted across our long backyard. Honey followed at our heels, her long pink tongue lolling as she raced ahead of us.
We were situated on our waterfront property that was abutted on either side by thick privacy forest that Jennifer and I had saved for, for the past five years. This place was our getaway from the city and our little condo there; our sanctuary of green and calm, our piece of earthly Nirvana when the day-to-day stressors became too much. We came up here almost every weekend, even during the winter. We held this cottage in our hearts, teaching our children how to swim, how to canoe, how to survive in the woods, and all the other skills that we, as parents, felt was pertinent to their long-term survival.
We pushed into the rustic parlor as the first of the downpours erupted, throwing the room into darkness. Trees bent over as wind picked up with a hard, sudden force that ripped leaves from branches. Lenny began to cry and pressed his face into my shoulder. Honey circled my legs, whining soft and low in her chest.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” I reassured them both. “We’re inside. We’re safe.”
“What about Mommy and Tia?”
I felt that odd little shiver again at his words. “They’re in town with many other people, Len. They’re safe in a car. I’ll give Mommy a call as soon as I get us set up here.”
I went around the room and into the kitchen, turning on lamps, filling the rooms with the artificial warmth of electric light.
“You sit here at the table while I get a washcloth,” I told Lenny. “I can’t bathe you with a storm like this.” I recalled my parents’ words when I was young as we’d watch storms move past together. How you shouldn’t talk on a telephone, lest the wire get struck by lightning, nor bathe, boat, swim, or be anywhere near water due to its conductivity. How standing under trees or being the tallest thing in a flat field could be dangerous…the sheer, daunting ubiquity of the threat. A storm seemed like a dark thing to me back then, something that penetrated walls with its thunder and reached around corners with its probing fingers of lightning. I knew exactly how Lenny felt. I hadn’t forgotten, but I masked that sour-gut feeling over with adult logic that stated that, as adults, we could always makes things safe. I filled a bowl with warm water and a little mild soap and proceeded to wash Lenny’s face, arms, and hands. It would do until we could get him into a bath. I noted the time. Three-thirty-one PM. Jennifer and Tia should be on the road, halfway back between Kingsto
n and Loon Bay by now. They’d be following Highway 10 from Kingston, a narrow two-lane strip of blacktop that wound through lake country. They’d be hitting the storm, face-on.
“Just sit tight while I give Mommy a quick call.” I gave Lenny a glass of chocolate milk and a cookie to occupy him. Honey stayed close to us, her big golden eyes wary as she, no doubt, picked up on our emotions. I plucked the receiver from the wall phone and punched in Jennifer’s cell phone number. A crack of lightning filled the house with an unnatural brilliance, followed by an ear-splitting cough of thunder that shook the cabin. Lenny dropped his glass of milk. The glass shattered on the floor, sending liquid and bits of glass in all directions. Honey barked, frantic.
“Daddy!”
“It’s okay, it’s all right, Len. I’m here,” I squeezed the receiver between my chin and shoulder as he ran to me. I scooped him up. “I’ll clean it up. It’s no big deal. It’s just thunder, scout. It can’t hurt you. It’s just a big noise. It’s just warm air and cool air coming together and—” I happened glance through our kitchen window at that moment, at a heavy bank of cloud rushing past. For a moment, just a terrifying moment, I’d swear I saw an unearthly face regarding me in the clouds, a part of the clouds themselves—this expression of intensity in the form of expanding cobalt eyes, a drawn out mouth of agony, a growing expression of horror. Then it was gone, as quickly as it had happened. The phone rang twice, three times, five times…
“Pick up, Jen,” I mumbled. Len gripped me, his small arms too tight around my neck and throat. Then I heard her cell phone connect, followed by her voice and a flood of relief swept through me. My wife and daughter were okay.
“Where are you both now?” I asked.
“We left Kingston fifteen minutes ago. We’ll hit Westport in another twenty. Quite the system that’s blowing in.”
“It’s forceful,” I said. “Be cautious driving with this wind and rain. Take your time. Stop somewhere, if you have to do it. Listen to the radio reports.”
She laughed, her infectious laugh that, sadly, failed to relieve me right now. “Sweetie, you worry too much. I’m a big girl. I’ve driven in a lot of storms over the years, the winter ones much worse than this. We’ll be fine. I’ll take my time. We may not get home until four-thirty or closer to five.”
“That’s okay,” I cut in. Our reception started to break up, turning her words into fragmented pieces that made little sense. “I’m losing reception!” I yelled into the phone and felt Lenny grip me tighter. “Len, you’re choking Daddy. Jen?”
Our line went dead. This could happen in the city, or within loops of hills in the country where signals became weak or nonexistent. I held the receiver to my ear and heard the solemnity of silence from the other end. Lightning flared overhead as the day darkened to the point of midnight and wind screamed around the cabin, hurling torn leaves, branches, bits of dead grass, wayward paper past the windows. Then, a huge crack that shook me to my core so deeply that I felt a buzzing inside my teeth. The receiver hummed in my hand. I dropped it as if it were hot. Lenny and I watched the telephone receiver dangle, oscillating back and forth like a pendulum from its cord, counting off the seconds as day turned to night and calm to turmoil.
“She can’t try to drive in this,” I thought aloud, then shut my mouth as I realized that Lenny would internalize everything I said.
“Is Mommy okay?”
“They’re fine, son. They’re on their way home.” They had thirty-five or more kilometers to travel, depending upon which route Jennifer chose to take. She could come up Highway 10 straight to Westport and cut through Sydenham, or she might go further west before heading north to Random Lake. All of it cottage country, all of it surrounded by water that would feed the storm, so much of it over bridges and through dips and hills. Then the power went out, shoving us into darkness, other than from lightening. Honey began to pace from room to room, moaning, frightened.
“Daddy,” Lenny cried.
“I’ll find our flashlights and lanterns,” I said. “You come help me, bud.”
We went through the cabin to the small storage closet in our bedroom where we kept emergency gear like candles, batteries, and such. I carried two glass candleholders with me into the kitchen, then went back to retrieve a flashlight and a small, battery-charged transistor radio. I plugged the radio in, lit the two candles, and Lenny and I sat down at the kitchen table, the room’s sliding patio doors overlooking our verandah and the lake, to listen for updates to the weather report. One came on within minutes.
A series of strong storm cells is currently making its way across the Great Lakes region and into Eastern Ontario. A severe thunderstorm warning is being advised. Areas currently being hit are—
Another flash of lightning. I happened to glance out at the lake, my mind drifting a little as I listened to the report, Lenny nestled into my lap, when I saw an image of Jennifer superimposed in the glass of our patio doors. It was a strange kind of image, one that lasted mere seconds in the flash, but which continued to show itself as an aftereffect upon my retinas. She’d been smiling and walking towards me, her hands extended out, her hair blowing in the wind. The image of Jennifer blinked out. Wishful thinking on my part, I reasoned. I just wanted them home.
This was followed by a series of resounding crashes as thunder broke directly over us. Lightning illuminated the sky again, highlighting the boiling clouds and I watched with horror as it hit an ancient maple across the shore from us, splitting the trunk and sending a volley of sparks up into the air. A cacophony of splintering wood, followed by a resounding shudder as half the tree fell to the ground, shook the house. Lenny screamed and clung to me. I felt my heart crawl up into my throat and my mouth came open in stupefied awe at the fury of the storm. I thought of the face I’d imagined seeing in the clouds just minutes ago, a malevolent face that had swept past, the heart of the storm. Honey took her position beneath the kitchen table, whining and shaking at my feet. I reached down with a trembling hand and gave her a weak pat. At this moment, I didn’t feel any more confident than my son or our dog, but I needed to be in control. The idea that Jennifer and Tia were out in this, fully into the lake region now, made me feel sick. On impulse, I found my cell phone on a nearby cabinet and tried her number again. It rang, endlessly.
“Come on…pick up,” I begged. My mind imagined everything in the next few seconds. A car crash, a plunge into a lake, hydroplaning into an opposite lane, a thick tree limb crashing down at the wrong moment…
The line picked up at the other end and I heard Jennifer’s voice. “Hello?”
“Hon? Are you both okay? Lenny and I just watched lightning ruin a large tree across from us. I’d rather you both pull over somewhere and wait this thing out.”
The line sounded odd, almost tenuous, the way a telephone connection can sound when calling somewhere to the other side of the world.
“I’m just fine,” she said, her voice light and airy. She didn’t sound the least bit phased.
“How’s Tia doing?”
A pause. I heard wind in the background then, a low, moaning wind that suggested they either had their windows open, or that the gale force was picking up around them. Then the wind screamed and through it, Tia’s voice came to me. “Daddy…daddy!” I heard Jennifer begin to sing to her, the way she had when Tia and Lenny had been babies and needed comforting, a kind of crooning lullaby with vaporous tones. Hush little baby, don’t you cry, Mama’s gonna sing you a lullaby…
“Tia?” My voice, urgent. Lenny looked up at me, his big brown eyes stark and full of question. “Jennifer?” Nothing. The connection had simply evaporated again, like mist sucked out by a cross-breeze. Terror seized me. I knew, instinctively, that something was wrong. Perhaps they’d encountered some kind of trouble and Jennifer was doing her best to remain calm and keep Tia mollified, but it wasn’t like her to make light of something with me. I’d been married to her for twelve years and I knew every nuance of this woman. I sensed a change in somet
hing for which I could not quite pinpoint, and this feeling bothered me more than the storm itself. I sensed she was riding it out, even though she knew she shouldn’t, determined to get home and be with us. I tried her number again and this time the phone rang without response. Frustrated, I clapped the phone shut and hurled it onto the counter.
“Where’s Mommy and Tia?” Lenny pressed.
“On their way home,” I said. “They should be home soon.” I glared at the clouds boiling past the window, the endless roiling of black condensation, the fury on the lake producing five-foot wave swells that moved docks around with the ease of a child slapping bath toys back and forth. Our stove clock read four-thirty PM. Soon it slipped into five PM, then five forty-six PM. I tried her number again, frantic, debating whether or not I should dial the local police and have a cruiser search for them. What might they find? What if they didn’t find anything and my family still didn’t come home? I wanted my wife and daughter here with me, safe, warm, dry, where we could sit and wait this thing out together. Desperate, I turned to the radio again, Lenny clinging to me like a young orangutan to its mother.
…tornado touched down just south of Westport. We’re awaiting damage reports at this time, but key witnesses say they saw an unusual funnel cloud move over Lake Echo, sucking up water before crossing land through forest and distant roadways. Police are advising travelers to postpone all travel through the Leeds and Thousand Island Region…
“Oh my God,” I whispered. “Oh my God, where are my girls?” I felt tears sting my eyes. I rationalized. I’d just spoken to them only minutes ago, and although I’d heard terror in Tia’s voice, she’d been alive and, thus, all right. She and Jen had been fine, Jen singing to Tia, trying to keep her calm inside the car. I ran for the phone and dialed the local Ontario Provincial Police precinct to try and gain more details about exactly where the tornado had landed. I got a dispatcher who asked me if I had a personal emergency at that time. I couldn’t think of a worse scenario than this.