Mammoth Secrets (18 page)

“Foreclosure. That family left town months ago.”

Another tree was down along the slope. Below, the river rushed in a torrent of mud and rising water. Rain hammered down.

Outside the chapel, Jake dragged a small dining table from the donation's lot inside the shed, leaving two lonely stuffed chairs and a dilapidated dresser. Of all the harebrained, lunatic—

“What the heck's he doing?” Eden angled to her driveway. “Crazy Californian! Doesn't know a guster's coming.”

“I'll get you inside then scream some sense into him.” Lilah pushed her sister towards the door and headed across the street.

Dark curtains of rain took over the tree line as the storm edged closer over the hill.

He tugged a large chair toward the shed, at her approach he shouted above the wind. “I've gotta get these donations out of the storm!”

Lilah strode over, stood nose to nose in the stinging rain, “You knucklehead! Don't you listen to the weather?”

“Why do you think I'm in a hurry?” He set down a lamp and jogged back to grab an overstuffed chair. “Was that a tree I heard falling?”

“Yeah.” She shivered, picked up the front of the upholstered chair and helped him haul it into the storage shed.

They ran back out, gathered up another, and piled boxes on top.

“We've gotta get inside.”

“This first.” Jake's hair plastered to his face. He lifted an end table and trudged forward, water streaming down his arms.

Lilah grabbed two more chairs and followed him, cursing under her breath with each heavy step.

He eyed a large dresser, the last piece. “Get the drawers out. I think I can move it.”

“Are you absolutely insane?” She cast a worried glance back to the east in the direction of the wind. The swirl of clouds rushed low, so low she was sure she could touch them if she stood tiptoe. “Leave it.”

“But—”

Lilah's attention shot to the flicker of lit windows at Eden's and Nana and Papaw's. All winked out at once. “Power's out.”

“The sky looks so weird...” He closed the heavy bolt, tugged for good measure. “Done.”

Her heart jack-hammered as the rain blew sideways, streaked windows. “Not good.”

They needed shelter. Fast. No time to get across the street to Eden's. No time to race uphill and see if Nana and Papaw were safe.

 

~*~

 

Jake stood back, his eyes wide. “I've never seen a sky like that. The color of a three-day-old bruise.”

“That's tornado weather, genius. Now that we saved that third-hand furniture we should save ourselves.” She grabbed him by the sleeve and tugged. “We've gotta get to your storm cellar. Now.”

“Do I have one?” He blinked.

“Come on.” She pulled him around the back of the chapel. To the right of the storage room, the ankle-high wood door, set in concrete, lay between the church and pastor's house. She tugged on a ring, rusted hinges screamed as it flew open, the wind threatening to whip it out of her grasp. “Down there.”

Jake stepped onto moss-covered cement steps and hurried down.

At their backs, wind banshee-wailed, the rain ricocheted through the open door, but in the depths of the earth all was muffled and musty.

She tugged on a handle and rusted hinges screamed as the doors slammed shut. A yank to the slide lock, and it jammed, frozen. “It won't stay shut! Find something to wedge it with.”

Along the far wall, dusty mason jars coursed the shelves underneath a course of cobwebs. The other wall was bare earth and support beams. There was a lamp on the scarred wooden table in the middle, a couple of chairs.

He'd heard of storm cellars as a kid, but this was his first time ever in one.

Grabbing a stack of contractor pencils she hustled up the slimy stairs, jamming a handful between the rings and lock. “That might hold it.”

He shuddered. Pencils versus the wind?

She sloshed the kerosene lamp and turned to him. “Got any matches?”

Jake shook his head. Ten years since he'd had a cigarette. No call for matches since.

Rattling. Sounds of resistance at the top of the stairs. The cellar doors flew open with a bang as if invisible, furious hands slammed them back and forth.

She started forward.

He held her back. “Find a lighter or something. I'll get them.” Jake sailed up the stairs as air rushed around his body like a vacuum. The hairs on his arms stood on end; adrenaline fueled his limbs to keep moving as he grabbed the rings of the first door, secured it. The wind screamed a wild thing that tore at everything in reach. Rain sheeted by in blasts, he could only make out ghostly shapes. Giant oaks bent, snapped, broke in protest as limbs tore away.

No way the Revival tents would survive this. What of the carnival? Surely they'd closed their doors, but did those people have anywhere to go? Where would carnival workers hide out in a storm? Dodge a tornado?

He squinted in the direction of the spring, the fairgrounds, but visibility was next to nothing. The heavens unleashed their next fury. Lilah shouted at his back, urging him to hurry as bullet-sized hail zinged rapid-fire.

With a prayer for protection of this small valley, Jake muscled the second door shut, then shoved the slide-lock into place, secure, as their world went dark.

 

~*~

 

She struck the match. White flame shot to an orange glow as she replaced the glass hurricane. Shadows pushed to the shelf-lined walls. Jars packed with floating peaches, plums, and jellies glittered behind dusty jackets. Baskets of potatoes rotted where they sat. Must have been a few pastors since anyone had tended this place.

Jake eyed the contents, took inventory of the stock, and scratched his stubble.

“What are you concocting there, genius?”

“Stop calling me that.”

“Furniture?” She shook her head, dragged out a cane bottom chair that looked reasonably sturdy, and sat. “You wanted to move furniture in a tornado warning?”

“I was doing my job.” He glared. “Someone dropped it off.”

“Let's not fight, please.”

“Do you see a radio anywhere?”

“There should be one.”

Together, they scanned the eight-by-eight room. No sign of a radio amid the clutter. Bibles, texts, and hymnals moldered on the long shelves beneath coats of dust; untouched for an age.

“Everything but, apparently.” He snorted a laugh and dragged a finger through the dust. “And they said I'd have nothing to do here in the middle of nowhere.”

“Everyone always says that about this place.” She observed his profile in the firelight. Something about him being here made her feel warm and safe—even though she knew more about tornados and Ozark storms than he ever would. The thought fluttered, whirled, that she should be the one setting him at ease instead of the other way around. She pulled out the other seat and pointed. “Sit.”

He placed hands on his knees, wiping away nervous sweat from his palms. “Earthquakes, I'm ready for. I thought storms like this didn't come through until August.”

“Nothing weather-wise is the same anymore, anywhere, right?” She jogged her shoulders up trying to keep things light. “Climate change?”

Jake blasted a laugh, obviously less nervous now. Then, his worried look returned. “Do you think the others are safe? Your sister? Your grandparents?”

Lilah looked in the direction as if she could see through the earth into the spaces she'd spent many storms hiding under Nana's quilt as a child. In bathtubs, closets, and once even in the windowless hallway. The only one who'd never bought into Papaw's faith about Mammoth's trough. But she'd never let Jake know that. “They'll be fine.”

Jake seemed steadier. Still, the rain had tossed his reddish hair to a wild mane. Lamplight gleamed in his eyes while shadows deepened the crags of his face, the line of his jaw.

They were completely, utterly alone.

Outside the wind sang an ominous, howling tune. A hum and snap as something uprooted.

Storms would bring Papaw to panic mode. She prayed Nana was holding him together. Strong, supportive, brave, and made of sturdy stuff. Her little grandmother had the deepest roots of all. She wouldn't be toppled in the storm of Papaw's illness. She would bend just enough to keep from breaking, and no more.

“What now?” His hand outstretched, he waited for her to meet him halfway.

She took it, allowing him to stroke her skin with a calloused thumb. She sighed through the shiver that his touch sent. Thrills ringed her blood like pebbles in a stream. “Now, we wait.”

“Pray with me?” So hopeful.

She leaned toward him in a rush of rightness. In the low gleam of lantern light, she bowed her head for the first time in many years and prayed with another.

 

 

 

 

25

 

Pain radiated through right leg from foot to knee. Stupid ankle! Eden's cheerleading injury reared its ugly head at the most inopportune times. Her brief moment of glory at the top of the pyramid, the crash to the bottom. Never the same again, and for what?

Lilah disappeared across the street.

Eden dragged her injured self into the house, flipped on the television, squinted at the fuzzy broadcast out of Springfield. The warnings for Fulton County scrolled across the bottom in red, ordering residents to seek shelter.

Rain streaked in fat drops across the windowpanes, fingers of water blowing sideways across the glass. Not good. Below the river, dark sheets of driving rain obscured the moaning oak tree limbs swaying in swirling, growing wind.

Through the fury of winds and rattling of windows, her cellphone chirped from her purse by the door. Her own personal life raft. She grabbed it and screamed hello.

“Eden?” Luke's voice was high. Healing water.

“Where are you?” She clung tight.

“Are you all right?”

“I'm home. Sprained my ankle good…”

“...tornado...accident on the route.” His words garbled among the static. “...safe...still there?”

“Don't worry about me,” she urged. “Just do your job. I'll see you when it's over. Luke? You there?”

The line was dead.

She stared at the phone, the no-signal indicator flashed. Always taken for granted, never on the receiving end of her affections, and still he called to make sure she'd made it home safe.

Lord, what've I been playing with?

The storm raged. Wind howled. Window panes shook furiously in their frames. The living room lamps flickered, then winked out, the television silenced. No power.

Eden hobbled to her bed, grabbed fistfuls of pillows, and headed to the bathroom and climbed into the cast iron, claw foot tub.
Help me through this and I promise I'll tell him I'm sorry. I promise I'll come clean with him. I'll tell him everything.
She scrunched down as the demon raged at the door. She waited. Prayed. Luke's disappointed gaze that night at the carnival watermarked on every plea to God for her safety. And his.

 

~*~

 

Luke shoved the phone to his hip pocket. The blue and red lights of the ambulance swirled, reflecting in the blowing rain. His fireplug of a partner, Jeremy Anders, gripped the wheel, sure she'd made it home safe. They slow-drove down Main Street, peering through windows in search of folks to help. “Looks empty.”

“Only a fool would be out in this weather,” Jeremy agreed, hesitating at the intersection. “Or us.”

“What about the carnival people?” Luke scowled through the weather. The fairgrounds was obscured from sight by the darkening storm. “Think they got somewhere safe to go?”

Jeremy turned left to go toward the school, right to head to the fairgrounds. “We've gotta go see. Get them to the school. There's time.”

“Let's do it.”

“Your girl OK?”

Luke scowled deeper, then sighed, took the CB from its holder. “She's not my girl.”

“Yet.”

Luke called in their location to base. Waiting for a response, he turned and answered his partner. “We're done. And, don't ask.” Luke rattled off their location to the West Plains hospital dispatch, suggested they check at the fairgrounds.

“Good call, Nine.” After a muffled exchange, dispatch agreed. “You gather who you can and take 'em to the high school. Be safe now, Luke, Jeremy. You hear?”

Situated in the trough, the high school offered a natural shelter from the storm. Most everyone in Mammoth without Earl Dale's convictions would head there; everyone but Eden and her hard-headed family. The ambulance shuddered in a hard blast of wind. He turned to his partner and grinned. “Let's go to work.”

He aimed the Maglight, slick under his palms, as Jeremy angled through the lot, devoid of cars. Then, in the shadows of the headlights, the flashlight, a figure hunkered down battening down tent flaps.

“Over there!” Jeremy drove down the empty midway, between booths and the strong man pole that wavered against its restraints. Dipping clouds spoke ‘funnel' before the Klaxon sounded, but not much.

“Sounds like War of the Worlds.”

“Feels like it, too.” Luke jumped out as the man finished one, started another. “You gotta get out of here.”

“Nowhere to go, son.” The man in the dark green jacket continued wrapped another cleat. “No way to get there, neither.”

“We're taking people to the high school.” Luke dragged at the man's sleeve, feeling his thin arm under the coat sleeve. “You'll be safe with us.”

The man slanted his attention back toward the ambulance and finally found some modicum of self-preservation at the sight of a thickening downdraft. “I'll go, all the same.”

Luke opened the back doors. “Anyone else here?”