The Weatherman (9 page)

The Weatherman told viewers to be thankful for a domed stadium. He stood beside the radar screen and explained. Mild winter-wild summer. This was the most explosive type of weather situation the five-state area had faced in years. Warm air from the south was feeding these storms, and there were no cold fronts from the north to sweep them out. The front moving through tonight had stalled, setting up a barrier thunderstorms could not penetrate. “Here we go again, folks,” said Dixon Bell. “Better late than never. The National Weather Service has just issued a severe thunderstorm warning that does include the Twin Cities. You should expect strong, damaging winds and even more rain than the four inches I forecast earlier. Maybe six inches or more. And that spells flash flooding.”

On this particular night the Channel 7 weatherman was slightly unnerved, though viewers may not have noticed it. Just before he had gone on the air, the phone rang in the weather center. It was dateline, the number known only to family, friends, and employees. Dixon Bell picked it up.

“I’m gonna ice you, Weatherman.” It was a high, raspy voice, a feminine man, or a woman impersonating a man. Also a pisspoor attempt at a southern accent.

“I’m gonna ice you, Weatherman,” the voice said again. Then he hung up.

Dixon Bell had heard that voice once before, the day of the tornado. Or was it the day before the tornado? He couldn’t remember. What’s he got against me? I’m just a local-yokel weatherman from the southern end of the river.

Dixon Graham Bell was raised in a shotgun house above the railroad tracks that run above the river in Vicksburg, Mississippi. They call them shotgun houses because the rooms are built one behind the other, so a shot fired through the front door will sail straight out the back door. Vicksburg stands at the southern tip of the Delta, built on thirteen hills where the Yazoo River flows into the Mississippi. Indians called the Mississippi River “Father of Waters.” They called the Yazoo “River of Death.” It was in these thirteen hills above these two converging rivers that the future weatherman spent his boyhood, staring into the thunderheads, trying to imagine the fury of the tornado that had struck this town and got his life off to such a tragic start.

After the Eden Prairie tornado, the second tornado in his life, questions arose about the lack of warning from the National Weather Service. Officials confirmed that at least four sirens in storm areas didn’t go off. They still hadn’t located the reasons for the failures. Dixon Bell stated publicly that the National Weather Service was a technology museum, complaining that in Minnesota, as in some other states, the Weather Service does not issue a tornado warning until a person actually sights one. The first two people to sight the Eden Prairie tornado were dead. So camps seemed evenly divided between those who wanted to shake the Weatherman’s hand and tell him what a wonderful thing he did and those who wanted to blame him for the tragedy.

They had buried Bob Buckridge and Kitt Karson at Fort Snelling National Cemetery. Military honors all around. But right after the funeral the Weatherman had a run-in with Rick Beanblossom. The masked asshole, Dixon Bell called him.

“Why did you tell him to switch positions?”

“I directed him to a safe position.”

“You threw him right in the path of that tornado. Somehow you knew it was coming.”

“That’s ridiculous. He was out of harm’s way. After that, he made the decisions.”

“You knew damn well what he’d do once he saw that thing.”

“Get off my back, Beanblossom, and take your grieving act somewhere else. Buckridge didn’t care for you any more than I do.”

The masked newsman shouted at the Weatherman as he walked away. “Why don’t you go back to Mississippi, or Tennessee, or wherever the hell it is you came from.”

That was the most insulting thing said, that Dixon Bell didn’t belong.

Andrea Labore was another story. Too often the woman of a man’s dreams turns into the nightmare that destroys his life. Dixon Bell knew in his heart that when the end came his last thought on this earth would be of a woman. If not Andrea, or Lisa, it would be of another brown-eyed beauty down the road-a woman he loved with all of his heart but who never loved him back.

It was difficult to work with Andrea. A few weeks back, before the tornado, he asked her out for the first time. She told him no. As kind as she was, and she was kind, it was humiliating. He noted this humiliation in the diary he kept. It had taken him years to get over Lisa. He swore it would never happen again. And it didn’t until Andrea Labore laid those big brown eyes on him.

“As our metro area continues to grow,” the Weatherman told his viewers, “and our farmlands and wetlands are paved over, these heavy rains have nowhere to go but into the street.” Dixon Bell threw it back to Ron Shea.

Then came big smiles from the anchors. The schlocky music kicked in. Balloons and confetti fell from the ceiling onto the news set, just like New Year’s Eve. Ron Shea hoisted a bottle of champagne onto the desk and popped the cork. The credits rolled over all of this as the anchorman from Virginia looked into the camera and told the people of Minnesota, “Good night from the number-one-rated news show in the Twin Cities.”

After the broadcast Andrea Labore hung around her desk. The celebration over the ratings book quickly wound down. She finished her glass of champagne, then popped a mint into her mouth. She called up Script on her computer and tapped out a banal thank-you letter to a fan. She thought about answering another, but it was difficult to concentrate. The news director had asked to see her in his office after the show. But Jack Napoleon was still on the phone.

She opened another letter. It was from a state legislator. He wrote how much he admired her work and asked if they might get together for a drink next time he was in town. A valuable news source, he promised. Andrea crumpled up the invitation and tossed it into the wastebasket. Television 101-never answer people who want to meet you, and never date cops or politicians.

She looked over at the glassy office. The curtain was drawn. Butterflies fluttered in her stomach. What did he want at this hour? Other than that of a movie producer, perhaps, no job gives eager young men more control over the careers of ambitious and beautiful young women than that of a television news director.

Andrea Labore knew what she wanted: harder news. Since her arrival she had been assigned mostly puppy-dog stories. Good training, she was told. Every time the zoo got a new resident, Andrea got the call. She did stories about wounded eagles in a hospital for birds, and peregrine falcons living atop a Minneapolis skyscraper. She even did a piece about a pet cemetery. She swore if she had to do another animal story she’d put the beast in the ground herself.

Andrea watched co-workers turn out lamps and monitors and filter out of the newsroom. In the weather center across the way, radar screens tracked the storm clouds now stuck over the cities. The iridescent sheen they emitted cast an eerie pall over the darkening newsroom. She could make out the shadow of a large man moving across the weather center wall, and for a moment she got caught up in the spacey mood created by the high-tech gadgetry. Then news director Jack Napoleon emerged from his office in the glassy corner. He turned out lamps in the outer area and shut off the monitors. He retreated to his office without looking her way. The door was left slightly ajar. The ceiling light went out, leaving only the translucent light of a television set peeking out at her.

Up at the assignment desk the overnight dispatcher retreated to his shack to listen to scanner chatter. She heard him radio the photographers in their vans asking them to watch for flooding, shoot tape. Then the lights went out there too, leaving only a lamp to read by.

Andrea pulled tissues from her Boutique box and wiped the perspiration from her palms. She put the tissues to her mouth and spit out the mint. She shut down her computer, stood, swung her purse over her shoulder in a done-for-the-day manner, and searched the newsroom one more time. It was all but empty now. She took a deep breath, walked with purpose to the news director’s office, and pushed open the door, purposely leaving it open.

“Close the door,” he told her.

Andrea palmed the door closed. Outside the skyscraper’s top-floor windows the two cities were being pounded with rain.

He was seated on his office couch as if he were at home, his hands clasped behind his head, his feet up on a coffee table, watching a console television set with a
VCR
stacked atop it. He was a handsome man. His sleeves were rolled up, exposing muscular arms thick with hair. Black slacks were stretched tight across his legs, accenting his height. At thirty years old he did not look like an ex-college athlete, but more like a former class president. Jack Napoleon enjoyed controlling people, not scoreboards.

Andrea couldn’t see what he was watching, but she heard some moaning and groaning and she assumed it was a steamy love scene from a movie on videotape.

On the wall above the overstaffed couch hung a large oil painting of Jesus Christ rising through the clouds, ascending into heaven, his palms outstretched, blessing the poor souls he was leaving below. On a wall in the corner was a small crucifix. A white Bible lay on the desk beside the picture of his wife and two children. It seemed more like the office of a Baptist minister than that of a news director. Jack Napoleon was a born-again Christian.

He wasn’t the first news director Clancy Communications had dropped into the Sky High newsroom, but he was the most bizarre. When he arrived at Channel 7 Napoleon shocked believers and nonbelievers alike by making his religious beliefs known at his first staff meeting. He wanted it understood the new Sky High News was to reflect Christian values, with heavy emphasis on community involvement and the family. He reminded them that if they all worked to be better Christians they would be a better newsroom. At that bit of heavenly advice, one staff member raised his hand and caustically asked if the Jews in the newsroom could be excused from becoming better Christians and just concentrate on becoming better reporters. There was little preaching after that, but his message was Christian clear.

“That was really a good stand-up you did yesterday, Andrea.”

“Thank you. I’m still concerned about my anchor work.”

“It’s coming along well. You’re getting there. And your research is good.”

“I’d like to do more anchoring.” “Charleen will be back soon. Ratings always go up after an anchor comes back from maternity leave. We’re going to begin promoting her return next week. Got some really cute stuff of her and the baby.”

It was not the answer she had hoped for. Andrea had a gnawing feeling in the pit of her stomach that she’d be in a much stronger position if she were married and knocked up. They fell silent. He kept his eyes glued to the TV screen. She watched the cold rain on the hot earth. Their transparent images were mirrored in the storm. Great splashing drops smeared the glass.

The moaning and groaning coming from the television set was growing intense and loud. Andrea walked over to the couch and stood beside him. “My God, what are you watching?”

“Porn,” he told her, matter-of-factly. Indeed, it met all of her standards for obscene, but Andrea Labore couldn’t take her eyes off the coupling. “Why?”

“Because I believe that we are living in the last days before the start of the tribulation, and the entree of the Antichrist.”

Andrea didn’t know what the hell that meant, but it

sounded so god-awful that she almost burst out laughing.

“People are getting hurt by this,” Napoleon went on.

“Pornography is a multi-billion-dollar industry. Let’s find

out how it works. Who’s behind it? Where does the money come from? An investigative piece. Maybe even roll it into a one-hour documentary after it airs on our news. Are you interested?”

The cop-tuned-reporter didn’t waste words. “No, not in the least.”

Jack Napoleon shrugged his wide shoulders. “Maybe I’ll give it to Beanblossom.”

“He won’t do it. He probably watches this stuff.”

Then for one frightening moment Napoleon’s breathing became as loud as the breathing on the videotape. He caught his breath and relaxed. “This weather plays hell with my asthma.” He wiped the water from his eyes. “You don’t like him, do you?”

“Rick? It’s he who doesn’t like me. He thinks I’m a bimbo.”

The easiest way to hurt Andrea Labore was to call her a bimbo, a Barbie doll. In college a drunken frat boy once joked that if you dropped Andrea’s pants you’d find a smooth plastic crotch. She thought it was the cruelest thing ever said about her. On the police force the boys often referred to her as the Barbie doll in the badge. Then with television news credentials and the most beautiful face in town came an immediate stigma. Bimbo! She fought this unfairness daily.

Thunder broke outside and startled her. City lights below were disappearing in the wind and rain.

Napoleon glanced over at the window. “Dixon Bell has been on top of this storm for twenty-four hours. At six o’clock the other stations were still predicting sprinkles. God, what a find he’s turned out to be. I’m from Chicago. I know the importance of the weather.”

“Yes, Dixon’s good.”

“I heard he asked you out.”

Andrea rubbed a chill from her arms. “It was no big deal.”

The news director turned his attention back to the noisy couple on the TV screen. They changed positions and went back at it like Pavlovian dogs. “I looked into the record books. In the history of television this station had never been rated number one in this market. Now it is. Do you know why we’re number one, Andrea?”

“Because of the tornado.”

Napoleon enjoyed her wit. “No, Andrea. Because we stress family values. We accentuate the positive. People tune in and see good news. If we tried to do hard news every day like the other stations, they’d kill us. But do you know what the other stations have that we don’t have? Awards. They promote their awards. Sky High News has no awards. That’s embarrassing. I’m looking for an award-winning investigative piece.”