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  ‘But, Mama, they got nigger-toes!’ Earl said, only to see all the hostages look up at him – the white women with shock on their faces while the two black women in the group just glared at him.

  ‘They got another name?’ he asked in all innocence.

  ‘Brazil nuts!’ the black deputy said, her teeth clinched.

  ‘Huh,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know that. Thanks, ma’am.’

  Nita just shook her head and turned back around.

  There came a groaning from behind the couch and Eunice Blanton swung around, her gun pointed at the noise. It was the boy who’d been about to knock on the door when they burst in. She had no idea why a boy would be coming to an all-girl party, but it had worked out OK.

  ‘You, deputy,’ Eunice said, brandishing her weapon at Jasmine. ‘See to him.’

  Rex Kitchens had a bitch of a headache. Worse than a hangover, he thought. He knew he had a gig to do, the money from which kept him in beer and Buffalo wings, but, feeling around, he noticed he was still wearing his break-away firefighter costume.

  He opened one eye and saw that lady, the deputy, who had hired him. ‘Did I fall down?’ he asked her.

  ‘More or less,’ Jasmine said, helping him to sit up and propping him against the side of the chair in which Dalton’s cousin June sat.

  Rex looked up and saw the three Blantons with their guns pointed directly at him.

  He grabbed Jasmine’s arm and pulled her down to where she could hear him whisper, ‘They got guns!’

  ‘Yeah, Rex, they sure do. We’re all being held hostage,’ she said.

  ‘Me, too?’ he asked.

  Jasmine looked at Eunice and Eunice nodded her head. Looking back at Rex, Jasmine said, ‘Yeah, you, too.’

  ‘Am I still gonna get paid?’ he asked.

  Even though the twister had passed, Johnny Mac was still scared shitless. Trees were down all around him. He didn’t know which way would lead back to Aunt Jewel’s house, and he sure as heck didn’t know where Matt and the other boy were. What if they’d been hurt? Maybe he should go looking for them. But he didn’t see how he could get that girl’s bike through all the rubble. Then he looked at the spot where he thought he’d dropped the bike. No bike there. He stood up and walked gingerly toward the spot. His shoes were gone, and they were good ones, too. His first pair of Nikes, with a glow-in-the-dark Nike swirl. His mom had paid a lot of money for them. His mom. He wished she were here now. Actually, no, not really. She’d have a hard time walking. He guessed what he wished was that he was with her. At that party, watching the ladies get drunk and sitting in a corner eating all those appetizers his mom had told him had been ordered. He liked chicken wings and jalapeño poppers. He was like his dad – he liked the hot stuff. Although Dad couldn’t eat that stuff anymore. Mama said bland food was all he could have. Doctor’s orders. He wasn’t sure if that was his dad’s doctor’s orders, or his mom the doctor’s orders.

  But none of that musing was getting him out of this mess. He took a few more steps, wincing as he stepped on something sharp. He looked at his foot, still covered in his new Fruit of the Loom socks. The shoes and the socks had been some of the new purchases for going back to school. He doubted if the socks were going to make it. But there was no tear in the sock this time, and no blood coming from a cut on his foot. He’d just have to walk more carefully. Looking steadily at the ground, Johnny Mac took several more steps until he was at the rubble where he thought he’d left the bike. He lifted some branches and saw a strange metal thing he thought might have come from a car – he didn’t want to think about that flying through the air so close to him – but didn’t see the bike. Beyond the rubble, and past a few downed trees, he saw what looked like the trail. Gingerly, he headed that way.

  Jewel tried to open the door to the shelter but it was stuck. She asked Laurie to help, and between the two of them they managed to dislodge whatever had been pinning down the double doors of the shelter. When they got out, they saw what it was: Jewel’s refrigerator door – with jelly, mustard, mayo and ketchup still in their allotted spaces. Jewel looked up and saw that her house was mostly gone.

  Although a shock to her system, she figured it wasn’t all that bad. The house had been her husband’s first wife’s home and she was more than happy to see it gone. But then she sobered: Johnny Mac. Where was he?

  ‘Where are the boys?’ Laurie Potter asked, anguish in her voice. ‘Matthew said he was going to your house! He wouldn’t lie!’

  Jewel just looked at her next-door neighbor. How naive was this woman? Having raised three children – two of them boys – Jewel knew one thing for sure: they lied. Boys lied about anything, while girls lied mostly about boys.

  Laurie’s house was more intact than Jewel’s so they went that way, hoping to find a working phone or a cell phone. Jewel had no idea where hers was. But then again, she rarely did, which was a bone of contention between her and Harmon, her husband.

  The bedroom wing was missing from Laurie’s house but the living room looked unscathed. Books still sat on the shelves, magazines were still laid on the coffee table and there were toys in a box by the fireplace. They heard a screech of tires and both ran out to the driveway. Bobby Potter came out of his car fast, running up to his wife and grabbing her.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he asked.

  ‘Where’s Miranda?’ Laurie asked, looking for her youngest, Matt’s little sister, owner of the now missing girl’s bike.

  Miranda came out of the back seat of the car. ‘Mommy, what’s wrong with our house?’

  ‘Where’s Matt?’ Bobby asked his wife.

  Laurie put her hands to her face and began to cry. Jewel said, ‘My nephew was here – he told me he was going to Matt’s. Matt told Laurie they were coming to my house.’

  Bobby nodded. ‘So where are they?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ Jewel said, feeling the tears begin to sting her eyes.

  Bobby Potter was a big man, about six foot three or four, with massive shoulders. A former college-level wrestler, he’d almost made it to the Olympic tryouts but was benched due to a severe inner-ear infection. He hadn’t been on good terms with his ears since.

  Bobby patted Jewel on the arm. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘we’ll find the little shits. They think they’ve been in a tornado now, huh? Wait until you two get hold of ’em, huh?’ he said and laughed.

  Neither woman laughed back.

  Ronnie Jacobs, the pizza delivery guy from Bubba’s Pizza and Pasta, had been on his way to Bishop to deliver a pepperoni and bell pepper extra large. He was playing an old Randy Travis CD of his mom’s, not listening to the radio. If he had had the radio on, he might have realized what he was driving into. As it was, the extreme southeast edge of the twister grabbed his Toyota Celica and flipped it over four times, turning it in circles like a whirling dervish until it came to rest on its roof. Ronnie hung upside down in the driver’s seat, only his safety belt keeping him in place. His hat had fallen off and his hair, which needed to be cut, was hanging straight down. Ronnie didn’t notice. He was out like a light.

  FOUR

  Marge Blanton had been a sad little girl, a sad teenager, and had grown into a sad woman. She’d married her second cousin, Kenny Blanton, when she was sixteen, at her parents’ insistence. She didn’t love Kenny and he really didn’t love her. He just liked her big boobs, and his idea of romance was jumping on her at unexpected times. She lost her first baby when she was four months pregnant; her second was stillborn. Her third pregnancy ended just weeks after it had begun. But the fourth, which had resulted in her beautiful daughter Chandra, had been a success. And only Marge and one other person knew why.

  His name was Gary Roberts, and he’d mistakenly come to Blantonville to try to sell vacuum cleaners. Luckily he’d come to Marge’s trailer first and she’d set him straight. Nobody in Blantonville liked door-to-door salesmen. In fact, there was a rumor that a Fuller Brush man had come to town once back in her mama’s day and had never been
seen again.

  Kenny, Marge’s husband, was at work in the body shop he and some of his cousins owned right outside of Blantonville, so Marge had been alone in the house with Gary Roberts, the vacuum cleaner salesman. It was the first time – maybe ever – that Marge had talked to a man outside of the Blanton clan. And she’d found him fascinating. He’d shown up at ten in the morning; by three that afternoon, after a lovely lunch (Elvis sandwiches – peanut butter and banana – with a Marge flare of added bacon and Lays potato chips), they’d ended up on the built-in sofa of Marge’s single-wide.

  When she’d found out she was pregnant, she hadn’t immediately thought it could be Gary’s. She’d just assumed it was Kenny’s, as he had pounced on her many times between her tryst with Gary the vacuum cleaner salesman and her finding out that she was pregnant. As the pregnancy wore on, she’d tried not to get her hopes up – they had been dashed so many times before. But when the baby had been born alive and began to thrive, she’d had to wonder. Was it the fresh genes? How come every pregnancy with her second cousin had failed but one dalliance with an outsider and she bore the perfect child? By the time Chandra was six months old, Marge could see a definite resemblance between her beautiful baby girl and the vacuum cleaner salesman.

  Gary had left her his business card, so she had an address. She wrote him the following letter:

  Dear Gary,

  This may come as a shock to you, but you have given me the greatest joy in my life – our beautiful daughter, Chandra. She’s six months old and looks just like you! I don’t want to put any pressure on you, but if you are so inclined, please come by and get me and the baby and take us away from here. If I don’t hear from you, I guess that means no.

  Sincerely,

  Marge Blanton

  Needless to say, Marge never heard from the man. Chandra was now seventeen and Marge had never told anyone about Gary the vacuum cleaner salesman. But now her little girl was pregnant and, as far as Marge knew, Chandra had never even glanced at any of the Blanton boys. She could only hope that the daddy of her grand-baby, like the daddy of her own baby, was from outside the invisible walls of Blantonville.

  Marge knew it was the vacuum cleaner salesman in Chandra that made her stand up, just a little bit, to Mee-maw. It was the vacuum cleaner salesman in Chandra that had her sitting away from the rest of them, refusing to be a part of this madness of Mee-maw’s. If Marge had just a little bit of that defiance, she could turn the gun in her hand on her mama – maybe not kill her, but at least slow her down. Enough, anyway, to get Marge and Chandra out of this mess. Oh, and maybe save a hostage or two.

  Drew Gleeson, the EMT, was almost glad about the tornado, except for the people who were injured or even dead. He was sorry about that. But at least the activity was keeping his mind off Joynell Blanton.

  Drew had never in his life messed with a married woman, but Joynell was different. She wasn’t like most women. She was smart and tough while at the same time gentle and feminine. And she was beautiful. Beautiful in a way most women weren’t, in Drew’s opinion. She had an inner beauty – and it shone through her like a light inside a Halloween pumpkin. She was the love of his life. And that goddam husband of hers had gone and killed her. It was bad enough that the way Drew had met her was when the asshole had knocked her down the aluminum stairs of their double-wide and broken her ankle. The asshole hadn’t even been there when Drew had shown up in the ambulance. He’d been on his own that day, Jasper having taken the day off for his father-in-law’s funeral. And there she’d been, sitting on the steps to the trailer, cradling her swollen ankle. Maybe it wasn’t love at first sight, but it was definitely lust at first sight. Then he’d seen the ring on her left hand and got himself in check. But on the ride to the hospital, with her lying on the gurney right behind him as he drove, they got to talking and, although she’d never said anything directly against her husband, he’d got the vibe that she hadn’t accidentally fallen down the steps. He’d hated Darrell Blanton ever since, and now … and now …

  Drew was driving the ambulance, and tried to push that thought out of his mind as he felt the tears starting. Not only was it not manly – in Drew’s opinion – for a man to cry, it could cause an accident, and he already had injured people in the back of the ambulance. But still and all, he wasn’t paying that much attention and almost ran into the back of the rescue van. Slamming on his brakes, he could see beyond the van and ascertain the problem. Two firefighters were heading toward a Toyota Celica resting upside down in their lane of the highway.

  Drew reached behind him for their emergency bag and jumped out of the ambulance, Jasper two feet ahead of him.

  There was a young man in the driver’s seat of the Toyota, hanging upside down and not moving. Drew felt for a pulse and found one beating strong.

  ‘He’s alive,’ he told the firefighters. ‘We need to cut the seatbelt. First, though, Jasper, bring the backboard.’

  Grumbling under his breath, Jasper headed for the ambulance while one of the firefighters went to the rescue van for clippers to cut the belt. When they both got back to the Toyota, Jasper laid the backboard down as close to the kid as they could get, while the firefighter clipped the seatbelt.

  Drew and Jasper both had hold of the boy’s head and shoulders, and were able to gently release him onto the backboard.

  ‘Now what?’ Jasper asked Drew. ‘We go back with what we got or keep going?’

  That, as far as Drew was concerned, was the $64,000 question. With this guy in the back the ambulance would be pretty much full. Did he take this kid back to Longbranch to the hospital, or hope that the clinic in Bishop was still there and could take care of him? In the end he decided that they needed to get the unconscious young man and the firefighter with the broken arm to the Longbranch hospital. Checking out the head injury of the female firefighter, he discovered that the cut had stopped bleeding and the woman insisted she had no headache or any other residual effects. Her eyes looked clear, which suggested no concussion.

  ‘OK,’ Drew said, removing the pencil flashlight from her pupils, ‘I guess you’re good to go.’ He looked at one of the firefighters standing by. ‘OK with y’all if she goes with you?’

  ‘Ah, hell, man, she’s senior,’ the firefighter said. ‘I got no say in that A-tall.’

  The woman stood up. ‘So I’m outta here,’ she said.

  ‘I reckon so,’ Drew said and smiled at her. She gave him a mock salute and led the other two firefighters back to the rescue van.

  ‘Ideas!’ I said to the men standing around with their thumbs up their butts. ‘Come on, y’all. Ideas!’

  ‘We could sneak up there, then bust the door down and take the Blantons down,’ Emmett Hopkins suggested, his forehead sweaty, although the air conditioning in the Longbranch Inn kept the restaurant permanently chilly.

  ‘I considered that,’ I said, ‘but I’m afraid Eunice would shoot one of the hostages.’

  ‘Not if we shoot her first!’ Emmett said, his face turning red with the tension and stress of the occasion. Emmett Hopkins, former police chief of Longbranch, Oklahoma, current head deputy of the Prophesy County, Oklahoma sheriff’s department and one of the most level-headed men I’ve ever known, was about to lose it, and I was afraid that if Emmett lost it I wouldn’t be far behind.

  ‘Well, that has some merit,’ I thought. OK, I sorta wanted to shoot the old lady, but I knew that wasn’t what I should be thinking.

  ‘Too iffy,’ Charlie Smith said. ‘She could have one of the hostages with her, or be standing close to them. Just because they were where Mike said they were when he was up there doesn’t mean they’re still in those positions.’

  That pissed me off. I’d already considered that and I wasn’t too happy with Charlie thinking I hadn’t. But this wasn’t the time for a pissing contest. I had bigger fish to fry.

  ‘Maybe we should call in the state boys,’ Emmett suggested.

  ‘You wanna wait for them to get here? Usually takes ’em
a couple of hours to get all the paperwork done and their asses in gear. I’m not sure about yours, but my wife will be dead by then,’ I said.

  Emmett nodded his head. ‘You’re right. The time for calling in the state has long gone.’ And the look he gave me then made me question my motives. But what was done was done, and now it was time for ideas and action.

  ‘What if we send somebody else up there?’ Charlie suggested. ‘The staff’s supposed to bring up desserts at closing, which is usually ten o’clock, but we could send someone up with the desserts and say we’re closing early because of the storm—’

  ‘Shit!’ I said, jumping up. ‘The storm!’ I turned to Mike. ‘Did they have the TV on or a radio in the room?’

  ‘No, sir,’ Mike said.

  I grinned real big. ‘Then we gotta evacuate ’cause that tornado could be heading to Longbranch, donja think?’

  Johnny Mac used his flashlight to illuminate the way through what was left of the forest, calling out Matt’s name as he went. No one answered him, but he kept walking. He wasn’t sure which way he was going – he’d gotten all turned around in his head – but he hoped he was heading in the direction they’d taken rather than back to his aunt’s subdivision. As careful as he was, watching where he stepped, he tripped over something right in front of him and fell on his face. The flashlight flew out of his hand.

  He pulled himself up and looked for the flashlight, scared that he’d lost it. But he saw the light shining on some rubble, and was thankful the bulb hadn’t broken when it went flying out of his hand. It was as he was trying to stand up that he noticed what he had tripped over. A bike. A boy’s bike.

  ‘Matt!’ he yelled at the top of his lungs. ‘Cody!’

  He heard something. Just a slight something. He twirled around, not sure which direction it had come from. ‘Louder!’ he said.

  ‘Here!’ came a small voice.

  ‘Keep talking!’ Johnny Mac shouted. ‘So I can find you!’

  ‘I’m over here. Is that you, Matt’s friend?’ came the voice.