The Fury Out of Time (2 page)

“The tables,” Karvel said again. “Where are the tables?”

Whistler’s arms flapped protestingly. “Stored. Stored for the winter.”

“It isn’t winter yet.”

“It’s gonna be winter.”

“It’s always going to be winter. It was going to be winter last month, but the tables were there. It was going to be winter last spring, when you bought the damned things. I want my table.”

“Nobody wants to sit outside. It’s too cold.”

“I want to sit outside,” Karvel said. “Cold is one of the few genuine discomforts that modern civilization hasn’t corrupted. You ought to try it sometime.”

Airmen, crowded four ranks deep along the bar, cheered on the argument. “How about that?” a hefty chief master sergeant said. “Taking the major’s table when it ain’t even winter yet. Whistler’s a cheapskate!”

Others took up the chant. “Whistler’s a cheapskate!”

Whistler ignored them. The unexpectedness of Karvel’s attack had rocked him off balance, but only momentarily. He loved an argument, and his uncouth features concealed a mind of surprising resourcefulness. Karvel grinned in anticipation of a devastating rejoinder, but before Whistler could speak the sergeant waved for silence.

“Nobody buys until the major gets his table. Right?”

“Right!” the airmen chorused.

Whistler wavered, shaken by the thought that winning an argument might cost him money. He glared at Karvel. Then he descended to the basement, and came crashing up the stairs with a table.

Karvel was genuinely fond of Whistler, and he would have preferred to win his point without the low blow to the cash register. The damage was done, however; he placed a bill on the bar, told the men to have one on him while it lasted, and left the room to a rousing chorus of “He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.”

He followed Whistler outside and resumed the argument, this time over the number of chairs required for the comfort of Bowden Karvel. They compromised on two. While Whistler waited impatiently for his order, Karvel draped his jacket over one chair, sat down in the other, and composed himself to have the last word.

“The usual?” Whistler said finally.

“No. This isn’t one of my good days. When I spend money for whiskey, or even for the diluted paint remover you peddle as whiskey, I want to be happy enough to enjoy it. Just bring me a bottle of pop.”

Speechless, Whistler glared at him. Speechless he departed. The bartender brought the pop. Karvel sipped it slowly, and admired the view.

The patchwork of brown fields and riotously colored trees dropped away precipitously in a breathtaking expanse of landscape. Swift-moving clouds were crisply white against immaculate blue. The wind that knifed its way up out of the valley and tore at the gaily colored umbrella was cruelly cold, but Karvel did not reach for his discarded jacket.

Sounds of arriving and departing cars drifted to him fitfully from the parking lot. In the main room of the tavern two choruses of exuberant airmen began to shout songs. Thumping gusts of wind capriciously blended the strains of “Roll Out the Barrel” and “Yellow Rose of Texas,” to the enhancement of neither. Lieutenant Ostrander kept time with blasts on his moose call. A whistle sounded shrilly, and another answered.

Karvel resignedly raised his glass. At such moments he felt himself insecurely balanced between the glories of nature and the vulgarities of man, and in grave danger of toppling the wrong way.

He spent the next half hour feeling very sorry for Bert Whistler.

The tavern owner was torn between shipping the whole Air Force off to the nearest mental hospital or following the path of least resistance to the bank. Karvel considered it a tragic study in human degradation. Whistler hadn’t wanted to be rich, or he wouldn’t have built his tavern miles away from anywhere. Then the Air Force located a new base in his neighborhood, and his income skyrocketed. Money, Karvel thought, could be as habit-forming as dope.

Though Whistler’s insults were often hilarious, Karvel had never known a man so devoid of a sense of humor. He tolerated the airmen’s gags not because he appreciated them but because he never quite seemed to see the point. He said nothing at all when some wag hung up the OFFICERS CLUB sign, or even when the words WAF’S WELCOME appeared mysteriously over the door of the men’s room. He’d watched without protest when Lieutenant Ostrander nailed up an enormous streamer that read, IF YOU WANT ANYTHING JUST WHISTLE.

But this last sign produced results that Whistler found not just unamusing but also unnecessary. It appealed to the competitive spirit of his customers. The base was sifted for whistles, men wrote home for whistles, sirens, horns, and assorted noisemakers, and vied each other to see who could order beer with the loudest, shrillest blast. All of this Whistler endured stoically enough, but when Lieutenant Ostrander broke out his moose call the sign came down.

Now it was rumored that Whistler was at work on a sign of his own, to be hung over the front door. It would read OFF LIMITS TO AIR FORCE PERSONNEL.

But Karvel knew that the tavern owner would never have the nerve. The money-making habit had him hooked.

Eventually Karvel dismissed Bert Whistler and his problems to lose himself in contemplation of the scenic beauty spread out before him. Man’s normally corrosive touch had been unusually benign in that lovely valley. The farms were well-kept and prosperous. The groves of trees that were splashed about the landscape with such generous abandon concealed most of the farm buildings. On the distant, curving valley rim the trim structures of the Mueller farm perched in doll-sized daintiness, but there were few other signs of human habitation—a narrow, graveled road that ran up the valley and several times crossed the stream that meandered there; a few silos that rose behind the trees like lonely, stubby fingers; an abandoned barn far off across the valley; a patch of white or red where a house or barn could be glimpsed through the trees; here and there the steep slope of a mansard barn roof. Cattle grazed where the fields rose too abruptly for farming.

It was altogether lovely, and it was
unhurried.
It offered the illusion of permanence. One could look away or close one’s eyes with the certitude that the beauty would be unchanged when one looked again.

The afternoon wore on slowly. There were seven empty pop bottles on the table and the sun hung low over the distant valley rim when Karvel closed his eyes and opened them just in time to see, far off in the valley, a solitary tree falling.

Even on that wind-blown autumn afternoon the event was incongruous, but it made no immediate impression on his consciousness. Then a dozen trees of a row that lined the stream were toppled, and
that
brought Karvel to his feet. Afterward he had no recollection of shouting, but a moment later Bert Whistler was beside him, and Karvel could only point silently.

Trees continued to fall, in a widening circle. Half of a small wood lot went down, and a flick of an eye later the abandoned barn across the valley disintegrated into splinters.

“What is it?” Whistler demanded.

Karvel shook his head. The path of destruction was spiraling outward with incredible speed, cutting an ever-widening swath and at the same time leaving a widening spiral untouched. Beyond an undamaged grove of trees a silo top vanished abruptly. Karvel strained to see what had happened to the farm buildings, but the grove screened them.

Trees continued to fall. A herd of cattle was bowled over, and an instant later the destruction reached the distant rim of the valley and sliced through the Mueller farm. The barn collapsed, the house dissolved in a cloud of erupting brick. Outbuildings and a concrete silo were untouched.

“It’s coming closer each time around,” Karvel said to Whistler. “It’ll be here in a moment. Better get everyone into the basement.”

Whistler gawked at him wildly and turned away muttering to himself. “Crazy! A tornado in this weather!”

The screen of young pines at the left of the garden suddenly bent to the ground, and an invisible force smashed into Karvel. He lay twenty feet from where he had been standing, dazed and bleeding. The table, minus its umbrella and bottles, was spinning away down into the valley. The tavern was untouched.

Whistler waddled over to help him to his feet. “Crazy tornado,” Whistler said. “Didn’t even
hear
anything. You all right?”

Karvel did not answer. The pain in his chest sharpened to agony when he inhaled. He had the impression that his good left leg had been torn from its socket at the knee, and his various aches were too numerous and well-distributed for inventory. He dabbed at the moisture on his face with his handkerchief and identified it as blood.

“Your head’s bleeding,” Whistler said unnecessarily. “Can you walk?”

“Let’s try,” Karvel said.

With Whistler’s support he made his way around the building to the parking lot. Every step and every breath was genuinely exquisite torment, but he noted wryly that the law of compensation was still operating. The intense pain in his left knee had absolutely cured the limp in his artificial right leg.

Far up the road a pickup truck had veered into the ditch. A carload of airmen had pulled into the parking lot a moment before, and Karvel pointed and snapped an order. “See if anyone’s hurt.” With Whistler’s sturdy figure still supporting him, Karvel turned toward the tavern. Just inside the door was a pay telephone. He fed a coin into it and found to his surprise that it was working.

He got through to Hatch Air Force Base and asked for the Combat Operations duty officer. “This is Major Bowden Karvel,” he said. “I’m calling from Whistler’s Country Tavern. I suggest an immediate base tornado alert.”

“Tornado
alert?” the officer repeated blankly.

“I’d guess that you have five to ten minutes. Allow fifteen as a safe margin. If nothing has happened by then, it’s missed the base. Civilian and off-duty casualties will need all the medical personnel and equipment you can lay your hands on. Send whatever men are available to help clear away the wreckage. Most of the farms in the area are badly hit. We’ll need an officer to take charge—Hello!”

The line had gone dead. Karvel hung up, and with Whistler’s help moved across the crowded room to the Officers’ Club. The sole occupants were Lieutenant Ostrander and his moose call. Ostrander was dreamily arranging empty beer bottles into a monogrammatic
PO.
Karvel cleared the table with a crashing gesture of disgust.

“Take six men and get over to the Mueller farm. Look for survivors.”

“Survivors,
sir?” Ostrander’s youthful face assumed contortions of astonishment. “What the devil’s happened?”

“Move!”

Ostrander moved. Karvel pointed Whistler toward the main room and plucked the chief master sergeant from behind a bottle of beer.

“I want every road in and around the valley checked carefully,” he said. “You may find cars wrecked, and you’ll find a lot of buildings flattened. Leave a rescue party wherever you think it’ll do any good. Use your own judgment. Send back reports on what you find, and let us know where medical supplies and ambulances are needed.”

“What happened, Major?” the sergeant asked blankly.

“Get moving, and you’ll find out.” Karvel turned to Whistler. “You may have to convert this place into a temporary hospital. Tell Ma what happened, and leave her in charge here. You get over to the base and try to convince someone that we’ve had a major disaster. That idiot in Combat Operations didn’t believe me. He’ll ask the weather officer, and the weather officer will say there couldn’t be a tornado today, and he’ll forget about it.”

The parking lot was emptying rapidly when they got outside. Karvel saw Lieutenant Ostrander’s party off, and helped the sergeant get the main rescue force under way. Bert Whistler watched silently.

“I been thinking, Major,” he said, as the last car pulled out. “It wasn’t no tornado. What was it?”

“I don’t know.” Karvel moved toward his own car.

“Your head’s still bleeding, and you really look awful. You better wait for one of them ambulances.”

“I’m going to drive around by Mueller’s and come back up the valley road. You get over to the base and raise hell. Insist on seeing Colonel Frazier personally, and tell him I sent you. I have a hunch that a lot of lives are going to depend on how quickly we can get people out of smashed houses. You saw what happened to Mueller’s?”

Whistler nodded, and helped him to get settled behind his steering wheel.

“Can’t you bend your leg at all?” Whistler asked.

Karvel shook his head impatiently.

“Good thing you got hand controls,” Whistler said. He closed the door and stepped back, and Karvel drove away without a backward glance.

At the Mueller farm he found Lieutenant Ostrander and his men working quickly and efficiently on the mound of brick that had been the house. A small body lay on the ground, partially covered by an Air Force blouse. “One of the younger kids,” Ostrander said. “The rest of the family’s either dead or unconscious. We haven’t heard a whisper.”

The lieutenant was no longer the congenial buffoon with the moose call. He was pale and tense, but superbly competent. He snapped an order at two men who were trying to pry a rafter loose, and ran to help them.