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“What did I do to deserve that?” I asked. “I treated you as well as I could. I put you on a pedestal. Then you were the one who said you were unhappy. I waswildlyunhappy, but I was willing to stick by our marriage vows. This was all you.”
“I settled for you,” she said coldly. “I thought you could be better, and I settled for you. But you just couldn’t leave your stupid backward Texas life behind. You were always so stuck on them. So stuck in being a dumb-ass redneck.”
“Get out,” I said. “I don’t want to even hear your name unless it’s coming out of my lawyer’s mouth.”
“Fine,” she said, sticking her chin up in the air and dramatically sweeping toward the door. “I’ll have James call you and tell you what an idiot you’ve been.”
As she walked out, heading to her car, I noticed one of my neighbors watching from their garden. She must have been there the whole time. She watched as Sarah left and then turned toward me with an expression of empathetic sadness. I shut the door and leaned against it for a moment. Adrenaline was running through me so hard that I wanted to break things. I wanted to punch a punching bag until my hands were raw. I wanted to…
Work out.
Yanking the polo off and tossing it onto my bed, I pulled open my drawers and found a T-shirt. I slid it on and grabbed my phone, not bothering to change out of my jeans. I wasn’t planning on doing cardio today. Today was going to be all about lifting until my arms were jelly.
I tried calling Melanie but got voicemail. I tried a second time and got the same response. So, I pulled up her contact info and shot her a text, asking simply that she would call me ASAP. Then I opened the door to the garage and stepped down into my sanctuary.
I flipped the television on, and immediately went to a sports station playing highlights. I was fine with that. I just wanted the background noise anyway. Sometimes I wanted music, but that was when I needed motivation. When I was working out anger or frustration, I didn’t need anything other than background noise. Music would only drown out the images in my mind that I was trying to work through.
Putting on heavy weights on the bench press bar, I locked them in tight and sat down. Strictly speaking, I shouldn’t test myself like this unless I had someone to spot me. But right then, I waswilling to be a little dangerous if it meant I got to beat this feeling out of me. I laid back and settled myself under the bar.
The first lift was easy, but it almost always was. My body was fine-tuned to lift heavy things after years of doing exactly what I was doing now. Working frustration out by punishing my body. The weights went up and then slowly came down, then back up again. It was always the end of the first set when I felt effort for the first time.
The second set started easily, then by the fourth rep, my effort was back. And by the end of the set, I was pushing, sweat beading on my brow.
The third set was effort from the beginning. I let out a primal roar as I got through the end of the set, feeling the burn of my muscles as I set the weight back on the bench.
The punching bag was next. My arms already hurt, but I still had so much adrenaline, so much frustration. I had to work it out. I slipped on my gloves and took a stance beside the bag. I never envisioned a person when hitting the bag. That was dangerous. That led to dehumanizing people and fists flying at flesh. The bag was a tool. Just like the weights.
And I hit the living daylights out of that tool.
I pounded on it until sweat was dripping off of me, and I was slowing down, throwing haymakers instead of combinations. Grunting with effort with every swing. Eventually, I had almost nothing left, and I sat down heavily on the bench. Now I had my biggest test.
Lying down one more time, I lifted the weights and went through a single set. It was excruciating, but with every lift, I felt the anger leaving me. My arms and chest were burning andspent, but I got the entire set done and racked it again. As soon as it landed in the rack, I let my arms fall and relaxed onto the bench. I was breathing heavily and sweat matted my hair down. I clenched my eyes shut and only opened them when I heard a strange sound coming from the television.
There was a blank screen for a second and then white words appeared. It said something about a tornado, and I sat up fully, grabbing the remote nearby to turn the volume up. A robotic sounding voice was giving the warning, and my eyes widened as I read what the screen said.
A massive tornado. Heading straight for downtown Murdock.
Right for the store.
I stood bolt upright and immediately grabbed my phone and ran into the house toward the bedroom. Yanking the sweaty shirt off, I grabbed a fresh one and was fitting it over my head when I got into the living room. A siren went off, low and piercing, coming from the center of town. I remembered it going off once before when I was a kid. We had to hide in the storm shelter under the house.
It terrified me then. My mom tried to make the best of it, convincing me that it was like a game. We had a propane camp stove and some beans and hotdogs. She cut up the hotdogs and threw them in a pan with the baked beans and cooked them until they were hot. From then on, that was a meal I wanted every time there was a storm. It was comforting.
There had been a bad one that year. It tore up a lot of the town and blew part of the high school to pieces. It had to be remodeled, which took forever. My freshman year was marked by the sounds of hammering and the smell of fresh paint asthey tried to finish a year-long project of basically rebuilding the school from scratch while people were still in it.
I pulled open my phone and checked my messages. Still nothing from Melanie. I decided to text her again.
I texted, Melanie. Please call me as soon as possible. It’s about the store. There’s a tornado coming. I want to make sure you’re safe. I am going up there now to make sure that everyone is out. Please take shelter. We can talk about everything else later. Stay safe, please!
With that, I stuffed the phone into my pocket. I grabbed a jacket and my keys, thinking at the last second to grab the charger for my phone, just in case I got stuck somewhere and needed to charge it and didn’t want to go out to the truck to do so. Of course, I was about to ridetowarda tornado. It was possible that wherever I ended up, my truck could end up somewhere very far away indeed.
I couldn’t stop and get anything else. I needed to get up to the store and make sure it got emptied and anyone who remained was safely sheltered. I ran out of the front door of my house, locking it behind me, and took off for the truck. The sky overhead had gone from a pale gray to dark, almost black with clouds. Lightning struck nearby and lit up the world for a moment, and thunder rolled behind it.
I just hoped I could be of some use. I tried to remember if there was a storm shelter at the store. There had to be one. It was the law in our town, I thought. After the storm that tore up the school, I thought everyone had to have one. I hoped they did, anyway.
If there was a shelter, I could go straight to it, open it up, and make sure any stragglers and employees got down there and we could wait out the storm. I just hoped that nothing happened to the building itself.
Pushing the engine start button, I pulled out onto the road and headed toward Brewer’s Grocery. Hail started to pelt the windows when I was only a block away.
