The Mint of His Breath

Matted clouds rose to the west, heralding thunderstorms but Mattie Wright wasn’t afraid. She’d gassed up her Buick, and had her tires checked by an ex-student, hiring him after suffering a blowout, sliding into a ditch, the airbag deploying, bruising her breasts. She was lucky the road crew was working that day, otherwise she might have stayed hidden for days battling Mackinaw’s finest rodents; saved by felons picking up beer bottles, condoms, assorted wrappers, ear plugs; saved by of all things, a Nelly concert.

Her father, who loved backpacking in the Rockies, had taught Mattie how to layer her clothing: merino wool underwear and socks, polyester sweater, Gore-Tex soft shell, waterproof hiking boots. But today she was prep-lite: a set of flares, a quarter pound of beef jerky, and a case of bottled water. Also an insulation blanket made out of aluminum. She could see her five foot six one hundred and forty pound body crawling beneath the flame retardant which reminded her of a Pop art. Rounding out the prep were tire chains and a foldable shovel. She’d charged her Iphone. Timmy had downloaded the Waze app. “But I’m not going out to sea.”

“No grandma. Waze. Not waves.” It had been Timmy who insisted she enter the 21st century and buy a smartphone, her fingers fudging the keyboard even with 3.00 reading glasses. The zoom function reminded her of childhood piano lessons, the three finger tap difficult to master. In the glove compartment was a hand-cranked emergency radio and light. Despite all the gear, her daughter had tried to dissuade her. “You understand we’re under a tornado watch.”

“If Oklahomans didn’t drive during tornado watches, we’d never go anywhere.”

“I still don’t like it.”

“I have GPS. And I’ll keep the phone on. I’m not missing Timmy’s birthday.” In truth, still grieving, she needed family more than anything.

Even with football traffic, the trip to Norman rarely took more than three hours. And this was Tuesday. She doubted the Sooners played midweek though Horace would have known for sure. How a mechanical engineer could spend his weekend watching football, the peanuts, cream-filled cookies, Bud Lite, ham sandwich with American cheese and corn chips accruing around him like some orgy instigated by Frito Lay. He’d suffered from prostate trouble the last years of his life. His excuse as to why they had double beds before a 65 inch LG tv affixed on the wall in the bedroom, the screen filling with colors so vivid it all looked painted, crowds cheering when some player got concussed, many fans wearing greasepaint, the more sedate in western jeans and cowboy hats, and upskirt shots of long legged cheerleaders doing splits. Thank god they used razors.

This was her second trip alone since Horace’s coronary--the symptoms initially fleeting. ”I feel a little sick. Maybe I will lie down for a second.”

She'd given it no thought but he never made it to the couch, collapsing onto the floor. What was it–two breaths and ten chest presses, or was it to ignore the presses or was that the breathing? In her confusion she pressed here, a breath there, the salty taste of potato chips and sodden crumbs on her lips, his face ashen, the eyes spiraling into distant whorls. Hysterically, she screamed at the late arriving paramedics who were young and bubbly and talking about the latest antics of Kanye while they bagged Horace, the device wattling like a turkey neck then “clear” firing the paddles on his chest. His body flopped like a fish. The girl who really should still be in high school with a Japanese tattoo behind her left ear assured her, ”there was nothing you could have done.”

After they wheeled him out, the coroner provided a funeral home address, the same one they had used for Horace’s mother. After they departed she realized the game was still on. The announcer said the Sooners had “come back from the dead.” And wanting to pay homage to a twenty-three year marriage with its ups and downs--only one affair she was aware of, in the early years of their marriage while Horace got his degree; she did what only a wife who had forgiven her husband could do. She watched the rest of the game, the Sooners winning in overtime on what the announcer called one of the greatest catches in the history of the sport. Like in death, in football there was plenty of room for hyperbole.

Entering her car she noticed the sun bound by a quartzite halo. She tried to remember what that meant. Ice, rain, or snow? All three? She was no good at Weather Rochambeau. Such a stupid game. Rock, paper, scissors. Some of her seventh graders had added the middle finger–dynamite used to blow up the rock. Middle school cheaters. Maladjusted already. Sadly, for many of them, she realized they would never leave the Reservation. She pushed the side mirror out of the way so she could see the rear of her car. A Click and Clack recommendation. Horace had loved their NPR show. MIT graduates had to know a thing or two about cars but it seemed to her a waste of a good education.

She set the AC to defrost, cruise control to 63. But what if hitting the brakes failed to disengage the throttle-she would have to turn the engine off, shift into neutral. Until Horace’s death, she did not worry about these things but his death had changed the tacit agreement she had with God: go to church, tithe 10% meant none of the bogeymen that assaulted her colleagues would attack her: the gym teacher shot by his son while hunting, a janitor who drowned, Sara’s daughter who contracted spinal meningitis, and Lulu, her parapro. The oncologists blasted her with radiation so she could make it until Christmas: shedding hair like leaves, a hovering rancid smell, drying up from the inside out.

The center lane offered neutrality, speeders could pass on either side. The big rigs had no reason to tailgate her. If they got behind her she just turtled her neck down, hands at two and ten and ignored them. The Waze voice--female, robotic--warned her of a car up ahead on the side of the road. Thirty seconds later she passed it--abandoned. What if Waze had signaled to some rapist or serial killer about their mishap? Would anyone know? The new technology was scary: made everyone into a potential bystander, victim or witness.

She loved her Buick. Horace had insisted on buying American. He'd grown conservative as he aged, blaming the Japanese for his failing automobile stocks–Ford and GM inherited from his father. He had only one other stock in his portfolio–Amazon. Why on earth had he bought that? She had no idea but it was worth nearly a half million dollars. Scared of the markets, she had cashed in half.

It helped. She could now afford a yardman, dentures, prescription lenses, a heat pump, a toilet with a heated bidet, storm windows, washer, dryer and the ridiculous insurance premiums Horace had insisted on--car, house, termite, liability. Liability? What was he afraid of? She made no frivolous purchases--cable, teeth whitening, or a Mercedes Benz like her next door neighbor Ezra who recently had retired from the post office. She wanted to leave a sizable inheritance for her grandson.

*

Meteorologist Hugh Mcclintock watched the developing storm on his computer screen. The doppler showed a rising supercell near Blackwell. He drove through there often: corn, soybeans, field after undulating field of rising wheat. So far the NWS had rejected his applications. Nearing forty-five he feared WXLT, which was supposed to be a launchpad, might wind up being an Indeed dead end. Four interviews and each time denied. He’d started dying his sideburns and injecting testosterone to improve his appearance but to be truthful, the domestic complaint from his ex-wife, one shove and a slip on a mopped tile floor, and her alabaster skin had lit up like an eggplant on steroids–enough bleeding under the skin that he got locked up for 48 hours in a community cell--the stench of drunkards and a teen meth dealer who stared at him, demanding his Social Security number, which was so scary Hugh gave it to him. He was six-two, two hundred and twenty pounds outweighing the dealer by sixty pounds but Hugh was not a fighter. His father had pushed him into football until his junior year when he got plowed under by a four star running back that broke his arm in two places. Any whiff of violence and he was seconds from what he had done under the Friday night lights before a capacity crowd: projectile vomiting.

The On Air producer diverted the live broadcast to Val and Belinda, storm chasers in a four wheel Subaru. Twenty-somethings with a love for each other and danger, freelancers with a passion. Val knew how to frame a shot, balancing the composition while engaging the storm and the tragedy afterwards: uprooted trees, houses smashed, the bedraggled looks of victims crawling out of mobile homes. She looked underage--skinny, flat chested, no makeup, always wearing army fatigues. Maybe it was her innocence that allowed her to get closeups of the aftermath. The shots The Weather Channel, and WXLT never showed: rented bodies, crushed cars, and one shot Hugh never forgot, a string of lights of pickup trucks twirling around the edge of a twister, six hundred feet in the air, the drivers likely still alive. Sheer horror. But those were the shots that would make people go into their storm cellars and keep the curious off the road.

Bumper to bumper traffic, Val reported, “like electrons circling a nucleus of catastrophe.” Coming from a recently graduated Magna Cum Laude English major, the channel had grown accustomed to her flowery similes.

“Be careful,” Hugh told them. What he always said, an inane phrase he had used with his ex-wife, his parents, his children.

“I got a wall cloud,” Belinda broke in, panning a shot of a sea foam churning vortex, rocketing from the bowels of the mothership. “We’re on it,” the producer said and the anchors took over, while Hugh moved to the weatherboard.

In his earpiece he listened to the anchors: Stone Hanson and Betty Chou, camera-worthy, Stone’s weekly haircut and prism chin, Chou’s filled lips and apex eyebrows. Hugh highlighted on the board the latest polygon, the future path of the tornado.

“There’s a hook echo. If we go to the velocities,” Hugh said, tapping a stylus which shifted the image to a pixelated screen, vibrant in red, yellow and green, specks of blue. He pointed to the interface of green and red, “a couplet,” and for all the technology there was not a damn thing anyone could do about what was about to happen.

“It just dropped,” yelled Val and a thick wedge appeared, boiling, rotating, eating dirt, a monster.

“It's going to cross the Interstate,” said Hugh.

#

Odd thought Mattie who felt the wind rock her car, the sky opaque, coke bottle green. She slowed to let other cars pass.

She had worn red to Horace’s funeral. A ruffled flutter midi she’d kept in the closet from her line dancing days at the Purple Wagon, sawdust on the floor, hip high banisters, steer horns on the walls and wagon wheel lights hanging from the ceiling, a well stocked bar at one end, bandstand at the other.

Horace had not understood her love for country music, his pitch perfect ear hearing every shrill note, pooh-poohing the twangy heartache and relationship disasters. But he loved her and he learned to two step, polka, jive and pony swing: face to face, lifting her up around and around, locking elbows, her body twirling, the lights glistening, the sweet considerate mint of his breath on her lips and the heavens…oh those dark heavens, descending.

BIO: D. S. Stewart has had work published or forthcoming in many magazines including Cimarron Review, Puerto Del Sol, Passages North, Shenandoah, Permafrost, Penmen Review, History through Fiction and Bellevue Literary Review. Honors include an award from the Kansas Arts Council for Best Fiction, a “Rising Star” grant through the Georgia Council for the Arts, and the latest Pushcart nomination from Jet Fuel.

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