My Brother's Name by Laura Krughoff

Author:Laura Krughoff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mighty Media, Inc.
Published: 2013-09-20T00:00:00+00:00

A BANK OF STORM CLOUDS ROLLS ACROSS OUR CITY AT dawn. Morning brings first an orange sky and then a green one. Raindrops hiss through the air and dash like mercury on my windowsill. I wake in confusion, thinking for a moment I am home at our parents’ house and the tornado sirens in our town are wailing. But it is only an ambulance passing. I don’t know if a city this size is ever subject to tornadoes. Maybe they need more space, less disruption between the land and the sky. I look out my window just in time to see lightning strike. The bolt sears my retinas, and before I can close my eyes against the painful light, a transformer box on the power lines explodes. Sparks fill the air and rain down on the street. Our power hums and dies. The box fan on my floor comes to a stop, and I hear the microwave in the kitchen beep.

“Holy shit,” I say, pressing my fingers to my eyes. John snores. I collapse back into bed and am dragged down into feverish sleep.

The rain does not let up. My bedroom window is a cataract when I finally get up. A new wave of thunderstorms is muscling its way over our city when I leave for work. The wet sky crackles, and when lightning isn’t ripping from cloud to cloud, the streets look as if dusk has fallen hours early. My sneakers are soaked and my jeans have wicked water to the knee by the time I get to work. Stew’s is empty except for Sean doing push-ups behind the last aisle. He jumps up when the bell above the front door rings as I enter.

“Sean,” I say, and Sean salutes.

“Welcome back,” he says.

“Shitty-ass weather, huh?” I say. My umbrella streams water across the store floor. I toss it into the office.

“Dude, it’s perfect,” Sean says. He crosses to the front of the store and peers up at the sky around a neon Yamaha sign. “I love it. I wish we’d get a tornado or something. If this were still a prairie, we could see this weather happening for miles.”

“I was wondering about that.”

“What?”

“Tornadoes,” I say. “Do tornadoes ever hit the city?”

“Not that I’ve ever known about,” Sean says. He’s still watching the sky. “Something about how all this concrete affects the ground temperature, I think. Up drafts. That sort of thing.”

“Okay,” I say. I take down the guitar that Sean hung up in the wrong place last night and return it to its rightful position before taking my place behind the counter. “We’re going to be dead all day.”

“Here’s the story, Fields,” Sean says. “I’ve told the band you’re coming this Sunday. Everybody’s stoked. You’re in, right?”

John and I didn’t talk about Sean’s band last night.

“I’m in,” I say. “I’m good to go.”

“That’s what I’m talking about,” Sean turns toward the office but turns back to me before taking a step. “While I’m thinking of it, let me give you Clint’s digits.

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