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  Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Wolf, Ryan.

  Title: Watches and warnings / Ryan Wolf.

  Description: New York : West 44, 2020. | Series: West 44 YA verse Identifiers: ISBN 9781538382714 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781538382721 (library bound) | ISBN 9781538383360 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Children’s poetry, American. | Children’s poetry, English. | English poetry.

  Classification: LCC PS586.3 W654 2020 | DDC 811’.60809282--dc23

  First Edition

  Published in 2020 by Enslow Publishing LLC 101 West 23rd Street, Suite #240 New York, NY 10011

  Copyright © 2020 Enslow Publishing LLC

  Editor: Caitie McAneney Designer: Seth Hughes

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer.

  Printed in the United States of America

  CPSIA compliance information: Batch #CS18W44: For further information contact Enslow Publishing LLC, New York, New York at 1-800-542-2595.

  THE CELLAR

  “It’s always wise to worry about the wind. When it gets tired of our little farms and schools and grocery stores, it will kick them down. It’ll shake us into the sky.” Mr. Gregor likes to talk this way as we replace old soup cans with new ones on his steel shelves. We sweep the concrete floors. Check the dates on medicines in his first aid kits. Drill together new racks. Fill them with supplies. Mr. Gregor could do this work himself. But then no one would hear his thoughts. Speaking makes him less afraid. So he tells me, again, how banks and governments fail. How they’re no match for a good storm. “I respect why the wind comes,” he says. “The earth can only make new things by brea king the old ones, and spinning them into different shapes.” He likes the shape he has now. So it’s best to keep ready. Mr. Gregor saw the death cloud touch down in 1993. Before I was born. “The storm was an EF5,” he told me once, while picking at his beard. “The strongest kind.” It killed his sister, her husband, and their baby. A sweet, Bible-believing family with plans to move to the state’s panhandle. While the cyclone screamed for them, they hid in a closet. Covered themselves with blankets. The evil wind did not pass them by or let them be. Mr. Gregor keeps their pictures framed inside the cellar. He dug this shelter in the ground because of what happened to them. Every Thursday night, I help him clean and care for the cellar. I wipe off the racks of camping lanterns. Water jugs. Bagged clothes. Bedding. Boots. Chargers you can crank by hand. I help him prepare for a storm that hasn’t arrived in 25 years. He pays me $40 each time. More than I deserve. Mom thinks I make only $20. I put $20 in the bank and bring $20 to Victor. My brother could use a cellar like Mr. Gregor has built. Then maybe the wind chasing him around would stop finding him. He could lie here, in this hole, until he was clean. Then we could go out East together. Like he promised last August. We could at least get to Tulsa. Or Oklahoma City. We could forget Uktena was even on the map.

  DEAD SKIN

  After I’m done with the cellar, I take my pay. Nod a goodbye to Mr. Gregor. Sneak behind the gas station two blocks over. Pass $20 to Victor. My brother has hungry hands. They eat the bills quickly and return to their pockets to rest. Victor looks like he could crawl into a pocket. Like he is ready to sleep forever. “Thanks, my good man,” he says. “Know if Gregor might be willing to pay more?” “I don’t think so,” I say. It’s a summer evening. About 85 degrees. Victor is wearing his winter coat. “Why don’t you ask him?” I shrug. A gray flap of dead skin hangs from his lip. “It never hurts,” the lips say as the skin flap sways. “I know,” I tell them. The lips don’t move. Victor’s eyes are the hungry ones now. Sliding from side to side. “The folks are still praying for you,” I say to keep him here longer. He smiles and the skin flap touches his teeth. He says, “We all talk to ourselves, don’t we?” I laugh at this, but the laugh feels strange when it sinks into my stomach. “Finish high school, my good man,” Victor says. “We’ll hit up New York. Or Chicago. Get an apartment.” I half-believe this. But I was in Victor’s current apartment once. It had a single bedroom shared by four people. There were footprints on the walls and the green carpet looked alive. When I went into the bathroom, I dug around. In a drawer, under a washcloth, I found his needles. I wanted to find them. They were holy objects. Like the nails that went into the wrists of Jesus. They entered his body and changed the course of everything.

  THE SKY

  I leave Victor with my money in his winter coat. I walk four blocks in the summer darkness. Pass Uktena Baptist, our family’s church. There’s a verse lit on its sign, shouting over the lawn: BEHOLD, I MAKE ALL THINGS NEW There isn’t much new to the plains that stretch out beyond our town. The native tribes and white settlers we learn about in school left their bones here. But they hardly changed the land. Maybe Mr. Gregor is wrong about the earth making new things after the storms. Our wooden houses keep cozy and quiet. But they don’t belong here. The cyclones only bring the land back to what it was before. The sky wants the land to stay flat. That way its beauty doesn’t compete with our little buildings. The sky can stay pure on a clear day or a cloudless night. Tonight the sky is black.

  BLESSING

  I enter my home through the back door. I give my mom $20 to put into the bank. Place the bill in her palm without looking up at her face. I begin setting the table. Fork, knife, spoon. Fork, knife, spoon. Fork, knife, spoon. And a tiny pink spoon for Angeline. Mom gets Angeline snug into her high chair. Dad pours grape juice into our glasses. Chicken sizzles. Broccoli steams. We pray for my sister and for my brother. We take turns. If it’s Dad’s turn, he always clears his throat. He speaks the same way he does when leading prayer during Sunday School and on Warrior Wednesdays. He has a firm voice that lands like a gavel, insisting God has no choice but to listen. When it’s Mom’s turn, she sounds like she’s put makeup on her voice. It’s the voice she wears when leading prayer during Sunday School and on Warrior Wednesdays. My parents are youth pastors. A husband and wife team. Their voices must stay bright enough to keep teenagers awake. Last year, they chose to show our church how large their hearts were. They adopted a child with Down syndrome from South Korea. Named her Angeline after my grandmother who died of lung cancer. We pray for Angeline’s upcoming doctor’s visits. For her health and happiness. That she grows up strong, knowing she is loved. For not only is she their child, she is God’s child. Angeline likes to wave her arms during the prayer. Later, I’ll wipe drool off her high chair tray. We pray for Victor. For his safety and return. That he is healed of the sickness in his body and soul. Released from the hold Satan has on his life. Receives the help he needs to be made whole. His chair sits empty across from me. He is alive, for now. Still, I imagine his ghost is seated with us. During the middle of the prayer, Mom checks to see if my eyes are shut. Sometimes if it’s her turn to pray, she says, “Lord, I hope Philip will show respect by keeping his lids closed and his heart on You.” It’s funny. She has to open her own eyes to know mine aren’t shut. When I pray, I tend to mumble. But I’m sure to cover the important bits. And no matter who is speaking, we always end with: Bless this food to our bodies. Keep Your angels around us. In Your precious name, Amen.

  THE AX

  I go to bed early on a summer night while others my age are elsewhere. Some must be drinking in secret at friends’ houses. Or kissing their dates with open mouths. They must be forgetting about death. Victor liked to smile at death. He used to show me horror movies on his laptop while my parents slept. Our beds were both
in this room. I sat on his mattress. He picked out a video, illegally downloaded. We watched teenage actors who could barely say their lines get their eyes poked out. Necks stabbed. Throats slit. We laughed. Once, when an ax went into the head of some drunk kid, I asked, “Do you think he went to heaven or hell?” I was 12 years old. The question seemed fair. “He didn’t go anywhere,” Victor said, smiling. “The ax comes toward your face, then Nothing. You don’t remember it hitting you. It’s like it never came and you never were.” This confused me. What my parents said about heaven was “gospel truth.” But Victor was smart. He knew things Mom and Dad didn’t. The thought of that kind of death made me feel cold and small. I tried to imagine everything I was coming to a stop. I couldn’t do it. Still don’t know how to. Since that night, I always think about death before I fall asleep. I used to try to picture Nothingness. I only saw the color black. Which is not the same as Nothingness. Now sometimes, when I think of death, I picture Victor at 16 with the wrist he broke while playing football. He is lying on the couch, with his working hand at rest in a potato chip bag for an entire hour, staring at a blank television screen. He doesn’t seem happy or hurt. He doesn’t seem like anything. Later, I find out he’s taken five Percocet pills for his pain. He only needed one. This could be how death is. You just stay like Victor was. Frozen forever. For now, I am here. In this bed. My thoughts slow, but do not stop. I hear the rain on the rooftop. Feel the sheets around me. Taste the mint from my toothpaste. Smell the damp dust in the air. Some of it made of my own dead skin. I forget where I am and that I am, in the end. I dream about Mr. Gregor’s storm cellar. I am packing cans of soup onto the shelves, but every time I look back, the shelves are empty.

  WATCH

  I come out of the fog at 1 a.m. to thunder slapping the sky. Rain on the rooftop landing louder. My phone buzzing. A text alert. Tornado watch for the county. This is the fourth tornado watch this year. Two tornadoes touched ground last month. But they were weak and neither reached Uktena. The wind rushes in wild bursts. Pressing itself against the house. Breathing hard onto the walls. I wonder about the thunder. The wind and the rain. Try to remember the steps to the science behind the sounds. I am not afraid, only curious and a bit tired. My thoughts sink. I float back into sleep.

  WARNING

  A hand is shaking my shoulder. The fingers dig me up from a dream I am forgetting. “Tornado warning,” Dad says, his voice pulling at my ears. “It’s plenty bad out there.” My bare feet trade damp sheets for carpet. The wind is beating at the side of the house even harder now. Each gust comes in waves along the floor. The storm siren lives near my high school. I can make out its whine along with the wind. It moves with the gusts. “Your mom and Angeline are in the basement,” Dad says. We are lucky. Most homes in Uktena don’t have basements because of the soil here. Lightning flashes through my blinds. It washes over the bed, where I am no longer lying. The room returns to darkness. Dad tosses me a hooded sweatshirt that belonged to my brother. I wonder if Victor is shooting up in his bathroom right now. As a storm rages outside, he will push a stronger storm into his blood. I look back at my bedroom as we leave it. On my dresser, I see the shadow-shapes of model helicopters. Victor and I built them together, years ago. I remember how tough it was to wash the model cement from my fingers. Another flash. A sudden anger jumps into my throat. I want the bed that keeps me warm to burn. I want the walls to be taken by the wind. I want to be shaken into the sky. The feeling leaves me, quick as it came. Shivers replace it. The thunder rumbles along the hairs on my arms. I follow my father downstairs. Fear crackles under my tongue as we cross the kitchen. We enter the open basement door.

  THE BASEMENT

  We are on the stairs when the lights go out. Angeline’s scream scrapes the total black. I feel around for the rail. Still trip on the last step. I move toward the sound of the NOAA Weather Radio, running on battery. Toward Mom singing to Angeline: “He’s got the whole world in His hands…” Dad swears as his foot strikes something in the dark. I’ve never heard him curse before. The radio is repeating the same warning on a loop. Take immediate cover. Angeline and Mom are huddled under the table with the radio on it. When I reach them, I grab Angeline’s shoulder by accident. She screams again. “Sssshhhhh,” Mom says. “Sssshhhhh. It’s okay, baby. It’s okay.” She sings, more slowly than in church. She prays. The prayer is not forced like a church prayer or a dinner prayer. It’s a prayer that shivers in the dark. Like the feeling I had in my bedroom. My mother seems more sad and real to me than I can remember. I would answer her prayer if I had the power. I think of Mr. Gregor’s sister and her baby in 1993. Did they sing into the storm? Did they pray? I try to. But only in my head with its broken thoughts. And not for very long. My eyes fill with white. Dad’s pointing a flashlight he found in a drawer. I see the wet cheeks of my mom and Angeline. Take immediate cover. The flashlight lowers. There’s a buzz and a rattle. The careless footsteps of a greedy giant in a fairy tale. My ears begin to pop and I know what this means. The death cloud. The ax.

  PRESSURE

  The flashlight streaks and scratches along the darkness. A roar covers everything. In bursts, I see the basement’s beams and boxes, the washer, the dryer, tables, chairs, all jumping old toy sets, like popcorn. Like the ground is covered in hot coals. The radio voice whirrs as it bounces from the table and breaks onto the concrete. Angeline’s child-screams combine with Mom’s prayers inside the roar. Dad trips as he dives under the table with us. His shoulder pushes against mine. The hiss and the crash, above and around, drown my ears. The pressure pulls me down into a pit inside myself. My mind is a room inside a room and the room is full. So full that there is no empty space at all. I cannot move. Everything around me is slow and heavy. Time is twisted up in the death cloud. It stretches with the roar. Then the cloud lets it go. Time drops onto the floor. Returns to its usual flow. Angeline’s little voice is full of baby tears and we are not dead. We are not dead. Nothing has stopped.

  AFTER

  Dad’s flashlight shows us the basement now. White dust has fallen from the ceiling. But the ceiling is still there. The washer and dryer moved a few inches, but aren’t dented. Cardboard boxes slipped from their shelves. But the shelves stand firm. Mom is kissing Angeline over and over. Dad just keeps moving his flashlight, back-forth, forth-back, across the room. “Thought there would be more damage,” he says. “It sounded so close.” I want to check my phone to see if the twister is gone. I feel for it. In the hoodie. In my sweatpants. Must have left it on my bed. “You got your phone, Dad?” I ask. “Yes,” he says. “Should’ve just used its light before. Wasn’t thinking.” “Check the alerts,” I say. He turns off the flashlight. The basement goes dark again. I can feel the heat of our life, hanging in the black. Dad’s phone screen brightens the room. “I think we’re fine,” he says after a long minute. Angeline is quiet now. “I think we’re fine.”

  THE BALCONY

  There’s more white dust upstairs. Shards from a glass left on the counter dot the kitchen floor. The window is cracked over our sink. Through it, I see the night sky tinted green. The lime glow spreads across a dim collage of metal and wood. Streetlights and power lines are snapped. Wooden poles crisscrossed. Branches from trees in separate yards make bony handshakes. Houses are tilted, poked by the finger of the fairy-tale giant. The homes of the Fischers, a young couple, and the Wagners, a family of four, aren’t there at all. There is a view to the plains where their houses stood. Crooked posts stick out from uneven ground. I tremble. Feel a gust come from the staircase going up to the bedrooms. When I turn, the wind reaches under my hood. Glides along the sides of my neck. I hear Dad curse again as he walks past me. I follow him upstairs. In my parents’ bedroom, a table lamp is broken. A jewelry box has spit out its rings and necklaces. Angeline’s pink crib is closer to the television than before. But the walls are unmoved. The rosy wallpaper unpeeled. Across the hall, my door
is thrown open. Barely on its hinges. Wind cuts through the gap. A light spray of rain travels with it. Faint green from the after-storm shines sickly on the doorframe. Two of my bedroom walls are pushed away. So is a chunk of the ceiling. Gone into the green night. I have a new balcony. It holds a perfect view of Uktena. The wicked wind granted the wish I never should have had. The death cloud shook my room into sky. Tossed my bed to the trees. It’s brought a new guest to take my place. The guest is lodged into the side of a wall that still exists. Where model helicopters once perched is the sign from our church. Its message looks like a Wheel of Fortune puzzle. Letters are missing. But I can fill in the blanks: BEH_LD, I MAK_ A_L TH_NGS N_W

  THE DOOR’S EDGE

  The death cloud took Mr. Gregor. Slammed him into the doors of his cellar as he tried to get underground. When he was found the next day, his head was nearly pulled from his neck. The corner of a door had jammed into his throat. Turned his tongue to red mush. No one knew why Mr. Gregor was not already inside his cellar after the first storm watch was issued. He always listened to the radio. Played it at his bedside through the night. He should’ve heard the warning. His house fell directly within the tornado’s warpath. It was beaten into a pile of planks. I never saw the result. Dad wouldn’t let me come along when he surveyed the neighborhood to see how bad the damage was. He went with a police officer who visited my school once to talk about the dangers of drugs. When they found Mr. Gregor’s body, they carried it for half a mile. Ambulances couldn’t get any closer. Our streets are twisted forests bunched with wire. Uktena is near the plains. Yet there are woods along the border. Most who built their homes here grew even more trees in their yards. Some that fell during the storm were over 100 years old. Their long trunks lie through the middle of every road into town. The National Guard was called in to help with the recovery. Only a few trucks have arrived. They park outside our forest streets. Other towns have worse damage. If that is even possible. All day, I hear neighbors with chainsaws cutting apart branches and tree trunks. They wade through the wires and metal scraps. Clear away brush. When I hear the saws, I think of the door’s edge, cutting into Mr. Gregor. I wonder how he felt in that instant. A horror film come to life. It wasn’t a masked killer or hateful ghost snatching his soul. It was the earth itself, as Mr. Gregor expected. It took him to join his sister, her husband, his baby nephew. Sometimes I almost believe if I think about death for long enough, I will never die. But that doesn’t work. Thinking about death didn’t save Mr. Gregor. It’s silly, but I wish I’d tugged on his beard. Just to know how real he was. I’ve clawed at the skin on my arm to feel my own realness. The feeling doesn’t stick. The death cloud’s shadow makes everything unreal. It pushes life to become stranger and stranger. Last night, Victor came home.