The Stormchasers: A Novel (9 page)

It’s true, she thinks as she cries. Tiff is right. This is useless. What is Karena doing here in Nebraska, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by sleeping strangers? They’re on vacation. Karena is on a wild goose chase. She tries not to panic, reminds herself she’s exhausted, starving, and headachy from the beer, and it has been an incredibly long and stressful day. A carousel of images advances behind her eyes: The chasers’ tailgate at the truck stop. Fern smiling into the sun. The Jiffy Pop Cu exploding behind the Sapp Bros billboard. The giant white anvil. The storm base pressing down on the Jeep. The wind lifting her up. Kevin at the window with his wet face streaming, Kevin beside her in the hall with a towel knotted around his waist . . . The chasers, Fern . . .

Work. Work is the antidote to panic. Karena turns on her laptop and breathes deeply as it boots up. She resists the urge to check flights home from, say, Lincoln or Omaha and instead opens a new document. Then she realizes her little recorder is in the bedroom and creeps out to get it. Fern snores vigorously away, a mop of purple-black hair on a pillow, while in the other bed angel-faced Alicia, a Latina meteorology student from Dallas, sleeps as sweetly as a child, her hands tucked under her cheek. Karena smiles and wipes her face. She is feeling fond of both these women, who have been kind enough to take her in so she doesn’t have to go look for another motel. But she’ll sleep with Alicia, thank you very much.

Back in the bathroom, Karena listens to her recorder and files the events of the day.
Agitated Cu. Cu field. Wheel of Fortune.
When she is done, she e-mails the document to herself and her editor and rubs her eyes. As usual, the writing has had a soothing narcotic effect. It is very late, almost three, and Karena knows she probably has another long drive tomorrow. But she decides to check Stormtrack anyway, as a reward for having done a good night’s work. And why not? She’d like to see where the other chasers ended up today, what they saw and reported.

Karena reads through the descriptions of the day’s adventure. Most of the posts originate from Ogallala. No tornadoes sighted, but many chasers mention the nice structure of the storm that blew up behind the truck stop. Karena nods as she scrolls through the photos, recognizing vehicles she saw earlier, including the stuck tank.

On the final page she stops. The second-to-last post is a photo of the white Jiffy Pop cumulus as it burgeoned up behind the Sapp Bros billboard, except the handle of the red-and-white coffee pot is flipped, pointing south instead of north. The image was taken from the opposite direction, the other side of the truck stop from where Karena and Fern were standing. The caption reads:
exploding cumulonimbus, ogallala, nebraska, C_HALLINGDAHL.
Charles must have been behind Karena, a few hundred yards away, all along.

“Y
ou doing okay there, Laredo?” Kevin asks from the passenger’s seat.

Karena blinks. “Sure,” she says, “why?” Though she knows why he’s asking. She wishes she were alone so she could slap herself across the face, but since she isn’t, she settles for tickling the roof of her mouth with her tongue, a trick Tiff taught her years ago to stay awake in history class. It didn’t work well then, and it doesn’t now. Karena keeps graying into microsleeps. She’ll think she’s fine, and suddenly the scenery will have changed and the Jeep is drifting toward the shoulder. It’s the three hours of sleep the night before, and the lack of caffeine. Not eager to use the Magic Stall, Karena hasn’t risked her usual coffee intake.

And it is this place they’re driving through, Cherry County, Nebraska, which Kevin has told her is the second-biggest county in the country but has only two major roads. They have been on one of them for ages, heading toward possible severe weather tomorrow in the Dakotas, meanwhile curving up and down and around an endless series of hills. Because that’s all that’s in Cherry County. Hills. Big green hills, hills like dinosaurs buried beneath the earth, hills humped in every direction as far as the eye can see. It is like Emerald City without the city, and it is hypnotizing.

“Whoa there, Laredo,” Kevin says, grabbing the wheel to steer them back on the road. “You want me to drive for a while?”

“No, that’s okay,” Karena says. She sits up and bites the inside of her cheek. Yesterday, when Kevin drove, was different, an anomaly, an emergency. Karena likes being behind the wheel of her own car, and not just because Kevin isn’t on her rental insurance. It’s the only way Karena feels safe. She starts to blink out again, her head jerking, then remembers what Fern said about sunflower seeds. They don’t have any of those in the Jeep, but . . .

“Could you pass me some of those corn nuts, please?” she asks Kevin.

“Sure,” Kevin says. He rips open a bag and the old-sneaker smell of corn fills the Jeep. “Hold out your hand.”

Karena does, and Kevin pours some fiery red nuggets into it. Karena sniffs them, then eats them. The corn nuts are teeth-rattlingly, deafeningly crunchy, but not bad. And Karena does feel more alert.

“Mmm,” she says. “Barbecue.”

“I can tell you’re a woman of great taste and discerning palate, Laredo,” says Kevin, tossing a fistful of nuggets into his own mouth. “More?”

Karena holds out her hand.

“Thank you,” she says, crunching.

“Don’t mention it,” says Kevin. “So, Laredo, what’s your story?”

Karena laughs and almost aspirates a corn nut. “Could you be a little more specific?” she asks when she’s done coughing.

“Sure,” says Kevin. “Let’s see. How long have you been at the
Ledger
?”

“Nine years,” says Karena and blinks, startled. “Wow.”

“Kudos, Laredo,” says Kevin, “it’s a great paper. And how do you like it there?”

“I like it a lot. It’s a great crew.”

“Good, good,” says Kevin. He is wearing aviator glasses that make him look like a cop. “That’s what my friends in the biz say too.”

“Ah, your friends in the biz,” says Karena, grinning. “You have journalist friends, do you?”

“Sure,” says Kevin, “went to school with a bunch of ’em. What’d you think, Laredo, that we scruffy chaser types have no intellectual life? That we just drive around all day, eating corn nuts and looking for storms?”

“Pretty much,” says Karena, “and drinking Big Gulps and saying things like, Dude, you caught that tube down in Kansas, nice!”

She makes bull horns with her second and pinky fingers and stabs the air. Kevin pulls his shades down to give her a look.

“Tubes, huh,” he says. “And yesterday you mentioned the core . . . Methinks our star reporter here is a secret storm groupie.”

Karena shrugs. “I read Stormtrack,” she says modestly.

“Uh-huh,” says Kevin. “I see . . . So tell me, Laredo, what does your boyfriend think of this assignment? How does he feel about you tooling around the country with us scruffy chaser types?”

Karena gives the road a little Mona Lisa smile. Is Kevin flirting with her? Unless she’s mistaken, she believes he is. The thing is, she doesn’t mind.
Oh, please,
Karena can hear Tiff saying,
a stormchaser? Seriously? What’s next, a sword swallower? Come on, Kay. Get real
. But around Kevin Karena feels something she hasn’t felt around anyone she’s dated in the past few years, maybe not even since the divorce. That includes William, her editor; the pilot who wined and dined her until one night he flew off and never came back; her neighbor the alcoholic, as gentle and dolorous as Eeyore. Well, everyone’s got something, some secret fault line, and no doubt Kevin Wiebke does too. Karena certainly does. But for whatever reason she’s attracted to this guy with his pie-round face and Old Spice cologne, and she feels safe and silly around him in a way she hasn’t for a long time.

She decides to give him a run for his money.

“Boyfriend, huh,” she says. “What makes you think I’m not married?”

“No ring, Laredo,” says Kevin, holding up and waggling his own bare left fourth finger.

“Faulty reasoning, Mr. Wiebke,” says Karena. “I could have dropped it down the sink. It could be at the jeweler’s for resizing. Or—”

She looks sideways at him.

“—I could have had to take it off because my fingers are swollen from the pregnancy.”

“Oh,” says Kevin. “Whoopsie.” He is wearing a brick-red University of Oklahoma polo today instead of his Whirlwind T-shirt, and the flush climbing out of his collar is the same color. “You’re expecting? I wouldn’t have guessed. Congratulations.”

Karena laughs. She licks a finger and holds it up with a
tsss!
sound. “Score,” she says. “I win. No, I’m not expecting, and I’m not married at the moment and I don’t have a boyfriend. Thanks for playing, though.”

Kevin shakes out another handful of corn nuts. “Laredo, Laredo,” he says, crunching away, “I’m just trying to pass the time here. Playing twenty questions. Because in case you haven’t noticed”—he sweeps his hand over the dashboard, palm up like a waiter carrying a platter—“we have nothing
but
time. This place is
made
of time.”

“True,” Karena acknowledges. In front of them the van, as tiny as a Matchbox vehicle against the giant hills, swoops up the side of one and disappears around a curve. Clouds are building in the northwest, filtering and concentrating the light until everything around them glows. The colors are surreal: the sky behind them periwinkle, the grass a bright lemony green, the formerly gray road red-purple.

“So my turn,” says Karena.

“Turning the tables, are we, Laredo?”

“You bet,” says Karena. “That’s what reporters do. We like to
ask
the questions.”

“Uh-oh,” says Kevin.

“You started it,” says Karena, smiling. “So, what do you do during the off-season?” There. This should pacify her inner Tiff.

“I’ll give you three guesses,” says Kevin.

“Wait, that’s not fair, why do I have to guess?”

“You said it, Laredo. I started it. It’s my game.”

“All right,” Karena sighs. She taps her fingers on the wheel. “You’re a . . . bullfighter.”

“Not since the accident. Try again.”

“Male dancer?”

The blush climbs out of Kevin’s shirt again.

“Stop, Laredo,” he says. “My head’s going to be too big to fit through the door. One last try.”

“Hmmm,” says Karena. She crunches a few more corn nuts, thinking about it. There’s his obvious passion for weather, and the stern look he gave Karena and Fern during orientation . . .

“Science teacher,” she says. “High school.”

Kevin whips off his aviators and throws them on the dash.

“Holy moly,” he says. “That is amazing! How did you do that?”

“I’m not just a reporter, I’m a psychic.”

“And a damn good one,” says Kevin. “I’m impressed. Except it’s junior high. I teach at Fitzgerald over in St. Paul. Right across the river from you.”

“Yikes,” says Karena. “Now I’m impressed. Kids that age are brutes. You’re a lot braver than I am.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” says Kevin. “You did pretty well in that storm yesterday . . . Okay. My go. You said you’re not married at the moment. Does that mean you used to be? Any kids?”

The Jeep swerves over the yellow line. “Jeez,” says Karena, laughing, “good thing you’re not subtle or anything!”

“That’s me,” says Kevin, “Mr. Savoir Faire,” and the ham radio crackles into life.

“This is KE5 UIY,” says Dennis. “KB1 SLM, you copy?”

Kevin detaches the handset. “This is SLM,” he says.

“What’s going on back there? Laredo drinking behind the wheel again?”

“Nothing, just having ourselves a little discussion, is all.”

“Well, you’re obviously having way too much fun,” says Dennis. “Cut it out. KE5 UIY.”

“KB1 SLM clear,” says Kevin and puts the handset back. He turns to Karena. “You were saying,” he says.

Karena smiles at the road. “I don’t think I was, actually,” she says.

But Kevin’s questions have made her think about her marriage, and her ex-husband Michael, and the last time she saw him and the last fight they had. This was about a month after Siri died, when Karena’s whole life felt so unfamiliar that her husband of eight years was the strange thing, the only recognizable object in an alien landscape. She and Michael had met at the U, when Karena was a junior and Michael was an exchange student, and gotten married right after graduation, and together had endured a number of hardscrabble years. At the time of the fateful conversation Michael was finally making good money as a realtor, and he and Karena were sitting on a bench by Lake of the Isles glumly watching the parade of strollers.
When d’ya think you’ll be ready then?
Michael had asked.
Two years? Five? I don’t want to be an old dad.
Karena had hunched her shoulders.
I don’t know, Michael
, she’d said,
it’s not a math problem,
and Michael persisted,
Don’t you want to do it for your mum, though? Make up for what you lost?
and Karena had gotten up and walked away. She had been outraged by the equation, lose a mother, have a child, as though that made Siri’s death all right. She had thought this was the reason she didn’t want to be married to Michael anymore, to have to go through life with somebody who saw things that simplistically. But also she was thinking, What about Charles? I can’t have a baby with somebody who doesn’t know Charles. And the thought of Charles showing up, in their apartment, in a hospital room in a maternity ward, talking to Michael—it was literally unimaginable.

The divorce coincided with her thirtieth birthday, and Karena saw Michael only once after that. She was sitting at a stoplight in Uptown when she spotted Michael bopping along the street near his office at Apartment Search. His honey-colored hair was winging back in its Lady Di way, and his mouth was open and smiling, and he looked happy. Karena almost honked but didn’t. She sat thinking how odd it was that nobody in the cars around them knew that the man on the sidewalk and the woman in the Escort had been married for eight years, made each other cheese toast at midnight, made love on the fishing dock at Lake Calhoun, made the bed on Sunday mornings after listening to church bells and laughing. Made each other happy. Then the light changed, and Karena moved on.