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Authors: Paul Quarrington

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BOOK: Galveston
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Beverly asked, “Mr. Hope, if you never believed the hurricane
was coming, why did you send Lester to Florida to pick that up?”

By way of answer, Maywell raised his eyebrows and tilted his head ever so slightly toward Polly. She was just straightening up—she had joined Maywell behind the bar to sort through some invoices—and she caught him doing this. “Well,” Polly announced, “nothing is more important than the comfort and safety of my guests. And that’s what Maywell believes too. Isn’t it, May?”

Hope nodded grimly.

Polly suddenly kissed him on the cheek. “Which is why,” she said, “he’s going to turn on the television now.”

“All right, all right, we’ll see what’s what.” Maywell picked up a blocky remote control, aimed it at the set and pressed the power button. Then he began to plow through the frequencies, the screen lighting with image and then collapsing into grey static between stations. There were flashes of baseball players, women in bathing suits, a man putting some small, furry animal into his mouth. “What was that?” wondered the girls.

Maywell Hope set the remote control aside when he saw a map of the Caribbean. A line cut across the screen. The line was solid on the right side, and in the middle was a little symbol
showing that Hurricane Claire was currently well out at sea. A broken-lined projection of the storm’s path extended from the symbol.

“What did I tell you?” said Jimmy Newton to Caldwell. “We ought to be in Cuba.”

“Shit,” said Beverly.

“What did
I
tell you?” demanded Maywell Hope. “You see that, Lester?”

“I see a map and some lines,” Lester answered.

“Well, that’s a relief,” said Sorvig.

“Although there’s still no guys around here,” said Gail, and with that the girls polished off their drinks and said good night.

“Okay,” said Jimmy Newton, climbing down from his bar stool. “I guess I’ll go figure out how to get off of this damn island.”

“I think you should just settle in, sir,” Maywell called after him. “This island’s hard to get off of at the best of times.” He looked at Beverly and Caldwell. “You people must be disappointed.”

Both shrugged, although for different reasons. Any larger action would have been too much for Beverly—her anger would overspill. Caldwell had no other reaction. His emotions were not available to him, in much the same manner as cable television is not available on the Galapagos Islands.

“But there’s many delights to be had on Dampier Cay,” Maywell continued, sounding like the chair of the chamber of commerce—which, as hard as it may be to believe, was a position he held. “For example, snorkelling. Or deep-sea fishing. But perhaps Dampier Cay’s main claim to fame is its bonefish. Do either of you people fish?”

Caldwell nodded. “That’s what I do.”

“I used to fish with my grandfather,” Beverly said. “That is, I spent hours sitting in a boat with him, threading pieces of worm onto the hook. Sometimes, though, when he got too drunk, I’d take over and fish.”

“Dampier Cay happens to be home to the finest guide in the world. Not to mention the All-island Fly-fish Champion twelve out of twenty years.” Maywell puffed out his bony chest to display the likeness on his T-shirt. “Bonefish Maywell, that’s me.”

“Well, then,” said Caldwell, “let’s do a little fishing.”

“Yeah, let’s,” Beverly said.

“We’d have to leave early in the morning,” warned Maywell. “High tide’s at first light.”

“I don’t care what time we leave,” said Caldwell. “It really makes no difference to me.”

 

F
OR SEVEN DAYS
they had seen no twisters.

This was Beverly’s first trip, although at the time she had expected it to be her last, her only. It had seemed like the end of a longer journey. First there were the two years spent in the land of the damned, which she viewed in some vague way as a holiday. But the truth finally dawned, this was no vacation, Beverly had never left the place; she’d been
born
in that land, was a certified damned citizen.

Near the end of the two years she’d got into difficulty with the law. She had been charged by the OPP with public nudity. It seemed an open-and-shut case, seeing as Beverly was arrested stark naked in Coronation Park. But the police report made no mention of the water surface, which she’d stumbled upon, coming home from God knows where. There was nothing in the report about how Lake Couchiching, that dawn, was as smooth as a mirror, or how the mist had formed into gently swirling towers on top of it. So Beverly had torn off her clothes and waded among the wind devils and waterspouts, and if that caused some concern to the members of the Orillia Road Runners, fifteen pudgy people out on their morning jog, well, Beverly really couldn’t help that. The judge was lenient, and decreed that in lieu of a sentence or fine Beverly had to seek counselling. Beverly hated that. All of the professionals kept sticking their noses places they didn’t belong.

Then she’d been arrested for destruction of public property and charged with vandalism. This was more serious—who would have thought stained glass windows cost so much?—but Beverly was able to mitigate the consequences by citing drink as the culprit. She proclaimed herself an alcoholic and promised to attend AA meetings. She went often, but she had no real trouble giving up liquor, because the stuff simply didn’t work. Booze couldn’t do what she needed done. Beverly didn’t know what that was, exactly, so she took all the governors off her impulses, just to see where they took her.

She found herself prowling the streets on stormy nights.

And she became a physical sensation junkie, roaming around southern Ontario in search of fairs and midways, spending hundreds of dollars on the rides.

There came a day when the two interests met. She was in the town of Stayner on a hot summer day, sitting on the top of the Ferris wheel while the carnies down below loaded and unloaded customers. Suddenly the wind picked up, rocking the baskets on the antiquated contraption. The fairground echoed with screams. Dust flew in all directions, obscuring the world. Candy wrappers and cotton candy cones floated about. There came a force—cyclonic action—and things began to move around and around and around.

Then there was dead calm. It had been nothing, really, just a little blow, nothing the locals hadn’t seen before. But Beverly had spotted the quarry.

She realized that she couldn’t leave things up to chance, especially given her luck. As her grandfather said, Beverly was Jesus jinxed. (Sometimes, when her grandfather could get his
hands on some money, he would take the bus to the racetrack in Barrie and wager on the trotters. He would leave Beverly alone in the apartment when he did this, even when she was five, six years old, fearful that she’d queer his luck. Even so, when he returned, drunk and penniless, he would blame her.
Jesus jinxed.
) Then one day, in the
Packet & Times
, she read a little filler piece about a company that took people to find tornadoes.
Bingo
, Beverly thought. She made a phone call and was dismayed to discover how much the endeavour would cost: a few thousand for the tour itself, not to mention transportation to Norman, Oklahoma. Her salary from Waubeshene Insurance alone would never get her there, so Beverly went back to Pilmer’s Grocery and asked if she could once again have a job as an assistant cashier. Mr. Pilmer was a little reluctant, given her recent notoriety, but he finally agreed.

It was some months before she could afford to book her seat with the Tornado Hunter Company. The time wasn’t wasted, however. Beverly was pleased to discover that southern Ontario is actually a wonderful place to live if one is interested in violent weather. She got pretty good at reading signs, both scientific data and omens presented in the sky. She read a lot of books about weather.

That was when she’d learned about Galveston.

But there were no organized tours in southern Ontario, not like in the Tornado Alley that slices through several middle American states. Beverly was also eager to go with the Tornado Hunter Company because they engaged the services of Jimmy Newton. She didn’t own a computer back then, but she sometimes used the library’s, and so had become a fan of Mr. Weather.

She was a little disappointed to discover when she arrived that there were two minivans and that she’d been assigned the one piloted by the young Larry DeWitt. Jimmy Newton drove the lead truck; Larry followed behind, drinking too much coffee and smoking cigarettes.

Jimmy Newton put them on supercells easily enough. They spent a lot of time staring at huge dark monuments to energy. The cells mushroomed toward heaven and spat lightning. The sight was awesome, but not what Beverly had come for. She realized that, despite her great interest, she was not really a weather weenie. She couldn’t appreciate the mammati, no matter how well defined, and she wasn’t satisfied with horizontal vort tubes.

Although she knew it was foolish, she blamed Larry for the failure to find actual tornadoes. She didn’t blame Jimmy Newton, because Newton shared her disdain for displays of unfocused energy, no matter how grand. Newton would march toward the dark system in the sky, his little fists buckled onto his hips like he was some kind of matador, trying to madden cyclones, to infuriate them to the point where the wind devils would split from the mother and charge. When nothing was forthcoming, he would spin around, his nose stuck up and testing the air. He’d say something like, “Let’s get on down to Ogallala. There’s something forming up down there.” Larry would still be staring at the supercell slack-jawed, his eyes clouded over with awe. Beverly would sometimes have to pull him away. “Mr. Newton says we should try near Ogallala,” she’d say, and Larry DeWitt would blink and spend a second remembering
who Beverly was, and why he was standing in the middle of some farmer’s field in Nebraska.

So she blamed Larry for not finding the quarry; not only that, she found him dull—well, he
was
dull, Jimmy Newton called him Larry the Wit with dripping sarcasm—and only reasonably good-looking. Beverly was much more drawn to another man on the trip, a professor of medieval literature, who had long flaxen hair and a scar across one cheek. Although she never asked how he got it, it thrilled her to imagine that he’d taken part in swordplay arguing over some delicate point of academia. And this man seemed to be attracted to her; at nights he would seek her out in the lounge of the hotel/motel, and he would drink whisky while Beverly sipped Cokes. But nothing ever happened. The man was, at fundament, shy, almost removed from the human race. Most drinkers were. And also, Beverly eventually relaxed enough with him to tell him her story, and from then on all he saw when he looked at her was a walking wound.

On the seventh day, the last of the tour, they caught a twister. Funnily enough, the scene had not looked promising. They stood on the edge of a field and stared at a distant dark sky, and no one in the group held out much hope—except Jimmy Newton. Newton popped up and down, he waved his little arms with impatience that bordered on fury, and as she watched, the air on the earth’s edge began to move, she could see it turning. The motion was visible because dust and dry straw and the like had been sucked into it, but Beverly preferred to ignore that fact. In her memory it was as if she
watched the air turn hard and furious, watched it spin and blacken and touch down.

That’s what Jimmy Newton said—“touch down”—although it was not quite that way. The twister had not exactly lighted upon the earth; the earth had risen to meet it. A belly of dust lifted gently and joined the darkening coil of wind. Then the tornado was alive, black and dancing and heading straight for the brace of minivans.

The other weather tourists were busy filming, armed with sleek compact digital recorders, except for the professor of medieval literature. He had a huge reflex camera mounted on an elaborate tripod, but he had time only to depress the button once before he had to start dismantling.

Beverly stared at the cyclone, barely noticing the commotion all around her. She heard Jimmy Newton cautioning people to get back into the van, but it meant nothing to her. Larry came up beside her and took her hand. But he didn’t pull her away, instead he walked with her as she took a few small steps toward the tornado. Larry said, “Let’s go, Bev,” and then she broke, throwing his hand away and running as fast as she could toward the thing. Larry tackled her, and she fell face forward onto the ground, tasting dirt and feeling little fingers of wind tousling her hair. It almost had her, but Larry turned out to be stronger than she had imagined. He picked her up and carried her to the minivan, despite the fact that she thrashed and punched and snarled, pitching more manic a tantrum than Margaret ever had. The other chasers had to hold her down in the back seat, they had to physically subdue her. Larry muttered, “Shit shit oh shit,” as he drove away, and if
the tornado hadn’t suddenly veered off, they all probably would have died.

That evening she had gone to Larry’s motel room, surprised him while he was in the shower. He came to the door with a towel wrapped around his bony hips, suds still plugging his ears. Beverly was wet too, because the storm that had spawned the tornado still raged. Thunder crashed and lightning lit the world like garish Vegas neon.

BOOK: Galveston
7.26Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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