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Chapter One April 1, 2006 Carter Danforth pressed the black ink of his pen into the palm of his hand. Across the lines and grooves, he wrote a few lyrics of a song he’d call “Hour of Freedom.” His mother was out on a delivery that afternoon, but he didn’t mind taking the Tulsa city bus home from school. If he played it right, he could set his secret plan in motion and still be home by four. Springtime in Tulsa was wet season, and Carter knew the weather was a gamble. The day before it was hot as a billy goat in a pepper patch. But that afternoon, blasts of cold air circled the heat. Another storm was rolling in. Stepping off the bus, Carter walked over to Tommy’s Pawn Shop, the second store down from his regular stop. His father’s guitar, a left-handed Martin acoustic, used to sit in the front window display. There was no telling whether Tommy had held on to it or if it already had found a new home. The pawn shop had one of those old-timey bells that jangled when you walked in the door. On display cases were older-timey items: farmhouse pottery, record players, and creepy old dolls with cracked porcelain heads. The man behind the counter picked at something between his lower teeth with a thick fingernail, appraising Carter. “You’re Sandra Bermejo’s kid, aren’t you?” “How’s it going, Tommy?” Carter nodded toward him. He’d come for the guitar, but he wasn’t about to up and admit it. Better to play it cool, pretend Eddie Danforth’s old guitar was nothing more than a passing notion. “Going to buy anything or you just staking the joint?” The man’s solitary interest was cold hard cash, and Carter knew he had just enough to cover the seven hundred fifty dollars Tommy was asking for the guitar. On a shelf behind the counter were stacked rows of dead cell phones. Carter was pretty sure he was the only kid in ninth grade without a phone. His best buddies Landon and Caleb had had phones since middle school. Carter had a burr under his saddle over not being included in their texts, especially when they spent the better part of a boring school day repeating the punchline of an inside joke he wasn’t in on. Carter’s mom said she’d buy him a phone, “on the very day you need one.” He couldn’t convince her that day had arrived ages ago. Squinting at Carter, Tommy grabbed a phone from the top of the stack and placed it on the counter in front of him. The hair on his bare arms matched the hair on his head, dark and oily. “All you got to do is take it down to the phone store, kid. You sign a contract and they power it up for you.” “How do you know—” Carter began as the crack and shatter of a flash downfall of hailstones pelted the sidewalk out front. “How do you know if it still works?” The sudden noise didn’t bother him. He was used to the random piercing cry of his mother’s band saw firing up from her basement woodshop at all hours. She’d made a career out of refinishing vintage wood tables, chairs, and dressers. “All my goods is hundred percent,” Tommy replied. He scratched the back of his neck, grimacing at the storm outside. “Crazy ping-pong-size balls dropping out of the sky.” There was only one thing Carter felt one hundred percent about, and that was buying his dad’s guitar. He’d come for the Martin and he wasn’t leaving without it. A phone would have to wait. A patchwork of TVs lined both sides of the store, most of them on but muted. Several were set to news channels reporting the hail falling right outside the shop. Supercell thunderstorm warnings sped across the bottoms of the screens in red text. Any Okie grade-schooler could tell you hailstorms didn’t last long, and supercell storms only turned into tornadoes about twenty-five percent of the time. But the sky was brewing a dark green- ish tint and the winds were howling. Carter figured he’d best get what he came for and head home. “I’m thinking about upgrading my axe.” Carter tried using the slang word some musicians used for guitar. Carter pretended his heart wasn’t pounding with longing. Above the TVs, dozens of guitars lined the ceiling. Eddie’s guitar had a special marking, an inscription. Not one of those lame, engraved labels some musicians had made up and stuck on. No, this inscription was stained into it, a few shades darker than the guitar’s own mahogany body, like a tattoo or a birthmark. Eddie’s guitar was the last piece of evidence the man had ever stepped foot in Tulsa, and Carter aimed to lay waste to it. “You still have that Martin left-handed acoustic I saw in here a while back?” Carter tried to act casual. “I think that old Martin is in storage. Put it away to make room for new inventory.” Tommy checked the time on his wristwatch. “Look, I got way better ones. Just right for a beginner.” Tommy waddled over to the guitar display carrying a long metal post with a hook on the end. He used it to fish down a beat-up electric guitar with faded stickers of extinct rock bands. “Name’s Cotton, right?” His mom had dubbed him Cotton, short for cottontail rabbit. “Mostly ears and legs,” she’d say, like it pained her to witness him sprout up the way he did. He wished her rabbit comparison ended there. “Big brown eyes and hair like cinnamon,” she’d add, mussing up his hair with her work-worn hands. Carter tried to convince her the same description might fit a white-tailed buck and not the bottom of the food chain. Any folks who knew his mother liked to joke, “Cain’t never could change Sandra’s mind.” “It’s Carter, sir. Nobody but my mom calls me Cotton.” “How old are you, kid?” “Fifteen.” “Dang. Tall as you are skinny, and you still got growing ahead of you.” “Yeah.” Carter folded his long, lanky arms across his chest, anxious to find the guitar and get out of there. “I passed six foot by my fourteenth birth—” “Let me tell you something, Carter.” Tommy put on his salesman’s voice. “It’s smarter to start on electric. The strings are thinner and closer to the neck. It’s easier to play chords.” “I’m looking for an acoustic, the Martin in particular.” Carter was getting impatient, and the howl of the storm outside wasn’t making him feel any easier. He knew the guitar so well he could recite its catalog description. “Dark mahogany, satin lacquer finish, Martin brand. Looks like it came right out of the history books.” Tommy moved along the line, taking down a few acoustics, a Seagull, and then a Larrivee. Carter shifted on his feet, uncer- tain whether Tommy was messing with him. He shook his head when Tommy pulled out a Taylor Big Baby with a blonde Sitka spruce top. “I just want the Martin 000-15M. Do you have it?” “You know the model number?” Tommy sniffed, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. “Someone’s done his homework.” In his pocket, Carter made a fist around his money. He’d heard enough of Tommy’s deals to know he took in pawned items at ridiculously low rates, then sold them to others as though they were part of the national treasure. The more Carter showed he wanted that Martin, the more expensive it would become. “You say you put it in storage?” Carter also had witnessed his mom bartering over broken antique furniture at weekend flea markets. He tried using her lingo. “Let me take it off your hands. It’s just wasting space, I reckon.” “Everything I sell is hundred percent,” Tommy repeated but reached for his keys to unlock the storage door in the hallway behind the sales counter. “Hold on, kid. I might have already moved it.” Tommy flicked a light switch inside the doorway and disappeared. Carter went through the guitars hanging on the ceiling again, making sure his dad’s Martin wasn’t right in front of him. Various news shows flickering across the wall of TVs broadcast one shared and repeated message: warnings of supercell thunderstorms, accompanied by footage of an F5 tornado in Moore back in May 1999, one of the worst tornado outbreaks in Oklahoma history. Eddie’s guitar wasn’t there. He was pretty sure he’d have felt its presence anyway. Tommy returned shortly with a couple of Martins, old but still good-looking, and set them on the counter. Carter looked them over, then shook his head. “Left-handed,” he said, pulling his left hand from his pocket and holding it up, the money he’d brought still clenched in his fist. When he realized what he’d done, heat crept up his neck, reddening his face. Carter plunged his hand deep into his pocket. It was too late, Tommy had seen the cash. Carter could tell by the way his eyes lit up. “Burning a hole in your pocket, ain’t it?” Tommy grinned, his teeth as yellow as his fingers. “How’d you come up with that kind of cash?” Carter narrowed his gaze at the man. He didn’t want Tommy to mention the money next time his mother came around to junk hunt. “I earned it helping out my mom in her woodshop.” Carter told him a bit of the truth. Tommy looked doubtful, so Carter stretched the truth a little. “And from doing gigs,” he added, tossing a loose wave of his hair carelessly to one side, “with my band.” Tommy squinted at Carter, unsure whether to believe him. “Well, you came to the right place. Waste of money shopping retail. Everything I got is one of a kind, you know what I’m saying?” The wind outside pushed against the glass storefront, rat- tling the bell over the door. The lights flickered overhead. Carter swung around, wondering if the door was going to hold. The sky had grown darker, even though it was just past three. Angry hailstones battered the pavement. Tommy scratched at the roll of fat circling his middle section and surveyed the empty store. “Shop’s closing early,” he said. “Why don’t we make this quick? C’mon, pick one and get out of here, kid.” Carter was sick of people telling him what he couldn’t have. His father sold off his Martin guitar along with Carter’s future when he left Oklahoma. As long as Tommy was holding on to proof of that fact, Carter’s past was in the pawn shop owner’s greasy hands. Tommy coughed. “What’s that, sulfur?” Carter realized he’d been holding his breath. He sniffed the air; it smelled bitter and smoky, like someone just lit a match the size of a bow rake handle. It was hard to breathe. With a flash and a roaring sound, they both dropped to the dirty tile floor. The thunder sounded like a freight train had barreled off track and was crashing through the heart of Tulsa. The shop lights went out and the TVs fell silent, and the glowing electric alarm clocks died on the shelves. He had to get out there. Seemed like every time he thought his plans were coming together, something or someone got in his way. Even the weather had it out for him. His mother would be home soon, and there was no bringing Eddie’s guitar back in that rain. Shouting to Tommy, “I got to go before the storm gets any worse,” Carter rose to his knees, fixing to leave. “Boy, you ain’t going nowhere.” Lightning flashed, illuminating the faces of the creepy dolls on the shelves. The bell over the entryway rattled. The front doors blew wide open, blowing the aging pottery off the shelves. The rows of hanging guitars slammed together on their hooks, then tore clean off the wall when the display bracket collapsed. The guitars’ hollow-wood bodies cracked and groaned, hitting the floor. Their heads poked in every direction from a crumpled heap. Chunks of ceiling tiles and roof shingles, and all the junk in between, dumped on the mess, crushing what was left of the guitars. A blast of rain and howling wind ransacked the pawn shop, sending pieces of smashed pottery skittering across the floor toward Carter. He covered his head as Tommy’s lumpy body careened over the counter like a sack of wheat. Tommy grabbed Carter’s arm and hustled him back toward the storage room. “Tornado” was all he said, the word swollen and distorted, like it took up too much room in his head.
