The Storm Makers

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  FOR MY DAD, WHOSE OBSESSION WITH

  DOPPLER RADAR PROBABLY LED ME HERE…

  THANKS FOR ALWAYS REFUSING TO TURN OFF

  THE WEATHER CHANNEL!

  There are some things you learn best in calm,

  and some in storm.

  —WILLA CATHER

  one

  ONLY RUBY KNEW about the stranger in the barn.

  It was the dogs who had first given him away. She’d been watching from her bedroom window as they danced at the double-doored entrance, bounding in and then out again amid a small cloud of dust. They were a cowardly duo, a pair of oversized brown mutts that seemed perpetually startled by the mob of barn cats in their midst. But Ruby had begun to get up anyway, in case it turned out to be something worse—a garter snake or a rat. And when she saw them suddenly dart away, streaking back up the drive and toward the house, she pressed her face closer to the window just in time to see a man walk out of the barn.

  He yawned and stretched, tilting his face toward the paling sky, then moved casually out into the open as if he were waking up in his own bedroom rather than the McDuffs’ crumbling barn. He was tall, perhaps the tallest person Ruby had ever seen, with long legs that seemed to account for an unusually large percentage of his body, giving him an overall storklike impression, which wasn’t helped by the length of his nose. There was something in his manner that she found unsettling, an air of confidence, like he was somehow entitled to be there.

  Ruby knew she should probably yell for Mom and Dad, or at least wake Simon, who was still asleep in his room next door. But even so, she remained frozen on the edge of her bed, unable to move from the window.

  As she watched, the man pulled a hat from his back pocket—a raggedy gray thing that barely held its shape—and placed it carefully on his head. He wore dark pants and a blue shirt with buttons that glinted in the sun, which seemed to Ruby an outfit better suited for an office than for stowing away in someone’s hayloft. He thumped a hand against his chest as if to give himself a kick start, then yawned once more before turning to walk purposefully up the drive.

  Ruby waited for another minute, her eyes still wide, her nose still touching the glass, and then vaulted out of bed and ran down the stairs in her pajamas.

  She saw Mom half turn from the griddle as she passed the kitchen, and she forced herself to slow to a somewhat normal speed. Dad looked up from the table, where he seemed to be examining the tines of a fork, turning it in circles and humming to himself.

  “Breakfast in ten, okay?” Mom yelled as Ruby hurried past, but she was already out the front door. She paused for a moment and swept her eyes around in search of the stranger, but it was as if he’d simply disappeared in the acres of wheat that bordered the farmhouse. As she headed toward the barn, the scorched earth was hot against her bare feet. The sky overhead was still pink at the edges where it touched the fields that stretched in every direction, flat and endless and unchanging.

  The dogs had returned and were now milling about at the entrance to the barn. Their tails fanned the air as Ruby approached at a jog. “You guys are fantastic security guards,” she said, giving each a pat as she stepped around them. “Really.”

  Inside, the barn was stiflingly hot—like everything else these days—and there was a crackling dryness to it, as if the hay might go up in flames at any moment. But other than the recent rise in temperatures, very little else had changed in the year since the McDuffs first bought the place.

  Their ten acres of land could be called a farm only in the very loosest sense of the word. From the outside, someone might be fooled into thinking they knew what they were doing; they’d planted just enough crops to get by, a half-dozen acres of corn and wheat, all of which was wilting badly in the drought.

  But the inside of the barn told a different story; there were no cows or pigs or sheep, just a few bales of hay in the very back, where the cats liked to curl up in the afternoons. The building’s main function was to act as Dad’s workshop. This was where he now spent his days, bent over a thick wooden table, struggling to give shape to the yet uninvented invention that had brought them all out here in the first place.

  In their old life, in a small suburb of Chicago, Dad had been a high school science teacher, and Mom a florist. But a year ago, just after Simon and Ruby turned eleven, their parents had traded in their perfectly good jobs and their perfectly acceptable lives to pursue their own separate dreams of becoming an inventor and an artist.

  So far, Mom had finished painting only a single picture of the barn, which looked about as dire as the thing itself, and Dad had amassed a stable full of wires and bolts and rattling sheets of metal, though not much else.

  “Imagining the thing is half the battle,” he always said when Ruby watched him work, his face screwed up in concentration as he examined this tool or that, pausing every now and then to turn the page of one of the many books that lined the uneven floor.

  He knew exactly what he wanted to build. He’d come up with the idea to put a device beneath the floor of every major train station and airport and sports stadium in the country, places with steady flows of traffic, people walking back and forth all day long, running for their trains or pacing during delays or jumping up and down for their teams. And the force of all those footsteps would be harnessed by his invention, which would turn them into enough energy to power the buildings themselves.

  Everyone agreed that it was a brilliant idea.

  The only problem was, he hadn’t quite figured out how to make the thing work yet.

  Now, Ruby made her way past the bookshelves and the lights and the radio Dad listened to while working, all the way to the back of the barn, where a small pile of hay bales were stacked along the wall. As she approached, thinking that it looked altogether too neat and that perhaps she had only dreamed the man in the blue shirt, she noticed one of the kittens crouched between the bales, batting at something with her paw. When Ruby drew near, she sprang up and loped off with her tail held high, disappearing into one of the stalls and leaving behind a silver button with the faintest of etchings on its metallic surface: a tiny, perfect O.

  By the time Ruby skidded into her seat at the breakfast table, Simon was already there, eyeing his plateful of pancakes.

  “About time,” he said, stabbing one with his fork. The McDuffs had a rule about waiting until everyone was at the table before eating, and Simon’s appetite—Mom called it healthy, though Ruby would have gone with disgusting—usually meant he was the first to arrive. Dad slid a pancake onto Ruby’s plate while Mom poured her a glass of orange juice.

  “Sorry,” she said. “The dogs were acting funny.”

  “Shocking,” Simon said, raising his eyebrows. He was still in pajamas, too, and his blond hair looked more like feathers than anything else this morning, sticking out in all directions. His eyes—the same shade of blue as Ruby’s—were still heavy with sleep. “What was it this time? The kittens? A mouse?”

  She slipped a hand into the thin pocket of her pajama pants, where she’d tucked the silver button. Dad was reading the newspaper and Mom was buttering a piece of toast, and Ruby took the opportunity to give Simon a long look, a look intended to be meaningful, but that obviously fell somewhat short.

  “What?” he asked, wiping his sleeve across his face. “Syrup? Did I get it?”

  Ruby sighed and shook her head. “No, you’re fine.”

  It wasn’t long ago that they’d been able to read each other’s thoughts without even trying. Or at least it had seemed that way. They’d grown up side by side, slept in the same room for most of their lives, whispered secrets
in the dark, invented languages, and murmured stories. They’d come into the world together at nearly the same moment, and because of this it had always seemed they were meant to stay that way.

  But if there was anything Ruby had learned in the last year, it was that things change. In summers past, she and Simon had explored their old neighborhood together. They’d raced their bikes and built a tree house; they’d invented a new flavor of Popsicle, and held a contest to see who could keep their goldfish alive the longest. They’d done all this amid sidewalks and driveways and rows of hedges. On concrete playgrounds and back porches and soccer fields.

  But now the backdrop to their lives was so much starker, so much wider, and sometimes Ruby couldn’t help feeling like the landscape itself was to blame for all that had changed between her and her twin brother. How could you be the king and queen of a place with no boundaries, where the sky fell like a blade against the horizon in every direction?

  Maybe they’d never really been inseparable so much as they hadn’t ever had room to separate.

  Ever since they’d turned twelve last month, Simon had grown moody, often stalking off into the fields or locking himself in his room for no reason at all. On rainy days, he’d taken to lying on his bed for hours at a time, mindlessly tossing a baseball up at the ceiling. Even the dogs had begun to avoid him, shying away in a mystifying display of wariness.

  Now they were keeping a wide berth around Simon’s seat as they circled the table, their noses twitching at the smell of the food. When he accidentally dropped a piece of pancake near his foot, both dogs hesitated, then one of them—the braver one—darted over to grab it before scurrying away again as if being chased.

  “So what’s on the agenda today?” Mom asked as she reached for the syrup.

  Simon groaned. “Trying not to melt.”

  “It’s like an oven out there,” Ruby agreed.

  “Oh, come on,” Dad said in the same falsely cheerful voice he’d begun to use for nearly everything these days. “It’s not that bad.”

  “Actually, it sort of is,” Mom said with a grin. “Sorry, hon. But I spent half of yesterday with my head in the freezer.”

  Dad shook his head mournfully. “How did I manage to get stuck with a family of such big wimps?”

  “Luck, I guess,” Mom said, nudging the empty bread basket in the direction of the twins. “Would one of you pop in a few more pieces of toast?”

  Ruby was the first to put her finger on her nose, so Simon rose with a sigh and grabbed the basket. Rules were rules.

  “I know, I know. Life is so tough,” Mom teased him as he moved sullenly around the kitchen. “And not to add to your troubles, but you’re on laundry duty later.”

  “Can’t Ruby do it?” he asked. “I’m helping Dad this morning, and then I wanted to get in some pitching practice this afternoon.”

  “You’ve got all day,” Mom said, unmoved. “And it’s your turn, not Ruby’s.”

  Simon rolled his eyes, though Ruby couldn’t tell if it was meant for her or for Mom or for them both. Right now, he seemed to be upset with the toast more than anything, jamming in the first slice of bread so hard that it crumpled like an accordion.

  “If Dad needs you this morning, we’ll get to it later this afternoon,” Mom continued, spearing a piece of pancake with her fork. “But it’s got to get done, okay?”

  “Okay,” Simon said, his voice heavy with frustration as he angled the second slice into the toaster, his hand brushing up against its metal paneling. As he did, there was a sudden spark, followed by a quick popping sound, and then the lights in the kitchen went abruptly dark.

  Simon dropped the bread and took a swift step backward, his mouth open. The hum of the air conditioner had gone silent, and the numbers on the microwave had disappeared. Everyone stared at Simon, who stood absolutely still.

  A few beats of silence passed, and then a few more. Finally, Dad cleared his throat. “Must’ve been a short circuit,” he said, looking vaguely pleased at the idea that something electronic might need fixing. “I’ll go down and check it out.”

  But Mom was still looking at Simon. “You okay?” she asked, and he held up both hands like a criminal caught in the act.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” he said quickly, and Mom let out a little laugh.

  “Of course it wasn’t,” she said. But from where Ruby sat at the table—the dogs cowering beneath her feet, the kitchen dark and silent—she wasn’t nearly as sure.

  two

  RUBY STILL HADN’T HAD A CHANCE to tell Simon about the button in her pocket. As soon as Dad had finished fixing the circuit breakers—letting out a triumphant whoop from the basement when the lights flickered on again—the two of them headed out to the barn together, leaving Ruby on dish duty with Mom.

  They stood side by side at the sink, looking out the window as the dogs ran circles around the scarecrow. The sun had risen higher now, making the fields look washed out and pale, and the heat quivered above them like something you could reach out and touch.

  Behind them, on the little TV set that was perched atop the microwave, the morning news showed images of the tornadoes that had been ripping across the Plains States with uncommon frequency—a montage of torn shingles and uprooted road signs—before switching to a story about unusually high rainfall and heavy flooding in New England. Ruby swiveled to watch, and Mom set down a soapy dish with a sigh.

  “Wish we’d get some of that rain up here,” she said, looking out grimly over the cracked fields beyond the window.

  On the TV, the lens of the camera was being pelted by raindrops that looked as big as quarters, and two people in slickers stood waist-deep in water. Ruby shook her head. “Not rain like that.”

  “No,” Mom agreed. “But we need some. Otherwise…”

  “Otherwise, what?” Ruby asked, feeling a faint tug of hope at the thought of their old life in the suburbs. This move was supposed to make life better, but the crops had been meant to keep them afloat until Dad had some luck with his invention or Mom got a letter back from one of the art galleries she was always writing to in Chicago.

  Nobody could have foreseen such an epic drought, though, the worst in a hundred years, at least according to the old farmers at the general store in town, their leathery faces set with worried wrinkles. Their first summer on the farm had been fairly normal, and the winter no worse than the ones in Chicago, but it was only the beginning of June, and already this had been the longest summer of Ruby’s life. It was the summer of heat and the summer of humidity, the summer of sweat and the summer of fans.

  But mostly, it was the summer of dust.

  Dust had become a fact of life. It was everywhere: in their teeth and in the creases between their toes, in their hair and in their eyes. Even after taking a shower, Ruby seemed to always find it in her bed at night, and it came through the window on the blades of the fans, determined to coat every inch of the house. To make things worse, there’d been a spate of freak wind gusts lately, rushing breezes that kicked loose the dry dirt in the fields and sent it sailing in great hazy clouds across the farm, stinging anyone who dared to venture outside.

  Ruby couldn’t help it. She hated the acres of land here, with hardly a tree in sight, and the vast and complete darkness that settled over the farm every night. The water in the shower was always cold and the house creaked and sang its way through the nights, and though she now had her own room, it felt big and lonely and not at all like she’d always imagined it.

  When she thought of home, it didn’t include a barn or a scarecrow; it was the house she’d grown up in, and she’d give just about anything to go back.

  Mom turned back to the sink, fishing around in the foamy water for the sponge.

  “Otherwise, what?” Ruby asked again, hoping the answer might be that they’d have to move back, pick up where they left off, pretend this year had never happened. But Mom’s mouth was set in a thin line, and she gave her head a little shake. They stood there like that for a while,
one washing, one drying, neither speaking.

  “So,” Mom said eventually, her voice a bit too bright, “any big plans for the day?”

  “No,” Ruby said shortly.

  “You two could go for a ride,” she suggested, and when she saw Ruby’s face, she laughed. “It’s not like it’s all that much cooler in here. At least on the bike you might catch a breeze.”

  “I’ll ask Simon,” Ruby said without much hope. She was pretty sure neither of her parents had noticed the distance between her and her brother, caught up as they were in their own separate projects.

  There was enough space here that it was easy to lose sight of one another.

  After the dishes were put away and the table was wiped off and she’d changed out of her pajamas, Ruby headed back out to the barn. The sun burned her scalp and parched her throat, but she was used to that by now. The worst part was how the heat had started to make every day seem exactly like the one before, a never-ending chain of moments, all melted together like candle wax.

  Now, as she neared the barn, she could hear a sound like drumming, punctuated by Simon’s laughter. Once inside, she could see that he was jumping up and down on a flat piece of metal that was suspended above another by thick, coiled springs. Beside him, Dad was frowning so hard at the lightbulb—connected to the contraption by a cluster of wires—that Ruby was surprised it didn’t light up out of sheer intimidation.

  “Any luck?” she asked, letting her eyes adjust. They’d taken to calling it the TGI—the Totally Genius Invention—but so far, it had done little more than give off a few accidental sparks.

  Dad seemed not to notice that she’d joined them, but Simon shook his head. “Makes a pretty good trampoline, though.”

  “Want to go for a bike ride?” Ruby asked.

  “Maybe later,” he said, but the way he said it, she knew better than to wait around. Instead, she crossed the width of the barn and unhinged one of the stall doors, then wheeled out her bike. But when she walked by Dad, he looked up sharply.