Authors: Lizzy Roberts
Steeling My Haart
Steeling My Haart
By Lizzy Roberts
Steeling
My Haart
By
Lizzy Roberts
Copyright
© 2015 Emma Clark
Cover
Design Emma Clark
Edited
by Liz Borino
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For
Martin, Robert & Elizabeth
April 2008, Glen Springs, OK
Charlie
“Goddammit!”
Charlie shouted as he cracked his head on the open hood of the truck he was
working on. Rubbing the sore spot through his dirty-blond hair, he walked
over to the chair by the messy desk in his uncle’s office and reached for his
old, worn black leather jacket. His cellphone was ringing with the
familiar ringtone Emma had assigned to her number. His stomach was in
knots. Not the normal kind of happy knots or the intense fluttering of
butterflies that warmed his gut when Emma usually rang him, though. He felt it
with every part of him and this was the call that was going to change
everything.
He
hit the answer button and with heart-wrenching resignation, raised the cell to
his ear. Clearing his throat, he did his best to feign happiness. “Hey, sweetness,
have you had a good day?”
“Oh
my God, Charlie, I got the letter! It’s here, Blaze, it’s really here,” Emma
answered, her voice laced with emotion. Normally hearing his precious
girlfriend use her nickname for him would have warmed him to the core but not
today. Today, for some reason, it just made him sad.
“So,
you gonna leave me hanging or what?” He sighed. He was trying hard to be happy for
her, but failing miserably. He knew once she opened the letter everything would
have to change. Nothing good for them as a couple would come of this situation
and deep down he knew it.
“I
haven’t opened it yet. I’m scared. I need you here. I can’t do
this alone.”
Charlie could hear the nerves in her
voice and steeled himself for what he was about to say.
“Okay, sweetness, give me five and I’ll
lock up. Uncle Hank is away now with Mom for the weekend now so he won’t
mind if I close up early. I’ll be there as soon as I can. We’ll do it
together.” He closed his eyes and winced to himself as he realized just what
this meant.
“Blaze,
I love you so much! Please hurry up! This is killing me! Do you realize what it
means if I got in? It means we could have a future away from here. This could
be a chance to have a proper future for us. It’s our ticket away from this
small town. But I need you here, too, because this is for us. I love you.”
He
took his time finishing up on the truck in front of him and unhurriedly set
about tidying the tools and sweeping the floor of the garage. It didn’t take an
idiot to realize he was trying hard to delay setting off. As if delaying
the inevitable would make the whole nightmare go away. As he reached for the
switch on the radio his attention was suddenly drawn to the warnings for severe
weather in their area. He wasn’t too worried. Although it was late spring and
typically the height of the tornado season, it was fairly rare to hear of one
in their area. Despite the rarity, the threats came once every couple weeks.
He
silenced the radio after listening to the short alert and shrugging off his
oily overalls and putting on his faded grey hooded sweater and jacket on over
his shirt, he quickly headed out to close the workshop. Emma needed him and he
was being a coward.
The
garage was situated on the infamous Route 66, and although the bulk of the
traffic flowing on the iconic route was mainly tourists now, the garage still
had a good flow of mechanical work, owing to his uncle’s local connections. The
garage also had a small shop adjacent to it, well stocked with the essentials
that most passing tourists needed, as well as offering a pay at the pump gas
filling service. So, for most of the time, motorists could fill up without
needing to head into the shop and his uncle decided that they could manage with
just the two of them manning both buildings. In the height of the tourist
season they employed part-time workers to man the shop, but it was not worth
paying the wages this time of year for the amount of passing trade they
attracted. As he secured the shop by pulling the shutter, he noticed again the
weather was looking pretty wild across the other side of town. Drawing his coat
tighter and raising his hood, he headed to his truck.
As
he drove the few miles across town to Emma’s parents home, he noticed that
there was a huge storm brewing in the distance. The day had been hot and the moist
air was suffocating.
As he turned
out of the parking lot of the auto shop and on the main highway, a huge shelf
cloud had formed ahead of the thunderstorm and was heading towards town. It was
almost as dark as the night during the middle of the afternoon and as he
steered the pickup across town, the rain and then hail began to pelt down. The
wind picked up, but it wasn’t unusual for them to experience storms like this
regularly, especially when the heat increased like it had today. He slowed to a
steady pace. As he neared Emma’s small home on the outskirts of town that she
shared with her parents, the wipers were beginning to struggle to keep the
windshield clear.
He
was barely able to concentrate on the road and the worsening weather. His mind
was drifting to the letter that had become so important. Pondering what would
happen when they found out what it said, he really began to doubt himself and
wonder if it could all work out for them. He was a high school dropout
with few prospects beyond the pittance his uncle paid him for helping out at the
auto shop. He wasn’t qualified and had picked up the basics from his uncle, but
he was unlikely to be able to head to college to learn more without his high
school diploma. He knew that it was doubtful that he could ever really take
care of Emma and give her the life she deserved. He had probably known this for
a long time, but had clung to the notion that everything would be okay. He
hadn’t wanted to give any thought to how different Emma’s future could be if
she took the opportunities that were available to her. But he knew now that
there wasn’t a chance for them going forward, and Charlie felt selfish for
clinging to his dream of a happily ever after with her.
He
was proud of the fact that she had graduated top of the class.
However, it took him as much by surprise
as everyone else when she had announced she would not be applying to college. When
she told him she didn’t want to move away and wanted to stay and build a life
together, it blew him away. They worked together as a couple, and he had to
admit that they had been blissfully happy these last eighteen months, but the
guilt ate away at him more with each passing day. He didn’t want to hold her
back.
She appeared content to be working
at the local law office in Edmond, a couple of towns over. She worked as an
assistant to one of the lawyers and they had been saving enough to be able to
afford a small apartment together. Emma was living with her parents and Charlie
was staying in the trailer with his mom. It had just been him and his mom since
he was born with only a little help coming from his Uncle Hank. Charlie had
been caring for her for years, leaving her increasingly more dependent on his
help so any plans he would make for the future had to include a way to
accommodate her, too. But this was yet another burden that he felt Emma didn’t
deserve.
One
of the senior lawyers who worked closely with Emma had convinced her to apply
to law school because he felt she was wasted as an assistant. She, of course,
had resisted. Charlie knew she would put up a fight. It had taken a lot of
persuasion by him and her parents for her to even consider applying. When she
was then offered a generous donation from the law office and a potential
scholarship, she warmed to the idea. He had eventually persuaded her to apply
to a handful of law schools. They argued daily and she had only agreed to consider
going to law school if he agreed to join her. He hadn’t actually committed
himself, but during one of their heated discussions she had said it was
non-negotiable. If she secured the scholarship, she would able to support him
until he gained employment wherever she ended up. But Charlie felt without a
shadow of a doubt that his beautiful, intelligent and sweet-hearted girlfriend would
ace the applications and even hedged his bets on her getting the scholarship to
Harvard. If she did, he was leaving. He had to. It was the only way she would
ever have a chance at building herself a proper future. He did not want her to be
stuck having to support a hapless loser like him. He had to find the strength
to leave her to get on with her life, to be successful and happy with someone
who could look after her and give her the support she deserved.
Even
if it destroyed him.
It
would shatter his heart, but that would be a small price to pay to ensure she
got the life he could never give her. He knew she would be heartbroken,
too, no doubt, but he had to cling to the thought that she would find someone
who could offer her more than his heart and give her everything she
needed. He would survive and maybe one day find himself lucky enough to be
worthy, but until then, cutting Emma free was the only act of selfless love he
felt able to consider.
Just
as he stopped in his usual spot under the carport of the house the
tornado-warning siren sounded and all hell broke loose. The wind whipped up,
and out of the corner of his eye, he saw the huge shelf cloud had followed him
and was heading across the fields behind the house and straight at where he was
standing.
The sky darkened almost
instantly as the weather front passed overhead. The hail that had been
hammering down on him in town was now unleashing its full force directly above
him. The noise of the hail hitting the corrugated plastic roof of the carport
was insane. He looked back across the fields toward town and saw that the dark
sky was turning yellow as the clouds thickened and the wind picked up.
The trees bounding the field directly
behind the house were starting to sway frantically and were almost bending with
the force of it all. Then the murky afternoon was set alight with ceaseless
flashes of lightening followed by the deafening thunder that began to rumble
almost constantly all around him. This wasn’t looking good at all.
Without
a thought, he jumped from his truck and ran inside the house screaming for Emma.
The telephone was ringing off the hook and he wondered where she had gone. He
could see out of the kitchen window that they had seconds to react. The dark
clouds were now a swirling mass of yellow, grey and white and he could see that
as the storm was approaching the clouds were rotating majestically, mixing
together in the turbulent air. Then he saw it, the tell-tale funnel of a
tornado that was trying to touch ground. He had seen a few tornados in his
time, not surprising as he was raised in the most tornado-prone areas of
America. But this was a monster storm and in the few seconds he had taken to
check what was happening he counted at least four separate funnel clouds that
kept trying to touch ground and that meant one thing; complete disaster. The
old, timber-framed house would be destroyed along with him and Emma if he
didn’t hurry. He had to act fast. The weather was worsening by the second and
with the intense hail that was now falling, they risked injury just trying to
attempt to escape.
Charlie
raced into the corridor, down the center of the house and straight into Emma’s
room where he found her listening to the iPod, oblivious to the scene unfolding
around them. Charlie and Emma were caught right in the middle of Mother Nature
was unleashing weather on a scale neither of them had ever witnessed before.
Wasting no time, Charlie grabbed the stunned young woman and as he ran from the
house with her in his arms the earphones fell from her ears and he shouted,
“Where is the nearest tornado shelter, Em? We need to get there now!”
The
terror was clear on his face and he felt her stiffen as she clung on to him so
tightly that her knuckles went white from the strain. He felt safer with her in
his arms, despite the absolute carnage that was unfolding just a few hundred yards
away from them now. He was trying his best to shelter her too from the huge
hailstones that were hitting them both relentlessly. He could feel them ripping
into the fabric of his jacket. He ran as fast as he could, holding her as if
their lives depended on it. She must have realized she was hindering him and
wriggled out of his grasp and grabbed his hand as she ran along side him.
“Over
there.” He heard above the roar of the wind and thunder as she pointed to the
old Fitzgerald place just opposite her parents’ house. It was a large log cabin
style home, which had in the past housed a substantial and well-stocked tornado
shelter in the grounds. She had often told him that the place always made her
grimace. He agreed, though that it’s odd looking, two-toned wood construction
made it was one of the least attractive buildings in the area. Thankfully, it
was buried within a large forested plot and was barely visible from anywhere
until the winter cleared the leaves from the surrounding trees. It wasn’t too
long ago that sweet, old Mrs. Fitzgerald had moved into a home near the big
city and the place was now empty. He hoped that the shelter was still there and
open. He later found out that Mrs. Fitzgerald had always made sure that Emma’s
parents knew to use the shelter with them being her nearest neighbors. Emma
wriggled from Charlie’s arms and they ran for their lives toward the side of
the property. The storm was almost on top of them. He cautioned a glance back
towards the house and saw that the funnel had touched ground and expanded in
the time that they had run across the road and to the shelter. The thunder
rumbled on, each clap merging into the next as the noise of the hail on the tree
branches and the asphalt of the road made it almost impossible to hear anything
else.