Rogers County Weatherman – Xperience Fiction

Rogers County Weatherman – Xperience Fiction – by Liam Sweeny.

Jeb’s wrist was Rogers County’s best weather service. Every time Maggie Dillard and the church group wanted to plan a bake sale in the parking lot of the A&P, She’d call Jeb the day before and ask if they needed tarps and such. When Johnstown had its Flag Day parade, Mayor Owen would ring the shack and ask Jeb, “How’s the wrist?” He even offered Jeb a spot on the old drop-top Caddy that the veterans rode on, but he’d never take it. He wasn’t a vet, but for the war at home. The war at home was what made him a weatherman.

He absorbed the pendulum creak of the rocking chair and set his eyes on the pasture. The feed was up again this year. He had to sell a few of his cattle well below what they could’ve gone for, and it bit into him. Emmy was settin’ to go into the third grade over at the new school building, the one they put up after the twister wiped the other one flat. The whole town had a lead heart when they pulled the bodies out – eleven got crushed in between two brick walls. Jeb had to admit to himself it wouldn’t be easy to let her out of his sight. Never was.

He rubbed his wrist. Been white hot all day. Something was coming, and he had to call someone. He also had to get Emmy from the babysitter. He was a single dad. He could have watched her, but he spent all day working heavy machinery. She was an adventurer, not a good profession for a kid when chainsaws and wood-chippers are close by.

He hopped into his F150 and it came to life with a sneeze of exhaust. He took no time backing off the rutted dirt road that led up to the cabin. Everyone was at the factory, shoveling their last bit of coal ticking seconds in their head till the closing whistle. Soon they’d be home, eating steak and gravy and mashed potatoes with their wives, handing out assorted ass-whoopings to their kids, or if unblessed, nuking TV dinners and watching the shit that passed for news on their flat-screens.

Jeb drove by Johnstown Park, and much as he didn’t want to, he looked at the pavilion. His wrist tingled as he brought himself back to the day he became the town’s weatherman.

Mary Lou was the town’s veterinarian. That’s how they met. He had a sick cow, and she came over. Had Jeb been the town weatherman then, he would’ve told her to come by the next day, because they got hit with a bad storm, they called them supercell storms. Lightning and thunder and downpour like God was emptying the wash basin. The road back to town was undriveable till the next day, and Jeb offered Mary Lou a place to spend the night.

Jeb was an honorable man, from good stock. They spent the night talking, and Mary Lou dazzled him with stories of Paris and Egypt and her summers spent with her missionary parents in Chile and Peru, and her love of soft jazz. Jeb was drunk in her passion and her intense eyes. When they got married a year later, he still couldn’t figure out what she saw in him.

Bliss reigned and in a year they had Emmy. Jeb and Mary Lou were county angels on pink clouds, but Mary Lou’s turned red. Jeb didn’t see it, like a frog in a pan of water brought slowly to a boil, he fed benefits to his doubts until he ran out of benefits. Jeb realized he represented something to Mary Lou that he didn’t represent to himself. He was her prop.

Her antics got further and further out of hand, her displays of anger and jealousy more and more public. When she accused his only hired hand, Louise, the milker, of sleeping with him, that was it. Louise was seventy-three.

The divorce was a one-sided affair. Jeb got Emmy because Mary Lou’s only evidence was herself, and it went south on her. But it wasn’t over.

She showed up at the Southpaw, yelling about child abandonment when she knew damn well Jeb had his girlfriend Karen taking care of her. She stalked Karen too. They both got restraining orders, but the judge could barely keep a straight face when he looked at big, tall Jeb. Yet Mary Lou stayed away until the Fourth of July picnic in Johnstown Park.

Jeb and Karen were sitting with Sheriff Brown, Jeb’s closest neighbor, who was off-duty.

“Jeb, I don’t mean to say nothing, but I caught Emmy by the fence.” He said. “I love the little girl, I just don’t want her to get hurt, with the dog and all…”

“No, I agree. Thanks for lettin’ me know.” Jeb said. “I built a play fence for her. I guess she must’ve figured it out.”

“That’s a smart kid you got.”

“Yeah. She’s gonna’ be a handful in a couple of years.”

“I imagine she’s a handful now,” the Sheriff said.

“Yeah, sure is.”

Sheriff Brown set upon his barbequed chicken, but something caught his eye. He got up and put his hand on Jeb’s shoulder.

“Don’t move,” He said. “I’ll take care of this.”

Jeb didn’t have to turn his head to know it was Mary Lou, but he did, just in time to see her slide a syringe out of her sleeve and stab the Sheriff in the shoulder with it. She hit the plunge. He grabbed onto her, holding her back some, but his grip slipped and he collapsed on the floor.

Shrieks filled the pavilion. Karen got between her and Jeb, but Mary Lou back-handed her. As Karen lost her footing, Mary Lou jumped on Jeb.

“You think you can take my daughter from me, you dumb cowshit?” Her eyes were pools of pupil. She pinned his arm to the table with her grip, which was ten-fold as strong as it should’ve been. She put the wrist of her other hand in front of Jeb’s face. It had a horizontal slash on it, stitched together like he’d seen her do to livestock. She grabbed a serrated steak knife off the table.

“I want you to feel what I felt, honey.” She smiled, eyes furious as she started slashing across his wrist, back and forth like she was cutting overcooked roast. Jeb felt the fire of adrenaline coat the blade. Then his fingers fell asleep. Then his palm, his forearm. He cried out when he saw the blood pouring from the cuts onto the white cotton tablecloth, soaking it.

By then people had pulled her off. Jeb scrambled to scrunch up the rest of the tablecloth, to keep his blood from flowing out, hell, to push some of it back in. But as the voices grew louder, the pavilion got darker.

Jeb took a year to heal from that. He regained function in his hand and arm. Not perfect function, but he only needed so much to do his work. But then he got his weatherman thing. Within two years, it was well established that his freak ex-wife made him a weatherman. He couldn’t just predict rain, he could predict how much. He wasn’t much good on tornadoes though. A whole lot of folk in town were angry that he couldn’t give them warning, but his hand was on fire that whole day. Just like today.

Theresa, his babysitter, lived in a flat above the five-and-dime, though why they still called it that baffled him. He walked up the steps on the side to her door and saw a note taped onto it.

I took Emmy to the store. Be back soon. Come in. I have tea.

Jeb jiggled the door handle. It was unlocked. Jeb walked in to the smell of lemon herbal tea. He was a coffee man, but he figured he might be waiting. He felt the pot, and flipped the dial on the top burner. He could hear the TV in the living room, and something unnerving on the radio – soft jazz. He would’ve turned it off were he not a guest. He reclined on the La-Z-Boy in the living room and caught the early version of the evening news.

“Police are still investigating the accidental release of three committed patients at the Williamson Psychiatric Center.” The anchor said. Jeb felt like he had passed through a cloud of fear, and had ingested some of it. Mary Lou was in there.

“Two of the patients have been found, but the third has yet to be located.” The anchor continued. “This is the third time in two years that Williamson has come under criticism for-,”

Jeb turned off the TV. The sound of smooth jazz filled the room. Jeb knew Theresa was a good babysitter. He knew they sometimes went to the store.

What he didn’t know… was what Theresa’s handwriting looked like.

He ran room to room until he found what he didn’t want to find – a huddled mass of stained sheets with two feet jutting out of one end and Theresa’s auburn hair spilled out of the other. Jeb flew out of the house, the last sound he heard was the tea-kettle hitting the linoleum after he knocked it over.

“Rogers County Sheriff’s Department, how can I direct your call?”

“I gotta talk to Sheriff Brown. It’s urgent.”

“I’m sorry,” the dispatcher said. “He’s not in right now. May I ask who’s calling?”

“Is this Sue? It’s Jeb McCrary. Look, is he at home? I got his home number.”

“Let me check, Jeb…”

“Wait, Sue… I just realized I got his cell. I gotta tell you something else. My arm is white hot today, like it was the day of the tornado. I don’t know when or where, but get people safe.”

“Okay, Jeb. Thanks.”

Jeb hung up with her and called Sheriff Brown’s cell.

“Hello?”

“Dale, it’s Jeb.”

“Jeb, what’s wrong?”

“I’m coming up Willow Street,” he said. “Mary Lou got out, I know it. Emmy’s gone. Theresa’s dead, and there was jazz playing in her house. That’s Mary Lou’s favorite music.”

“Jeb, calm down. Theresa’s dead?”

“Theresa’s dead, yeah. And I know Mary Lou did it. She’s headed to the cabin with Emmy, I know she is.”

“I’ve been outside all day. I haven’t seen her.”

“There’s a dirt road behind the barn, Dale.” Jeb said. “You wouldn’t see it from your land.”

“Okay.” Sheriff Brown said. “I gotta call this in. If you come up here, you go straight to my house, understand me?”

“Yeah, Dale. Just hurry.”

Maybe it was dirt kicking up in the highway behind him, or maybe smoke from burning rubber, but he never made it to his house faster than that. The lights were on. Somebody was in there. He looked in his rearview and saw two sheriff’s cars, without lights. He drove past to Sheriff Brown’s. The Sheriff was out front, ducked behind a bush with a pair of binoculars.

Jeb hopped out of his truck and closed the door easy. If she was in there, she knew what his truck door sounded like. Of course, she knew how it looked too, but thoughts don’t always get through in times like that. The wind, howling all day, was starting to gust. The extra daylight of the summer was being eaten by dark jade clouds.

“Dale, you gotta let me go in.” Jeb said.

“No way.” Sheriff Brown said. “You could set her off. We’re waiting for a SWAT team.”

“How far away is one of those?”

“Tulsa.”

Jeb shrieked, his knees buckled under him as every stitched nerve in his wrist tore loose. His arm convulsed.

“Jeb, what’s happening?”

“Just get me in there, goddammit. I gotta fix this. It’s my house.”

Dale got Jeb up on his feet. “You got guns in that house?”

“I got a twenty-gauge.” Jeb said. “It’s got rock salt in it, though.”

“She know where it is?”

“No. I hid it, from Emmy, but it’s hid.”

“I shouldn’t do this.” The Sheriff said.

“You just get your boys in the basement.” Jeb said.

Dale slid a revolver in the back of Jeb’s pants.

“I didn’t give you that.” He said. Hay and small slivers of wood were starting to go airborne.

“Get ‘em inside.” Jeb said. He walked around Sheriff Brown’s gate and stepped onto his property. Debris washed the sky in front of him. He staggered onto the porch, the familiar creak of the rocking chair at full volume until it toppled over. The screen door banged against the door frame.

Jeb grabbed the door and it slammed open. Smooth jazz was playing on the stereo. Emmy was on the couch, still.

Please God, don’t let her be-, then he saw her turn over.

“Tranquilizer,” came a voice from the kitchen. “I would never hurt our darling.”

“What do you want, Mary Lou?”

“I want what’s mine.” She walked out with a long knife he used for cutting turkey and whole hams. “You left me with nothing, not even a place to live.” She tip-toed toward him, pointed in three-sixty. “I want this.”

“I want Emmy.” Jeb said.

“See? Now we’re negotiating. Shouldn’t we have done this a long time ago?”

“I suppose so.” Jeb sunk, aiming to fall against the cabinets he had built below the front window. He hit it hard enough to smash the lock on it. He could hear a train outside. His arm was radiating torment.

“Oh, did it not heal right?” Mary Lou said. She came closer and closer. Emmy stirred. A gust rocked the house, and Mary Lou hit the floor. Jeb knew he only had one shot.

He popped the remains of the lock off the cabinet as he started to get up. The twenty-gauge was lying on a pile of flannel sheets. He picked it up with his good hand and air cocked it. Mary Lou was on her feet, wiping blood from a cut just above her eye. The house shook again. Jeb aimed and fired.

Mary Lou hit the back wall above Emmy, collapsing on top of her. Even with rock salt, she’d be knocked out from how close she got it. Jeb ran to pick up Emmy, and pulled a flannel sheet from the cabinet to wrap her up in. Then he ran from the house, darting straight for the Sheriff’s house.

The roof was starting to come off his cabin as he looked back. The ferocious black center of rotation was turning his barn into confetti strips. He ran, feeling the sting of debris, praying to every God he could find in myth and legend and Sunday Church that some section of pipe or piece of the barn’s shrapnel wouldn’t impale him or Emmy.

He got to Sheriff Brown’s house and turned the corner, hanging low by the cement foundation wall. He coughed and hacked, and pounded on the iron basement door. He slammed with all his might on it, but they couldn’t hear. Finally, he pulled out the revolver and shot at the locking mechanism. Sheriff Brown opened the door up, and Jeb handed Emmy in. He had just enough time to get below stairs himself before an aluminum sign flew by, taking the doors with it.

Jeb found his rocking chair, sturdy and intact. He sat on it as he and Sheriff Brown saw all that had come to pass. The Sheriff’s house stood. Jed and Emmy would have to stay with him a while as they cleaned up.

Emmy tugged at Jeb’s arm, which was free of pain.

“What happened to our house, daddy?”

Jed looked at the pile of rubble that had once played smooth jazz and entertained thoughts of Paris and Egypt.

“Mommy took it, honey.” He said. “Mommy took it all away.”

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