Black Evening (15 page)

"Then the Indian I met could cause this storm?"

"Who knows? Look, I'm a scientist. I trust in facts. But sometimes superstition's a word we use for science we don't understand."

"What happens if the storm continues, if it doesn't stop?"

"Whoever lives beneath it will have to move, or else they'll die."

"But what if it follows someone?"

"You really believe it would?"

"It does!"

He studied me. "You ever hear of a superstorm?"

Dismayed, I shook my head.

"On rare occasions, several storms will climb on top of each other. They can tower as high as seven miles."

I felt my heart lurch.

"But this storm's already climbed that high. It's heading up to ten miles now. It'll soon tear houses from foundations. It'll level everything. A stationary half-mile-wide tornado."

"If I'm right, though, if the old man wants to punish me, I can't escape. Unless my wife and son are separate from me, they'll die, too."

"Assuming you're right. But I have to emphasize. There's no scientific reason to believe your theory."

"I think I'm crazy."

Eliminate the probable, then the possible. What's left must be the explanation. Either Gail and Jeff would die, or they'd have to leave me. But I couldn't bear losing them.

I knew what I had to do. I struggled through the storm to get back home. Jeff was feverish. Gail kept coughing, glaring at me in accusation.

They argued when I told them, but in desperation, they agreed.

"If what we think is true," I said, "once I'm gone, the storm'll stop. You'll see the sun again."

"But what about you? What'll happen?"

"Pray for me."

The Interstate again, heading west. The storm, of course, went with me.

Iowa. Nebraska. It took me three insane disastrous weeks to get to Colorado. Driving through rain-swept mountains was a nightmare. But I finally reached that dingy desert town. I found that sleazy roadside stand.

No trinkets, no beads. As the storm raged, turning dust to mud, I searched the town, begging for information "That old Indian. The weather dancer."

"He took sick," a store owner said.

"Where is he?"

"How should I know? Try the reservation."

It was fifteen miles away. The road was serpentine, narrow, and mucky. I passed rocks so hot they steamed from rain. The car slid, crashing into a ditch, resting on its driveshaft. I ran through lightning and thunder, drenched and moaning when I stumbled to the largest building on the reservation. It was low and wide, made from stone. I pounded on the door. A man in a uniform opened it, the agent for the government.

I told him.

He frowned with suspicion. Turning, he spoke a different language to some Indians in the office. They answered.

He nodded. "You must want him bad," he said, "if you came out here in this storm. You're almost out of time. The old man's dying."

In the reservation's hospital, the old man lay motionless under sheets, an IV in his arm. Shriveled, he looked like a dry empty corn husk. He slowly opened his eyes. They gleamed with recognition.

"I believe you now," I said. "Please, make the rain stop."

He breathed in pain.

"My wife and son believe. It isn't fair to make them suffer. Please." My voice rose. "I shouldn't have said what I did. I'm sorry. Make it stop."

The old man squirmed.

I sank to my knees, kissed his hand, and sobbed. "I know I don't deserve it. But I'm begging you. I've learned my lesson. Stop the rain."

The old man studied me and slowly nodded. The doctor tried to restrain him, but the old man's strength was extraordinary. He crawled from bed. He hobbled. Slowly, in evident pain, he chanted and danced.

The lightning and thunder worsened. Rain slashed the windows. The old man strained to dance harder. The frenzy of the storm increased. Its strident fury soared. It reached a crescendo, hung there — and stopped.

The old man fell. Gasping, I ran to him and helped the doctor lift him into bed.

The doctor scowled. "You almost killed him."

"He isn't dead?"

"No thanks to you."

But that was the word I used: "Thanks." To the old man and the powers in the sky.

I left the hospital. The sun, a once common sight, overwhelmed me.

Four days later, back in Iowa, I got the call. The agent from the government. He thought I'd want to know. That morning, the old man had died.

I turned to Gail and Jeff. Their colds were gone. From warm sunny weeks while I was away, their skin was brown again. They seemed to have forgotten how the nightmare had nearly destroyed us, more than just our lives, our love. Indeed they were now skeptical about the Indian and told me that the rain would have stopped, no matter what I did.

But they hadn't been in the hospital to see him dance. They didn't understand.

I set the phone down and swallowed with sadness. Stepping from our house — it rests on a hill — I peered in admiration toward the glorious sky.

I turned and faltered.

To the west, a massive cloudbank approached, dark and thick and roiling. Wind began, bringing a chill.

September twelfth. The temperature was seventy-eight. It dropped to fifty, then thirty-two.

The rain had stopped. The old man had done what I asked. But I hadn't counted on his sense of humor.

He had stopped the rain, all right.

But I had a terrible feeling that the snow would never end.

 

If there's a touch of humor in "The Storm," there's nothing at all humorous in this further story about the Midwest: a gross-out shocker. Although the story was published in 1984, its origin is eleven years earlier. In the summer of 1973, I spent thirty-five days on a survival course in the Wind River mountains of Wyoming. The course was conducted by Paul Petzoldt's National Outdoor Leadership School and trained its students in a variety of mountaineering skills: climbing, camping without a trace, crossing wild streams, living in snow caves, scavenging, etc. At the end of the course, our food was taken away from us. We were each allowed to keep a compass, a map, and a canteen. We were shown a spot on the map, fifty miles away, over the continental divide, and told that three days later a truck would be waiting to pick us up.

How did we eat? We weren't supposed to. The idea was to replicate an emergency situation. Scavenging uses more energy than is supplied by the plants that are scavenged, so that was out. We could have caught and eaten fish, which would have given us adequate protein, but that would have been as a last measure. The idea was to prove to us that we could go three days without food, in strenuous conditions, and still be functional at the end. I was weak and light-headed when we came over the mountains and reached the dusty trailhead that was our destination, but I could have gone a day or two longer, and I certainly had acquired confidence about the outdoors. The course completed, I set out toward Iowa along Interstate 80, but my old four-cylinder Porsche 912 developed engine trouble, and in the Nebraska panhandle, I had to leave the highway, hoping to find a mechanic. That's when I came to this very unusual, very scary town. While the story is fictional, the setting is not.

 

 

There was a tree. I remember it. I swear I'd be able to recognize it. Because it looked so unusual.

It stood on my left, in the distance, by Interstate 80. At first, it was just a blur in the shimmering heat haze, but as I drove closer, its skeletal outline became distinct. Skeletal: that's what struck me at first as being strange. After all, in August, even in the sun-parched Nebraska panhandle, trees (the few you see) are thick with leaves, but this one was bare.

So it's dead, I thought. So what? Nothing to frown about. But then I noticed the second thing about it, and I guess I'd subconsciously been reacting before I even realized what its silhouette resembled.

Stronger than resembled.

I felt uneasy. The tree was very menorahlike, a giant counterpart of the candelabrum used on Jewish religious services. Eight candles in a row. Except in this case the candles were barren branches standing straight. I shrugged off an eerie tingle. It's just a freak, an accident of nature, I concluded, although I briefly wondered if someone had pruned the tree to give it that distinctive appearance and in the process had unavoidably killed it.

But coincidence or not, the shape struck me as being uncanny — a religious symbol formed by a sterile tree ironically blessing a drought-wracked western plain. I thought of
The Waste Land
.

For the past two weeks, I'd been camping with friends in the Wind River mountains of Wyoming. Fishing, exploring, rock-climbing, mostly sitting around our cook fire, drinking, reminiscing. After our long-postponed reunion, our time together had gone too quickly. Again we'd separated, heading our different ways across the country, back to wives and children, jobs and obligations. For me, that meant Iowa City, home, and the University. As much as I wanted to see my family again, I dreaded the prospect of still another fall semester, preparing classes, grading freshmen papers.

Weary from driving (eight hours east since a wrenching emotional farewell breakfast), I glanced from the weird menorah tree and realized I was doing seventy. Slow down, I told myself. You'll end up getting a ticket.

Or killed.

And that's when the engine started shuddering. I drive a secondhand Porsche 912, the kind with four cylinders, from the sixties. I bought it cheap because it needed a lot of body work, but despite its age, it usually works like a charm. The trouble is, I didn't know the carburetors had to be adjusted for the thinner air of higher altitude, so when I'd reached the mountains in Wyoming, the engine had sputtered, the carburetors had overflowed, and I'd rushed to put out a devastating fire on the engine. In Lander, Wyoming, a garage had repaired the damage while I went camping with my friends, but when I'd come back to get it, the accelerator hadn't seemed as responsive as it used to be. All day, the motor had sounded a little noisier than usual, and now as it shuddered, it wasn't just noisy, it was thunderous. Oh, Christ, I thought. The fire must have cracked the engine block. Whatever was wrong, I didn't dare go much farther. The steering wheel was jerking in my hands. Scared, I slowed to thirty. The roar and shudder persisted. I needed to find a mechanic fast.

I said this happened in Nebraska's panhandle. Imagine the state as a wide rectangle. Cut away the bottom left corner. The remaining
top
left corner — that's the panhandle, just to the east of Wyoming. It's nothing but broad flat open range. Scrub grass, sagebrush, tumbleweed. The land's as desolate as when the pioneers struggled across it a hundred years ago. A couple more hours into Nebraska, I wouldn't have worried too much. Towns start showing up every twenty miles or so. But heading through the panhandle, I hadn't seen a sign for a town in quite a while. Despite the false security of the four lane Interstate, I might as well have been on the moon.

As a consequence, when I saw the off ramp, I didn't think twice. Thanking whatever god had smiled on me, I struggled with the spastic tremors of the steering wheel and exited, wincing as the engine not only roared but crackled as if bits of metal were breaking off inside and scraping, gouging. There wasn't a sign for a town at this exit, but I knew there had to be a reason for the off ramp. Reaching a stop sign, I glanced right and left along a two lane blacktop but saw no buildings either way. So which direction? I asked myself. On impulse, I chose the left and crossed the bridge above the Interstate, only then realizing I headed toward the menorah tree.

Again I felt that eerie tingle. But the shuddering roar of the engine distracted me. The accelerator heaved beneath my foot, sending spasms up my leg. The car could barely do twenty miles an hour now. I tried to control my nervous breathing, vaguely sensing the tree as I passed it.

On my left. I'm sure of it. I wasn't so preocuppied I wouldn't remember. The tree was on the left of the unmarked two lane road.

I'm positive. I know I'm not wrong.

I drove. And drove. The Porsche seemed ready to fall apart at any moment, jolting, rattling. The road stretched ahead, leading nowhere, seemingly forever. With the menorah tree behind me, nothing relieved the dismal prairie landscape. Any time now, I thought. I'll see some buildings. Just another mile or so — if the car can manage that far.

It did, and another mile after that, but down to fifteen now. My stomach cramped. I had the terrible sense I should have gone the other way along this road. For all I knew, I'd have reached a town in a minute. But now I'd gone so far in this direction I had to keep going. I wasn't sure the car could fight its way back to the Interstate.

When I'd first seen the menorah tree, the clock on my dashboard had shown near five. As I glanced at the clock again, I winced when I saw near six. Christ, just a few more hours of light, and even if I found a garage, the chances were it wouldn't stay open after six. Premonitions squeezed my chest. I should have stayed on the Interstate, I thought. There at least, if the car broke down, I could have flagged down someone going by and asked them to send a tow truck. Here, I hadn't seen any traffic. Visions of a night spent at the side of the road in my disabled car were dismally matched by the wearying prospect of the long hike back to the Interstate. I'd been planning to drive all night in hopes of reaching home in Iowa City by noon tomorrow, but if my luck kept turning sour, I might not get there for at best another day and likely more, supposing the engine was as bad as the roar made it seem. I had to find a phone and tell my wife not to worry when I didn't reach home at the time I'd said I would. My thoughts became more urgent. I had to —

That's when I saw the building. In the distance. Hard to make out, a vague rectangular object, but unmistakably a building, its metal roof reflecting the glint of the lowering sun. Then I saw another building, and another. Trees. Thank God, a town. My heart pounded almost as hard as the engine rattled. I clutched the steering wheel, frantically trying to control it, lurching past a water tower and an empty cattle pen. The buildings became distinct: houses, a car lot, a diner.