The Weatherman

by Steve Thayer

  Rick Beanblossom laid the Weatherman’s diary on his lap. Reading by moonlight was a strain on his eyes. He felt a headache coming on. Andrea rolled over, sound asleep, her eyes closed, her breathing even. He watched her sleep and thought of how much he loved her. He knew her now, knew the qualities behind the perfect face. Understood her quiet intelligence, her thirst to know more about life. He admired the way she had grown as a journalist, as a human being, admired the way she had forced him to grow.

  The man in the mask leaned an elbow on the windowsill and in the sweet stillness of a summer evening stared out across the valley. He could see the old courthouse on the hill with a bronze soldier a hundred years old standing guard. He could see the bluffs of Wisconsin so green and lush not even the night could darken their allure. And where the St. Croix River left town and headed for its rendezvous with the Mississippi he could just barely make out the pitched roof of a guard tower between the pines. Tomorrow he would pay the Confederate prisoner there another visit. He couldn’t help wondering if this visit would be his last. When the air turned cool, when the leaves dried up and fell to the ground, the Supreme Court of the land would decide the fate of the Weatherman.

  Each inmate was allowed eighteen hours of visitation per month. The hours were from 1:30 to 9:00 P.M. At two o’clock Rick Beanblossom signed in. He surrendered his driver’s license and had his hand stamped. Within the prison walls the man in the mask had become a familiar sight. “He’s that writer married to Andrea Labore.”A guard ushered the most famous husband in Minnesota into the visitors’ lounge. Compared with the county jail the room was a coffee house. There was a “no contact” area where booths with Plexiglas separated visitor from inmate, but it was used only for disciplinary reasons, for the inmates who couldn’t keep their hands off their visitors. Most of the area resembled a comfortable depot lounge: vinyl chairs with wooden armrests, strung together in neat rows and watched over by a guard at a desk.

  It was unusually busy for a weekday afternoon. The only empty row of chairs was in the back along the children’s section, where the kids played while Mommy visited Daddy. On this afternoon no children were present. Rick studied the fairy-tale characters painted on the wall as he waited for Dixon Bell.

  The guards held the door for him as the Weatherman entered. Two guards escorted Stillwater’s only death row prisoner whenever he moved through the halls; at times it looked more like an honor guard than a security precaution.

  Rick Beanblossom and Dixon Bell never shook hands. They were as awkward as they had been the first time they ever met. They kept their backs to the others in the room. The guards left them alone. News and weather took seats facing the wonderland over the play area. Fluffy white clouds were painted in a bright blue sky. The Queen was there, as was the White Rabbit. Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Alice enjoyed tea with the Mad Hatter.

  “How is Andrea?” asked Dixon Bell.

  “She’s good. Puts a lot of work into the house. Hates the long commute to the station. She sends her best to you.”

  The Weatherman’s face almost turned into a smile. “Send her my best, too.”

  “Would you like for her to come and see you?”

  “No. Tell her please don’t.”The silence was chilling. The Weatherman leaned forward. He nodded at the mural. “Humpty Dumpty looks like your Hubert Humphrey. What were those famous words of his, about human rights?”

  “Dumpty’s or Humphrey’s?”

  Dixon Bell laughed, relieving the tension. “Humphrey’s.”

  “‘The time has arrived to get out of the shadow of states’ rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.’”

  Dixon Bell leaned back in his chair. “Ain’t them pretty words.”

  “That was at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in 1948,” Rick said, educating the man on death row. “It was the first convention to be televised. After his speech the southern delegates walked off the convention floor in protest and stacked their party badges on a table in front of the TV cameras. After the cameras left, they picked up their badges and went back inside. No cameras were there to cover Humphrey’s famous speech. Television had come to politics.”

  “I tuned into Sky High News the other night. Other than Andrea I hardly recognized the place, or the faces.”

  Rick agreed. “They got a new set. It looks like Sesame Streetto me. Ron Shea took that anchor job in Washington. The new anchor is named Stan Butts. They call him ‘the butthole from Cleveland.’The new weather girl is from Salt Lake City.”

  The Weatherman shook his head in disgust. “Dumb blonde. Doesn’t know a cool front from a storm front. What became of Jack Save-Me-Jesus Napoleon?”

  “He’s working for a television consulting firm in Des Moines. He’s one of those TV doctors who run around the country trying to heal broken stations. Dave Cadieux went to work for a video production company in Los Angeles. Nobody ever hears from him.”

  “Charleen Barington?”

  “Settled her lawsuit out of court. Lives in Dallas. Divorced. Works at a consulting firm for beauty pageants.”

  “Gayle the Ghoul?”

  “Got married. She edits a magazine in Chicago. Her husband writes for a newspaper there.”

  “Chris Mack?”

  “Took a PR job with Northwest Airlines.”

  “And Andy Mack dropped dead right in front of the weather wall.”

  “Yes.”

  “Television. What a business.”

  “Yeah, what a business.”

  After another uncomfortable interlude Dixon Bell announced, “I know what Andy said just before he died.”

  Rick looked up, startled. Impossible. How could he know? Rick and Andrea had told nobody about the puzzling last words muttered by the old weatherman as he lay dying on the studio floor.

  Dixon Bell smiled, then broke into his favorite Andy Mack impersonation. “And in Ruby, North Dakota, today it was forty-eight degrees. And in Myrtle Creek, Oregon, it was fifty-five degrees. While down in Bogalusa, Louisiana, the temperature got all the way up to eighty-one degrees. Hard to believe.”

  Rick’s heart dropped back into place. “That was Andy.”

  The Weatherman admired the clouds painted on the wall. “I see the Nation - al Weather Service finally got the Nexrad system up and running. It looks phenomenal. They say its radar would have spotted the Eden Prairie tornado.”

  The former television news producer got up from his chair and walked to the sky-blue wall. “Hell, you did that, and you didn’t cost taxpayers three billion dollars.”What had seemed impossible only a year ago now seemed inevitable to Rick: the state was going to execute this man who had saved so many lives that day. “There’s a fingerprint expert from Scotland Yard speaking at a police chiefs’ convention in Chicago next month. I told Stacy I might take copies of the transformer print there along with the AFIS information and get his opinion.”

  “What are you trying to tell me?”

  “Just that we’re still working on it.”

  Dixon Bell sighed. “I wonder where I’d be right now if that tornado had shown up on computers, and that fingerprint hadn’t.”

  Rick Beanblossom took a deep breath. “Dixon, I want to have your diary published. At least let the local papers have it.”

  “No, siree. Absolutely not.”

  “You’ve never understood news, Weatherman. There are a hundred copies of your diary down at the county attorney’s office. It’s going to leak out anyway, page by page, and every page will be out of context. If the Supreme Court doesn’t hear your case, the only thing that’s going to save your ass is a PR campaign launched at the governor. In his heart Ellefson doesn’t believe in the death penalty any more than I do.”

  The Weatherman nodded in agreement. “You’re right. I’ve never understood news. What exactly does this ‘off the record’ mean?”

  “It means that you never said it, and I never heard you say it. You know that.”

  �
��But I mean, to really maintain a trusting relationship with all those secret sources of yours, you have to be pretty true to this ‘off the record’ stuff—kind of like a priest, huh?”

  “Yeah, kind of like a priest.”

  “Betray one source, you lose them all?”

  “Probably, yes.”

  Dixon Bell glanced over his shoulder. The guard at the desk was on the phone, paying them no attention. The Weatherman lifted a piece of paper from his shirt pocket. It had been folded and tucked so many times it looked like a tiny present. He held it out to Rick. “Here, Kemo Sabe. This is for you.”

  Rick Beanblossom reached for the note, but Dixon Bell jerked it away, the devil’s grin breaking like lightning across his face. “But you see, it’s off the record.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Rick.

  “That means I never wrote it, and you never read it.” That crazy look was descending over the Weatherman. “It’s for your eyes only. Not to be opened until after my death—be that next month, or be it the next century. Is it a deal?”

  “Only under one condition.”

  “No conditions.”

  “One condition,” Rick demanded. “Could this note—or whatever it is— could it save your life?”

  The Weatherman began laughing; his shallow, mocking laugh.

  “C’mon, stay with me on this, Weatherman. The sun is setting on this story.”

  “No. The words on this piece of paper can’t save my life.”

  The newsman with a thousand sources, and a thousand promises to keep, took another second to think about this odd request from this incongruous man.

  “Okay,” he said. “It’s a deal. Off the record.”

  “Forever?”

  “Forever.”

  Dixon Bell handed over the note.

  Rick Beanblossom rolled the small rectangle between his fingers. “Why are you giving this to me now?”

  “Because I don’t want to see you anymore.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Let’s just say I’m tired of looking at your ugly face.”

  Dixon Bell was back in his cell for the 3:30 lockup. Rick Beanblossom brought out the devil in him. At what point would the masked asshole read the note? Would it matter? Just before the bars slid closed, Carol Theguard handed him his daily bundle of mail. He sat on his bunk and listened as a thousand prison cells slammed closed and the body count began. The afternoon sun was streaming through the tall windows, causing a precipitate rise in the temperature. The giant fans in the day room only blew the hot air around. The Weatherman flipped through the mail, checking the postmarks. He always opened first the letters that came from the farthest away. Today there was a letter postmarked Honolulu, Hawaii. No return address showing. Without opening it he held it up to the light like a private detective. He was getting good at this. A prison game he’d invented: forecasting the contents of his mail.

  The letter was handwritten in a beige envelope. It had the faint scent of island flowers. It was from a young woman. It was a friendly letter, but the stationery had a military feel to it. It was a very personal letter; she wanted something. He ran the envelope beneath his nose and could almost smell the ocean breeze. Then it hit him, stronger than any letter delivered in prison had ever hit him. This letter was from a girl he had known long ago. A girl he loved? A knot grew in his stomach—nothing to be afraid of, but the knot was there. Letters had always been his undoing. He slowly peeled open the resealed envelope and removed the sheet of paper. He unfolded it and read. The Weatherman was right on all counts.

  Dear Dixon Bell

  My name is Su St. Germain. I am a nurse at the Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. Though I am now an American citizen, I am Vietnamese by birth. Like many Vietnamese Americans I came to the States in 1975 after the war was lost. I was a four-year-old orphan then. Upon arriving in Hawaii I was put up for adoption. I’m told I was very cute, and it was these cute looks I used to charm a naval officer and his wife into adopting me. I grew up a Navy brat. But I was very lucky. They were wonderful parents, retired now and living on Maui.

  So why am I writing you? Those of us who were forced to flee our homeland have formed something of a refugee club here in Honolulu. Members of our club have told me a story about my escape from Vietnam that I only vaguely remember. I remember this nice man who found me in a crowded room and bought me a bowl of soup. I remember bombs falling on us and I was very scared. I remember the man chasing an airplane and trying to put me on it, but I didn’t want to go. Then they pulled me out of his arms and into the airplane with all the crowded people and I couldn’t stop crying. That is all I remember. But others in our club are much older than I am. Two of them were on that same airplane. They have told me the plane was overcrowded and everybody was afraid they were going to crash. The pilot was trying to take off so no more people would get on board. They were fighting to

  close the door when a big man came running down the runway chasing the plane with a little girl in his arms. The little girl was me. My friends believe this man was the weatherman at the Tan Son Nhut Air Base.

  Over the years I have tried to find out who this weatherman was so that I can thank him. But all of my letters to the Air Force have come back with the same dismissive answer. “Sorry, your request is for CLASSIFIED information. Your request has been DENIED.”

  I have read in news magazines of your trial and your conviction. I am very sorry. One of the articles said that you were a meteorologist in the Air Force and you were stationed in Vietnam during the fall of Saigon.

  Mr. Bell, were you the weatherman at the Tan Son Nhut Air Base on April 29, 1975? Did you find a lost little girl at the evacuation center and race to put her on a plane to America? If you did, I am that little girl. I would like very much please to hear from you.

  I am married (yes, he too is in the Navy) and I have a little girl of my own now. We hope to have another child soon. It would mean a lot to me and my family if I could tell them more about how I came to America. If you can help me in any way please write me at the address below.

  I’ll be praying for you.

  Sincerely

  Su St. Germain

  The former Air Force officer dropped the letter on his bunk, the bunk where he now had three sleeping pills safely tucked away. He grabbed the roll of toilet paper from the shelf and blew his nose. He swallowed the lump of pride in his throat. He looked at the bars on the door and felt swallowed up in shame. Little Tan Jan. Who’d have thought it? Dear God, what to tell her? He swiped at a tear. Dixon Bell read the letter again. When he was finished he read it one more time.

  He left the rest of the day’s mail unopened. He stepped over to his desk and picked up the Holy Bible. He knew enough to turn to the New Testament. Dixon Bell found himself paging through the Gospel According to Matthew. At chapter 16 he smiled. Seems even Jesus Christ had taken a stab at weather forecasting. Christ said to the Pharisees, “It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.” Matthew didn’t say what happened after that, so it was a safe bet that Christ blew it and it was sunny all day. The Weatherman returned to the bunk with the Bible. When he finished reading an hour later, he marked his spot with the letter from Tan Jan.

  The Warrant

  On the day the Weatherman was scheduled to leave the Ramsey County jail for death row in Stillwater, the deputies lined up beside the sally port to shake his hand, joking he was the first prisoner in the jail’s history who actually stuck his head right through a wall. He smiled a sad smile at the thought of that day. And he thought of other times. He thought back to the children who gave him a standing ovation for merely walking into their classroom. He remembered the night Sky High News won the ratings war and they drank champagne out of Styrofoam cups like the one he now gripped in his hand. And, of course, of the afternoon he picked the tornado out of the sky over Eden Prairie and sounded the first warning.

  He remembered the first time he laid eyes on Andrea Labore
. She walked into the newsroom in a gold plaid pantsuit over a yellow blouse. The bright colors set off her big brown eyes and her shiny autumn hair. He was thunderstruck. Frozen by her beauty. Recognizing the Weatherman from television, she smiled at him from across the room. Then Chris Mack slapped him on the back. “Be careful, Dixon— she once killed a man who looked at her wrong.”

  He remembered his first night on Memphis TV. He was so awful, so tongue tied he was sure he was going to be fired. Thank God it rained cats and dogs that night, just like he said it would. When he was honorably discharged from the Air Force after twenty years of service the pilots he had guided through the storm clouds threw a party for him in the control tower.Why no planes crashed that night is still a military mystery.

  He remembered the Vietnamese people who thought he was God because he could read the weather. He saw himself running down the runway chasing a transport plane with the only girl who ever loved him back begging not to be released from his arms. Then the newsreel of his life came to an end.