The Stormchasers: A Novel (12 page)

“Sure,” says Marla.

Alicia leans over to tap Karena, her long dark hair brushing Karena’s arm.

“Hey,” she says. “Are you all right?”

Because Karena is staring at the laptop with her hands clamped to her cheeks.

“Karena,” says Alicia. “Do you want to go? Do you need some air?”

Karena looks around.

“What?” she says. “Oh. Sure. That’s a good idea. I am feeling a little woozy.”

She smiles at Alicia and waves away her offer to help, then gets up to leave. But in the doorway she looks back at the laptop, on which the man is again popping out from behind the hat rack. He is tall, slender, with dark blond hair and skin darker than that. As Karena has imagined, he has a scruff of black beard. Other than that, though, he isn’t much as she’s envisioned him, exhausted and skinny and ragged.

On the contrary, he appears to be glowing with good health. He leans into the camera, that grin like a slice of white watermelon in his tanned face filling the screen, then starts gliding backward. Charles always did do a good moonwalk, Karena thinks. She bursts from the room, startling Dennis who has stepped out for a smoke, and strides out across the lot.

F
or a few minutes she runs around like a chicken with its head cut off—Karena has had the unpleasant privilege of witnessing this on her grandparents’ farm, and now she imagines she knows how it feels. She jogs to the entrance of the lot and looks up and down Highway 20, as if Charles might actually have been at the party and just driven away. Then she turns and scans the Sandhills’ grounds. She is so mad, at Charles and at herself. How could she have missed him at the gas station? Where was she, the ladies’ room, showing Charles’s picture to the checkout girl? And how could Charles have missed her? Karena has always thought, given the childhood accuracy of the twindar, that if she got that close to Charles, she would just know. Apparently not. Either she has had really, really bad luck or Charles is playing some sort of game.

Karena has checked with the Sandhills receptionist earlier, and Charles isn’t here. But she hasn’t called the rest of the motels yet, nor hospitals or campgrounds, so she hurries back toward her room. Then she sees the lamp on and stops. Alicia has come back early after all and is sitting with her head bent over a thick book, one of her meteorology texts or maybe the Bible she carries in her backpack. Karena reverses direction and heads for the lobby. It’s empty, and as she dings the bell and waits for the receptionist, she watches the TV over the couch. It is showing the Weather Channel, as most televisions seem to be out here. The graphics show a big red blob sliding down from Canada to eclipse Montana, Wyoming, and the Dakotas. Tomorrow’s severe weather.

“Help you?” says the receptionist, coming out to the desk. She is wearing a shirt that might be a hospital johnny, thin blue material imprinted with teddy bears.

“Do you have a local phone book?” Karena asks.

“Yellow Pages in the corner,” the receptionist says. She gazes at the TV for a moment, then wishes Karena a good night and disappears back behind her curtain.

Karena sits on the couch and makes her calls from a phone with a curly cord on it. Her brother is not registered anywhere. At the campgrounds, she gets mostly recordings. At the hospitals, weary or indifferent voices confirm no Charles, Chuck, or C. Hallingdahl has been checked or brought in. Not that this is a total surprise to Karena. He looked amazing on Marla’s video. But sometimes that antic good humor was a signifier of his mania, of bad things to come, and what if he is nearly full blown? Or already there? Or is careening around doing something awful, then tomorrow will start his descent? Into the Black, he used to call it. Karena puts her head back and shuts her eyes against tears of frustration and fear.

She must sleep, the vodka and empty stomach and long hours of the road hitting her all at once, because when she wakes the TV is off and the sunburst clock on the opposite wall reads four thirty A.M. Of course, Karena thinks. She gets up, a little dazed, replaces the Yellow Pages, and walks outside. Everyone has gone to bed, and the night is so still Karena can hear the soft patter of moths hitting the lobby, a bright and empty box. Karena knows she should sneak back into her room, since they have another long drive to the Dakotas tomorrow. The more sleep she gets, the better. But now she is wide awake. She wanders to the swing set and sits, pushing herself back and forth with one foot. Karena has always loved swings, but not as much as Charles, who for several summers was obsessed with the double-boat swing in their backyard.
Come onnnnn, K
, he would whine and wheedle and plead, until Karena agreed to go on it with him, and then he’d make her stay there for hours, jackknifing his body to see how high he could make them go and singing,
Ninety-nine bottles of BEER on the wall, ninety-nine bottles of BEER!

“Hiya,” says somebody behind Karena—it’s Fern, wobbling a bit in her high-heeled cowboy boots and hoodie.

“Hey, Fern,” says Karena, her hand over her galloping heart. “Jeez. You scared me. What’re you doing?”

Fern holds up the vodka handle, which now has only about an inch of Chuck Norris swirling around in the bottom.

“Drinking,” she says. “You?”

“Swinging,” says Karena.

“Mind if I join you?”

“No, please, that’d be nice,” says Karena, and Fern comes around the swing set. She hands the vodka bottle to Karena, lowers herself cautiously onto the swing, then takes it back.

“Cheers,” she says.

They swing for a couple of minutes, the chains creaking gently.

“Can’t you sleep?” Fern asks.

“Not tonight,” says Karena. “Or most nights, actually. I’ve got pretty bad insomnia.”

“Me too,” says Fern. “All I do is lie awake thinking about
him
.”

“Who—,” Karena begins, then remembers. “Oh, the sexy bastard guy. You mentioned him back at the truck stop, in Ogallala.”

Fern squints for a second, then says, “Right, right.” She takes a drink and adds, “That’s him, all right. Bloody bastard. It’s bad enough at home, when we’re half a world apart. It’s so much worse when he’s right here.”

Karena has a sudden unwelcome thought. “Is it—it’s not Kevin, is it?”

Fern gives her a sly smile. “No,” she says, bumping Karena’s swing with hers. “No worries. He’s still free.”

“I’m not worried, I’m just trying to figure out . . .” Dennis? Karena thinks. Maybe a little old for Fern, but—Then, suddenly, she knows.

“Dan?” she says. “It’s Dan?”

Fern nods gloomily. “Told you,” she says. “The best, sexiest, smartest man in the whole world, and he don’t fancy me. I could just die.”

She starts to cry, a tear trickling down her nose, then another. Karena looks away in case Fern doesn’t want to be watched, but when Fern keeps snuffling Karena plants her feet in the dirt to move her swing closer.

“Hey,” she says, rubbing Fern’s back. “It’s okay. It’ll be okay.” Dan? Karena is thinking. He’s so scary. He’s like one of those old-school cowboys who talks without hardly moving his mouth. But maybe Fern likes the stern, silent type, and who is Karena to comment on the vagaries of love.

Fern wipes her eyes with the sleeve of her hoodie. “I love him so much,” she says, her voice wobbly. “I have done ever since I set eyes on him. I’d do anything for him, move to the States, have his children. I’d bloody dip myself in a deep-fat fryer if only he’d have me. But he won’t.”

“How do you know?” Karena says practically. “Did you tell him? Does he know how you feel?”

“Oh, he knows,” Fern says savagely. “I made a move on him, didn’t I. Tour Three, 2004, we met up early and chased together a few days before meeting the rest of the gang, and it was pure heaven. But then like an idiot I had to spoil everything by making a play in a Super 8, and he told me no in no uncertain terms.”

“What’d he say?” says Karena. “Maybe you misunderstood.”

Fern swipes at her face. “Hardly,” she says. “He said he thought I was a great girl but he just didn’t have those feelings for me, and he liked his life the way it was. Said he was a happy bachelor and likely to remain so, and I should go find somebody my own age who’d treat me right.”

“Oh,” says Karena. “I’m sorry, Fern. That’s rotten. I know how you feel.”

“Do you,” says Fern, glancing sideways.

“I do,” says Karena. “Somebody said almost exactly the same thing to me once,” and she tells Fern about William, her editor, her first lover after the divorce and in some ways harder to get over. “It was partly my own fault,” she says, wrapping up. “I just couldn’t let him go. I tried, but I couldn’t.”

Fern lights a cigarette. Her hands are trembling a little, but she seems calmer. “How’d you get over him?” she asks.

“Slowly,” says Karena, “then suddenly. It was like having a terrible fever. For so long he was all I could think about, last thing before I went to sleep, first thing in the morning, and then one day,
poof!
I woke up and it was gone.”

Fern nods. “Yeah,” she says. “
Poof
. That’s what I’m waiting for. Where’s my
poof
, I’d like to know”

“Probably on its way,” says Karena. “Any minute now.”

“I bloody hope so,” says Fern. She starts swinging again.

“Thanks for putting up with me being so pathetic,” she says.

“I don’t think you’re pathetic at all,” Karena says. “Love can be hard.”

“Too right,” Fern sighs, then bumps Karena’s swing.

“What about Kevin then?” she says.

“What?” says Karena. She laughs, taken off guard. “What about him?”

“You and him,” says Fern. “Go on, don’t tell me you haven’t noticed he’s got a thing for you. He’s utterly smitten. We’ve got a pool going in the van.”

“You do not!” Karena says.

“S’truth,” says Fern and holds up her hand. “I swear.”

Karena shakes her head, smiling. “Boy,” she says, “we’ve got to find you people some storms soon, because you’re clearly hard up for entertainment.”

“True,” Fern admits. “But still. Have you got a boyfriend?”

“No,” Karena says.

“And you’re not married.”

“Not anymore.”

“And don’t you fancy Kevin even a little?”

Karena laughs. “He’s very nice,” she says.

“He’s
quite
nice,” says Fern, with an entirely different intonation. She puts out her cigarette. “If I weren’t so hopelessly, desperately, pathetically in love with Dan, the bloody unavailable bastard, I might have a go at him myself. Why don’t you go for it?”

Karena pushes her swing back and forth. She doesn’t want Kevin to be her focus right now, doesn’t want to think about how much she likes him and all the reasons—one in particular—she should leave him alone.

“I do think Kevin’s great,” she says, “but I’ve got other stuff on my plate.”

“Such as,” Fern persists.

“Well, I’m on assignment, for one. And . . .”

“Go on,” Fern prompts.

Karena digs her toe in the sand, pausing her swing.

“You know that guy on the tape tonight?” she says slowly, her throat dry. “That’s my brother.”

Then she winces, waiting for the sky to fall. She can’t believe she has told Fern this. But revealing it to Kevin was such a relief, and Karena could use the extra lookout. She hasn’t been doing so well on her own.

“The tape,” Fern repeats, sounding puzzled. “Oh, the video-bomber?”

“Exactly,” says Karena. “That’s my brother, Charles. I’m looking for him.”

“Right,” says Fern. She swings a bit, then says, “I’m utterly lost.”

Karena laughs ruefully. “Sorry,” she says, “my fault. I’m not used to talking about this. . . . Charles is a chaser, and he’s—not well, so I need to find him and help him. I haven’t told anyone because it’s kind of a family thing. And I didn’t want Dan to think I was on his tour under false pretenses.”

“Riiiiiiiiight,” Fern says and lights another cigarette. “I won’t say a thing. Mum’s the word. But d’you think he’s somewhere nearby then?”

“I’d imagine so,” says Karena. “I missed him by inches today. So I’d like to keep it quiet, but I’d also love your help. If you see anyone who looks like Charles . . .”

“Definitely,” says Fern. “On both counts. Definitely.”

“Thank you, Fern,” says Karena.

“It’s nothing. No worries. We’ll find him.”

Karena feels the sudden pinch of tears behind her own eyes then, surprising her. She sniffs them back.

“Boy, it’s been an intense couple of days,” she says.

“Hasn’t it though,” says Fern.

She hands the bottle to Karena, who takes a swig and passes it back. Then they swing idly for a while, finishing the Chuck Norris and watching the sun come up. It appears first as a gray patch in the east, then shoots white rays over the buildings across the highway. Finally, when it casts a fine gold net over the Sandhills lawn, they get up to go back to their room. Karena is stiff from sitting, and chilled and damp with dew. But while they are crossing the grass their movement startles a flock of birds in the vacant lot next to the motel, and she stops to watch them rise as one and circle into the sky. It seems an omen of something. Karena just doesn’t know what.

T
hat morning when they leave the Sandhills, Karena asks Kevin to drive, since although it still makes her uneasy to have somebody else behind the wheel, Karena doesn’t trust herself. She’s used to surviving on not very much sleep, but not this little. It’s like having a hangover. Karena’s stomach rolls, her eyes are grainy and tender, her reflexes off. Everything looks too bright, is moving too fast. Karena figures she’ll nap for an hour, maybe two, then take over again. By the time they finish gassing up the vehicles, she’s out.

When she wakes she has no idea where she is, only that she’s very hot. The Jeep is stationary, and the windshield concentrates the sun into a laser beamed directly on Karena in her seat. She sits up, her body running with sweat, feeling like a bug under a magnifying glass.