Riven (35 page)

When the power came back on, Thomas had a fleeting wish it had stayed off. Awkward as this was, it was worse in full light.

Grace served tiny meatballs pierced with toothpicks.

“A nice cold one would go great with these!” Dirk said. “Oh! Sorry! My bad. A nice cold anything, I mean.”

Grace brought him a glass of water, which he ignored.

“This is so nice, Mom,” Ravinia said, and it warmed Thomas to see that she too was working hard to make the best of a tense situation.

“We’re serving your favorite tonight, Ravinia,” Grace said.

Rav grabbed Dirk’s arm. “Didn’t I tell you?”

“You did. She did, Mom and Dad. Any wonder she’s the brightest lawyer in her firm?”

“My firm! In my so-called firm, the partners share cubicles.”

Dirk howled. Thomas and Grace smiled. Dinner could not come soon enough.

Addison

The storm blew past the landscaping office as quickly as it had come, and except for the driver’s-side mirror and some creasing of the door, the pickup looked little the worse for wear.

Brady picked up his check and hurried out the back. The wind was quickly dying, but on the horizon in the direction he was heading, the sky was pitch-black. He supposed he ought to stop by the restaurant and check on his mother, though she probably hadn’t given his safety a second thought.

The highway was crowded, and with six miles to go on Touhy Avenue, it was stop-and-go. Cars from both directions took turns avoiding downed power lines and branches. Emergency personnel were obviously overtaxed; in some intersections civilians were directing traffic.

Brady pulled into the packed parking lot of Judy’s Feed Bag, a hash house owned by a guy who had named it after his granddaughter. The place was hopping, every table occupied, but most patrons stared out at the storm as they ate.

“I’m lookin’ for my ma,” Brady told a girl at the counter. “Erlene.”

“Went home. She was worried about you. Said you were off school today and might have been home when the tornado hit.”

“One touched down?”

“Tore up your trailer park, so they say. But at least you’re all right.”

Brady burst from the place and jumped in Peter’s car. He tried driving on the shoulder to pass lines of cars, but when he came to obstacles, no one would let him back in. One guy shot him the finger and screamed, “We’re all in a hurry, pal, okay?”

Adamsville

Thomas decided on a simple prayer, thanking God for all the blessings of life, including Dirk and Ravinia, and for the provision of food and a wonderful wife and mother to prepare it.

“Amen to that!” Dirk said. “I’m starved.”

Thomas found Dirk charming. And while the man seemed to know how to make Grace feel good about herself and her cooking, he seemed a little less affectionate toward Ravinia than Thomas remembered. Of course, he hadn’t seen them together all that much, and the first time was before they had even moved in together. The last time he had seen them was at the wedding, and naturally they had been affectionate there.

Maybe they were just settling in, as happened to most couples. And while they were still relative newlyweds, they had been together a long time.

“We have news,” Ravinia said.

“Well, hon,” Dirk said, “it’s not really news yet. I mean, we may have news in a while, but do we really have news yet?”

“What?” Grace said. “You have to say now.”

“We’re going to try to have a baby next year.”

Thomas just sat staring and could tell Grace was doing the same. Why did this surprise him? Wasn’t it the natural course of events? Had he hoped that since they were both career people they might put this off, maybe forever, or at least until Ravinia came back to her faith and Dirk became a believer? “Well, that’s something, isn’t it?” he said.

“You know what trying means!” Dirk said, too loudly. “But that’s why it’s not really news yet. It’ll be news when it works and we have a date to announce. But, as long as we’re talking about it, we’re hoping something will happen early in the year so we might have a child by this time next year. Cool, huh?”

“Will you stop working then, Rav?” Grace said.

“Oh no. Nobody does that anymore, Mom. No need. I’ll take the appropriate maternity leave; then I’ll jump right back in.”

“And who will care for the baby?”

“The county provides day care right at the office,” Ravinia said. “I can work and see the baby anytime I want. I can take it with me in the morning and back home at night.”

Thomas knew Grace’s gears were turning and she was deciding how she might care for her own grandchild at least several hours a day.

He knew she was not up to it now and would be even less so in a year, but this was all moot unless and until, as Dirk said, there was anything to report come the new year.

What Thomas was afraid to ask was what, if anything, Dirk and Ravinia had in mind for their child’s spiritual life. Would they allow him and Grace to take their grandchild to church? If they were like most modern nonreligious parents, he decided, they would talk a lot about exposing the child to all sorts of ideas and letting him or her decide what to believe.

When that happened, the child generally grew up like the parents and believed either a mishmash of conveniences or in nothing much at all. This was going to be one delicate balancing act. Thomas knew well that this would not be his child. But it would be his grandchild, and he wasn’t about to retreat from trying to see that he or she was raised, as the Bible said, in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

Thomas had left the TV droning in the living room, and in a brief lull in the conversation, Dirk said, “Did you hear that? Where’s the Touhy Trailer Park, and why is it that tornadoes seem to aim at those things?”

“The same funnel that blows through a neighborhood and takes out a tree or two can rip those foundationless little boxes to pieces,” Thomas said.

Addison

Brady thought he had been hardened by his years inside. How long had it been since he had felt anything but anger or lust?

But now, as a rent-a-cop in an orange vest vigorously waved him over about two hundred yards from what was left of the gaggle of motor homes that had been his neighborhood, Brady was sick from his gut to his throat.

A thin, halting line of traffic snaked past the place, drivers gawking. Brady had to stay out of that line, because once in it, he would be corralled past, unable to stop, unable to run home, find his mother and brother, and see what had become of the single-wide that had housed them for as long as he could remember.

He pulled off the road, only to find he was blocking an ambulance. The driver blasted his siren, pointing, shouting. Brady moved as far to the right as he could, only to have his right front tire drop off the shoulder and the car slowly slide deep into the ditch.

At least he was no longer in the way.

The ambulance crept past, and there Brady sat. He could imagine it being days before he would be able to find anyone to tow him out. The hail had given way to a cold, steady rain that cocooned the car. On the one hand he was desperate to get home, and on the other he dreaded what he might find.

He couldn’t just sit there. If he could help, he had to try. But his door opened only a few inches before striking the side of the ditch. In that instant he was drenched. Brady pulled the door shut and wrenched himself across the seat, tumbling out the passenger-side door into frigid water over the tops of his work boots to his shins. Every step in the sucking mud was an effort.

His first couple of attempts to scale the incline found Brady sliding back down. Finally he climbed atop the hood of the car, then the roof, and leaped up onto the shoulder, nearly into the path of a car. He zigzagged through the traffic to the other side, clods of mud flying up behind him.

He gave a wide berth to the trailer park sign, hanging by a single chain and swaying madly in the wind. The asphalt seemed to boil as millions of huge raindrops caused tiny splashes to rise from the surface. Emergency vehicles rimmed the place, and from one high vantage point as Brady began his path toward home, he could plainly see where the twister had barreled through. He had seen carnage like this only on television.

Again, part of him wanted to flee, to race back to the car and fling himself across the backseat. There he would hide his head and try to stay warm and keep any horrible news from invading. He had been close, so close, to a new life. Sure, he was taking risks, getting back into the unhealthy lane, consorting with dope pushers, living on the edge. But so far so good. Brady had a little money with the promise of a lot more on the way. And his parole officer seemed pleased, if wary.

But what if he’d lost a place to live or at least to crash? What would he and his family do?

Brady knew all this worrying was just delaying the inevitable. Deep in the recesses of his soul he was terrified at what he might find at home. It wasn’t really his life and his income he was worried about. It was his brother.

“God, please,” he whispered as he hurried that way. “I know I don’t deserve a thing from You, but please. Not Petey. Please.”

If Peter had been home when this happened, it was because Brady had begged him to be. Couldn’t the kid have been irresponsible, selfish, rebellious, disobedient once in his life?

Please.

Many trailers lay on their sides, some on their tops, some pushed several feet from their moorings. People Brady knew milled about, eyes vacant, crying, holding each other. The convenience store had had its roof blown off, its front door and window obliterated. People streamed in and out, apparently still able to buy things.

Emergency workers hurried through the crowds, barking orders, searching for the injured and the dead.

The gas station, where the Laundromat had once been, seemed the lone unscathed place, a strange oasis that had somehow escaped the worst of the damage. Men and women in uniform on squawk boxes made it obvious some emergency crew or another had set up a command post there.

The ravages from the funnel seemed to worsen the deeper Brady got into the park. Two entire streets, once made up of tight rows of modular trailers with tiny picket fences and indoor/outdoor carpeting that had served as pretend lawns, were now just empty ribbons of blacktop. In the distance towered a macabre pile of twisted aluminum carcasses. It was as if the homes had been tossed atop each other one by one.

Such was the devastation that Brady found himself suddenly disoriented, unsure exactly where he was. But there lay a street sign, marking an intersection he knew well. His trailer should be just ahead and left two blocks.

Adamsville

Except for the disconcerting news about a potential addition to their family, Thomas found the meal and the evening going better than he had expected. That was due, he had to admit, to the people skills of Dirk Blanc. Oh, maybe the tall man with the shaved head was a little out of touch with how he came across to others, but he proved gregarious and solicitous. He so praised the dinner that Grace had to finally scold him into stopping.

And he asked Thomas all about his work at the prison, maintaining eye contact and at least acting fascinated, even though Thomas had done all he could to make it sound mundane. Dirk actually convinced Thomas that he had learned much from what little the chaplain had shared about life inside the supermax.

“Thank you, Dad. That gives me a real picture of what Ravinia will be encountering over there. Hey, big ball game on tonight. You follow baseball, do you?”

“Sorry, I can’t say that I do,” Thomas said. “Just never really got into it.”

“Really? Because it looks like there could be a New York subway series this year.”

“Subway series?”

“You know, both teams from the same city? New Yorkers can watch all the games just by taking the subway between Shea and Yankee Stadium.”

“No kidding.”

Dirk threw his head back and laughed. “You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

“I used to watch the Cubs and the Sox now and then when I was a student, if somebody got free tickets.”

“Well, you see? If they had both been in the World Series the same year, that would have been a subway series in Chicago.”

Thomas looked puzzled.

“You see what I mean, right?”

“I think so, but what would be the odds they would both make it the same year?”

“I wouldn’t even want to try to compute that. But, anyway, Dad, I guess you’re not interested in watching the game tonight?”

“Oh, I see! You want to watch a game. By all means.”

“Oh no, not if it’s only me.”

“We can watch, sure.”

Thomas tossed Dirk the remote, and as he began changing channels, Grace and Ravinia emerged from the kitchen. “Oh, Dirk,” Ravinia said. “Now, no, you promised.”

“It’s okay with Dad,” Dirk said. “Let me just see if there’s any score yet.”

Thomas had called his late father-in-law Dad. But Grace’s father had actually seemed like a second father to him. Thomas didn’t feel like Dirk’s father at all. Maybe that would come.

41

Touhy Trailer Park

Brady’s little street proved nearly as bad as the obliterated neighborhood he had just come through. Where his trailer had once stood lay only the concrete two-step riser that had led to the front door. Even that was gone from most of the little homesteads.

Brady had always loathed this park and the ugly metal box he called home. But now he felt as devastated as the acreage he stood in. It hadn’t been much; in fact it had been a depressing, desolate place he had always longed to escape. But it was also where he’d grown up and the only real home he had ever known.

Would Touhy Trailer Park rebuild? He couldn’t imagine it. If he owned a park like this, he’d just leave it in his rearview mirror and make a new start in Florida or Texas or California. What did owners do in situations like this?

Worrying about everything and everybody other than the matter at hand worked at keeping Brady from awful realities only so long. He forced himself to keep moving, and as he scanned the debris for anything resembling his trailer, he came across the figure of a thin, trenchcoat-clad woman, shivering in the rain with her back to him.