Sightings Read Free Page B

weathermen’s warnings, its harsh beeps bleating from the radio, warning us of tornado watches until midnight, reminding us that this was not a test. Ronald was over (we’d been comparing class schedules), when my father peeked his head into my bedroom and told him he might as well stay over, that there was no sense braving a “goddamned whopper like this.”
    Arrangements were made – sleeping bags unfurled on the living room carpet, grape soda put on ice – while Ronald and I watched the storm from the porch. We watched as a slow wind began tearing through the leaves, and how our front yard oak trees – once the target of an unprovoked mass toilet papering – now faced a far different foe.
    One moment there was nothing and then, everything. The thunder came first, followed by the flash. And then the rain began flying in sideways, like Unser’s rain, and as the howling picked up and the stars receded, we turned back toward the screen door.
    We stopped.
    From our place on the porch we spotted movement in the corners of our eyes. There was somebody out there, or several somebodies – it was hard to make out who. Ronald and I squinted until they came into focus, Pony and his tribe scurrying across their yard, collecting what remained of their lawn ornaments. Their mother shouted inaudible directions to them from the doorway, her finger pointing in a hundred different directions as her children scattered, tucking the rabbits and bunnies and deer into their chests like footballs.
    They were drenched, Pony’s long hair sticking to the left side of his face, and through all the shouting, somehow their dog slipped from between their mother’s thick legs and burst across the street to our yard. This only caused Mrs. Ross’s shouting to raise a pitch higher, and I was reminded once more of all the shouts and yips I’d endured throughout the summer, all the Indian asses pressed to my bedroom window.
    I left the porch and called out to him – “Come here, pal,” – and sure enough, after releasing a nice, steaming dump on my mother’s gardenias, he trotted over as if to claim his prize.
    I grabbed him by the collar and then – faster than a speeding fastball – ran him home as the world fell apart all around us. Thick limbs cracked and collapsed on all sides of me, but I dodged everything, swooping over branch and under water to return that dog to safety. I leapt the trash bin lids that rolled down our street like tumbleweed, sidestepped the water-choked sewers. I was suddenly fearless, even as the sign for Kickapoo Drive rattled in the wind. I arrived at their home, handing the trembling dog over to his rightful owner, felt the leathered hand reaching back.
    I heard a single word whispered over the sound of the crashing thunder:
    Huckleberry.
    I can’t say if it was Pony or not – it was just some old, Indian hand – and by the time the hand laced its fingers beneath the dog’s collar, I was already soaring back toward my porch. There was no thank you, just a change in grip, the charge safely passed and then silence.
    Ronald began shouting to me upon my return, though I could hardly hear him over the wind chimes.
    â€œJer! What the shit man! What the shit?”
    I didn’t say anything, just stared at the dog fur stuck to my palm and thought about saving lives.
    After another few minutes of peering into the night we watched the neighborhood teepee teeter and crash to the ground, its long poles clattering like a pile of pickup sticks, the canvas deflating.
    It was the closest thing to a premonition I ever experienced, and less than a week later, long after the storm subsided, the Indians were gone. Their father had gotten transferred to Indianapolis, and while the rest of us were out trying on school clothes and stocking up on boxes of Kleenex, their tribe worked in reverse – reforming their assembly line and passing boxes from