“I need to go read the Goodland advisories.”
“It’s…five-twenty in the morning.”
“Those sound like major storms out there.”
They hurried down the front porch steps, the grasses thrashing and the air making their eyes water, filled with dust and slivers of chaff.
In the RV, Peter opened the laptop and pulled up the National Weather Service page he’d bookmarked upon his arrival in Hoxie.
“Oh, man,” he said.
“What?”
“Come look.”
BULLETIN - EAS ACTIVATION REQUESTED
TORNADO WARNING
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE GOODLAND KS
517 AM MDT MON JUL 17 2006
THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN GOODLAND HAS ISSUED A
* TORNADO WARNING FOR...
NORTH CENTRAL SHERIDAN COUNTY IN NORTHWEST KANSAS...
* UNTIL 630 AM MDT
* AT 510 AM MDT...NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DOPPLER RADAR WAS TRACKING A TORNADO 15 MILES NORTHWEST OF HOXIE...OR ABOUT 8 MILES WEST OF SELDEN...MOVING EAST AT 15 MPH.
* THE TORNADO WILL BE NEAR...
SELDEN AROUND 610 AM MDT...
IF YOU ARE AT HOME...SEEK SHELTER IN A BASEMENT IF POSSIBLE. OTHERWISE...GO TO A SMALL INTERIOR ROOM ON THE LOWEST FLOOR. AVOID WINDOWS AND PROTECT YOURSELF FROM FLYING DEBRIS.
IF IN MOBILE HOMES OR VEHICLES...EVACUATE THEM AND GET INSIDE A STURDY SHELTER. IF NO SHELTER IS AVAILABLE...LIE FLAT IN THE NEAREST DITCH OR OTHER LOW SPOT AND COVER YOUR HEAD WITH YOUR HANDS.
“I have to go,” Peter said.
“Right now?”
He closed the laptop. “Right now.”
“I want to come with you.”
“This will be dangerous, Melanie.”
“I know. But I want to see it. Just let me go change into something.”
“We don’t have time.” He jumped up from the sofa and moved into the front of the RV, sat down behind the wheel, fished the keys out of his pocket. “Bring the laptop please,” he said. “You can help me track it.”
They sped through dreaming Hoxie, the wet streets of the hamlet vacated, the houses still dark. Peter ran the single traffic light at the center of town and raced north up Highway 23, pushing the Winnebago harder than he had in years, the RPMs edging into the red.
“There it is,” Peter said.
“Where?”
He pointed out the windshield. To the northwest in the strengthening light, a thunderhead towered over the plain—concentric circles of green-tinted clouds spiraling into the upper reaches of a 60,000-foot supercell out of the bottom of which a curtain of pale gray draped to the prairie floor.
“God,” he said.
“Is this a special one?”
“You never see them like this.”
“On the radar, it looks like the storm is moving just a bit more to the north.”
“Is it still on track to hit Selden?”
“I think so.”
“Then we’ll try to intercept on Highway 9.”
They entered Selden at 5:57 a.m.
Houselights shining. Families gathered on porches to stare at the sky and listen to the eerie wail of the tornado alarm that blared through town. Peter bypassed the miniscule business district and turned onto Highway 9. They screamed east for three miles, Selden shrinking in the rearview mirror, and then he eased off the highway where it intersected with a dirt road.
“Let me see the laptop.”
He studied the radar loop for thirty seconds and handed the Mac back to Melanie.
“Are we good?” she asked.
He could feel his heart pulsing against the back of his eyes. “Perfect.”
Peter drove the RV across the intersection and onto the opposite shoulder so they faced west toward Selden and the storm. He cut the engine and opened his door and stepped down. Walked twenty feet out from the Winnie, straddled a slash of faded yellow paint in the middle of the road.
Checked his watch: 6:04.
They’d pulled over at a point of prominence on the prairie, the land falling gently away in every direction, so they could see for miles. The front passenger door slammed. He glanced back, saw Melanie walking toward him in a pair of slippers and a lavender nightgown, the thin cotton flickering in the wind.
She smiled, took hold of his hand.
At their backs, the sun crept over the horizon, and when its light hit the storm, the leading shelf cloud turned dirty pink.
It sounded like Selden was getting shelled, the tornado alarm reduced to a dial tone from this distance.
Raindrops specked the pavement.
The alarm hushed.
The swarthy clouds over Selden turned black and a substation exploded in a burst of loose electricity.
Melanie’s grip tightened around Peter’s hand.
Already you could see the counterclockwise churn of debris growing more profuse with every second, and then a black column emerged from the town, carrying pieces of Selden in its swirl which curved for several thousand feet into the sky.
Melanie said, “Oh my God.”
Pellets of hail had begun to bounce off the pavement, a breathy roar becoming audible.
“Should we go?”
He couldn’t take his eyes off it. “The twister’s going to come right down this highway. Right over this spot.”
“Yeah, I can see that.”
He handed her the keys to the Winnie. “Head east as fast as you can.”
“Peter—”
“Listen to me. It’s a slow-mover, and there’s a northerly component to its trajectory, so it’ll eventually veer north of the highway.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Melanie, I’ve been trying to get myself into this position for ten years. This is a once in a lifetime kind of—”
“What position? Getting yourself killed by a tornado?”
“I don’t expect you to understand, but I am asking you to please just let me have this moment. Let me do this without interference. I think about it every day. I dream about it all the time. This is what I want. This is all I want.”
“So I just step back, let you commit suicide?”
“I could’ve shot myself years ago. This isn’t about suicide, Melanie.”
“Then what’s it about?”
The twister sounded like sustained thunder, even from three miles away, the condensation funnel widening and darkening, cluttered with all it had scoured out of Selden—cars and stoves and splinters of siding and so many airborne shingles they resembled a flock of birds and God knows what else.
“You better go.”
She shook her head.
“Goddammit, you aren’t going to change—”
She framed his face with her hands. “I’m not trying to change your mind. I honest to God want to stay with you.”
“Melanie.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t you do that. We haven’t known each other long, but I get you, and I think you get me. We aren’t here to save each other, Peter. You know that. That’s not what this is about.”
He stared at her, the wind whipping her hair across her face, pea-size hail clinking on the RV. For a second he considered what it might feel like to love her, but the attendant pain and fear was cost-prohibitive.
He swiped the keys out of her hand, started running toward the RV.
“Buckle your seatbelt,” he said, cranking the engine.
Through the windshield, Selden had vanished behind a shaggy funnel a quarter-mile across.
Peter accelerated toward it, the tornado expanding until it consumed the view west.