the radioman had warned, vowels shortened and run together in that put-on drawl.
He circled the barn’s exterior, scanning for things he’d missed. Hooves galloped along the edges of the sky. An image of the hole flashed before him: his stone flipped and split, the rent in the earth matched by the gash of a funnel cloud, his secrets sucked up and scattered. He trotted up the hill and around to the back of the house, arms swinging at his sides as he ran over the emergency list in his head: blankets, batteries, first aid kit, canned food, water, flashlights, radio. Nina had taken the wash off the line and picked up any garden tools. The windows were open, yellow checked curtains blowing into his father’s bedroom.
She was in the kitchen with the Old Man, fiddling with the radio. “Tornado advisory in the following counties…” Nina looked up when Perry entered and said, “It’s bad,” just as the Old Man barked, “It’s coming near, all right,” with a strange tone in his voice, almost satisfaction.
“Where’s Sill?” His daughter’s nickname sounded hollow. He’d been negligent. It was time to tell Sill about the stone, about laying her grief to rest. She needed to know, he needed to help her.
“She probably took shelter with Rose,” Nina said, reassuring herself. “She’s been spending a lot of time over there.”
“Of course she’s at Rose’s,” the Old Man spat.
His father went down the hall and Nina stepped closer. “Rose said, No, and so did the Old Man,” Perry told her.
She flicked her braid back and took a breath. He could have leavened it, mentioned that the Old Man had left him an opening: See if I stop you. But it was easier to keep it black-and-white with Nina. There were only so many expectations he could disappoint in any given day. Two spots of color appeared on her neck and she said something snappish about giving up. She was worried, he knew, more than angry. About him, and about Sill. He poked her gently in the shoulder as the Old Man clattered back into the kitchen.
“I’m trying,” Perry said. Neither of them answered him. The kitchen lights flickered.
Perry picked up the phone to call over to Rose’s and then set it back down—a busy signal, the lines were overloaded. Sill knew how to take shelter. “Let’s go,” he said, and they all three walked out the front door. Nina held the Old Man by the elbow, and Perry veered off to do another sweep around the house. The stiff chicken wire around Nina’s vegetable garden whipped in the wind. He was standing on the bluff at the east side of the house when a tree branch smacked him across the kidneys. Hard and quick, it knocked the air out of his lungs and sent him down on one knee. He staggered to his feet and ran to the front of the house just in time to see Nina and the Old Man tumbling down the final third of the hill, the Old Man crumpling and Nina dragged along after, rolling, flashes of skin, her hand locked onto his elbow.
He reached them soon after they hit the bottom. Nina was already on her hands and knees, struggling to stand. The Old Man’s legs flailed. He’d lost his cane and Perry scrambled for it, shoving it into his father’s hand. He grabbed them each by the arm and pulled, yelping as the muscles tightened in his lower back. The wind caught his cry and threw it back on them.
“Sill!” Nina turned toward the house.
“No,” Perry yelled, “That was me.” But she trotted back up the hill, waving her arm behind her, and shooing the men toward the shelter. “You heard me.” Perry tried to make her understand.
Nina was too far off to hear. The Old Man’s sinewy arm locked around his neck. Something was wrong with his father, as if all his strength had been stored up in that wayward cane. Perry swung his arm around him and they turned to the cellar, just ten feet away. When he looked back again Nina was by the porch standing face to face with Sill. Right there, the only things he loved. He waved his free arm at them and yelled but his father crumpled a few more inches and he had to turn, he couldn’t wait. The sky was an ocean, brackish and churning.
Everything was wrong. Sill and Nina left unsheltered, the Old Man shriveled at his side. Perry’s back throbbed. He fumbled to swing the trap door open, pulling it hard against the thick wind, and the Old Man slid awkwardly down the ladder. Perry turned to look at his wife and daughter but there was too much in the air—pieces of wood, grit, rock—and he had to cast down his eyes. He’d settle the Old Man and go back up for them. The trap door tore from his hand and slammed down as he followed his father into the dark.
*
People speak of the quality of the light. Not the dark greenish sky of extremity but its precursor: slightly overcast but bringing a clarity that makes everything—trees, houses, sidewalk cracks, cars lined in a parking lot—eerily distinct, strangely beautiful.
Some liken it to the light during a partial eclipse. The degree of brightness changes. As if the diffuse light of the sun gives way and the moon takes over, no matter the time of day. A cooler eye, sharper outlines. Images imprint and linger on the retina. A mundane afternoon feels like eight o’clock on a summer evening and, a switch flipped, you crave an ice pop. Twister weather, the old ones say, meaning, perhaps, twister light—but they’re proven wrong as many times as right.
Citizens with experience might begin to assess the proximity of shelter. But many do not. It is, some say, intoxicating to feel newness in a world you think you know so well, to be reminded of its otherness. An average middle-aged woman will see a shadow cast by a power line on Main Street and think of her long-lost father: young, mowing the backyard in a white t-shirt, so alive that each blade of grass vies for attention while beyond, a mile away, noted but judged no immediate threat, a funnel cloud meanders gracefully through an empty field.
Of course reason prevails. Minds turn to the quiet spaces that usually sit forgotten. Many people nowadays do not have storm shelters. A basement will do very nicely; or bathtubs, interior closets. These spaces take an imperceptible inhale of possibility. Before the day is out Louise Logan and two other bank employees will shelter surrounded by safety deposit boxes in the hushed cloistered space of the vault. Portentous, padded with valuables and legal documents and lit by long white fluorescent bars, the vault is a church of secrets.
Louise Logan
Louise pulled into the parking lot that morning at the same time as her coworker Dayana—8:25, just ten minutes after their boss. Dayana waved and cut the engine, and then slid out of her car holding an enormous travel coffee mug. She jutted her hip in its figure-molding skirt, hiked a knockoff designer bag over her shoulder, and leaned over to lock her car door. Louise knew that if the big bosses decided to save money by cutting a teller they’d most likely keep Dayana, twenty years younger, and cheaper in every way. Louise bared her teeth into the rearview to check for lipstick smears and chided herself. Dayana couldn’t help it. What did seniority and experience count for these days?
She took a breath and stepped out of the car, adjusting the waistband of her A-line skirt. They walked together to the glass door, waiting for their boss to let them in. “Bill’s cake is in my backseat,” Louise said to Dayana. “I’ll leave it there for now.”
“Oh damn!” Dayana smacked her purple faux leather bag with her free hand. “The birthday card’s in my other purse.”
“No big deal,” Louise said. They could do without, or make one.
“I don’t know where my brain is. The barometric pressure or something.”
Bill appeared through the glass, greeting them as he swung the door back and ushered them in. Louise had overheard him talking about plans to install another ATM machine. Their jobs, their very relevance, were in jeopardy. She went straight to her station and set to work—she was good at what she did, might as well remind him of that.
Louise moved through tasks she knew by heart. She tore open the plastic shrink-wrap around a roll of pennies, careful not to chip her nail polish, wound the pen chain at her teller window into a neat spiral, and checked her inventory of receipt slips and lollipops. Outside the thick glass, a few cars made their way down the street. They’d probably get a handful of