Joe (15 page)

Chapter
Twenty-five

Joe

A
storm was rolling in. The sky outside my bedroom window had become an angry
gray. Not a breath of wind was rustling the trees. Even the air in my apartment
seemed to have fallen stagnant, the world quieter somehow. I stepped outside on
my second floor balcony to get a feel for what I knew may be coming. After
living smack in the center of Tornado Alley for all of my life, I didn’t need
the television meteorologists to tell me that a tornado watch was in effect.
Most of us lifers don’t. Sniffing out a tornado becomes like a sixth sense. Or
a seventh, in my case.

The warm air engulfed me, though not a
sliver of sun broke through the gray mass that seemed to be slowly sweeping
across the sky. The air was still and moist and comfortable on my exposed arms.
It was a
perfect
temperature, really. One I had come to know well over the
years. One that makes you want to just sit outside and soak it up. But the way
the sky seemed to be at odds with itself, with the heavy gray bodies passing so
maliciously overhead, as if preparing to face some great battle, and the
atmosphere below standing so stiffly at attention. An eager spectator that has
positioned itself too close to the field. 

There was a charge, too, if you knew it
well enough to look for it. While the air was so still it seemed to form a soft
cushion all around you, it gave off a little hum as well, a tiny, silent
vibration that seemed to radiate from the warm-air cushions pressing against
your body. That’s the best way I can describe it. You either know what I’m
talking about, or you don’t.

Tornado weather always gets me thinking.
I’m not sure how many tornado watches and warnings I’ve lived through. Too many
to count. A tornado watch is issued when there is a high potential for a
twister. A tornado warning is issued when a tornado was actually
seen
in
your area. When this happens, sirens go off in the streets, loud and obnoxious
and continuous, and most of us with half a brain get underground quick. As I
stood on my balcony, I got the feeling that they would be going off soon.

A tornado was coming. I could feel it. I
could
always
feel it, and that’s why it always got me thinking. I had
heard plenty of old timers over the years talk about how they could smell the
storm coming. In fact, I think anyone who lives in Tornado Alley long enough
sort of develops a nose for it. This, for me, raises questions.

I have never met another like me.
Likewise, I have never seen vampires lurking in shadows or witches casting
spells. But then, I haven’t seen very much of the world, either. What was it
that happened over time to let people be able to sense something as
unpredictable as a tornado? Did everyone possess a certain aptitude for
foresight? The biggest mystery, really, was: Were there other people out there
who had a gift like mine? A higher aptitude for…something. Though my fear of
the world—or better yet, the things I
would
see
if I were to
travel anyplace larger than Peculiar, Missouri—would more than likely keep me
tied to this place for the remainder of my life, I found the question arising
in me more and more often. Surely I wasn’t the only one. Surely.

There was Nostradamus, of course. The
great and powerful seer. The supposed poster-boy for my kind. There were people
who claimed to be able to reach the dead. There were people who claimed to be
able to speak to God. Hell, there even people who claimed that they were
psychic. Surely they were not
all
liars, right?

The problem was, all of the ones I have
talked to, were. When I turned seventeen and moved out of my parents’ house, I
began to search for people who claimed to have such powers. For my first stop I
went downtown to the Westport area (an area of Kansas City that is known for
housing strange things) and visited a woman by the name of Momma Bobarn. She
had been in business since the early thirties, telling people their fortunes and
reading their palms for five bucks a pop. When I got there, after I coughed up
the money, she took me to a small back room that was decorated from floor to
ceiling in deep reds and purples. A low, round table sat in the middle of the
windowless chamber, and fluffy pillows were scattered about the crimson floor.

Momma Bobarn took my money and told me
what my future held. Which, according to her, were kids, a middle-class job,
and a hard-headed but loving husband. She tossed in a few mystical words, prescribed
a little wheat oil for some common ailment I don’t have, and sent me on my way.
The psychic looked into my eyes, held my hands, and said not a word about how I
may be different from the other folks that wandered through her door. I had
been nervous and hopeful before that encounter. I left discouraged, but not
completely.

Most of my research was done on the
internet, as I have not the funds, nor the desire, to physically search the
world. Everything I have found has been as encouraging as The Great Momma
Bobarn. I still wonder, during times of bad weather especially, but I don’t
expect to ever really find the answers I’m looking for. And the worst part is,
if I don’t, my knack for seeing dismal futures may eventually drive me insane.
Some days I feel not too far from it.

Control
. That is what I was searching for. I
got it in my head that if I could find other people like me, or even other
people with extraordinary gifts, I could figure out if there was a way to work
on controlling the ability. Perhaps, find out how to extinguish it all
together. Now there was a dream.

I stepped back inside my apartment and
slid the balcony door shut. The storm outside unnerved me, but not enough to
make me seek out a storm shelter. Perhaps I had become too comfortable with the
threat of tornados over the years, which is certainly a deadly way to feel.
But, I felt like the coming twister was not going to touch down right here. We
were going to get some hellish winds, the electricity may even go out for a
while, but I thought I would probably be just fine in my apartment. Then again,
people always seem to think that they will be just fine.

It wasn’t just familiarity and stupidity
that kept me from running for cover, though. If the time came, I wouldn’t
hesitate to do just that. It was because I have called it before. Just once,
when I was seven years old, but I called it before.

That day the sky had looked the same as
the one currently outside my door. A tornado watch had been in effect. My
mother—despite having grown up in Tornado Alley—was deathly afraid of being
sucked
up and spit out by the sky,
as she so eloquently loved to put it. She would
sit in front of the television, the remote clutched between her sweaty hands,
and watch all of the newscasts tracking the storms. There are two reasons I
remember that day so clearly, even though it was now fourteen years gone. One
was because it was the only time a tornado had ever come close to doing me real
harm, and two was because it was the only time my mother made a comment about
my gift. Before that day, I thought that both of my parents had no idea. I
still believe my father doesn’t. Since she has never since mentioned it again,
I am suspicious, but not positive, that my mother knows about my ability.

We were sitting in her parlor
(please
remove your shoes and wash your hands before entering thank you)
watching
the meteorologist inform us about the coming storm. At this point only a watch
had been in effect. The warning for my area would not be issued until thirty
minutes
after
the damage was done.

Whenever a warning was issued, my mother
would rush my father and me down into our basement, and we would sit there for
hours, my mother telling us both about how
God’s hand was coming down. God’s
hand was coming down and it meant business,
and me sitting in the corner
with a flashlight and an old paperback. My father and I never had much in
common, but we both hated when there was a tornado watch, and the potentially
deadly tornado had nothing to do with it.

So, my mother sat, eyes glued to the
television screen and waiting for it to announce that the watch was now a
warning so that she could rush us down to the basement and spout her paranoia
for endless hours. Meanwhile, I crept into my room to pick out the book I would
bring with me when she made us go down there. I was scanning my bookcase,
trying to decide between a collection of Poe’s poems and stories and
Great
Expectations
, when a potent sense of dread rushed through me. I turned from
the bookshelf with wooden stiffness and crossed my room to look out of my
windows. I took no time to wonder why I did this, I just
did.

The sky was dark and gray and ugly, but
no more so than when I had seen it on what seemed like hundreds of occasions
before. Except, that day, as I looked out at it from the false and flimsy
protection that was my bedroom window, my heart was nearly leaping out of my
chest. Nothing beyond that simple glass window was moving.
Nothing
at
all.
Except for that angry gray mass that was hovering above.

Standing at the window that day, looking
out at that dark, still world, was the first time that I ever
wanted
to
have a vision, a sliver of the future. I had nothing to support my feeling that
the tornado was coming, and that it was coming
here
(a watch had been
issued in twelve separate counties. Odds were we’d get spared, and
watch
also meant no one had spotted a twister, anyhow), but somehow I was terrified
that a tornado
was
coming, and that our house was on its menu. I stood
there and shut my eyes, my body suddenly cold all over and my heart pounding
war drums in my ears, and I hoped with all my heart to see if it was coming. I
wished with all my heart to see if it was coming
before it came.

My wish was granted. I saw what was
going to happen. And it was coming.

I had rushed back into my mother’s
parlor, my face dripping cold sweat, my fists clenching and unclenching, and
struggling worse than ever to get the words I needed to say through my lips.
“Uh-uh-uh-uh st-st-st—”

My mother noticed me then, and her face
lit up with angry alarm. She came over to me and gripped me hard by the
shoulders. “Spit it out,” she said, shaking me now, as if that would help the
words come. “Spit it out, you crazy little shit! You’re scarin’ me!”

“T-t-t-t—”

She shook me harder, her pale, terrified
face only inches from my own. “Spit it out, godamnit! If you know something,
spit it out!”

“TORNADO!” I screamed at her, the word
ripping flawlessly up my throat and through my lips.

Her face had changed then. Whereas
before there was just fear and anger, now there was also a little disgust. She
released me, shoving my shoulders with such force that I stumbled back a few
steps. Staring down me, she said, “I knew it.” Whether she was referring to the
storm or to my gift, I still do not know.

We’d only been in the basement for
fifteen minutes when it happened, and despite all of the things I have endured
since, that experience remains to be the single most terrifying of my entire
life. The single light bulb hanging from the concrete basement ceiling
flickered, moving shadows against the walls and floor and our shocked faces.
Then the light went out completely, and my parents and I sat in utter darkness,
all of us too scared to speak or move. And just before the “hand of God” came
down, the world went unnaturally silent, as if all of its sounds had been
sucked into some enormous black hole, leaving only a void for the ears. Nothing
seemed to be stirring. I remember thinking one thing:
It’s the calm before
the storm. That’s what they mean when they say—

And my mother screamed then, filling the
void with such hard, high-pitched terror that I slapped my hands over my ears
and tucked my knees close to my chest as I sat on the cold, hard floor. I bent
my head down between my knees and listened, and waited.

Then, all hell broke loose.

The entire house above our heads let out
a guttural, anguished groan, followed by a crack of thunder so colossal that I
found myself shaking and muttering into the darkness. My father cursed. My
mother fell silent. More groans, more angry thunder. And then we heard
it.

And
it
was not a force of sound
which could be compared with anything. It was the sound of the world rushing by
outside of your open car windows. It was the sound of high winds in the dead of
night, slapping tree branches against your window. It was the sound of a hair
dryer pressed right against your ear. It was all of those things, but it was
not. It was the ungodly sound of Mother Nature herself, in all of her enormous,
unstoppable glory.

Next came the sound of breaking things;
boards snapping and ripping like weak bones and soft muscles, shattering glass,
tree branches splitting, objects flying, landing, crashing. The moment seemed
to go on for an eternity, the dark, the cold basement and the sounds of
it
drowning the world. I would find out later that it had only lasted for a
handful of minutes, but in that moment I felt sure that it was eternal, that I
would be trapped in this black hole for the rest of forever.

We finally found the nerve to crawl out
of the basement, my father going up the stairs first, followed by me and my
mother behind me. We got to see firsthand just how big and bad Ms. Mother
Nature really could be. Almost every window on the second floor of our house
had been shattered, and more on the first floor. The privacy fence around our
backyard had been ripped from the ground and tossed carelessly aside like a
child’s plaything. Several houses on the block had been reduced to heaps of
boards and furniture and rubble. Power lines lay across the road in deceptive,
dangerous silence. Trash was strewn everywhere, the streets and lawns
resembling the sight of some unruly party. An old, gigantic oak had been torn
up by its ancient roots and tossed straight down onto my mother’s parlor room.
The chair she had been sitting in when I came in to warn her about the tornado
had been crushed under the oak’s massive trunk. When she saw it, she flashed me
a look of hatred so deep that I fell back a step, turned on my heel and
wandered around the destroyed neighborhood in shock and hurt.