Page 54 of Up in Smoke

I thought about it, nodding my head in agreement. I pulled back the flap of the box to peer inside, spotting a ridiculous number of dark-colored film canisters waiting to be developed on top with a collection of other boxes, folders containing papers, and a few gift-wrapped items. “She took the time to wrap some of this, Sandro.”

“Well, she knew her time was drawing short, so I guess she wanted to fill the hours doing something kind.” Sandro got up and went into the other room, returning with a box of tissues, which he set beside me. “She couldn’t take any of it with her to the grave, so why not give it to someone who would enjoy it? She knows you. She also knows how you wouldn’t have had a whole lot to call your own. You said she was aware you’d fallen in with my family. Perhaps she just wanted to send you off with things that you could call your own and are rich with good memories.”

“These boxes are going to take me for one hell of a ride,” I predicted. “I can’t control my scrying abilities really. I can try to invoke it picking up objects and hoping for the best, over and over again, until I find something with weight and presence, but I don’t get to pick what I see. Most objects don’t have much weight.” After a moment of hesitation, I pointed at Peace, which took up his armchair. “She has a lot of weight and history, but she’s old.”

“It’ll be all right. Only do as much as you can handle. I’d check the film rolls first. If her camera lens witnessed something important, I’d like to know.”

As I did, too, I reached into the box and picked up the first of the film canisters.

Thursday, April 1, 2027.

Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The Alley.

“What a bad idea of a joke,”Frankie muttered, the only one watching the funeral pyre burn.

She then lifted up her Pentax K1000 and took a picture of the flames. On the horizon, storm clouds grew, the sky tinging with green in a warning of what would soon come, earlier than normal for the region. I wondered at that, my attention focusing on the sky.

While the body of her husband burned, Frankie stayed, one eye on the sky. She didn’t cry, rather sighing every now and then while she waited for the flames to die away. She took a few more pictures of the pyre, capturing her husband’s last moments on Earth before he burned to ash and bone.

Then she turned her camera to the sky, snapping picture after picture of the churning clouds on their relentless and early march through the Alley. I wondered.

Had 2027 been the beginning of Tulsa’s misfortunes? When had everything started to fall apart?

How long had choirs been singing their dark song to kill off those in the most lethal of quadrants?

How lethal was the Alley, really? How much of the quadrant’s misfortunes were the crimes of mere humans chasing after greed and power?

The bombardment of questions would haunt me, much like Frankie’s love for her husband had haunted her.

I hadn’t realized it’d been so long since his death, and the realization stirred deep guilt. I’d always assumed Frankie’s husband hadn’t died that long before I’d arrived in Tulsa and begun working for Brent McCoy. Her love for him had defied the seasons and years, as brilliant as the flames working through wood and flesh alike while the first gusts of wind brought warning of the developing storm heading towards the city.

It amazed me that Frankie hadn’t broken under the burden of her loss.

The storm drew closer, but Frankie remained with the pyre until it burned down to cinder, ash, and bone. Then she turned and walked away, leaving the rain to wash everything away.

Wednesday, May 1, 2030.

Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The Alley.

Frankie stoodwhere her husband’s body had burned, and she spoke to him as though he might be somewhere listening, telling him of all the things that had changed in Tulsa over the years. She held her camera, staring in the direction of the storm developing in the same place as it had the day she’d lit his pyre.

“It’s just not natural. First, they came and brought those damned contracts with them, changing our perfectly good traditions with these new ones, claiming all the youngins liked the new way, that anyone who is anyone would be contracting for a spouse, as though some piece of paper will make people loyal.” Frankie snorted. “I’ve a mind to teach them what loyalty means, but they wouldn’t figure it out even if I hit them in the face with proof. It’s always about the money.”

She took a picture of the storm, and a funnel developed, descending from the green-hued wall of cloud spinning in the distance. “I’m glad you’re missing this, though I miss you something fierce. Each year, it’s one thing or another. More folks are leaving because they’re not stupid and see the writing on the wall—or in the sky. Several towns not too far from here have been wiped out. More will be wiped out this season. And it always starts there.”

Huffing her irritation, Frankie turned, and I realized she’d burned her husband’s body to the west of Tulsa, the same direction the scryers were claimed to have been taken.

Frankie turned back, and she took one final photograph, pressing the button on the camera just as five twisters converged on the torn ground below the storm. “And it always starts there,” she repeated, and in her tone, I heard her question.

Why did the storms always start there?

I needed to know.

Thursday, June 25, 2043.