Twister Man

by Randy Chandler

Forsaken by the storm, Ava crept catlike from the house and saw Monroe, her dead husband, sitting on the front porch in a ladderback rocker. She pursed her crinkled lips to speak his name but didn’t say it because, at that moment, she recognized the red-and-black flannel shirt, faded overalls, and straw hat of the scarecrow she’d made with Monroe’s old clothes and posted in the cornfield.

The man cocked his head and fixed her with muddy eyes.

“What are you doin’ on my porch?” she asked.

The man rocked forward in the rocker, which creaked like new leather. Broomstraw hair hung from the man’s hat. A mound of mudcake on his jaw moved as if it were a sullied swath of skin when he opened his mouth; “Jus’ sittin’,” he said.

Ava saw her Ford pickup parked under the pecan tree, and the tractor with the dead battery beside the barn. She saw no other vehicle.

“Where you get them clothes?”

The man rocked back like it pained him and pointed at the cornfield.

Ava said, “Took em off my scarecrow. Now why would you do that?”

“Needed em more than he did,” the man said. “Didn’t have a stitch on me.”

“What was you doin naked in my corn?”

“It dropped me there.”

Ava gave the man a hard stare. “What dropped you?”

“That dang twister. Whereabouts am I?”

“My Lord,” she said. “Where you come from?”

”Outside a Vinewood. Over by the Ohoopee River. ”

”That’s five miles from here. You ‘spect me to believe a tornader picked you up and stripped you naked and set you down here?”

”Only way I can figure it, ” he said. ”I caint recall exactly. Somethin’ whopped me pretty good in the head. Hurts like a bear. You got some headache powder? ”

She told him to take the hat off so she could have a look at his head. He removed the straw boater and closed his eyes the way some men do when they’re in a barber’s chair.

”Sweet Jesus,” she said when she saw the iron rod sticking out of his head, just behind his left ear. Dirt and a few quills of pine straw were stuck to the clotted blood where the black iron was embedded in his skull.

”What?” His eyes opened, mudpools, the whites bloodshot with jagged streaks.

”You got a piece of iron stuck in your head. ”

”Naw. ”

”Yes sir, you do. Stickin out a good six inches. You could hang your hat on it. ”

He laughed. Reached up and touched the thin spike with stubby fingers. Stopped laughing. “Don’t that beat all,” he said.

”You need to go to the hospital.”

”Don’t reckon I do. You can jus’ kindly pull it out for me and patch me up good as them doctors.” He tested it with his fingers and said, ”Might need a pair of pliers.”

”I ain’t touchin’ it. It could be in your brain. I pull it out, some of your brain might come out with it. I’ll not have you bleedin’ to death on my porch, thank ye, nor your brains leakin out neither.”

”Then get me the pliers an I’ll do it myself out there in the yard.”

”No. I’m callin’ the ambulance. You sit right still.”

”I ain’t ridin’ in no ambulance,” he said.

Ava ignored him and went in the house to use the phone, but the storm had knocked it out of commission.

”Phone’s dead,” she told him. “I’ll have to drive you myself.”

“I don’t wanna put you out.” He put the hat back on and pushed out of the chair, swaying a little on his bare feet. He looked down at his toes and wriggled them. “Lost a good pair of shoes on the way here,” he said. Paid twenty-five dollars for ‘em at the Wal-Mart.”

“Come on and get in the truck.”

He took a step forward, then fell back into the chair. “Let me rest here a minute,” he said with a look of embarrassment. He leaned his head back and shut his swimming eyes.

“You’re too big for me to carry,” Ava said. “I’ll drive over to John Quarles’s and get him to come help you.”

He blinked his drooping lids and stared off into the breaking clouds. “First I wuz scared, ” he said. ”Knowed I wuz done for. Then it took me way up an I wuz spinnin’ and twistin’ like on one of them rides at the county fair an that’s when I thought it might not kill me. They wuz tree limbs and mud and I don’t know what all flyin’ round with me. Even saw a crow tryin’ to fly off from it but one of its wings was busted. Thought I saw a hog off a ways in the black wall of the funnel but I ain’t sure. Couldn’t see too good what with all the flyin’ mud and such. But then I got to thinkin’. Some folks say when you die you go through a dark tunnel and come out in the light an I got scared again. I didn’t see no light but I sure wuz in a dark tunnel. Reckon that’s when the thing hit me upside the head. Next thing I know, I’m lyin naked in a cornfield. Twister’s done gone and I find that scarecrow. Seen this house an now here I am talkin’ to you. Beats all I ever seen. ”

“You stay right there, ” she told him. I’ll be back with help.”

“I ain’t goin’ nowhere. Whenever I stand up I start spinnin’ again like I wuz back in that twister. I done enough spinnin’ for one day.”

“Ava got in the truck and drove over to John’s place. Low clouds raced ragged over the horizon, but the sun was out and shining on the autumn afternoon. She found John Quarles behind his house, cutting up a downed tree with his chainsaw. She told him about the twister man, and John followed her home in his old pickup.

When the wind was howling and hailstones were pelting the house, Ava had wanted the storm to take her. She thought it was her time. With Monroe dead these two years and not much to live for but one day bleeding into another about like it, she had lost her heart for living. But the storm went on without her. And now she had a stormriding scarecrow with an iron spike in his skull waiting on her porch and she surmised she ought to be thankful because it gave her some purpose, however transitory.

The brightness of the sun hurt her eyes and showed her how dark her moods had turned of late, and she felt old and too tired to contend with the storm debris on the road before her or the debris in the wake of her used-up life. She eyed John in her rearview mirror and hoped he would not insinuate another marriage proposal. Marriage was a closed chapter in her book and not one she wished to dip into again.

She turned off the blacktop and drove up in front of her house. The rocker on the porch was empty, the twister man nowhere in sight.

“Where is he?” John asked when he got out of his truck.

She looked out at the brown cornstalks and said, “Maybe he’s out scarin” crows.”

They stepped onto the boards of the porch. John Quarles stuck his big hands in his denim pockets and rattled his keys and blew out a whistling breath. A ten-inch iron rod rested on the rocker’s sagging seat. One end of it was wet with gore and had a few strands of straw-colored hair stuck to it.

“Lord,” she said, “he pulled it out hisself.”

“Where could he have got to?” John said.

“Likely leakin brains, wherever he’s at.” She turned back to the cornfield and shaded her eyes with her hand. Then she was stepping through the brittle stalks to the center of the field where the scarecrow had stood sentry. John dogged her decisive steps.

“You don’t think…”

“The Lord,” she said when she saw the empty flannel shirt, overalls and straw hat hanging on the wooden cross like the discarded raiment of a reluctant savior.

“So where the heck is he?

“Stop askin” me that, John Quarles. Don’t you see I made it all up? Weren’t no twister man. You been had by a addlebrained old woman scared of a storm. Get in your truck and go on home.”

After he was gone, Ava sat in the rocker and held the iron spike in her lap and watched the sun sink into the dead cornstalks. The failing light soothed her some and her mood lightened a little. She glanced over at the scuffed porch boards where Monroe’s old railroader’s shoes had left their marks with his years of pensive rocking, but this time she didn’t feel the absence of man and chair quite so deep in her breast.

An errant breeze rustled a path through the brittle brown stalks as if a ghost were passing there. The evening star winked down at her.

“Godspeed, Twister Man,” she whispered on the wind.

*****

Randy Chandler was nominated for the 2000 Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel. His short stories have appeared in numerous small-press publications and more recently in on-line magazines such as EOTU and Horrorfind. In the Eighties and early Nineties he reviewed books for The Atlanta Journal-Constituion and interviewed author Robert Stone for The Atlanta Journal. Chandler is marketing his first solo novel, Bad Juju, and is currently working on his next novel.