I Don't Like Where This Is Going (28 page)

I sat next to Little Bob, who had hardly touched his food and who couldn't take his eyes off Lorena and the baby. I asked him how it felt to be a daddy again. He said he was happy and he was sad.

I said, “Why sad?”

“I won't see her grow up.”

Lorena asked Little Bob to go inside and fetch a blanket for the baby. I became aware of the sudden change in the weather. It seemed to have dropped ten degrees in five minutes. A breeze from the southwest picked up and scattered some of the napkins, which I hurried to pick up and dispose of. I saw Mike and Zandra slip around the side of the house and head for East Street.

Lorena handed the baby to her sister and went inside to see what was taking Little Bob so long. Ophelia dandled Emma Grace on her lap. Patience sat beside me and said the predicted nasty weather was on its way. Dot felt a headache coming on. When Patience tried to get the weather forecast, we realized for the first time that we did not have phone service in Flaubert.

Reverend Kline said, “Tornado weather.”

Ernst tied a knot in the green garbage bag and said, “There's a mobile home park over by Glenham. Any tornado will probably head right for it.”

The Dischlers were mumbling a collective prayer, heads bowed, hands folded. Dot said she didn't see a funnel cloud, and weren't we all getting riled up for no good reason? Little Bob came out to tell us the power was out. I asked Little Bob if he had a storm cellar.

He said, “We got a ditch yonder.”

The gathered clouds were billowing and brown, and then what had looked like a comma at the bottom of a cloud dropped to the earth as a funnel, and Patience said, “Goddamn it, Wylie, this is getting biblical.” And as if to prove her right, it began to hail, and we all took shelter in the house, which itself was rattling on its foundation, and it seemed as if the whole of the lowering sky, and not just the spinning funnel itself, was turning slowly counterclockwise, as if trying to twist the very earth loose from its purchase and lift it into the chaotic heavens. The rubber duck in the baby's crib began to squeak, and we saw a cottonwood spiral up into the whirlwind. Reverend Kline shouted that we should all run to the church and get down into the cellar, but the church was three blocks away, and the tornado was considerably closer and bearing down on us.

Bay said, “Get the baby, pile into the van, and we'll drive to the church.”

Little Bob turned in a circle, clapped his hands on his pockets. He said, “Where's the baby at?” Lorena screamed. Patience, Bay, and I ran outside, where the rain and the hail had stopped. The baby's carriage was being pushed along by the wind at a vigorous clip toward the ditch. When I caught up with it, I discovered that Emma Grace was not inside. The funnel was now a hundred yards away, and debris was swirling around and, for the most part, above us. And then I saw Ophelia, untethered in body and mind, walking resolutely toward the tornado. The funnel was now the solid brown of accumulated soil and as thick at the bottom as at the top. The wind thundered and whined. I turned and saw Ophelia holding Emma Grace, whose innocent heart was as light as a feather, saw Ophelia holding Emma Grace above her head as if offering a sacrifice to the cyclone Ammit, the Bone-Eater, the Swallower of the Dead, and Ophelia's resplendent robe was torn from her
naked body and born aloft into the maelstrom, and, just like that, the bludgeon that was the whirlwind stopped and spun in place before the woman and child, and then it quieted and diminished and became, at first, lank and ropy, and then ascended back into the matrix of clouds from which it had dropped.

Bay reached Ophelia and took the baby from her arms. Lorena wrapped her sister in a blanket and took the baby from Bay, and then there was silence in Flaubert. And then we all went to church, Christians and nullifidians both, and we all sang praise to whatever force it was that had stilled the storm and saved the town, and the Reverend Kline spoke of Elijah taken up to heaven in a whirlwind and said how at times we need the storm, the whirlwind, the earthquake. “When the whirlwind passes,” he said, “the wicked is no more.”

The power was back on at Little Bob's house thanks to his gasoline generator. Lorena put the baby to bed, and we all sedated ourselves with vodka and listened for news on the radio. The National Guard, we learned, was on its way to help with the search for survivors. The mobile home park in Glenham had been leveled. Bay said he'd been thinking about following Zandra's husband to North Dakota, finding a private poker game, and getting himself some of that oil shale money. Mike walked in the door with a thousand-yard smile and dropped onto the love seat beside Bay and said, “What's new?”

I said, “Where have you been?”

“Girding up my loins, I think they call it.”

“And how did that go?”

“Knocked it out of the park.”

I said, “Now what?”

Patience said we were all going home to Florida. She'd bought the tickets when she purchased the Dakota tickets. “Nothing in
Everglades County could be as bad as what we've been through already.”

Bay looked at Little Bob and said, “Why don't you three—you four—come with us.”

Little Bob said, “Home is where the baby is.”

Bay said, “Where's the nearest pediatrician?”

Lorena said, “Dr. Gadbois over in Glenham, but he drinks a bit.”

Ophelia said, “
This
baby will take care of
us
.”

And I was reminded of Eric back in Battle Mountain.
Not all there, but sweet as honey
.

Zandra kicked the door open, stepped inside, and leveled a pistol at Mike. I suppose I should have known no good would come of the carnal misalliance of Mike Lynch and Zandra Schine.

Lorena said, “What the hell is going on?”

Mike said, “The lady asked for a gratuity, and I politely declined.”

Little Bob said, “Don't shoot, you'll wake the baby!”

And Zandra said, “The beautiful baby,” and it was as if the vital flame in her face was extinguished, and she lowered her pistol and cried, and I knew then that Zandra had been denied a child in her own life, and that the emptiness that followed, and the grief that was its consequence, had driven Zandra into the greedy and plundering arms of goat-drunk men who were the unworthy but fortunate recipients of her aimless yearning and her aching hunger.

Little Bob said, “Sit your glorious ass down, Zandra, and have a drink.”

And on that day of Emma Grace's baptism we all told stories late into the Dakota night so that we forgot all about moving on, and we sustained one another with laughter and sadness, and we thought that we understood, for the moment at least, the varieties
of human experience, and on that night the legend was born of the woman of true voice, clothed in the sun, and the bright and lavish child, who together tamed the whirlwind and delivered us all to the Land of Vindication. And on that night, out on the porch, I drew Patience close and smelled the sweet clover scent of Emma Grace on her neck and inhaled her own savory fragrance laced with those odorless but intoxicating pheromones, and we heard the stirring baby cry, and in the succeeding stillness I proposed to Patience once again. I said, “Marriage?” She said, “Family.” I smiled. Done!

Acknowledgments

As always, thanks to Jill Bialosky for finding the story in the manuscript. And to Dave Cole, artist, poet, copy editor, and face-saver. Thanks to Maria Rogers for her generous feedback and incisive reading of the manuscript. To John Bond, who taught me what I know about poker. To Django and Zoë, who hung out with me on the writing desk and sometimes on the writing paper, and who managed to insinuate themselves into the book. Thanks to Bill Clegg for his faith and enthusiasm, and to Richard McDonough, without whom none of my books would have happened. Thanks to my colleague and walking partner, Julie Marie Wade, who also has a role in the book. Thanks to Florida International University's English Department and to my inspiring students. Thanks to Cindy, of course, and to Tristan. Thanks to my sweet family, Paula and Denis, Cyndi and Conrad, Mark and Lucy, Madelyn, Missy, Hiedi, Kristine and Roger, and my mom, Dot. And thanks to our extended family, Liz and Bruce, Kimberly and Jeremy, and Theo, my best pal, the boy who keeps me smiling, makes me happier than I may deserve to be, and who invented the Game of Pens.

ALSO BY JOHN DUFRESNE

No Regrets, Coyote

Is Life Like This?

Requiem, Mass.

Johnny Too Bad

The Lie That Tells a Truth

Deep in the Shade of Paradise

Love Warps the Mind a Little

Louisiana Power & Light

The Way That Water Enters Stone

Copyright © 2016 by John Dufresne

All rights reserved

First Edition

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The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Names: Dufresne, John, author.

Title: I don't like where this is going : a Wylie Coyote novel / John
Dufresne.

Description: New York, NY : W. W. Norton & Company, [2016]

Identifiers: LCCN 2015043955 | ISBN 9780393244687 (hardcover)

Subjects: | GSAFD: Suspense fiction.

Classification: LCC PS3554.U325 I3 2016 | DDC 813/.54—dc23 LC record
available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015043955

ISBN: 978-0-393-24469-4 (e-book)

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