“So this particular day, June tenth, 2001—a little late in the season for Oklahoma Panhandle Magic but that’s the thing about that area, you never know. It’s my favorite place to chase, actually, No Man’s Land. They call it that because it’s this little strip between Texas, Kansas, and Colorado, and at first nobody wanted to claim it, and they probably had the right idea because in the thirties it got eaten alive in the Dust Bowl. The people there are tough as boots. But anyway, if I had to choose a dead center of Tornado Alley it’d be Highway 412 in No Man’s Land, which bisects the Panhandle horizontally straight as a string. It’s so flat there the locals say you can stand anywhere and see fifty miles, and if you stand on a tuna can, you can see a hundred, which makes it prime atmospheric playground. The fronts collide and get cranking and the storms just bowl right down 412. So that day even though the models said we’d be better off in Amarillo, I was perfectly happy to hang out with Chuck in Boise City.
“And that’s what we were doing. Hangin’ on the hood of Chuck’s station wagon—he had an old beater in those days, God knows where he got it, but one of those seventies rockers with the wood-paneled siding like the walls of somebody’s rec room. He called it the Whirl-mobile, but we all called it the Chuckwagon. It was a total piece of shit, but man, could that thing go. Anyway, there we were at this Conoco, eating burritos and watching the radar and shooting the bull with the locals, telling them, yeah, they should watch the skies, there might be some action later. And just waiting for the Cu to go up. Good times, you know. Those are my good times.
“The Cu did go up too. Nice agitated Cu like you saw the other day in Ogallala, except these were really taking off. And one of them just exploded, again like you saw but this one didn’t bust. Nosiree, it went up like an H-bomb and took off down 412, and we jumped in the Chuckwagon and went after it. I was pretty freaking psyched too, I don’t mind telling you, because this storm was phenomenal. Within an hour, it grew into this beautiful laminar supercell—which means it had rings, Laredo, sculpted bands wrapped around it like the rings of Saturn from its rapid rotation. And it was this deep blue-green from hail, a real icemaker, a gorgeous mothership sitting on the north side of the highway. I was out of my mind. I said to Chuck, ‘You’ve hit it out of the park again, man. Let’s reconfirm our escape options and then just sit here and wait. I think this thing’s going to produce real soon.’
“But your brother said no. He wanted to keep moving, he was really agitated that day—yeah, somehow I forgot to mention that, although it’s really the fact most pertinent to the story. Freudian slip, maybe. Anyway, I was wound up too, we all get that way, you have to kick it up a notch when you’re chasing, to be your best and sharpest self. And that’s part of the fun. But I knew Chuck could go over the top with the edgy thing, I’d seen him do it before, like three-day trips when I’d chased with him and he didn’t sleep a wink, or times I’d hang out at this dive he was living in off Meridian and he would’ve been up for a week straight, editing video. He had this weird—dark energy about him at those times, and to myself I called it cookin’ with gas. I got that from ol’ Dave S. on the Weather Channel, remember him? He was one of the original anchors, and whenever there was a severe warning out he’d get all gleeful about it even though on-air you’re not supposed to. Ol’ Dave just could not contain himself, though, and the moment a red box was issued for, say, Nebraska, he’d be like, ‘Mmm mmm mmm, North Platte, you’re cookin’ with gas.’
“But that day Chuck was not only cookin’ with gas, there was something different about him, something more. I didn’t notice it while we were driving up there or at the Conoco, I was too distracted by checking out what was going on in the sky, but once we were out on 412, I could totally see it. It was like—well, I know this is going to sound melodramatic, but it was like he was possessed. I swear I could almost see somebody else beneath his skin. I don’t know any better way to—what’s wrong, Karena? Are you all right?”
Because Karena is gripping Kevin’s hand. The djinn, she is thinking. He saw the djinn. The Stranger. She nods and detaches her nails from Kevin’s palm.
“Sorry,” she says. “I’m sorry. Go on.”
“You sure?”
“Uh-huh. That last part just sounded familiar . . . now please, tell me the rest.”
“Okay, if you’re sure . . . Okay. So where was I. Oh yeah, the guy under Chuck’s face. It was like that and not like that, if you know what I mean, it was just that he had this barely contained energy in him, like something was about to burst out, and his expression had changed and gotten all dark. He was restless and fidgety, bouncing his foot and talking nonstop about the storm, and the other storms, and maybe we’d chosen the wrong one, and he had a bad feeling we were in the wrong place, he was just sure something bad was going to happen, stuff like that. And I don’t mind saying it worried me a little. Not that I thought he was going to do anything—not then. I didn’t even attribute my nerves to him. I just thought, you know, his instincts were so good, maybe he sensed the storm we were looking at was going to drop some horrific wedge or something.
“So I said to him, ‘Chuck, man, it’s your car so it’s your call, and we can move if you want to, but I think our chances of seeing something are virtually guaranteed if we stay right here.’
“And he gave me this look like I was yanking his chain—but not only that, like I was suddenly against him, like I was somebody he’d known and had trusted who suddenly wanted to do him harm. He wiped his mouth, like totally spooked, and he said, ‘Are you kidding, Wiebke? You’re kidding, right? We can’t stay here, don’t you know that? You’re just fucking with me, right? We have to move, Wieb, and we have to move fast. Because otherwise he’ll see us.’
“It was such a weird thing to say, coming out of the blue like that, that at first I didn’t understand. Although I did get goose bumps, actually, and all the hair on my arms stood up like it does when I’ve gotten a little too close to a CG field—sorry, Laredo, that’s cloud-to-ground, cloud-to-ground lightning. So I guess my body knew before I did, but at the time I just didn’t get it. I looked all over the place, and I said, ‘Who’re you talking about, Hallingdahl? There’s nobody out here!’
“And that was true, although we had seen some spotters back near Boise City. But out here there was nothing, literally nothing but yucca, for a hundred miles in either direction. And the storm, of course. Just sitting there and turning and growing sweet as you please.
“But Chuck got that wild-eyed look horses get near snakes, and he said, ‘You are. You are fucking with me, Wieb. You’re not seriously telling me you haven’t seen him.’
“Then my head caught up with the rest of me and I realized he wasn’t joking and I thought, Uh-oh, we’re in trouble here. Still, I didn’t know what it was. I had the idea that maybe Chuck was dealing, like crank or coke or meth or something, and that’s why he was so wired—and no offense, Karena, but it wasn’t the first time I’d wondered that. And unbeknownst to me his supplier was coming after him and had just caught up with us and that’s who he was worried about.
“So I said, ‘No, Hallingdahl, I guess I must be pretty dense because if somebody’s tailing you I’ve totally missed it.’
“And he gave me that walleyed look again and said, ‘You really don’t see him, Wieb. You’re really telling me you haven’t seen him.’
“And I said, ‘No, man, I haven’t.’ And maybe I made a mistake then, but I was so weirded out I laughed. I said, ‘Who’re you talking about, anyway, Hallingdahl? The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man? Jesus, man, if somebody’s giving you trouble, just tell me.’
“And he nodded then, like he was relieved, and he said, ‘I am. I am in trouble, Wieb. Because he’s after me, and I think he’s almost got me. I think he knows exactly where I am.’
“And I said, ‘Who?’
“And he said, ‘Motorcycle Guy.’
“And I said, ‘Who?’ but then he looked in the rearview, he was looking all around him all the t
ime, and he screamed, ‘HOLY SHIT, there he is!’ and he gunned it so suddenly I’m lucky I didn’t break my fucking neck. I did have some serious whiplash that day, I can tell you.
“But still, when I looked behind us there was nobody there. The highway was the definition of empty. So I started yelling ‘Slow down, Chuck, Jesus Christ, slow down before you kill us,’ and Chuck was yelling, ‘Shut up, shut the fuck up, Wieb, don’t fucking distract me or he’ll catch us and kill me!’ and I kept saying, ‘Who, man, you’re out of your fucking mind, there’s nobody there! Just slow down! Just pull over and let me drive!’ We went on like this for maybe ten miles, both of us screaming our heads off, and then Chuck must have thought he saw this mythic badass Motorcycle Guy gaining on him, because suddenly he cranked the wheel and drove us off the highway into the yucca. So basically we were off-roading in a 1977 Dodge station wagon, doing eighty, ninety miles an hour even though you’d think the tires would’ve gotten mired, but no such luck. Chuck was practically standing on the fucking gas, and he was still yelling and I was still yelling, and he was heading us straight into that tornadic storm. And there was a nice big gray anteater-snout funnel coming from it by then too.
“But we did get lucky, in a manner of speaking, because he flipped us before we got there. We must have hit a gully or a big rock or something because the next thing I knew the sky and ground were switching places, a couple of times in fact, and I felt like I was in a washing machine. My head got banged up pretty nicely and I broke my left wrist, though I was so hopped up on adrenaline I didn’t feel it at the time. And then we came to a stop, luckily again right side up, and Chuck had knocked himself out. Which was also a good thing, because it gave me time to get out of the car and run back to the highway and flag down some help, which came along about ten minutes later in the form of this really rockin’ EMT chick named Sylvia Ramirez. I’ve never forgotten her. She was out spotting for the Guymon Fire Department, and she got us both back to Guymon before the tornado did anything too majorly bad. Although it did put down an F2 tornado, that’s what the NWS said the next day, so despite everything, Chuck had been right. He’d been right about that at least.”
Kevin pauses, for breath, Karena assumes. She is staring straight ahead, concentrating on her own breathing. Forcing shallow sips of air, in, out, in, out, because ever since Kevin mentioned Charles seeing the man who wasn’t there, Karena has feared she might pass out. She just about has the dizziness under control now, though. She looks down the baked-board path into the desert between the rock walls and says, “Please, continue.”
“So,” Kevin says. It seems to take him a few seconds to warm up again, but then he gets his stride back. “So. So, they stitched us up in Guymon, because Chuck needed stitches on his forehead and had some broken ribs, and I had my wrist, and while the ER doc was setting that I said . . . well, I said, ‘I think my friend’s not right. In the head.’
“And he said, ‘Are you sure? What makes you think so? Do you think he’s a danger to himself or others?’ and I hesitated, because I knew if I was right and if it wasn’t drugs causing this, they could maybe lock Chuck up for a while. But I was scared, for him and for myself and for other people too, because what if I just said, ‘Nah, you know what, it’s probably nothing, just some bad trip or something,’ and the next day he went out and did it again? And maybe broke his fool neck this time or killed somebody else.
“So I did. I did say, ‘Yes, that’s right. I do think he’s dangerous. And he was talking to a man who wasn’t there.’
“So what happened was, they let me go but they kept Chuck overnight, and when I came back the next morning they’d carted him off to a psych ward in Oklahoma City because they didn’t have those kinds of facilities on the Panhandle, and by the time I got back down there, they had him on some pretty heavy-duty drugs. Antipsychotics, I gather. Thorazine. Some bad shit. And at that point I kind of went ballistic, because, well—let’s just say Chuck was not himself. I had never seen anybody in that condition, and it was pretty horrifying. He—”
Then Kevin maybe remembers who he’s talking to, because he stops.
“Sorry,” he says. “You get the general idea. Anyway, I asked the psychiatrist in charge was it really necessary to keep him doped up like that, couldn’t they find anything a little mellower? Like Thorazine Lite, maybe? And the doctor gave me a real dressing-down. He was probably tired or used to being yelled at or had a hundred other patients to deal with or whatever, but he got this look and he said, ‘Mr. Wiebke, your friend Mr. Hallingdahl is bipolar. At the time he injured himself and you, he was in the grips of a severe manic episode. He was also having a psychotic break. He has continued to exhibit psychosis, and he is terrorized by the visions in his own mind. We need to stabilize him before we can determine what else we can do for him. So yes, Mr. Wiebke, the antipsychotics are necessary.’
“Well, that took the wind out of me, and I left. The next day I had to go up to the Twin Cities for a while, because The Ex was setting up house in St. Paul and I had to go be domesticated. By the time I got back to OKC, about a week later, Chuck was gone. They’d released him. I couldn’t believe it. I pitched another fit, I’m afraid. I was definitely not that doctor’s favorite person. But I just could not understand how somebody who’d been in Chuck’s condition could be let go. He was, though. According to his doctors he was somehow ready. I tried as hard as I could to find him after that. I went to his apartment, asked around all the places he’d worked. But he was gone. Just gone. And that was the last time I saw him.”
Kevin stops. He pinches the bridge of his nose. Wind drives sand along the road, the platform, the desert floor. After a minute Kevin touches Karena’s hand. His eyes are red.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
Karena nods and looks away. She bites down on her lips, trying not to cry.
“Basically, it’s my fault you can’t find him, Karena,” Kevin says. “I drove him underground when I ratted him out. I think he was too embarrassed to face anyone after that. That’s why I didn’t know if you’d even want to talk to me again when I told you this. But I had to tell you. And I had to turn him in. I just didn’t know what else to do.”
Karena nods again to show she understands—oh, she understands. She tips her head back. The sky overhead is the clear blue of a gas flame, arcing to navy in the east. The moon is up now, riding alongside a spire, and there is a single bright star.
“And, Karena,” Kevin says. “I will help you find him. I’ll do everything I can to make that happen. I just didn’t know if you knew what you were getting into, if you have a plan in mind for when you do. Do you?”
Karena shakes her head.
“No,” she says, her voice hoarse. She clears her throat and sniffles. “Not really. My friend Tiff asked if I was just going to bring him home like a puppy, and that’s about as far as I’ve gotten. But I’ve just always wanted to, you know?” she cries, turning to Kevin. Her eyes fill again, her chin trembling. “I know it’s stupid. I know it probably won’t work. But I just want to help him. I just want to stabilize him, get him to a doctor. I just want to get him home.”
“That’s not stupid,” Kevin says. “It’s totally understandable. And it’s doable. It is. It’ll just take some planning, that’s all.”
Karena shakes her head. She glares sideways at the road and wipes her eyes on her forearm.
“It’s going to be all right, Laredo,” says Kevin. “Come here,” and when he folds Karena into his arms she leans her head against his chest. She closes her eyes and listens to his heart lollop sturdily along, lub-dub, lub-dub, and when he does finally kiss her, slowly, exploring, Karena hears what could be her own blood rising to meet his or maybe the mysterious rush of wind in her ears.
17
They stay in the bottom of the Badlands until they are summoned back up, which isn’t very long. Their conversation has taken a while, and shortly thereafter Kevin’s cell phone rings. “We were wondering,” says Dan, “whether
you’re planning to rejoin us or start your own nature hike company.” Karena and Kevin hurry up the road holding hands, which they drop when they get within sight of the Whale. Scout winks at them, and Fern mouths, Good on ya, and Karena’s cheeks feel scrubbed with embarrassment and sunburn, wind and Kevin’s stubble.
But they don’t have a chance to do anything else until an hour later, once everyone has finished checking in to the J&J El Rancho Fergusson Inn & Suites in Kadoka. Karena slings her bags into the room she’s sharing with Fern and Alicia and goes back out to secure the Jeep, which is parked in the very last space in the full lot, beneath some old pines. Kevin is in the driver’s seat, unhooking his laptop and the ham from their power cords to be carried safely in for the night.
“Hello,” says Karena.
“Laredo,” Kevin says.
Then, although she doesn’t know who starts it, they are suddenly going at each other in a session the likes of which Karena hasn’t experienced since high school, when she and Tiff called it mashing. That first kiss down on the wildlife platform in the Badlands was amazing, delicious and slippery and investigative in the way only first kisses can be—and this one was a doozy. Now shirts are pushed up, Karena’s hair comes down, her bra snaps undone with a deft flick of Kevin’s wrist. “Left-handed,” she murmurs. “Nice.”