The Year of the Storm (9 page)

He smiled. “Fucking queer. I'll bet you squeal like a little bitch when he gives it to you, don't you, Walter?”

I pulled the knife away from his throat and flung it out into the grass. I stood up. This was something that was long overdue. He got up, wiping the blood off his neck. He stepped back.

“It's just one on one now, Jake. Me and you.”

He took another step backward. “You'll get yours.”

“You're scared,” I said. “I don't have a knife. Come hit me.”

Jake continued backing up. That's when I realized we weren't alone anymore. I turned and saw Seth's father kneeling over him, his hand on Seth's bare shoulder. I honestly didn't know if Seth was alive or dead, and hated myself a little for not remembering him sooner. I got so caught up in my anger toward Jake that I forgot my friend. I ran over and knelt beside his father.

“He okay?”

His father didn't answer for a moment, and I thought he might be crying. He kept his head down, studying Seth's naked body, where the sticks had done their damage. He took his finger and ran it along a bad cut. Seth groaned in pain.

“This one is nice,” he said.

“Huh?”

He looked up at me, like he just realized I was there.

“This one,” he went on. “This one ain't nothing more than a surface wound. A scratch.” He spit off into the grass, like such a small wound disgusted him.

“Shouldn't we get him to a doctor?”

He spit again, this time near me.

“Mr. Sykes? He needs a doctor.”

“He don't need a doctor. He's fine.” He grabbed Seth by the shoulders and shook him. “Get up. Come on. Get your ass up.”

Seth stirred a little, groaning.

“I think maybe we should get him to the doctor. The boys . . . They had sticks . . . They—”

He shook his head, disgusted. “I was eight years old when the twister leveled these woods. Trapped in the cellar of our little cabin. Me and Mama. It had always been me and Mama, seemed like. There was my sister, of course. She was about six when it happened, but she was over at the neighbors' and didn't get stuck in the cellar with me and Mama. Daddy had run off, left us all. Mama was already crazy by then, talking about quicksand and godforsaken swamps. People thought she was the devil incarnate back then. A lot—” He hesitated. “A lot of bad things happened, leading up to me and Mama being in that cellar. It didn't make much sense to me 'cause I was so little, but sometimes, I think on it and realize all of it had to have happened for a reason.” He was staring off into the trees now, as if seeing it all on some invisible television screen. “We didn't eat for a long time. See, the door was jammed. A big tree had fallen right across it. Mama said it was going to be okay, that we'd get out soon enough, that somebody would come looking for us. I believed her but nobody came. I got so hungry, boy. So goddamned hungry that I stopped being hungry at all. I just lost my energy and lay on the floor of the cellar. She drank the water that leaked in and that must have been what made her sick. Whatever it was, it took her fast. When she got near the end, she talked about all that stuff. Said she could see it from where she was and it was beautiful. Then she was gone. Talking one minute and dead the next. I rolled her body over so I didn't have to see her face. After that, I must have died myself because the whole damned shelter started rolling like the world had turned into a giant wheel, and then I saw her there in the swamp.”

He paused. His eyes had lost their focus. They were dead and unseeing. It was like he had entered a kind of dream state.

“I'd give anything to go back there again,” he whispered.

I shuddered.

“But you can't, right?”

He turned on me suddenly, remembering I was there. His eyes flashed with anger very briefly and then went away again. “When that sheriff from town finally found us, he said my eyes were all wild and I couldn't even sit up straight. Said I was near starved, and damned lucky to be alive.”

I nodded, but he didn't even look at me. He had forgotten I was even there.

He stared off into the trees for a long time, like someone was there speaking to him. Once or twice he even nodded. Then he shuddered so hard I could hear his teeth clicking together. After that, he slumped over, his eyes barely open.

Seth groaned again, and that seemed to bring him back completely.

“Damn it, boy. Get up.” He turned back to me. “You know, when I first met you, I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. You didn't seem like a queer. But I should have known, considering the people you come from.” He stuck his finger in my face. “My boy ain't going to be queer forever. I'm going to beat it clean out of him.” He looked back at Seth, who was struggling to get to his feet. “Them boys didn't do nothing compared to what I'm going to put on him. I see you near my boy again, I'll put it on you too, son. Something you'll remember the rest of your natural-born days. Now git on home.”

I went. It was one thing standing up to Jake and his cronies, but something else to face an adult, especially one like Mr. Sykes. I saw now what Seth meant. I had seen the real man. His eyes, the way he touched his son's wounds, not with love, but with cold fascination. He was like a hunter evaluating a gun or an auto mechanic lifting the hood to check for an oil leak. And the spell that he'd fallen under when talking about his mother's death. It made me shudder when I thought about it.

That night, I cried myself to sleep. I could lie and say that I cried for Seth, but mostly I cried for myself. I'd made a decision, one that I thought was right. Now I would have to live with it. For a long time I let myself go. After it was over, I just lay there, listening to the music coming from the den where my mother suffered her own demons in silence.

DANNY

M
om and Anna disappeared last September. A summer storm had blown in that afternoon. Anna had her earplugs in, so the storm hadn't yet caused her to get upset. I was on the couch, eating a piece of fried chicken and watching reruns of sitcoms, something I did only when it was raining and I had no book to read. Anna loved the sitcoms, especially
The Brady Bunch
, which she could quote so well that sometimes it actually frightened me. When the theme song came on each afternoon at three o'clock, she would convulse with delight, her hands involuntarily flying up over her head like ecstatic birds.

On the day they disappeared, she kept the earplugs in as the theme song played. I missed her voice singing along. More than that, I missed the battery of directives I always had to endure during the commercials: “Danny, say ‘Brady.'”

“Brady,” I would say.

She would giggle, her eyes almost rolling white. She'd shake her hands emphatically, as she anticipated the rest. “Say ‘Brady
Bunch
,'” she said, her voice barely able to contain her delight.

“Brady
Bun-ch
,” I said, stressing the last two letters in exaggerated fashion. I never knew why she loved this so much.

She'd be rocking by this point, positively shuddering with pleasure. “Again. Say it again, Danny.”

So I would say it again. And again. As many times as I could take before I told her I'd had enough. There were days when I didn't want to participate in what seemed like mindless games. Lots of days, actually. But that was before she vanished. After, I understood how precious those interactions had been, how fleeting. Suddenly, the meaningless had become fraught with meaning.

On the day she disappeared, though, there were no silly games. She was
in a way
, as Mom liked to call it. She'd woken with bad dreams about the man again (“He grabs me, Mama. He grabs me and he won't let go,” she always said). The storm came just as she was beginning to forget the dreams, a brutal storm with jagged lightning touching down in the yard. But the thunder was the thing that always got Anna. On that day, it was relentless, one loud booming shudder after the next. The earplugs helped only until the thunder began in earnest. By then they were worthless because the entire house shook with each deep rumble. Dishes dropped inside cabinets and shattered. Outside, a stray dog howled desperately with each concussive blast. Anna sat, eyes closed, earplugs in, rocking back and forth. There was no consoling her when she was like this. Mom, sensing, perhaps, that Anna was headed for one of her freak-outs, had already retreated to her bedroom and locked the door. I tried to concentrate on Marcia Brady and her troubles with the school bully.

After that things get blurred together. At some point the phone rang, and I rose to answer it, but Mom's door opened and she called down the stairs for me to leave it alone. I shrugged and sat back down. Mom raced past me to get to the phone in the kitchen.

I heard her say hello, but that was it. Our phone cord would stretch all the way to the back porch and if you wanted to talk in private, that's where you went. I heard the back door open and knew that was where she'd gone. I didn't think very much of it at the time.

I think a lot of it now.

When she came back in,
The Brady Bunch
had ended, and I was watching the Fonz hitting a jukebox with his fist, and imagining how cool it would be to be able to have two girls, one for each arm.

“Danny, I've got to step out for a few minutes. Can you watch your sister?”

“Seriously? Mom, it's about to storm. She's about two seconds from a freak-out.”

Mom looked at Anna, and I looked at Mom. If I was honest with myself then, I might have admitted she didn't appear normal. Her eyes were bloodshot, her cheeks sallow, and most disturbingly, she looked drugged. Like she couldn't focus, like she needed to lie down and take a long nap.

But I wasn't honest with myself then. I ignored all of this and instead acted like an insolent brat.

“You know I can't deal with her when she freaks.”

“Only Mama Anna,” Anna said.

My mother's real name was Susannah, but Anna managed to always ignore the beginning of her name and focus on the part that sounded exactly like hers. So, Susannah became Mama Anna, at least to my sister. Mom and Dad always thought it was cute and would never have dreamed of discouraging it. And sometimes it seemed like Anna clung to this similarity in name more fervently than even she had a right to. It may have been Anna's odd obsession with the sound of words, the way she loved certain sounds more than she loved any of us, but whatever the reason, Mom was special to Anna. Mom was the only person who could calm Anna down when she was upset, the only person Anna would follow anywhere. Anna tolerated Dad and me, but she truly loved Mom.

Mom touched Anna's brow and pushed her hair back.

“Mama Anna wants you to stay with brother Danny.”

Anna looked at me suspiciously. “Say ‘Potsie,' Danny.”

“Shut up, Anna.”

“Don't talk to your sister like that.”

“Mom . . . don't leave her with me. Where are you going anyway?” We had only one car, which Dad had taken to work. Her options were pretty limited.

I don't know how Mom would have answered my question. I think about that a lot these days. She never got the chance. Thunder, low and menacing, vibrated the roof.

And then it happened. Meltdown.

Anna stood up, ripped the earplugs from her ears, and screamed. The scream was terrible because it wasn't very loud. It was like hearing somebody scream who didn't have lungs or vocal cords or whatever was needed to produce a real, full-fledged scream.

“Goddamn it, Danny! You did this!”

She reached for Anna's shoulders. Mom was the only one who could calm her when she was like this. Gently, she massaged Anna's back and whispered softly to her.

After what seemed like a long time, Anna stopped shaking.

“Okay,” Mom said. “I am leaving. Watch your sister.”

As soon as she let go of Anna's shoulders, she screamed again.

Mom exploded. “Goddamn you!” she screamed. “Goddamn you both!”

She took Anna's hand and led her to the door. I was dumbfounded.

She opened the door, and the wind almost took it off its hinges. Anna started shaking her head and murmuring “no” over and over.

“Fine,” Mom said. “You stay with your brother.”

“Nooooo!” she wailed as soon as Mom let go of her hand.

I thought for an instant Mom was going to slap her. Then her face softened. The transformation was so sudden, I missed the calculation in it. I don't miss it anymore.

“Anna, if you can't stay here with your brother, then you have to go with me.”

Anna began to sing
The
Brady Bunch
theme song.

Mom stood up. Anna was still singing. She had both fingers in her ears.

Watch her
, Mom mouthed. She slipped out the door and into the storm.

Anna stopped singing and began to scream.

—

I
'm not sure why I didn't watch her. Maybe it was because I was angry at Mom. She'd never cursed me before, and I was reeling from it as if she'd struck me in the face. Or maybe I was just fourteen and irresponsible. Maybe it wouldn't have mattered even if I did. When Anna was determined to do something, she did it. She was a lot like my mother in that regard.

It happened like this. She screamed. I tried to comfort her. I tried to massage her shoulders, just like I'd seen Mom do so many times before. It only seemed to make things worse. My thing wasn't comforting Anna. It never had been. Instead, I was Anna's entertainment, a sounding board off which to bounce all the sounds that fascinated her. When the shoulders didn't work, I tried talking to her, pulling out the phrases she loved best:
Blueberry banana-rama-pumpkin pie
,
Brady Bunch
,
Sit on it
,
Ralph Malph
, and a dozen others she'd latched onto over the years.

None of them worked. She shook with fear, closed her eyes, and stuck her index fingers in her ears.

I finally went upstairs. There, I lay in my bed and watched the big oak tree in the front yard as the rain and wind rattled it like a tambourine. It groaned under the pressure, and I imagined it snapping and rocketing toward our house, obliterating it once and for all.

Then I saw her. She didn't walk as much as float, blown on the high wind. Anna, heading toward the woods, her fingers still in her ears, her eyes squinting into the wind.

I went after her, taking the steps in a single bound. I would have caught her too, I feel certain, if a limb hadn't snapped off the oak tree and flown at the front door, blocking my exit momentarily. I got it pushed aside and started down the steps. I braced myself against the wind and held my hand against my brow to shield the hard rain. Looking toward the woods, I knew I only needed to spot her before she disappeared and I'd be able to chase her in and bring her back. But it was too late. She'd already vanished.

—

I
tried to follow her. But you don't follow someone who has vanished. There's no trail, nothing left to follow. The storm subsided as I made my way through the woods, calling her name. There was no answer except the wind in the trees, and sometimes I still find myself believing that's the only answer, no matter how far you search or how hard you listen. Just the shaking of leaves, the swish and shudder of dry limbs, mysteries in the sky that keep secrets older than memory.

—

W
hat do you mean they took off in the storm?” Dad said.

I was sitting on the porch steps. He stood over me, not particularly impressed by my tears, looking out onto the wreckage that was our front yard. Oak tree limbs, trash, a piece of roof. This and more. Debris scattered everywhere. The aftermath was so much more potent than the storm.

“First Mom, and then Anna. Mom told me to watch her, but she slipped out.” I pointed vaguely at the door. “It was crazy. As scared as she is of storms . . .”

“And your mother? Where did she go?”

I shook my head. For some reason, it never dawned on me to mention the phone call. Or maybe it did. Maybe, if I'm honest, I just stopped thinking about it.

I was afraid Dad was going to get mad. He had every right. Coming home to this: a son, but no wife or daughter. Most men would lose their cool, especially upon hearing that their fourteen-year-old boy stood by and watched as his mother and sister charged headfirst into a deadly thunderstorm, but Dad was different then. He stuck out a hand and helped me up. Then he put his arm around me, holding me steady. I smelled sweat and oil on him from work. He said, “Point which way they went.”

I pointed toward the trees, the general direction Anna was headed before I lost her, not mentioning I had no clue which direction Mom had gone.

He headed off into the woods across the drive. Thirty minutes later, he came back.

When he saw me, he shrugged. “Let's get you cleaned up.”

After my shower, Dad and I ate a frozen pizza. He seemed to be trying not to panic. He kept talking about possibilities: A neighbor had picked them up, they'd gone down to the gas station and waited the storm out, and now they were waiting for the old man who worked there to give them a ride home. I didn't bother telling Dad that neither of these made much sense. Instead, I let him talk and nodded along.

After we finished, Dad stood up. “Come on. You're okay, aren't you?”

“Sure,” I said, though all I wanted was to fall into the bed and wake tomorrow and realize this had all been a bad dream. I followed him as he went outside and headed back for the woods.

This time both Dad and I shouted for them, our voices echoing back to us from the hollows. We went deeper, all the way back to the little shack, the one I later learned belonged to Pike. I remember Dad clearing the kudzu away from the door and going inside. He emerged a few minutes later, his face so burdened with emotion that I half believed he'd found their dead bodies. Instead, he'd simply found the end of his own rope.

“I think it may be time to call the police.”

Back at the house, Dad reached Deputy Jack Barnes, who was underwhelmed by the news of a missing woman and child.

Dad got angry with him, almost shouting over the phone, before he pulled back, reining himself in. “Listen, my daughter is autistic. They just walked away. None of this makes sense. Could you just try to put yourself in my place?”

Barnes said he'd send a cruiser by and put out an all-points bulletin.

“Too early to get worried,” Dad had said to himself after hanging up. He looked relieved somehow.

That night, I barely slept. Each time I began to drift off, I was awakened by a noise, some sound that I imagined to be Mom and Anna returning. “We had to wait out the storm at Cliff's place,” Mom would say. “And then we just stayed for dinner.”

I'd rush downstairs to hug them, and Dad—who'd never even attempted to go to sleep—would put in two frozen pizzas and we'd sit around the table laughing and talking about what a close call it had been, about how we'd been to the precipice and almost fallen, until some hand, some high and lonesome hand, had reached for ours and pulled us back and made us a family again. In the vision, I saw us sitting on a mountaintop somewhere, all four of us, happy and content. Most of all, together. This was the vision that would drive me when I started to doubt Pike's sanity, or even my own. This image of us together. The way it should be. The way it will be, I told myself over and over again.

At some point I did sleep, only to be awakened again by a noise. Something downstairs, a sound like a door opening. My dream was true. Rushing down the steps, I found Dad standing at the door, holding it open with both hands, staring out into the hot night.