All the Beautiful Sinners (18 page)

Jim Doe punched the nurse’s car for all it was worth. It was a Chevette, though.

The clouds above were rotating slow, immense.

Three times so far he’d seen funnels, had to slow to pick his way through clumps of people, stopped to watch the sky develop.

Two times, a man had stepped out from his truck, to call Jim Doe back.

One of the men had lost his hat for it.

Jim Doe apologized in his head.

The Chevette’s radio was spotty, the station taking a beating wherever it was, so Jim Doe dialed back to AM. The longer wavelengths cut through the clouds better.

The weatherman being patched through was trying to control the panic in his voice and then with no segue was replaced by a reporter in the field, the wind tearing across the fabric of her mic, maybe blowing her hair into it.

She was in Plainview, was closer to Jim Doe now than the Lubbock weatherman had been, even though he was taking backroads up to Nazareth, stabbing up through Hart, knew better than to get stuck on the circus 87 had to be right now.

The reporter-in-the field, she was past the panic, was just trying not to cry now.

Jim Doe could almost see her, standing out in a field, half the field in the air, tumbleweeds whipping past, windmills screaming, the world upside down.

What she was saying was funnels were dropping everywhere, and that one had touched down for a few seconds in west Plainview, but the damage was still uncertain, and there were no reports of lives lost. That everybody was still underground, waiting, andthat—

With no crash of static, no screams, no anything, she was just gone.

There was silence for maybe twenty seconds afterwards, and then the DJ came back on, and he was saying individual names, of people he knew in Plainview, and then he said this was for them, and put on a Buddy Holly song.

Jim Doe reached for the dial but hit a bump, missed the radio with his hand and just left it there, tried to get the pedal to go down farther, the tinny speakers pushing what sounded like a real true crackly record over the airwaves.

What he was going to Nazareth for was . . . it was hard to get at in any kind of direct way.

It was because this was a repeat, mostly. Not because he could save it, the town, but because if the storm took Nazareth and
still
left him behind—he had to be there, this time. No choice. Especially if he’d dragged the storm here from Nebraska somehow. If it hated him that much. If it had recognized him.

If the sky was going to chew everything he knew up, spit it back out in pieces, he was going to be there to scream at it, he was going to be there to drive into it as hard as he could, blame it for his sister, for everything.

He didn’t know, really.

Just that he was going home, finally, after all these days, all these states, all these bodies. That he had to.

He pushed up through Spade, through Hart Camp, which he never saw through the dirt until he was in it, about to slam into the back of an abandoned Honda, and then he buried the speedometer again, for Olton, the last real place before Nazareth.

The white paint on the passenger side of the nurse’s Chevette was going to be stripped, he knew, was being sandblasted now, but that for was for later. Right now he needed the car.

He tried to tune Buddy Holly back in, but the radio was gone.

He pulled the headlights on, leaned closer to the windshield, straining against the seatbelt, but still, he almost plowed into the cattle walking up the blacktop, leaning on their shoulders like they were exhausted, but still had miles to go.

The Chevette skidded, went sideways a bit but didn’t have enough weight for anything serious, just settled to a stop, the tiny engine chugging in place.

The cattle moved past, brushing the side of the car hard enough to rock it on its ancient springs.

“Go,” Jim Doe said to them, “live,” and when the last calf had caught up with its mom, he straightened back up, got back to speed but had to slow right back down again.

Olton.

It was a mess.

A tornado had already cut through, carving a swath houses wide.

People were just starting to emerge.

It was the same funnel from Plainview, had to be. But it was bigger now, had stayed down longer. Was skipping, probably leaving craters out in the fields, twisting circle systems up into impossible shapes.

On the right side of the road, a boy in a sleeveless shirt and backwards cap stepped out from behind a fence, pulled something out into the open after him. A slender rifle.

He lifted it against the sky, pulling the trigger again and again, against the storm, even though it was gone, and all at once Jim Doe understood the world for a moment, and this boy’s place in it. That this is what you did.

At the dogleg off Main, the short little jag onto 70 to get back onto the road to Nazareth, Jim Doe had to stop.

The world was white, like snow.

The gin had exploded, was in the air all around, was in no hurry to settle.

One of its big corrugated tin tanks or elevators was rolling ponderously in the intersection, as if trying to decide which way to go.

Jim Doe dropped the Chevette quietly into reverse.

The tank was a steamroller, now.

It rocked Jim Doe’s way then back on itself, and then, improbably, it started collapsing. From the inside.

A truck.

A tall pick-up had come from the east, at stupid velocity, was cutting straight through the tank like the tank wasn’t even there.

A king cab dually with a meaty grill guard Jim Doe knew close-up.

The truck never even considered stopping.

For a flash Jim Doe saw the driver, a tall, thin man, his arms locked against the wheel, the side of his head bloody, his mouth open in a scream—he was screaming at the tank, screaming to get through it—and then the debris trailing off the truck fell away, along with a fender, both mirrors and the tailgate.

“You,” Jim Doe said, and then just had to time to flinch away when the police cruiser came sliding around the side of the exploded tank, the giant bald driver fighting the wheel, hand-over-handing it, the Nebraska State Police car holding on for all it was worth, its light bar only hanging on by one bracket anymore, but still on, flashing red and blue, lighting up the cotton in the air.

The bald passenger had his thick arm out the window, was holding onto the side of the car, his other hand on the dash, the smeary snapshot of his eyes like skunkbit dogs Jim Doe had seen locked out in sheds, to see if they were going to turn. Dogs he’d been called out to put down.

The Nebraska car clipped the front of the Chevette just enough to straighten the Rangers back up, and then they were gone.

Jim Doe reached his shaking hand for the key, to turn the car back on.

The starter ground, ground. The nurse had warned him about this, apologized for it.

Jim Doe swallowed, breathed at last.

Just up the road was Nazareth. Home.

Above him was creation, violent and endless and angry.

Jim Doe started the car, kept his foot on the brake for a long moment, apologized in his head to Sarina and Agnes and Nazareth and turned the timid little car left, made himself part of this suicide carnival, driving into the storm at breakneck speeds, no ticket out, no nothing. Just the sky, hammering into the ground.

It was beautiful.

It was gone, Earth.

That simple.

The roads would still be there after the county came in, bulldozed all the rubble into some pit, but for now the town was a crater, a blight.

The Nebraska State Police Car was parked deadcenter on the blacktop, doors open, lightbar gone now, its push bumper up against where it couldn’t go any deeper.

To the left of the road were the ragged marks where the Ranger’s truck had stepped into the field, powered through, around, found part of the road again with its double set of rear tires.

Jim Doe parked the Chevette alongside the cruiser, left the key in the ignition.

The sky was still heavy, but the air was still. A group of birds were even drifting across now, maybe looking for a powerline to settle on, a tree to rest in.

“Good sign,” Jim Doe said about them, to no one, and then a leftover gust the birds hadn’t known about caught them, flung them out of whatever their path had been.

Way past them, maybe three miles out in the field, was the lone black ribbon that had been the tornado.

As Jim Doe watched, it dissipated, was spinning out, turning back to dust and ash.

About three miles too late for Earth.

Jim Doe had never come here much in high school, but he’d liked the bumperstickers.

He stepped through the rubble, touching this streetsign, now on its side, that wingback chair, no longer in its house.

It was something he’d never got to do in 1982.

Then, he’d been trapped under the roof for hours, bundled straight into an ambulance, was the one who lived, the one the town had to protect.

This was calmer. A different kind of silence altogether. A deeper quiet.

The one the Tin Man operated in. Was moving through right now.

Jim Doe reached down for his pistol but it was still handcuffed to a seatpost, so he went back to the Nebraska cruiser for its shotgun. The key was right there on the ring, the ring in the ignition in case anybody needed to move the car.

He hated Texas, but sometimes he loved it, too.

He worked the slide, collected the shells in his hand and loaded them again, just to be sure.

Then he went back in, walking where the cars couldn’t go.

The weatherman had been back on the radio for the short ride here, his voice mournful, cataloging the damage.

He was comparing what had happened to Lubbock to Woodward, 1947. The big F5 that threw bodies miles away. Except, in Lubbock, instead of one big one, they’d had between eight and a dozen ropy sidewinders.

The big one had been out here. Just nobody knew yet.

And . . . were there any Indians in Earth?

Jim Doe wasn’t sure. Mexicans, definitely, and the Tin Man had taken one Mexican, once, but that had maybe been an accident.

He’d meant to get Sarina’s Indian little brother, Jim Doe knew.

He closed his eyes, opened them.

Kept the shotgun at port arms.

The sky was full of newspaper, now, like the town had been made of it, and leaves, and plastic shopping bags, and grain, and, every once and again, a solid thunk in the ground that had to be a car wheel, a mailbox, a chimney.

And the smell. The musty insides of trees, not open for two centuries probably, before Texas was Texas. And under that the stagnant water of iron pipes. Whatever had been fermenting at the bottom of the grain silo. Blood.

Jim Doe stepped into what had been the main convenience store. The shelves were collapsed, the windows shattered out, the ceiling tiles on the floor.

A sound, though.

The kid clerk stood up into the yawning mouth of Jim Doe’s shotgun.

Jim Doe lowered it.

“You all right?” he said to the clerk, and the clerk nodded too fast, too nervous.

“Anybody else?” Jim Doe asked.

The clerk shook his head no, less sure now.

“Phonebook?” Jim Doe asked.

The clerk, keeping his hands in sight, produced one.

It was too confusing, though. Name after name after name.

“Any Indians in town?” Jim Doe finally said. “Like, with kids?”

The clerk narrowed his eyes, didn’t understand.

“Feathers, not dots,” Jim Doe clarified.

“Indio or Indian?” the clerk finally asked back.

American or Mexican Indians.

“Like me,” Jim Doe said.

The clerk flipped to the back of the directory, the map that meant nothing now, and touched what had been a part of town. It was just another row of streets.

“And they’re Indian?” Jim Doe said.

“I think so.”

“Why?”

“Everybody calls him Chief.”

Jim Doe studied the store again and left, had a direction now.

Sometimes he mostly hated Texas.

He stepped out, heard footsteps crunching through the debris and went flush against the store, between the ice machine and the phone bolted to the wall, the shotgun threaded straight up in front of him, his finger hooked on the trigger guard.

It was the Rangers, Maines and McKirkle.

They were walking on either side of the street, guns out, eyes steely.

McKirkle stopped to toe over a roadside blanket booth that had exploded. There were blankets everywhere, silver wolves and Korean flags and Elvis faces and dramatic moons and fake fur.

Maines covered McKirkle with his lever-action until he was through with the digging.

Nothing.

They moved on and Jim Doe stepped out, made himself count to fifty, to be sure they were gone, and then he eased through the relatively quiet destruction of the blanket booth, walked the map he’d burned into his head, not having to follow the streets so much anymore since the houses weren’t in the way.

Maybe fifty yards into it, a parking curb fell from the sky, stood end-up for a moment in the asphalt, then the concrete crumbled away, leaving just the rebar underneath.

Jim Doe looked up to where it had fallen from, saw, instead of a rain of parking curbs, the way he’d heard happened with frogs and fish and salamanders, National Guard helicopters.

They were touching down at the eastern edge of town like Valkyrie, to ferry off the dead. Like buzzards, come to scavenge. Big metal flies.

Meaning there wouldn’t be much time, now. The Tin Man wouldn’t want to have to answer their questions, explain where the rest of his rescue unit was.

Jim Doe paced the Rangers north, to the house that was supposed to be Indian. It was like they knew about it too, somehow, or were following the truck’s tracks, or its exhaust, still hanging oily in the air. Or maybe they were just going for worse and worse neighborhoods, until they found the Indians.

The air was humid, thick, and the sounds there should have been were gone, until Jim Doe grubbed up to the gauze on the side of his head, pulled it off.

The sound came—a loud emptiness—and blood seeped down his neck.

One house he walked through still had the television on, sideways, the picture rolling, the horizontal forever shot.

Lying alongside it, as if to see better, adjust, was a man, dead.

Jim Doe moved on, a loud newspaper clinging to the shin of his pants leg, found the street he was pretty sure the clerk had landed his finger on, and knew the Indian house right away, the same way the Rangers had. It was the lowslung ramshackle one that had a trailer growing from it, the plywood-roofed walkway between them getting more boards each year, until it was almost a hall, something you’d need a lightbulb for. The only thing that had kept it standing was that there were so many holes and slits in the walkway that the wind had blown through, instead of against. It was the best defense, the only defense. A judo house.

Positioned in front of it, too, crouched behind a turned-over pick-up, was Walter Maines.

He was waiting, the butt of his lever-action against his thigh.

Through the broken-out window for a flash, at an angle Maines didn’t have, Jim Doe saw what he was waiting for: a yellow jacket, moving past. A ghost. The boogey man from his childhood.

It made his knees weak, his eyes hot.

He raised the shotgun, fired into the wall six paces past the window, blasting a basketball-sized hole that opened onto nothing. Just darkness.

Maines turned, had his carbie centered on Jim Doe at fifteen yards.

“Son,” he said, and they heard it together, over whatever the clouds were doing now: a propane tank like from a barbecue.

It was rolling out into the yard.

“Shit,” Maines said, and ducked behind the car.

Seconds later, the tank exploded, from some jury-rigged timer or a well-placed shot from the house, Jim Doe had no idea.

And it didn’t matter.

The tank whooshed a mushroom into the sky, all flame and anger, and then Jim Doe heard the shooting, another cannon going off.

Through the smoke to the left was the fireman, running hard, his arms cradling a long bundle to his chest—a child.

The shooting was coming from McKirkle, stepping around from behind the house, unable to see what the Tin Man was carrying.

For an instant the Tin Man was exactly between him and Jim Doe, and McKirkle could have had him, knocked him over right there, except the slug would have carried through, into Jim Doe.

McKirkle sneered, tipped his pistol up as if in recoil, and Jim Doe fell back anyway.

Maines was already gone, after the fireman, shooting every chance he got, kid be damned.

And there was something else.

Jim Doe looked up.

It was one of the National Guard helicopters.

It was out of control, was falling across the sky, the body of the copter spinning the opposite way from the blades. It made the blades look slower.

Jim Doe looked to where it was going, and had to look up, and up.

It was an F5. The single most destructive force on earth, spinning itself back together for one more go-round. A temporary black hole, scraping across the land.

And it shouldn’t have been so calm this close to it, but Jim Doe didn’t know the rules, either, and couldn’t tell the size to know how close it really was, or wasn’t.

The ramshackle house crumbled up into the windpipe, anyway, didn’t come back.

Jim Doe dropped the shotgun, scrambled away trying to keep the tornado in sight, track it, then he just turned, ran so fast he was having to touch down with his fingertips every few steps.

Ahead, there was still shooting, but the sound was small, muted, distant, hardly mattered.

One block later—les than a second for an F5—Jim Doe came upon the scene that had been coming for years, the big standoff at the end of the chase.

The Tin Man was trapped against the skeletal remains of a water tower. Past it the street had been churned deep, was all vertical slabs of sidewalk, crumpled cars, and mounds of asphalt. Nothing he could hope to cross without going slow. Which there was no time for anymore.

Maines was standing not thirty feet away, looking down along the top of his lever-action.

“Time to meet the wizard,” he said, and shot into the ground maybe an inch before the fireman boots.

The Tin Man didn’t flinch, just stared through his face shield.

And, because it was just Maines here, Jim Doe knew McKirkle was coming around the back way, through the galvanized struts and cross braces of the water tower.

He looked back, checked the tornado but it was all around now, was too big to even see all at once anymore, was so big it seemed to be rotating in slow motion. A brown and white swirling wall of pain.

Caught up in it now was what Jim Doe initially thought was the helicopter, but turned out to be an oxidized box car, tumbling through the sky. Growing larger and larger now.

It came down for them all, slammed down between Maines and the Tin Man, knocking Maines and Jim Doe back just from the force of its landing, which buried it two feet in the ground.

Jim Doe couldn’t tell if the Tin Man had been caught under it or not, but then the yellow jacket came streaking around the front of the box car—it had landed like it had sat in real life, its doors ripped away—and the Tin Man did the one thing Jim Doe would never have guessed, at this point in the game: threw the child into the box car then kept running, McKirkle finally cresting the mound of blacktop behind him, his pistol going off, no sound from it, just stabs of flame.

Hi shots found the Tin Man, blew his chest out before him, and now Maines was firing too, spinning the Tin Man around by the shoulder, the Tin Man’s fire helmet slinging off so that Jim Doe could see he had that same Tin Man mask not just on, but duct-taped on to hide him forever, making the whole top of his head look tin. As he fell, and his arms opened out to the side, a roll of paper or white tape or cloth unrolled from his hand—what he’d meant to tie the kid up with, maybe—and then the F5 was there like the finger of God, pointing down, and that wall of wind was lifting him before he could hit the ground, taking him up into the sky to bury him once and for all, and the last thing Jim Doe remembered before the world died was diving for the safety of the box car, rolling into it with the bundled-up child the Tin Man had left there and coming up in the back corner of the car, making one ruby slipper wish, the most important one, and then closing his eyes to make it come true.