In the passenger seat, May looks out of the window, stony-faced, unreadable. Shutting down.
I pull past what’s left of the feed store, and around towards the road that leads down to the ranch. I can’t even bring the truck up the driveway.
The minute I hit the brakes, May flings the door open and runs straight across the shingle-littered grass, her lacrosse cleats pounding straight into the muddy dirt. ‘PAPA!’ she yells. ‘MUMMA!’
Jordan, in the back seat, looks like someone’s sucked the life from her face. She’s pale as a sheet as she takes it all in. ‘My parents texted,’ she says quietly. ‘Spared our place. It’s so twisted. The paths these things take.’
The knots that form in the pit of my stomach agree. For your home to be standing, to have four walls and a roof, running water, electricity, it feels gut-wrenching when you see something like this.
We both get out of the truck, and I lock it before we jog down the way May went. My heart thuds double-time at the fear of what’s in store, more so about what May might have found. My fingers twitch, hands shaky, but my body is put at ease when Jordan and I catch sight of May and her parents in a shared embrace, standing outside what’s left of their home. It’s a miracle that the first floor of the house is still quite intact. Much of what’s around it – the fencing in the ranch, the barns, the stables, weren’t so fortunate. And then there’s the field.Ourlacrosse field. My mouth goes dry when I see it in the distance, grass all torn up, goalposts ripped apart, netting in pieces, covered in shards of wood from the fences.
‘Oh, thank God,’ Jordan sighs.
‘You took the words right out my mouth.’
‘Lord.’ She kicks a piece of wood, glancing up at the parts that still stick up from the ground like fingers of a hand reaching up to the sky. ‘This is completely …’
‘Yeah.’ I crouch down and pick up a shattered photo frame, inside which is a news clipping of May, the calling card of exceptionally proud parents.UOKC RESEARCH AIMS TO PUT THE ‘EARLY’ IN EARLY DETECTION.A group of five people, May among them in a Johnny Cash T-shirt and jean shorts, poses beside one of the dated tornado sirens down in Prosperity.
‘Clean-up’s going to be an all-week affair.’ Jordan nudges me. ‘Red Cross will be here soon, but we’d better get a start on it now. C’mon.’
The house is still in a treacherous condition, so we wait on a couple of the Velascos’ construction-savvy friends to come over and help get inside so they can look around and grab what valuables they can find. Later on, the Red Cross arrive, joined by teams from the county, to assess the damage. I hear Mr Velasco mention that they’re fully insured, against floods and tornadoes, which is a very slight source of relief among all the chaos. The house is obviously their biggest concern, but then there’s the ranch – all the grazing land, the fences, the barns. And importantly, the animals, including May’s barrel-racing horse and the Velascos’ prize cattle, which Mrs Velasco assures May the ranch hands took to the evacuation barn, a town over, the second the tornado watch came on.
‘That’s good, at least.’ May sighs, wiping dirt off her hands on her sweatpants. ‘Rocky’s safe?’
‘Rocky’s safe, May, but where will we put him?’
‘We can take ’em all up to Tía’s, right? She’s got room on her farm.’
‘May.’ Mrs Velasco takes her daughter’s hand. ‘We arelucky. We can’t push it. We’ll take this a step at a time.’
Her mother heads off to check with the contractors alongside her dad. It’s definitely not my place – it’s not my scene, and I shouldn’t be saying shit considering I’m the guy who decided to turn up again after leaving the state – but I open my mouth anyway.
‘We’re here for you, May,’ I say tentatively. ‘If anyone can get back on their feet—’
‘Colt, you can stop now, alright?’ Her voice wavers, her eyes filling with tears, fists clenched at her sides. The hasty bun she’s tied her hair into threatens to fall out from on top of her head.‘Please! Acting like you’ve been here all this time when you got out of this place as fast as you could and this,thisis what we deal with while you’re up there at your game-night bars and your socials and your after-parties. Okay? I get why you’re here. I get it. I amsorryfor the pain you are feeling. But you aren’t helping my pain when you treat me like you’re some sort ofgiftto thesimple peopleof Oklahoma, right in front of my damn face and this house, our home …’
She covers her mouth with a quivering hand, shaking her head. ‘Please, please just let us be. Please, Colt.’
Chapter Twenty-Six
PBR on the Porch
Colt
‘Don’t take her too seriously.’
Mr Velasco’s reassurance comes with a cold bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, straight out of someone’s truck cooler. He nods, extending it my way. ‘Here. We really appreciate you helping us today.’
‘I don’t know that your daughter does.’
He lets out a laugh, probably the first someone’s laughed in this space in hours. The sun is starting to dip below the horizon, and we watch the teams clearing out for the day from up on the porch – one of the only parts of the house left intact. ‘She does. In her strange, Mayday way.’
‘Can I …’ I accept the beer, popping the cap in thought before I finish my sentence. ‘Would you guys like to stay at ourstonight? It can be the night; it can be however long you’d like. I just … I think …’
A weight seems to lift from Mr Velasco’s shoulders. He smiles, and it’s both grateful and melancholy. ‘We’d like that. Can’t thank you enough.’
‘You don’t have to. We can head over soon.’
