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In the morning, he brought yesterday’s coffee to a fast boil in a saucepan and powered up the laptop. The forecast discussion on the National Weather Service’s Goodland, Kansas Website thrilled him—extreme thunderstorm activity expected along the Nebraska border.
Peter headed north up Highway 23 and reached the town of Cedar Bluffs at noon, the sky still clear, the heat intense and wet. He pulled into the parking lot of an abandoned Pizza Hut, nuked a frozen di
He woke sweating, the sun blazing into the RV. Grabbed a bottled water from the Fridge, drained it in one long gulp.
That familiar pang of disappointment blossomed in his stomach as he read the updated forecast discussion. The NWS had, as usual, missed the boat. A line of storms were setting up, but over the eastern plains of Colorado, a hundred and seventy miles west of his position. With convection already underway and a supercell forming south of Greeley, the party would be over long before he got there.
He convinced himself on the five-block stroll from his RV to the Prairie View Café that he was going in hopes they’d reprised the chicken-fried steak and because he’d spent the entire day in his home on wheels. It had nothing to do with the waitress who probably had the night off anyway.
She stood at a booth scribbling an order onto a pad when he walked into the restaurant. The chimes that jangled over the opening door caught her attention, and she looked at Peter and raised her finger, might even have winked, though he couldn’t say that for certain in the poor light. The thought of it put knots in his stomach. She wore a blue and white dress that seemed such the epitome of her profession it reminded him more of a movie costume. With her hair down tonight and her lips a paler pink than before, perhaps their natural color, he went short of breath as she walked toward him.
“Hi, Peter.”
“Melanie.”
“You want the window booth again or a brand new experience?”
He thought about it. “I like the booth.”
She walked him over.
He slid in.
“How was your day in scenic Hoxie?” she asked, setting a menu on the table, and he almost responded as he would have to any other human being who tried to engage him, but he didn’t want to just say, “Fine,” because then she’d probably smile and leave and he wasn’t sure why, but he didn’t want her to walk away yet.
“Disappointing,” he confessed.
“What happened?”
“It was supposed to storm up near the Nebraska border, but the forecast didn’t pan. Kind of a wasted day.”
She looked at him askance. “It was a beautiful day, Peter.”
“Not if you wanted a storm.”
“No, I guess not. Well, I’ll be back in a bit to tell you about the special. You want something to—”
“I’m an idiot,” he said, heat flooding his face, wondering if she noticed the color. “I should explain.”
“No, it’s—”
“I’m a storm chaser. That’s why I wanted it to—”
“You mean one of those people who photograph tornadoes?”
“Sort of.”
Her face lit up. The awkwardness retreating. “Oh my God, that is so interesting. So you’re one of those guys.”
“Yeah.”
She smiled. Strangely, genuinely impressed. “That’s the coolest thing I’ve heard of in awhile. How’d you pick Hoxie?”
“You guys got hammered a couple years back with a tornado outbreak.”
“I was here when those storms swept through. It was awful.”
“Well, I’ve been all over Oklahoma, the Texas panhandle, eastern Kansas.”
“Searching for that elusive storm?”
“Something like that. This western part of Kansas is the last region I haven’t spent a ton of time in. Long range models were predicting an active couple of weeks, so I thought why not give it a shot.”
Melanie glanced over her shoulder at the two other occupied tables, then sat in the booth across from Peter.
“You ever seen a tornado?”
“I’ve seen nine of them.”
“Like in real life?”
“Yep.”
“What’s the closest you ever got?”
“A mile away.”
“What was it like?”
Like standing next to God, but he didn’t say that.
“Amazing.”
She looked at her tables. “I better get back to it.” She got up.
“Melanie?”
“Yes?”
His heart thumped in his chest.
“I’m going out again tomorrow. Now, there’s no guarantee the weather will cooperate, but—”
“I’d love to, Peter.”
“You would?”
“You must’ve read my mind. I was hoping you’d ask.”
It was like nothing he’d done in years, and he felt both joy and debilitating regret that in a moment of weakness (or strength) he’d exposed himself.
The waitress said, “Glass of red?”
His throat constricting. “Be great.”
She headed back toward the kitchen, and he stared through the windowglass, watching the prairie darken. Kept telling himself that it was still Saturday night and he was only in Kansas and his RV just five blocks away. As if that piece of news might tether him to the world he knew.
Melanie lived two miles out of town at the end of a dirt road, spruce trees forming a windbreak along the north and west boundaries of the homestead. It had seemed an idyllic farmhouse from the highway, austere on the morning prairie. Proximity destroyed the illusion. The white paint had chipped almost completely away, and the weathered boards and the rusting tin roof and smiling porch presented more of a ghost house than a livable dwelling.
Melanie emerged and spent a minute locking the door after her. Came down the bowing steps and through the weeds onto the drive as Peter leaned across the seat to open her door, the pair of coffees he’d bought at the gas station steaming into his face.
“I could barely sleep I was so excited,” she said as they rolled along the dirt road toward the highway.
“Could turn out to be a bust,” Peter warned. “I just don’t want you to get your hopes up.”
“Well, it’s all about the journey, right?”
They drove west on the interstate, the sun a blood blister in the side mirrors, its light so watery and diffused you could stare it down. Adult contemporary droned through the speakers at a reasonable volume, the small talk coming just often enough to keep the stretches of silence from passing the point of no return.
They crossed the border into Colorado at a quarter past eleven and Peter pointed through the windshield. “You see that?”
“You mean those clouds?”
“The one that looks like an anvil is going to be a thunderstorm when it grows up.”
“This is good?”
“Very good. Major convection underway.”
Melanie squealed and clapped her hands, something free and childlike in her excitement.
He took the next exit and pulled over so they could track the gathering storm cells on the laptop—irregular blobs of green with nuclei of hot pinks and fuchsia.
“They’re still maturing,” he said, ru
They went north. The summer sky turned dark. Peter lowered his window, let the musty air rush in. Straining to hear thunder over the engine.
They pulled onto the shoulder on the outskirts of Wray, Colorado. Peter killed the engine and glanced over at the computer, now in Melanie’s lap.
“We’re in position,” he said.
The first fat drops of rain splattered on the windshield as Peter squinted at the screen.
He opened his door, got out, crossed the road.
Melanie joined him.
Strings of lightning bent down and rain sagged from the clouds in ragged black tendrils.