This damn Zephyr handles like it has four flat tires. The gusts and gales of wind shearing against him, Pat struggled to keep the car on the road. You have to be drunk to drive in this shit, he thought, and circled the neighborhood, running up Cedar Bend, then down Rosser, on the lookout for Dan. But Pat had no idea where his son might be, and the search was secondary to Pat’s fury. Ignoring the dangers of the storm, he was locked into driving himself mad.

“What do you want from me?” he said aloud, alone.

Pat tried to reconcile the hundred ways he had gone astray, and thought of his father. A drunk, another fool out in a storm—Pat swallowed hard—and I’m no better, and maybe worse.

As he rounded past High Meadow, he saw that a live oak had split to its trunk and hurled a thick arm of branches across the intersection. Pat swerved and braked. As he stopped short, the pain in his side returned. This shit feels like I’ve been stabbed. Could it be my appendix about to burst? Pat took a shallow breath and let the pain pass, then turned onto Marsh Lane.

Clouds moving east; if I head south I can duck past it. The air-raid siren wound up again, and Pat raced down the street, making a futile effort to outrun the storm. As he reached Royal Lane, he drove straight into more hail and sheets of rain. He gripped the steering wheel, feeling flushed and exhausted, the pain slicing through the right side of his gut. Christ Almighty, what did I do to deserve this? The windshield wipers couldn’t keep up, and Pat had no choice but to pull over. By the time he made it to the intersection at Walnut Hill he knew exactly where to do it.

You weren’t looking for Dan. You knew where you were going the whole time.

Pat jerked the wheel into a hard left and skidded into the parking lot for the Hasty Liquor Store.

Tumbling out of the driver’s seat, Pat was completely soaked after two steps in the downpour. Lightning flashed and forked, and a crashing thunder rumbled near. He shouldered into the front door, surprised to find it open, the power still on. He stepped into the cool, white fluorescence and endless rows of booze.

The clerk, a bent-over old-timer with a name tag reading sweeney, ignored the tempest and recognized Pat as the frequent customer he was.

“Hey there, I was just about to lock her up . . .”

“I needed to get off the road.” Pat grinned like a loon, forgetful now, past the pale of his plight. “One hell of a storm.”