A Song for the Road by Kathleen Basi (classic literature books txt) 📕

Dicey woke with a start, cursing. “What is it? What happened?”

“I don’t know. Check your phone.”

Dicey scanned the horizon. The sky looked like Dr. Frankenstein’s lab gone wild. “Miriam, that is a shitload of lightning.”

The car bucked again. “I know.” Miriam sounded calmer than she felt. “Tell me what’s going on.”

Dicey cursed again. “Tornado warning.”

“How close?”

“I don’t know, I’m trying to find out—just wait a minute! I’ve only got one bar.”

Miriam gripped the steering wheel, knowing nothing she said could make the insufficient connection move faster.

“The map won’t load,” Dicey said. “I don’t know where we are!” She leaned forward and peered into the deepening gloom.

The seconds ticked by. Miriam’s fingers ached from gripping the steering wheel so hard, repeatedly wresting back control of the car. The wind was like a living thing, howling against the windows. The gloom settled around them. And just when she thought it couldn’t get any worse, it did.

“Miriam …” Dicey’s voice sounded squeaky. She pointed.

“I see it!” The twister looked like a narrow Play-Doh worm flipping around while God rolled it through the sky. It roared toward them in the midst of a huge debris field. Maybe Miriam was imagining things, but it sure looked like it was getting fatter by the moment.

The prairie stretched, rolling and unbroken, to every side. No ditches to hide in, no buildings to shelter in.

“Don’t freak out, don’t freak out,” Miriam whispered.

Dicey grabbed the overhead handlebar as the car bucked again. “Are you kidding? This is exactly the time to freak out!”

“There.” Miriam pointed. “That sign up there. What’s it say?”

A yellow triangle flashed past. “Narrow bridge. Narrow bridge!” Dicey said. “We can hide under the bridge!”

Miriam veered onto the shoulder.

The road cut through a low ridge, too small to provide any real protection. They got out of the car; the rain stung as Miriam half dragged, half carried Dicey down the grassy slope at the edge of the road. Her locket slapped her collarbone with every step.

It wasn’t much of a bridge—just a short deck enclosed by guardrails crossing a shallow ditch gouged into the prairie by runoff. But at least it blocked the rain. Mostly, at least.

The wind, though, was unstoppable. Dust and debris slapped Miriam in the face. The women huddled up into the narrow angle where the sloping creek bank met concrete. Miriam huddled behind Dicey, putting protective arms around her companion, as if she could possibly ward off a twister. Dicey clutched her arms. Her metal bracelet bit into Miriam’s forearm.

The younger woman was mumbling; it took Miriam a minute to recognize the Lord’s Prayer. The gut shot went clear through her: it hadn’t even occurred to her to pray. Just how much of herself would she lose before this was over?

If she died in the next five minutes, Mom might never know what happened to her.

And what about Dicey, whom she’d dragged along for this ride into hell? Dicey had a mother too. And an unborn child!

Miriam didn’t want to die. She wanted to live. Not just exist, mummified in her guilt and regret and loss. But live. Like Dicey, grabbing life by the horns. Like Becky, indispensable to everyone around her.

Please, Miriam whispered silently. I’ll do anything. I’ll talk to Mom. I’ll tell Gus—somehow. I’ll even be nice to Jo! Just keep us alive.

The tornado roared closer, the wind at its edges skittering up and down in pitch like a banshee. Miriam closed her eyes and added her voice to that of the girl trembling in her arms.

 30

WHEN THE STORM PASSED and the two women emerged, shaking and battered by debris, from their hiding place, they found the darkness complete. They struggled up the wet embankment in the rain. Dicey got back in the car, but Miriam wanted to check the vehicle’s condition before they went on. She walked around it, using her phone as a flashlight. The front windshield was cracked, the driver’s side back window shattered altogether. The instrument cases in the back seat were littered with glass, but mercifully it seemed to have missed the front seats. Hailstones covered the rear floor, though. And she had no intention of picking them out. Not with broken glass all over everything.

The outside of the car was pockmarked, the finish rough after being sandblasted by dust.

Becky was going to kill her.

She got in and closed the door. With the back window broken, it wasn’t exactly cozy, but it got her out of the rain. “Let’s go find a service station,” she said.

“Let’s hope the car starts.”

“It’ll start.”

Dicey raised her eyebrows, cradling her abdomen protectively. “Just sayin’.”

Miriam had always hated that phrase, but she pinched her annoyance beneath her lips and started the car. “See?”

But the moment she pulled forward, she knew something was wrong. The motion felt jerky and uneven. She shut it off again before stepping back into the rain.

She’d missed the flat front tire. A shattered glass bottle lay right behind it. She hadn’t even felt the car go over it when she pulled off the road.

Nothing to be done about it now. Miriam popped the trunk and retrieved the tent and the sleeping bag. “Here, spread this out,” she told Dicey, handing her the sleeping bag. Then, she started rigging the tent cover around the edges of the back door.

“What are you doing?” Dicey asked.

“We have a flat.”

“Don’t we have a spare?”

“I imagine we have a donut. But it’s buried under all our stuff, and it’s raining, and it’s dark.”

Dicey pulled her phone out. “I have no signal.” She sounded scared. “Do you?”

Miriam got into the car and closed the door. “No,” she said, anxiety gnawing her insides. She’d just promised Jo to keep in touch, and she couldn’t. Jo would freak. Mom would freak.

Well, there was not a thing she could do about it now. She relaxed her throat to keep her tone even. “We’ll just have to wait for daylight.”

“How can you be so calm?” Dicey’s voice, normally so dusky, was almost sopranino.

Miriam