“I didn’t like it,” Ted said.
“Nor I,” Everett said. “I didn’t like writing it, and I didn’t like it when I was done with it.”
“Well, actually, I loved the novel in the novel. I thought that story was real gripping. You know, true to life.”
“I’ve heard that.”
It grew darker outside. The wind screamed. The dispatcher calmly crawled under her desk. The front door blew open, hit the wall, and then slammed shut. Horace was shaking.
“Wow,” Everett said. “I’ve always wanted to see a tornado, if in fact this is one. Could be just a bad storm.”
“I read that tornado is a messed-up form of some Spanish word, tronada or something like that.”
Everett scratched his head. “Could be from the Latin tonare, to thunder. Anyway, I like the word twister better.”
“Maybe you two should step outside there and get a close-up look,” the Chief said.
“Maybe I will,” Everett said. He smiled at the Chief. “Tell me, constable, just what is a Smuteye?”
“It’s a dish,” I said.
“I tried it,” Ted said. “Tastes like shit.”
Everett looked at the Chief and around the station. “I can well imagine.”
The whole building rattled.
“Well, we can’t go out in this mess,” the Chief said. “The best we can do is hunker down in here. And the best place for that is back in the cells.” He leaned over the dispatcher’s desk. “You’re gonna have to come on back, Lucy.”
So we did. Horace unlocked the cell doors and we all joined Billy sitting on bunks and against the walls.
Everett stared at the disgusting, seatless toilet. “I grew to hate that during my incarceration,” he said.
The roof shook, and we all looked up. Dust fell from the ceiling into our eyes. The wind roared like an engine.
“It’s a bad one,” Horace said.
“Thanks for the news,” the Chief said.
I pictured the satchel of money swirling up into the funnel cloud, opening and scattering the bills across six counties and into Georgia. I felt nothing for the money; it was only fifty thousand, a drop in my so-called bucket. However, I felt I needed it in order to make a show of depositing it into the bank — a move designed to protect myself from the would-be robbers. And I wanted the sisters to have it, though I was unsure why that was important to me, if in fact it was and not some mere and strange act of perversion on my part.
Ted was marveling at the storm and saying wow over and over. “I read that twisters in the northern hemisphere rotate counterclockwise, I think, opposite from the ones in the southern hemisphere. Hey, you ever try on trousers and they’re too short in the rise and for some reason you buy them anyway?”
“That happens to me a lot,” Everett said. “I don’t know why. Mr. Poitier was one of my favorite students. That is until he cowardly dropped out of school. I think it’s because no girls would sleep with him.”
The roof made a loud cracking noise, and we let out a collective gasp, but the structure stayed together. The dispatcher prayed loudly. Billy comforted her, called her “Mama.”
Horace said, “Think we’re going to die, Chief?”
“We’d never be so lucky,” the Chief said. “If I could only get that fucking lucky.”
Then the wind stopped. Rain leaked in through the damaged roof, but the blowing stopped. All was silent. “I guess that’s it,” the Chief said, disgust in his voice. He walked away back into the station room.
I followed him. “Chief, I think we ought to go get that money now the weather has broken.”
“Oh, you do,” he said. “That’s just like one of you selfish muckety-mucks from the city. I’ve got to go out there and check on the folks. I might have to rescue some poor peckerwoods from the tops of trees or some such. And all you can think about is your money.”
“Actually, it’s the sisters’ money,” I said.
“You and your friends go and find your damn money. I got pressing business to attend to.”
“But I’m afraid I’ll be in danger,” I said, slowly.
He looked blankly at me, then said, “Horace, drive around and see what’s what while I help this boy find his money. And do it right now and don’t go visiting that Sarah Purdy that you think I don’t know you visit every day.”
“Yes, sir, Chief.”
The road outside was strewn with fallen limbs and whatever garbage there was in the town of Smuteye, but it didn’t appear that any of the buildings had been ripped from their foundations. Ted and Everett sat in the back of the car while I sat in the front and reminded the Chief how to get to the sisters’ place. We turned off the road and bounced over a few limbs. Then I saw her. Actually, I first saw the white head of Thornton Scrunchy, then I saw Sister Irenaeus. I told the Chief to stop, and we got out. Sister Irenaeus and the man were shoving bills back into what I recognized as my satchel. When they saw us, they ran through the woods toward a pickup parked at the side of the road. Sister Irenaeus looked back when she reached the passenger-side door. She looked wild eyed, nothing like the woman I had met before. She turned, got into the cab, and slammed the door. Thornton Scrunchy punched the accelerator and sprayed the bushes behind him with mud and gravel. The truck sped away into the wet, windy, dismal gray of Bullock County.
I walked over to what had been the money’s hiding spot. Bills were still all over the place — in the crooks of tree branches, in puddles, on the muddy ground. They hadn’t gotten nearly all of them. Everett started collecting the money he could reach and stuffed it in his pockets.
“We have to catch him,” I said, realizing suddenly just what was happening. “He’s the one who killed me.”
The Chief, Ted, and Everett studied me, quizzically.
“We have to stop him,” I said, again. My heart was pounding. “He killed that man because he thought he was me. Someone is dead because of me. Because of my stupidity.”
We hurried back to the car. The Chief slammed his foot on the gas as we hit the highway again. The weather began to turn bad once more. We were driving into another storm. Sheets of rain washed along the road and then over us. The rain fell so hard that the wipers did little to help our vision through the windshield. The rain stopped, all of a sudden.
In front of us was the overturned and mangled blue Ford pickup of Thornton Scrunchy. Engine parts littered the road. As did Sister Irenaeus and Scrunchy and Scrunchy’s hair. The utility pole into which it had crashed was broken and lay on the ground beside it; the wires were sizzling and popping on the wet road.
Ted whistled as we stood there staring from a safe distance. “Hell of a thing,” he said.
“Do you think they’re dead?” Everett asked.
“Dead enough,” the Chief said. He was at the open door of his car and on his radio. “Lucy, call Donald and have him come over to Two Forks Road and the highway with his wagon. And call the county and tell we need a cleanup, some power lines down.”
“What if they’re alive?” I asked. The electrical line bounced and danced across the asphalt.
Ted turned to Everett. “Does rock beat paper or does paper beat rock?”
“Paper beats rock, but I have no idea why,” Everett said. “A rock should go right through paper, don’t you think? I mean, I love paper as much as, or more than, the next guy. My guess is that it’s the function of some kind of privileged intradialogical and embedded enunciator.”
“What are you talking about?” Ted asked.
“Paper beats rock. What beats paper?”
“Scissors.”
“Ah, yeah.”
“Your friends are nuts,” the Chief said to me.