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Vortex

We know vortices in this part of the country. We grow up with them, and it doesn't take a siren or emergency broadcast signal to know one's coming. There are signs. The way the dogs stop barking. The way the birds take flight. The way the sky turns the color of an old dime, and the air fills with the shrieks of therapods on the hunt.

Jerry was a sensible man till I gave him the camcorder for our twelfth anniversary. Before then, when a vortex struck, he'd do all the right things -- pull the Dodge Caravan over and take refuge in a culvert or hide under an overpass. But once he got the video camera he became one of those idiots you see on the Weather Channel. A vortex hunter.

From November to April, vortex season, I would barely see him. He'd drive the van up and down the length of Vortex Alley, scanning the radio dial for Hawking radar reports, dropping into diners and retirement homes to see if some oracle's trick knee was acting up. Meanwhile, I worked two jobs to make the mortgage and fight off our mounting credit card debt.

Don't get me wrong. I loved Jerry. God knows I loved my man. But he left me alone to raise three girls. Girls need a father, and I need a husband.

The one that finally got him was the V5 that struck Boston and sucked away half the city.

If the vortex ever does spit him back out -- and that sort of thing has been known to happen -- the first thing out of his mouth won't be a question about me or the girls. He'll want to talk about actuality vectors and temporal fronts. He'll shove the camera in my face and insist I watch the footage he got of allisauruses or oviraptors.

Technically, it was the V5 that took my husband. But I lost him to a different kind of vortex long before that.