The Tornado Watcher
by Jeffrey Greene
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Table of Contents, parts 1, 2, 3 |
part 1
On a moonless summer night in the middle of his life, a man with a borrowed name and a stolen car drove fast down a narrow country road, cursing the rattle under the hood and watching the temperature needle’s steady climb toward Hot. His cursing was by now all-inclusive: he cursed the police sirens he couldn’t hear yet, the heat lightning that made him wince at the memory of the shotgun’s muzzle flash and, most of all, he cursed himself.
Danton’s blood on his hands and shirt was dry now, but the sticky protein smell filled the car. He cursed Danton, too, as he bled to death in the back seat, cursed him for his choice of cars to steal and country stores to rob. And then he listened to the feeble, whispered curses in response, until the sucking breaths ceased and he was alone.
The open windows cupped a swampy, vegetable smell and frenzied snatches of a miles-long multitude of crickets and frogs. The steamy air carried a hint of something else, too: a mitigating coolness, the sense, almost instinctual, of a river nearby. He knew the road paralleled this section of the Suwannee, somewhere beyond the black barrier of trees to his left. The rattling under the hood had become a grinding torment, and some faint trace of his father’s love of cars made him wince at the sound.
There was a gray suit hanging in the back seat that might fit him, and he’d worn a mask during the hold-up. If he could get to the river and ditch the car and Danton’s body, then hide in the woods overnight, there was a thin chance he could walk back to the highway and catch a ride out.
His headlights lit up a red reflector in the darkness. He backed up, turned in. The reflector was on the post of a mailbox beside a dirt road curving into a dense hammock of oaks and palmettos. He decided to chance it, going as fast as he dared over the snaking, pot-holed path.
Lightning seared the western sky, followed by a concussive roll of thunder, and he cursed again. Bad idea, he thought, bad all around. He shouldn’t have let Danton talk him into it. They’d been hanging out together for a couple weeks, ever since he’d hit town, downing pitchers of beer over endless games of pool. He’d liked Danton despite Danton’s being a liar and talking too much about money and how easy it would be to get some the “quick” way. His hand groped through the paper sack on the seat beside him, containing the “sure thousand” that his fingers knew couldn’t be more than a few hundred.
Lightning flashed again, and again he saw the second man appearing in the storeroom door, the twelve-gauge roaring and Danton spinning into a stack of soft-drink cartons, blood spraying his shirt and face, and then his own arm sweeping around, the pistol bucking and the hole appearing in the high white forehead.
He’d lived thirty-two years without killing anybody, and was already resenting that red-holed face. When you killed a man, you took a picture of him for others to hang over his grave, one that would never fade or be forgotten, not by the police, by his family, least of all by you.
The dirt road forked to the right and, through a stand of pines, he could see the lights of a big house at the top of a low rise in the mostly flat countryside. He kept going straight, hunched forward in his seat with both hands on the wheel as if he were urging on a tired horse, hearing the awful sound of metal on metal and trying to see through the smoke belching from under the hood. Oaks weary with moss hung over the dark tunnel pierced by his headlights and palmetto fronds slapped the windows. Half a mile farther, the trail dead-ended at a clearing in the woods. The black gulf beyond was the river.
Leaving the engine running, he turned off the headlights and groped his way to the riverbank. The cool, gusting wind of an approaching thunderstorm blew in his face, and a horizontal vein of lightning lit up an expanse of moving water and the closely-packed trees of the opposite bank. Where he stood was a steep fifteen feet above the river which, in his lightning-dazzled glimpse of it, appeared to run slow and deep.
He felt his way back to the car and opened first the trunk and then the rear door. The interior light, already orbited by moths and beetles, shown palely on Danton’s body, the blood-grimed hands hanging limply entwined above the shattered chest, head thrown back, mouth and eyes open, the expression a languid parody of surprise.
Grasping the body by the feet, he dragged it out, looking away as the head bounced on the door frame, then pulled it around to the trunk and turned it over. Finding the wallet, he took out the money and stuffed it in his pocket, then, gripping the body by the neck and the back of the belt, lifted it into the trunk. He changed quickly into the suit, finding it a little tight in the shoulders, then threw his old clothes in the trunk.
Flames began to flicker through the smoke billowing out from the radiator grille. He stuffed the gun in his belt and the money in the coat pocket, got behind the wheel, put the car in gear and drove it to the river’s edge. He got out and gently eased it into the water, where it went with a hissing splash.
He waited impatiently for lightning and, when it came, he saw the smooth, untroubled water below. He threw the keys and Danton’s wallet into the river. Taking out his handkerchief and the gun from his belt, he hesitated a moment, feeling the darkness behind him like a hungry presence, then rubbed it clean of fingerprints and threw it as hard as he could into the river. When he turned his face to the woods, the first heavy drops of rain began to fall.
Struck into brief silence by his arrival, the frogs picked up the threads of their song-making, in ones and twos at first, then swelling as the rain fell harder to a deafening collective urgency. Mosquitoes assailed him, and he moved in fitful circles, slapping and cursing. Feeling the rain begin to trickle down his back, he knew he couldn’t stay here all night. He couldn’t stay here five minutes. That house he’d seen a half-mile back: he’d go there, look for a car to steal, or a barn to sleep in. All he had to do was get through the woods.
The darkness pressing on his eyes was almost suffocating. Feeling his way with a stick, he began a halting walk up the trail. Again and again, the night was shattered by thunderbolts that made him flinch and cover his head, searing images on his retinas of a branch hanging in front of his face like a threatening arm, spiky fingers of palmetto, dripping spider webs, a bearded oak looming gigantically over the trail.
He splashed through deep puddles of warm water and tripped over exposed roots and fallen branches. He cupped rainwater in his hands and scrubbed off the blood and told himself that he was all right, that no one had seen his face. They might not find the car for days or even weeks. He’d be out of here by tonight or tomorrow, with nothing to connect him to the robbery but the money, which he’d spend soon enough. Yet he went on cursing as he walked, as if he knew that to stop raging against his predicament, even for a moment, was the beginning of surrender.
He felt the elevation changing slightly, began to see spaces between the trees, and then he spotted the lights of the house. He took a path through the pines, ascending to a wrought-iron gate flanked by a high, spiked iron fence. There was a limestone arch covered with vines hanging in flowered tendrils that clung to the rusted bars, through which he could see, almost hidden by a protective cordon of live oaks, a decrepit and dimly-lit two-story, wood frame house.
Noting the single car in the driveway and looking for any sign of a guard dog, he lifted the latch and stepped into the yard. He didn’t hesitate: the absence of a dog, the mosquitoes, and the rain decided him. He checked the car and found it locked. There was no barn. He’d have to move on, risk the highway.
He was turning to retrace his steps when he heard galloping sounds to his right. Two doberman pinschers had just rounded the corner of the house and were silently bearing down on him, their sleek-muscled forms eating up the yard in front of him. In half a second, he calculated the distance to the gate as too far. He turned and sprinted for the front door.
As he leapt over the three steps and onto the wooden porch and grasped the doorknob, he heard the nails of the faster dog scrabbling on the stone walk a few feet behind him, and knew that the whole, sweet, terrible, enchained series of instants that constituted his life hung on the turning of the knob. It turned; he plunged through and slammed the door just as the doberman, carried forward by its own momentum, crashed against it.
He took a step back, weak-kneed with delayed terror, his heart racing, scarcely noticing the oak-paneled hallway in which he was standing. To his left was a set of French doors opening onto a spacious living room, and standing in the middle of the floor, watching him with glazed and sullen eyes, was a very drunk woman as tall as himself, holding a glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
The woman was about fifty, maybe a little younger, and wore a sleeveless summer dress that accentuated her long legs and too-angular thinness. Her pale face, framed by a regal head of graying blond hair, was carelessly made-up, and her mouth had a sour, downward twist, but the high cheekbones still held the blurred lines of beauty.
“Who’s this?” she said, trying to focus her bloodshot eyes on him.
“Sorry,” he said, breathing hard. “Sorry about this. Your dogs didn’t give me any choice. I had an accident.” He pointed vaguely toward the highway. “Skidded off the road into a ditch. I saw your mailbox and walked up here. Sure as hell didn’t see any Beware of Dog sign.”
She leaned forward, squinting, the drink sheltered against her breast. “Hurt?” she asked.
He followed her gaze and saw a smear of Danton’s blood on his pants. “Just a scratch from the accident.” He shook his head, nodded toward the door. “Those dogs had it in for me. If your door had been locked...” He flinched away from the thought.
“I hate them,” she said. “They’re my husband’s.”
“Is there a phone I could use?” he asked.
“No phone. How about a drink?”
“A drink?” He glanced nervously behind him. “Sure. Thanks.” He stepped into a dusty, high-ceilinged room lined with bookshelves and poorly-lit by a crystal chandelier with most of the bulbs burned out. He noticed that her left leg was stiff at the knee and markedly thinner than the right leg. He watched as she limped across the room toward the liquor cabinet.
“Have a seat anywhere,” she said over her shoulder. There was an almost obliterated trace of an accent, possibly German, in her speech, and her voice had a smoker’s huskiness. “Whisky all right?”
“Fine.” He reached for the handkerchief, remembered that he’d thrown it away with the gun, and wiped his face with the back of his wet sleeve. “I’m pretty wet,” he said. “Got a towel I could borrow?”
She handed him a glass of straight whisky and limped out of the room without a word. She came back with a bath towel, tossed it to him, then lowered herself carefully into a leather easy chair. He dried off as best he could, then spread the towel on the couch and sat down.
“Cheers,” she said, getting right back to her drink.
“Cheers.” He drank. It was good whisky. He drank some more, trying to calm his wild heartbeat, telling himself he still had options. They might not come here at all.
“Really off the beaten track,” he said, glancing over her shoulder through the open window and struggling to keep his voice conversational. “You like living this far out?”
“It was my husband’s idea, like everything else around here.” Raising her glass, she said, “This was my idea. One of my best. He doesn’t like it.”
“Doesn’t like whisky or you drinking it?”
“Both. If Dr. Morrison doesn’t like something, he doesn’t like you liking it, either. He’s funny that way. So, who am I drinking with?”
“John Sutton.” It was the name he’d used with Danton. “I’m a salesman, on my way to Tampa.”
“Suzanne Morrison. I’m a housewife, on my way to a hangover. So, what do you sell, Mr. John-Sutton-on-his-way-to-Tampa?”
Something Danton had told him about one of his brothers came back to him. “Fiberglass. For boats. Lot of boats down there.”
“Fiberglass,” she said. “Well, isn’t that... sad.”
In the teeth of his own fear, he smiled. “Sad?”
“Sorry. I’m sure your work is very interesting.” She closed her eyes and swigged her drink.
“I didn’t say it was interesting, Mrs. Morrison. But I do all right at it.” He was feeling the liquor now, though it hardly blunted his edginess.
“So I’m wrong. About most things, my husband would say.”
“What kind of a doctor is he?”
“General. A general dislike for all his patients.”
He smiled at that, and so did she, showing smoke-stained teeth. A phone rang in another room, and he sat up, staring hard at her. She didn’t seem concerned at having been caught in a lie and made no move to answer it. He wasn’t ready to drop the charade yet. The idea of getting tough with her didn’t appeal to him, but he would if he had to.
Somebody had answered the phone: he heard a thin, penetrating male voice behind a closed door. He was instantly sober, snapped back to the controlled fear that had never really left him. He looked at Suzanne Morrison, who was smoking and avoiding his eyes. Why had she lied about the phone? He strained to hear what her husband was saying, if that’s who it was, but he couldn’t make it out.
The voice stopped talking, and a door opened. A thin, gray-haired man in his fifties entered the room with a hurried, impatient shuffle, threw a quick, cold glance at Mrs. Morrison, then advanced on him with a friendly smile and an outstretched hand.
The man’s head was small and darting, the skinny neck thrusting forward from rounded shoulders and a mildly curved back. His stiff hair was cut short and brushed straight back from a narrow, sharp-featured face with thin lips and desiccated cheeks, and his small, pointed ears rode low on his head. Behind horn-rimmed glasses, gray eyes watched with a snake-like stillness.
As Sutton rose to shake hands, he was put on his guard by that toothy smile: it didn’t go with the eyes.
“Suzanne didn’t see fit to tell me we had a guest,” he said with a strong, mid-western accent. “I’m Henry Morrison.”
“John Sutton. I got run off the road about a mile back and saw your mailbox. Mrs. Morrison was good enough to offer me a drink and a towel.”
“Are you injured?”
“No, but your dogs almost got me.”
“Terribly sorry about that. I’ve been meaning to prune the vines covering the Beware of Dog sign, but we don’t get many visitors out here, and I’m so damn busy. You’re sure you weren’t hurt?”
“Nothing worth calling you in for, doctor.”
Copyright © 2026 by Jeffrey Greene
