The Year of the Storm (8 page)

I couldn't imagine what it would be, but I felt bad for threatening to rip the painting, so I agreed.

He led me outside and back into the deepest part of the woods, where Jake and Ronnie and me brought some girls last summer, telling them scary stories about the woods so that they'd squeal and hug us tight. It was spooky back here, something about the trees. Their shadows seemed to linger and spread out across the ground until you couldn't really tell what was shadow and what wasn't.

We walked slowly as a storm began to build in the sky above us. We said nothing, plowing through the densest parts of the woods. As we walked, it became clear that there was a buried past here, a community worn to rubble by time and fire and weather. A rotting fence tapered away into nothing. A stone wall that might have once been the front of a house. A pile of old junk, rusted and broken beneath smoke-charred branches. There was probably more too, but the kudzu and creepers overran everything, burying the old places as sure as if they'd been sunk into the ground.

Seth moved with an assurance that made me jealous. How was it possible that I had lived in these woods my entire life and felt confused and disoriented, while he knew exactly where he was going?

I glanced up at the darkening sky. “You sure this is a good idea? It's looking pretty ugly.”

“It's right here,” he said. “And the storm is a good thing. Makes it easier.”

“Easier? What are you talking about?”

He ignored me. “If you ever try to find it without me and you see the little cabin, you know you've gone too far.”

Cabin? I saw nothing but trees and shadows. At the time, I had no idea the “little cabin” he mentioned would be the place where my life would change forever.

“What exactly are we looking for?” I asked.

He bent down, clearing away some of the foliage. I saw a solid square block of concrete. There was an opening, a round hatch, no more than three feet in diameter, built into the top. He lifted it, revealing the arms of a ladder leading down into the darkness.

“Storm shelter. My grandmother used to live back here. I know because I found her journal in an old trunk and she wrote about this place a lot. About how the storm shelter saved her life once. About how she climbed out of it after a big storm and saw that the world had changed.”

He pointed at the crumbled remains of something half hidden by the trees. An old plow lay next to it. “There's pieces of buildings everywhere. I call them ruins. They're all that's left now. It was a whole town. Called Broken Branch. Another storm, a few months after the one my grandmother survived in the shelter, destroyed everything. Including her. This time, she couldn't make it to the shelter and she died in the cellar at her own house. My dad was with her. He talks about it sometimes when he goes off into one of his moods. The cabin I mentioned? The one that you'll see over there if you go too far? That was where she died. My father rebuilt it years ago. The rest of Broken Branch is gone. His sister and him were two of the six that survived. The others moved away to start over somewhere else, I guess.”

I waited for more, but Seth got quiet and just looked out at the trees.

“And?”

“That's it. It's all history now, except one thing.”

“What?”

“This storm shelter.”

“And this is what you wanted to show me?”

“This is the doorway to what I wanted to show you. The real thing is the swamp.”

“In the painting?”

“Yeah. The same one. That's where we're going.”

I tried to imagine what I'd seen in the painting being out here in the woods. The cabin, maybe, but the swamp? No way. Not here. I shook my head. “This doesn't make sense.”

“Forget sense, Walter. Just follow me.”

He went down the ladder into darkness. I hesitated to follow, purely out of pride. I still hadn't forgotten our fight, what he'd said about my father. His foolish attachment to the painting. All of that vexed me to no end, but damned if I didn't feel a new, more powerful emotion as I took hold of the ladder: curiosity.

—

L
ater, I'd hear my dad talking about how the storm had been “a big 'un” and how the roof came right off Bill Morgan's house, but inside the storm shelter, I could barely hear anything at all. It was out there, sure, but it didn't seem real. Nothing seemed real inside that shelter.

We sat down on the dirt floor. Seth was across from me. It didn't matter where. He was close.

Neither of us spoke. I felt sleepy. We sat there, just soaking in the silence for a long time. Eventually, we heard the thunder as it rocked the world above us, but it was a small, faraway thing that didn't matter at all.

“The painting in my room,” he said at last. “I painted it when we moved away. I couldn't go there anymore, so I painted that picture and hung it up in my room. When things got really bad, I would stare at it and dream of coming back. Then after my mom disappeared, my father decided it was time to move back.”

“You're kidding, right?”

“What do you mean?”

“That painting was of a swamp. There's no swamp in these woods. I've walked them from top to bottom hundreds of times.”

“You're wrong about that.”

I could do nothing but grin. He was insane.

“I want to take you there.”

I shook my head. “I don't understand. We're inside a storm shelter.”

“You have to trust me, Walter. Can you do that?”

“Sure,” I said. But it was a lie. I felt uncomfortable suddenly, and I couldn't say why.

“I've never shown anybody before.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The swamp. It's where I go. I can show you.” I felt his hand on me. First my shoulder, then down to my hand. I pulled away.

“What are you doing?”

“Do you want to see it or not?”

I'm sure part of me was thinking this whole thing sounded like the biggest load of bullshit I'd ever heard, but there must have been another part of me that wanted to believe in disappearing to your own place, somewhere safe and secret. More than anything, though, I was curious. I wanted to see for myself.

I let him hold on to my hand.

“Close your eyes,” he said.

I did, though the darkness inside the shelter was so total it was hard to tell.

We sat like that for a long time. His hand was over mine, the silence of the shelter broken only by the thunder booming above us.

My hand felt sweaty in Seth's, and worse, I felt weird holding hands with another boy, especially one who was so widely suspected to be queer.
Just forget it, Walter
, I told myself.
He's not like that.
Still, the longer we sat there, my hand in his, the more I wanted to pull it away. I was just about to when it happened.

What
it
was is still a little unclear to me. First, the whole shelter seemed to tilt. It was like we were sitting inside a giant barrel that somebody had suddenly decided to roll over. Seth's grip tightened on my hand, and I opened my eyes. Darkness. Then I was falling; my stomach flew up into my lungs and my neck. I saw images, moving past me quickly: shadowed trees etched against a purple sky; a low moon; a brownish muck of water flying up toward me. I fell fast. I spun like someone had pushed the barrel down a hill, but there was no hill. Only free fall. I closed my eyes, bracing for impact.

That's when I became aware of Seth again. He was with me, falling. His hand gripped mine tightly. Together we spun. I saw the moon and then the trees, the water again. A cabin. A single wooden cabin, with a light burning inside. Over and over we spun together, and it was wonderful and easily one of the scariest damn moments of my life.

The instant we hit the water, it was over. My body went under and then I was lying on solid ground again, Seth on top of me, the spell broken. But we'd gone somewhere, fallen into some other place. That was all that mattered.

“I saw it!” I shouted, clapping my hand on his back. “I saw the swamp. I saw the cabin from the painting!” I tried to roll Seth off me, but he didn't move.

“Seth?” I said. I thought for an instant that he might somehow have died during the fall, but that couldn't be right. His breath was on my face. Then I felt something else, his lips seeking mine. To be honest, I don't even think I understood what was happening. At least not at first. I thought he might be confused in the dark. “Seth,” I said. “Get off me.”

He made one more urgent effort to place his lips against mine, and I shoved him hard. The wonder I had felt an instant ago burned out inside me, replaced by an anger so righteous, I felt possessed.

The little faggot. The goddamn little faggot.

I swung at him in the darkness but missed. My fists hit the concrete walls, busting my knuckles open.

“I'm sorry . . . I didn't mean . . .” Seth trailed off. “Jesus, Walter. Please don't hate me.”

I hardly heard him. “Open this damn hatch!”

“Walter . . .”

“Let me out of here, you queer.”

Something creaked, and light and rain came into the shelter.

I started up the short ladder. When I reached the top, the hail and rain hit me hard. Then the wind. I lost my balance and almost fell back into the shelter, but I clung hard to the first rung of the ladder and managed to pull myself out. Just before the hatch swung shut, I heard Seth call my name and say something about the storm. I didn't care. He could say whatever he wanted to. I only wanted to get as far away from him as fast as possible.

—

I
probably should have died that day. The storm leveled trees for miles. Six people lost their lives in the county, even more statewide. The next morning Mrs. Parker came over to our house. She was a widow with three grown boys who'd abandoned her as quick as they could get out of the woods. She banged on our front door until I woke up to see who it was.

Her hair was wild, her eyes even wilder. “Your daddy home?”

I knew better than to tell the truth. “No, ma'am.”

“Well, you'll have to do. I need help getting the tree off my house.”

Mrs. Parker had never been much for subtlety.

“Okay,” I said. “Let me get my boots on.”

She nodded. I turned to go look for them and ran into my father.

He held his palm flat against my chest. I could tell from the way it didn't yield that this wouldn't be pretty. “No,” he said. “Go on back to bed.”

“Preston,” Mrs. Parker said. “I got to patch my roof before the next one comes.” She looked up at the sky warily.

“Not my problem,” he said, and moved to shut the door.

“I'll help her. I don't mind,” I said.

“You may not mind,” he said. “But I do.”

Mrs. Parker began to cry. She wasn't loud about it. She didn't beg, and somehow that made it worse. She wiped a tear from her face and nodded.

“I can pay you,” she said.

“How much?”

“I got eight dollars.”

My father spit past her into the yard. “Keep it.” He closed the door and turned back to me. “Don't look at me like that.”

I said nothing.

“That woman cheated on her husband. She don't deserve our help.”

He brushed past me roughly and went back into the bedroom. I stood there for a long time, wondering at how cruel the world could be. It was something I thought about a lot as I got older. Why some folks seemed so obsessed with their own lives, why they'd only help if the price was right. I guess, if I'm going to be honest about things, I made myself a promise right then and there. I promised that I'd always do my best to help out anybody no matter what their situation was, no matter what they'd done, no matter if the price was right or even if it was wrong. Didn't take me too many years to test that promise because the price is nearly always wrong.

W
hat happened that day in the shelter nearly did me in. Before that day, I'd felt pretty confident in what I knew to be true. The world was a solid place. Boys liked girls and a storm shelter was a storm shelter. Nothing else. I hadn't been happy by any means, but I'd been comfortable, secure. Then everything changed. It was like somebody had pulled back a veil on the world. Everything was more complicated and when you peeled back one layer, there were always two more.

Eventually, I got over the doubts I felt after Seth's attempted kiss. But in the days and weeks that followed it, I agonized over stuff, spending long hours trying to convince myself that I didn't like boys. Thinking on it now, it seems like a curiosity to me, but then it was real, a near-burning blast of confusion at the worst possible time in my life. Fourteen is confusing enough for a boy without having to go through that.

The other thing—the glimpse of the swamp—that was what was hardest. I wanted it to be real, for it to be more than a dream or my imagination, but with each passing day, it got easier to believe it hadn't happened, to think somehow I'd made it up.

None of those things excused what I did next, though.

It happened in the restroom at school, between fifth and sixth periods. I was there, stealing a smoke, a habit I'd almost quit since Jake and Ronnie dropped me back in the summer. Lately, I'd been feeling the urge again, probably because of all the stuff that happened with Seth.

Ronnie came in and nodded at me. Jake hadn't so much as looked at me without a scowl on his face all school year, but sometimes when Ronnie was by himself, he still treated me like a human being.

I nodded back.

“Got an extra?” he said.

“Sure.” I placed my last cigarette in his palm. He held it up and used mine to light it. It was hard not to like Ronnie. When he was by himself, he was okay. It was Jake's influence that made him do the things he did. Plus, I'd always felt bad for him. A couple of years back, his older brother, Bobby, had been hunting in the mountains north of here and some guys beat him to death. They took his guns and ammo and left his body naked in the middle of the woods. His brother had been an okay guy too, from what I could remember. I knew the loss had hit Ronnie pretty hard.

“You still hanging out with that queer?” he said, after he blew some smoke toward the open bathroom window.

I almost said,
He's not a queer
, but then I stopped myself. He
was
a queer. Wasn't he?

“Not anymore.”

“Smart move. People were starting to talk.”

I shrugged. “I never really wanted to hang out with him anyway. I just don't like to see somebody beat down in an unfair fight. Queer or not, nobody deserves to die.”

Ronnie shrugged. “Who says?”

“You helped save him.”

“That was before I knew him. I wouldn't save him again.”

I didn't want to argue. “Okay.”

“Seriously,” he said. “I wouldn't. I don't think queers deserve to live.”

He seemed to be getting angry. I held up my hands. “I'm not queer, Ronnie.”

Ronnie leaned against the sink, backing off a little. “But you do admit he's a faggot, right?”

I could have said,
I don't know
, or
No way
, or I could have said nothing at all. Instead, I said the words I would regret for the rest of my life.

“He tried to kiss me. So yeah, I'd say he's a queer.”

“See,” Ronnie said, slapping the sink with his hand. “That's what they do. They can't, you know, control themselves.” He shook his head, disgusted. “Did you sock him in the mouth?”

“No,” I said, already regretting telling him. Whatever was said to Ronnie would go straight to Jake. It was guaranteed.

“You should have socked him.”

I nodded, feeling ashamed. I wanted to take it back, to say I was just kidding. Despite all the anger I felt for Seth that day, despite the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach when I thought about his lips pressed against mine, I didn't want to see him hurt. I just didn't.

“Hey,” I said. “Maybe you shouldn't tell Jake that. I mean—”

He wasn't listening. The bell rang to start sixth period, and he left at a good jog. I had no doubt what would happen after that.

—

D
ecember came and I hit a new low. Things were worse at home. Daddy had come in drunk one night and tried to jump on Mama, but this time she was waiting on him with a knife. She stuck it into his stomach and he bled a lot. He didn't die. He just lay in the hallway cursing and moaning. Mama went to bed, left him lying right there, the knife stuck in his gut. He pulled it out, eventually, and I helped apply pressure. Nearly a month passed before he was able to work again. On Christmas Day, neither of my parents got out of bed. I moped around the house the whole morning and afternoon, looking for something to eat. I went to bed that night hungry, alone, and in tears.

Sleep didn't come. I lay in bed night after night racked with guilt over betraying Seth. I went back and forth between hating him and thinking about what he'd shown me that day. How had he made me see those things? As much as I wanted to hate Seth, I couldn't deny the power of what I'd seen. It was the only thing I could remember in the fourteen years I'd been alive that seemed to matter. How had it happened? And what on earth did it mean? In light of those few seconds, I understood that the world was a much larger and more mysterious place. And I hoped, somewhere in the great mystery of it all, I might yet find some grace.

—

O
ne of those sleepless nights, just after Christmas, I got up to piss. I walked down the hall toward the bathroom when I noticed a light on in the den. I kept walking and looked around the corner. The faint sound of a country and western song whispered across the room. Mama sat in front of the radio, her posture slumped, one hand brushing the hair off her forehead. In that single instant, I saw something that stunned me. Her gesture, the way she touched her hair, belonged to someone else. I'd wondered why Seth looked familiar to me, and now I saw the answer very clearly. My mother.

She looked up just then, and I saw he had her eyes. There was an instant where I didn't think she saw me. She seemed to look through me, but then she spoke. “Can't sleep?”

I shook my head.

“Come sit down,” she said, patting the couch. I was amazed; she hadn't said more than two words to me in the last week.

I sat beside her on the couch. A twangy guitar started up on the radio. It was joined by the rasp of a cymbal and a voice that sounded like it was a million miles away and right in your ear all at once.

“Did you have a sister?” I said.

Mama's eyes—normally empty, distant—sharpened.

“No, only a brother.”

“A brother?”

“Sure, you remember your uncle.”

But I didn't remember. I tried to think about my earliest memories, the ones from way back when we'd been a happier family. I barely remembered when Daddy would still smile and sometimes pick me up and hug me. I'd smell the alcohol on him, and it didn't smell like anger yet. Hadn't there been another man once? A man with red hair? Jesus, when it hit me, I felt a cold chill. The reason Seth's father had reminded me of a family member was simple. He was my uncle.

“I think I do,” I said. “Can you tell me about him?

Mama shook her head. “I don't want to talk about this.”

I waited, knowing I'd have to go easy on her, coax it out of her.

“What was your mother like?” I said. “My grandmother.”

“People said she was . . . was . . .” She seemed flustered trying to think of the right word.

I took a guess. “Crazy.”

“Yes, crazy.”

“Was she?”

She shrugged. “It's hard for me to remember. Everything about that time seemed crazy.”

I waited, hoping if I was quiet, she might say more.

A new song started on the radio, its bass line fluid and long, peppered by a high-hat cymbal as a voice came through the tiny speakers.

“She died in the big tornado. Nineteen thirty-two. I don't remember because I was only a little girl, but they said I was playing at a friend's house and their family made it to the storm shelter. They took me with them. Only six people survived. Killed the whole town.”

“What about your brother?”

“He lived. But wasn't never the same.”

“Mama?” I said. “I think your brother is back. He's got a boy with him named Seth.”

I waited for her reaction, but her eyes had already gone away, staring at the framed picture of her and my father getting married.

—

T
he turning point came in January, on my way home from school. I was walking along the highway when I heard voices off in the trees to my right. I slid down the embankment and moved in closer to see what was happening.

What I saw still makes my blood boil.

Ronnie, Jake, and five other boys formed a circle around Seth. The other boys' names don't matter. They were just wannabes, willing to do anything Jake said. They'd stripped off Seth's clothes and tied his feet together so he couldn't move. Each boy held a stick and they kept poking him and calling him names. Seth's eyes were closed and he seemed oblivious to their taunts. His flesh was torn up from where they'd prodded, scraped, and stuck him.

I experienced a moment of indecision so powerful I can still feel its hold on me. I wanted so badly to help. I wanted so badly to run away, to ignore what was happening, to save myself.

I think my mother swayed me. I'd seen her fail to act so many times, letting my father take advantage of her, turn her life into something less than human. She'd made the one desperate attempt with the knife, but that was too little, too late. I saw her sitting beside the window, listening to a radio program and slowly losing who she was, losing what mattered.

Mama had already lost the things that mattered—her dignity, her self-respect, her identity. Now, watching those boys kick the shit out of Seth, I had to make a decision about what mattered to me or, like Mama, risk losing myself. It was one of the first times I realized that the person you are is created by the actions you take, or, more importantly, fail to take.

I acted.

I was halfway there when I realized I couldn't take them all, and I held up, ducking behind a pine tree.

I had to help him. But how? I needed a gun. Dad had recently started locking his up, probably out of fear that if he didn't, Mama would use it on him.

Then I had it. In my mind's eye, I saw my mother sitting on the couch, her eyes empty, her mouth slack. Dad came in, fell on top of her, groped her like he always did when he was drunk. I saw the knife in her hand, the way she jabbed it hard into the fat of his stomach and then rolled him off onto the floor. I saw him struggle to get up, then walk three steps toward the hallway before collapsing again.

I ran home as fast as I could. My house was only a short ways through the woods. Even so, I knew I was taking a great risk. When I returned, Seth might be badly injured, or worse, dead. Still, I couldn't take them on unarmed. It was my only chance. When I got there, Mama was in her spot, on the couch, the radio on. She turned her head to see me. Her face stayed neutral. She seemed unconcerned with me and turned back to face her radio. Elvis Presley sang about heartbreak. I went into the kitchen and found the biggest knife in the drawer.

As I ran back, it was damn lucky I didn't trip and stab myself. When I returned, they were taking swings at him with their sticks, following through like Mickey Mantle. I found my target and broke through the trees.

Jake didn't see me coming until I was right on top of him. I could have killed him, would have killed him if he hadn't sidestepped at the last second. The knife nicked his shoulder. We fell to the ground, me on top of him.

I held the knife to his neck. His eyes were wide and filled with hate.

“This is over right now,” I said. “Everybody goes home.”

I felt Ronnie moving close. He was behind me. I couldn't see him, but I felt his presence.

“Ronnie, you can't go your whole life doing Jake's dirty work,” I said.

He came closer.

“I'll kill him if you take one step closer. Do you think I won't?”

“Stop, Ronnie,” Jake said. I heard fear in his voice.

“Now go home,” I said. “All of you.”

I turned my head to see that some of the boys had already left. Ronnie and a couple others glared at me.

I touched the knife to the skin of Jake's neck and said, “Tell them to go home and to stay the hell in their houses for the rest of the night. Tell them.” I pushed the knife harder, drawing blood.

“Go home, guys,” he said. “Stay inside for the rest of the night. This is over.” He waited a beat before adding, “For now.”

I pushed the knife harder, maybe too hard. He gasped. Blood was everywhere.

The other boys cleared out. Only Jake and Seth and me remained. Seth hadn't moved, and I thought he was probably dead. Thinking about him dying made one thing clear in my head. Queer or not, nobody deserved this. I'd done the right thing, and in doing so, I'd managed to save Seth and myself.

“Remember this knife, Jake. I'll always have it handy.”

He smiled, thin lipped. “I told Ronnie you were still a queer. He said you had broken it off with your boyfriend, but I always say, once a queer always a queer.”

“I should fucking kill you,” I said. I was surprised by how calm I felt, how much I meant it, how easily I could see myself sticking the knife straight into his neck.

He spit at my face. I couldn't wipe it off without letting him free. I wasn't ready for that yet. I bore down on him instead, letting his own spit drip back onto his face.