The Stormchasers: A Novel (24 page)

Now the poster is long gone, probably water-damaged or sold at some house sale, and the storm memories are overlaid with other, more recent ones: all the time Karena has spent down here on the same rug, except stationed instead at the door of her brother’s lair. Sitting and doing her homework or reading or just listening while Charles cried within—or lowed, actually, like a cow, because he didn’t have enough energy to really cry. These are the times Charles can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t respond, doesn’t do anything but lie curled in a ball. They are the times the Hallingdahls most fear, that Karena dreads more than anything, those periods when she sits and prays her brother will keep crying because of what it will mean if he stops.

But Karena rarely goes in Charles’s lair itself, not even when Charles is on the road. And not because Charles has forbidden it, although he has. Karena is frightened of the lair because it is the evidence box of her twin’s disordered mind. Yet when Charles ushers her inside now and pulls the string on the lightbulb and ceremoniously seats Karena on the cot, she looks around and notices that actually the lair is highly organized, in patterns. The walls are hidden beneath layers and layers of paper: magazine and newspaper clippings and photos. They are chronologically arranged, and everywhere the image of the tornado repeats in them, rope tornadoes, cone-shaped ones, the squat and fearsome wedge. The shelving that once contained Mason jars is full of Charles’s equipment, thermometers and barometers and radios and things Karena can’t even begin to name. And on the bookcase beneath the high arrow-slit window are Charles’s lightning lamps, orbs and disks in which branches of electricity crawl as if alive and seeking a way out.

“Okay, K,” Charles says. He has been busy digging through an old leather satchel and now apparently he’s found what he’s been looking for, because he comes to sit next to her on the cot. “You ready?”

“For what?”

He puts a photograph in her hands, still exuding its chemical-bath smell. It shows a white strip sandwiched between two black ones.

“Cool,” Karena says dutifully.

Charles snorts. “You have no idea what you’re looking at, do you.”

“No,” Karena admits.

“It’s a supercell,” says Charles. “A tornadic thunderstorm. See?” and he traces the stripes of light and dark with his forefinger. His hand looks like a man’s hand, Karena notices, big and tan and square. It is not shaking. If Charles were taking his lithium, it would be.

“This is the ground,” says Charles, “and this is the base. See how close they are together? The storm was super-intense. It was awesome. A real juicy monster of a cell.”

“Cool,” Karena says again, though she means anything but. “Isn’t that so dangerous, though?”

“Please,” Charles scoffs. “Don’t be such a girl. Okay, look at this,” and he shuffles the photos and exhibits one of a large white lump. “Hail, tennis-ball-size, produced by the same storm. But this, this is my prize,” and he brings out a snapshot of a dark shape against a murky background. “Check it out, K! Isn’t it amazing? I was about a hundred yards away when I got this. I had to throw myself in the ditch like three seconds after.”

“What is it?” Karena says.

Charles taps her on the forehead. “Oh my God, you airhead! How can we even be related? It’s a tornado, K, it’s a classic, beautiful stovepipe!”

“Oh,” says Karena—and now she does see the funnel. “God, Charles! You were that close?”

“Yup,” says Charles modestly. He pulls his shirt away from his neck and shows Karena a puffy bruise bisecting his collarbone.

“Debris,” he says solemnly. “It was too dark to know what hit me, but there was shit flying around all over the place. At those wind speeds it could have been anything, like a sock or a drinking straw, and still leave that kind of mark.”

Karena lifts her hand to touch the bruise, but Charles shies away.

“Don’t show me stuff like that, Charles. It’s terrifying! Why do you
do
this?”

Charles calmly slides the photos back into an envelope marked
kearney, neb 9 july 1988
. “Research.”

“Well, I know that, Charles, but do you have to get so close?”

“Because it compromises the data otherwise,” says Charles. “I have to get right under the updraft to observe the cycling.”

He tucks the envelope into a black-and-white marbled composition book—his storm ledger—along with a newspaper clipping from the
Kearney Hub
that says, “Twisters Take Aim at Arthur County.” Karena eyes the ledger with mistrust but also with respect—and a sneaky, treacherous hope. Everyone in New Heidelburg makes fun of Charles’s scientific aspirations. But maybe they’ve been selling him short, Karena included. So Charles has stopped going to school. So he’s flunking out. So what? Isn’t there a reason they call scientists mad? Charles might never go to college or follow the typical career path. But if he really is getting this close to his tornadoes, might he not make some contribution after all to . . . what’s the weather -ology? Meteorology.

“Charles,” says Karena, “what are you going to do with all this data, anyway?”

Charles grins and pats Karena’s hair, and she twitches her head back.

“Don’t!” she says.

“Don’t!” Charles mimics. “Sorry, K, I couldn’t help it. You’re just so adorable in your ignorance. I’m going to submit it, of course. I’m going to correlate it and write it up into an abstract and send it to the
Journal of Meteorology
and
Stormtrack
and
Popular Science
and I’m going to change the face of meteorology forever. I’m going to win the Nobel Prize for this, wait and see.”

“But Charles,” Karena begins, and she’s about to ask him what the article is, exactly, when the door from the garage scrapes open overhead.

“Yoohoo,” Siri calls. “Karena? Charles? I know you’re down there.”

Both twins freeze, and then Charles pokes Karena in the ribs and she pushes him back. Their faces work silently as they bat at each other, neither wanting to be the first to laugh. Karena doesn’t dare look at Charles. But then she does and he mouths, as she knew he would,
Yoo-hoo!
and she can’t help it, she snorts. The pig noise sets Charles off, and then it’s all over—the two of them rock back and forth, howling, shoving each other, weeping with laughter.

“Exactly what is so funny,” Siri calls. “There’s nothing funny up here, I can tell you that. Charles? Charles Oskar, I’m talking to you!”

“Yoohoo,” says Charles to Karena. Then he calls, “Yes, Mother.”

“What happened to the car?” Siri calls.

Karena stops laughing and wipes her eyes. Why did Siri have to come home now, of all times, when things were going so nicely? And why does she have to start? Why can’t she just leave well enough alone? Karena draws away just a little so she can watch Charles more carefully. He looks irritated, he’s combing his hands through his hair, but there’s no sign of the Stranger—yet.

“Don’t you play games with me, mister,” Siri says, and Karena hears the
click
of her lighter. Smoke drifts down into the lair, and Charles gets up to crack the window. “You know what I’m talking about. What happened to your dad’s car?”

“Nothing,” Charles calls.

“Nothing?” Siri repeats. “It sure doesn’t look like nothing to me. I doubt it’s going to look like nothing to your dad.”

“Well, I can’t help that,” Charles says.

“What?”

“That’s your problem,” Charles shouts. “I can’t be responsible for your and Dad’s warped perceptions. The car still runs okay—I got home safely, didn’t I? So why don’t you just drop it.”

There’s a pause, and then Siri says, “Where have you been?”

“Around,” says Charles.

“What?”

“He said AROUND,” Karena calls, and Charles yells, “Nebraska.”

“Why? Doing what?”

“Collecting data. For my abstract.”

“Your what?”

“My abstract, MADRE,” Charles shouts. “It’s a scientific article. Forget it. I don’t expect you to understand.”

“I assume this means you didn’t get your application in,” Siri says. She’s referring to the possibility of Charles going to Mankato State next spring—or maybe to his being the assistant manager of the IGA market.

Charles rolls his eyes. “Like that’s going to happen,” he mutters, then calls, “I’m working on it, Madre. Okay? So why don’t you go watch your very important little programs on TV now. I’ve got stuff to do. And don’t worry about the car. I’ll deal with Dad when and if he ever comes home.”

There is a silence, and then Siri’s footsteps creak away across the floor. Karena lets out her breath. She can tell from where Siri is walking that she’s going to the kitchen liquor cabinet for a scotch, which she’ll take into the sunroom to drink while she watches the evening news and talks to herself, or to the anchors, saying,
What is going to become of this kid?
and
I gave up my life for this?
and
What did I do to make him turn out this way?

Karena feels bad, she really does, but mostly she is relieved. It could have been so much worse. Charles didn’t charge up the stairs, didn’t back Siri against a wall, didn’t scream in her face. And Karena can’t help thinking maybe Siri is bringing this on herself a little. If only Siri didn’t push Charles all the time. If only she’d leave him alone—maybe he could actually do some good.

“I’m going up,” Karena tells Charles. “You here for supper?”

“Sure,” says Charles. “I’ve got some work to do, but I’ll be up in a bit. See if you can get Madre calmed down. Tell her to take a chill pill or something.”

“I’ll try,” Karena says.

She is halfway up the stairs when it occurs to her to wonder, What did happen to the car? On the landing she opens the door to the garage.

“Holy crap,” she says.

Her dad’s Austin Healey must run, because as Charles said he got it here, but how is an utter miracle. Its grille is indented, its hood sticking up so it’s almost blocking the windshield. Karena can’t imagine how anyone can still drive it.

“Hey Charles,” she calls.

“Hey what?”

“C’mere.”

Charles appears at the foot of the steps.

“The car’s practically totaled!”

“Oh yeah,” says Charles, “that.” He is grinning sideways at the floor, as he always does when caught doing something bad.

“Oh yeah,” says Karena. “That. What the hell happened? Was it the tornado?”

“Not exactly,” says Charles.

“What then?”

“It wasn’t my fault, K. Sincerely.”

“Whose fault was it then?”

“The cow’s.”

“What cow?”

“The cow that got in the way of the car.”

“Oh,” says Karena. “That cow.”

“Yes,” says Charles somberly. “It was a suicide cow, or maybe homicidal. He jumped right on the hood. Tried to kill me.”

“Officer, he went that-a-way!”

“Officer, put out an APB on a black-and-white Holstein!”

Karena starts to laugh. She bites her lips and puts her hands over her mouth and does everything she can to try to stop it, but she can’t. She hears Siri turning up the volume on the TV and feels Siri’s injured silence leaking from the sunroom like smoke, and Karena knows she’ll pay for this later, that this minute of laughter will cost hours, maybe many evenings of assuring Siri she’s sorry, she didn’t mean to encourage Charles, and no, she didn’t mean to gang up with Charles against Siri and yes, she knows how important it is that she and Siri present a united front and of course Karena will talk to him about his college and job applications. But at the moment none of this matters except that Karena and Charles are both laughing so hard Charles is slapping the wall and Karena has to sit down on the basement steps, clinging to the railing, and here he is. Maybe things will turn out all right, maybe Charles has been through a rough time but will be okay now, with his data and his project? Maybe they’ve all been wrong, overreacting, because when Charles is like this, when he’s himself, there’s no safer and more delicious place for Karena to be than with her brother.

B
ut then, two days later: July fourteenth, the twins’ eighteenth birthday, and Karena is in the kitchen, cubing cheese for pea salad. Normally the Hallingdahls go to the Wagon Wheel in Creston for birthdays and special occasions. Since Charles’s incident at the Starlite it’s too embarrassing to go there. But Karena has begged for one last dinner at the house, anyway. It’s only a little over a month until Siri drives her up to Minneapolis and the U, and who knows when her next supper with her family will be? Siri has agreed, and Frank has sworn to close his practice early and be here, and Karena is making all of her and Charles’s favorite foods. Hamburgers for the grill. Grandmother Hallingdahl’s potato salad. And the pea salad, a goopy concoction of canned peas, onions, mayonnaise, and cheddar cubes that only the twins will eat. Even Siri can’t stand it, although the pea salad is as much a part of the Hallingdahl gastronomic tradition as lefse and lutefisk and summer tomatoes sliced and piled high with sugar.

Karena rubs the dirty sole of one bare foot against the other and sings along with the radio as she cuts. Late midsummer is a dreamy, peculiar, dangerous time of year, a feeling in the thick air that all bets are off. Just this morning Karena gave her notice at the Chat ’n’ Chew, and this afternoon she and Siri went to La Crosse to shop for Karena’s college wardrobe. Of course, Karena will buy her own clothes when she gets to the Cities, but she didn’t want to hurt her mom’s feelings. So she acquiesced to the sweaters and cardigans and new parka, and now as she looks out the window over the kitchen sink at the lawn and the old boat swing set and the enormous pine bush Frank keeps promising to trim but doesn’t, Karena is imagining her transformation. She will wear all black and high-heeled boots. She will have gold bangles and hoop earrings. She will smoke those little skinny cigarettes that look like joints—Capris. And although Karena’s English score on the SAT is the highest ever in New Heidelburg, she might go premed. Or maybe not, but it would be nice to have an office full of grateful patients, whom Karena will know how to help because of her early experience with Charles. And Charles himself will have long passed the danger point and be a prize-winning scientist, and they’ll meet for lunch and congratulate each other in a sunny restaurant with classical music and ferns. Maybe Charles will have a beard.