The sky was turning that odd color again. A color when purple, green, yellow, and grey all come together to paint the scene above the earth. And it was that color that made him so excited.
Bill threw back the door and moved on to the front step. He didn’t notice that he kicked the baseball mitt off the porch that was previously wedged in the screen door. The lawn scattered with toys didn’t bother him anymore, as it did when he returned home that afternoon, nearly tripping on a hula-hoop.
The clutter didn’t matter now that the sky changed color. He raised his hand to his eyes to look closer, even though there was no sun to shade. It wasn’t a time to think logically. There was too much adrenaline running through his veins for that.
He only needed a few seconds to realize his next course of action. Turning back to the house, he descended the stars from the cluttered kitchen to the basement to find his supplies. Whizzing through the kitchen, he passed his wife, folding laundry on the table that hadn’t been used for anything other than laundry storage in a year. His children sat on the living room floor, eating their meal off a tray on the coffee table. They had to sit on pillows, since the blankets on the couch already took up too much room.
None of the distractions could take him away from that basement. In the basement were his devices and notepads, documenting all the storms he’d chased in his life. The walls were covered with maps, needles poking out from spots he’d found a tornado. No pin stuck out from the city where his family lived. That is, until he found a spilled needle on the ground, and he put it in the map.
He released a sigh, turned, grabbed his bag, and went back up the stairs. This time, he noticed his wife standing there. She returned the look, but her eyes quickly darted to the bag hanging from his hand. She knew that bag well. Before they’d bought the house, that bag sat on the nightstand in their first apartment, haunting her each time she rolled toward her husband.
“I suppose you’re leaving now,” she said.
“You suppose right,” he replied. “I have to go. Tuck in the kids for me.”
Without another word or even a kiss on the cheek, he exited the home, the screen door slamming behind him. He didn’t hear it, but his children slammed their palms against the glass window, yelling farewell as he walked briskly to his truck. Their fingerprints stayed on the glass after they returned to the coffee table, and his truck pulled away.
The sky was getting darker now, not from the weather, but from the sun setting. Bill turned on his headlights, but that didn’t help with the amount of debris blowing around from the high winds. He could hear the gravel clink against his car as he left the city limits to enter the recently harvested cornfields. Out here, he could see the storm coming. He could follow it on the grid-patterned roads. Out here there was no risk, only science.
He climbed out of the truck, laid down in the bed, and waited. The storm was going to come. He was sure of it. And he would be there to welcome it when it did.
He peeked his head over the side of the truck’s bed when he heard the sirens go off. He imagined his children scurrying around their front yard trying to collect their toys before they had to bunker down in the basement. No storm was worth losing their umpteen teddy bears that didn’t hold any significance until there was the thought of losing them.
He laid back down. He had no worries. Everything he needed to survey the storm was with him.
That’s when everything got still for a moment. He peered over the side again. Off in the distance, past the hay bales that found a new home in the fields once the corn was gone, he saw it: the tornado.
There was no hesitation in his mind. He jumped out of the side of the truck and climbed in to the driver’s seat. Slamming on the gas pedal, he was off to chase the storm. His work was not as easy as it once was, ever since a flying beam cracked his windshield. But that didn’t bother him. He preferred to have the windows rolled down, veering his head out the window to drive alongside the storm. That way, he was actually there, not watching through a screen.
The gravel that was once blowing at him was blowing behind him as his wheels churned against the ground. He was off, and there was nothing to take his mind off the task.
For hours, he followed the storm, even when he couldn’t see the funnel anymore. Just the hope that he’d catch a glimpse of it kept him driving. But even the highest dreams come crashing down at some point. That was when he heard the beeping coming from the dashboard. The gas gauge was lingering over the empty symbol, threatening to cut his adventure short.
Going by foot to chase storms would do him no good. He had to turn back. There was no choice here. The opportunity to chase for as long as his heart desired had faded.
He rolled up the windows, the wind that fueled his adrenaline long gone. Back down the gravel road he drove, just waiting to see his town on the horizon. But before he could take a curve at the bend in the road and be closer to the city limits, he had to drive under the bridge.
It was a bridge he had driven under many times before without even a thought. But it was this time that he saw tree branches dangling from the overpass above that he slowed his truck. They dangled in the wind, threatening to drop at a gust that dared to knock it down. He pulled off to the side, determining if he could remove the debris to aid the inevitable help that would come from nearby towns to remove damage from the tornado.
In the corner of his eye, he saw something leaning in the corner where the support met the concrete bridge. He realized that was a child, wrapped in a purple blanket and crying to the wind. He left the tree and climbed to where the girl sat.
She was alone. He looked around to make sure. There was no one as far as he could see in the distance. He turned back to the girl, who didn’t make eye contact. She was still fixed on her surroundings, looking around for some familiar face that would come to save her. But all she saw was the man in front of her. And that was going to have to be enough.
He bent down to be on her level, trying any means to comfort her. The more he asked about her family or favorite games to play, the more she cried. There was nothing else to do except scoop her up, take her back to town, and find someone responsible for her. He couldn’t leave her here alone, not knowing when the next person would show up.
So that’s what he did. He took her, she cried louder, he put her in the truck, and they drove off toward home.
Or what was left of home.
As soon as he saw the city limits, his foot left the gas pedal. He coasted to a stop before his tires hit the siding that had once been on homes. There was nothing left in the rubble that looked remotely familiar. There was no one standing where the sidewalks should be, waving him down, asking if they’d seen a girl who had gone out too far to play and hadn’t come home before the storm.
At first, it wasn’t the destruction that baffled him. It was when it happened. When he had chased the storm in nearby towns, it stayed away from home. He was there the whole time. He was baffled as to how this could have happened. How the funnel could have escaped his view, reforming bigger than before and tearing apart everything he knew.
The girl cried louder once she managed to stand on her seat to see why the car stopped. This was not the help she was expecting. This was the exact opposite.
Bill forgot about the girl in the moment. The tornado had been the focus before, but now he only had one thought: family.
He didn’t hear the young girl’s cries anymore. He only heard his truck’s engine shift gears as he accelerated.
He made the final left turn he’d done what seemed like a thousand times before to his home. But this wasn’t the same as his previous left turns. Because now there was no home there to enter once he parked his car.
He left his car in the street, and he left the driver’s seat without removing the keys. The car idled while the girl continued to cry, her shirt sleeves soaked through as she tried to wipe away the tears streaming down her face.
He walked over beams, doors, pieces of fences, dirt, and all else that once used to form unified objects that were placed around his neighborhood. He continued to the front lawn, standing before a door that no longer stood.
The street was eerily silent. In the distance, sirens wailed as they approached the town. A helicopter flew overhead. But he heard no cries, no screams, no voices he knew.
He dropped to his knees and felt something cushion his left knee’s fall. He looked down and saw a baseball mitt. The mitt he had accidentally kicked off the stoop earlier.
He picked it up and looked up at where his house once stood. He heard cries behind him from the car as the girl tried to climb out herself to join him.
He didn’t turn around to look at her. He just joined in the wails.