"It does!"

He studied me. "You ever hear of a superstorm?"

Dismayed, I shook my head.

"On rare occasions, several storms will climb on top of each other. They can tower as high as seven miles."

I felt my heart lurch.

"But this storm's already climbed that high. It's heading up to ten miles now. It'll soon tear houses from foundations. It'll level everything. A stationary half-mile-wide tornado."

"If I'm right, though, if the old man wants to punish me, I can't escape. Unless my wife and son are separate from me, they'll die, too."

"Assuming you're right. But I have to emphasize. There's no scientific reason to believe your theory."

"I think I'm crazy."

Eliminate the probable, then the possible. What's left must be the explanation. Either Gail and Jeff would die, or they'd have to leave me. But I couldn't bear losing them.

I knew what I had to do. I struggled through the storm to get back home. Jeff was feverish. Gail kept coughing, glaring at me in accusation.

They argued when I told them, but in desperation, they agreed.

"If what we think is true," I said, "once I'm gone, the storm'll stop. You'll see the sun again."

"But what about you? What'll happen?"

"Pray for me."

The Interstate again, heading west. The storm, of course, went with me.

Iowa. Nebraska. It took me three insane disastrous weeks to get to Colorado. Driving through rain-swept mountains was a nightmare. But I finally reached that dingy desert town. I found that sleazy roadside stand.

No trinkets, no beads. As the storm raged, turning dust to mud, I searched the town, begging for information "That old Indian. The weather dancer."

"He took sick," a store owner said.

"Where is he?"

"How should I know? Try the reservation."

It was fifteen miles away. The road was serpentine, narrow, and mucky. I passed rocks so hot they steamed from rain. The car slid, crashing into a ditch, resting on its driveshaft. I ran through lightning and thunder, drenched and moaning when I stumbled to the largest building on the reservation. It was low and wide, made from stone. I pounded on the door. A man in a uniform opened it, the agent for the government.

I told him.

He frowned with suspicion. Turning, he spoke a different language to some Indians in the office. They answered.

He nodded. "You must want him bad," he said, "if you came out here in this storm. You're almost out of time. The old man's dying."

In the reservation's hospital, the old man lay motionless under sheets, an IV in his arm. Shriveled, he looked like a dry empty corn husk. He slowly opened his eyes. They gleamed with recognition.

"I believe you now," I said. "Please, make the rain stop."

He breathed in pain.

"My wife and son believe. It isn't fair to make them suffer. Please." My voice rose. "I shouldn't have said what I did. I'm sorry. Make it stop."

The old man squirmed.

I sank to my knees, kissed his hand, and sobbed. "I know I don't deserve it. But I'm begging you. I've learned my lesson. Stop the rain."

The old man studied me and slowly nodded. The doctor tried to restrain him, but the old man's strength was extraordinary. He crawled from bed. He hobbled. Slowly, in evident pain, he chanted and danced.

The lightning and thunder worsened. Rain slashed the windows. The old man strained to dance harder. The frenzy of the storm increased. Its strident fury soared. It reached a crescendo, hung there – and stopped.

The old man fell. Gasping, I ran to him and helped the doctor lift him into bed.

The doctor scowled. "You almost killed him."

"He isn't dead?"

"No thanks to you."

But that was the word I used: "Thanks." To the old man and the powers in the sky.

I left the hospital. The sun, a once common sight, overwhelmed me.

Four days later, back in Iowa, I got the call. The agent from the government. He thought I'd want to know. That morning, the old man had died.

I turned to Gail and Jeff. Their colds were gone. From warm sunny weeks while I was away, their skin was brown again. They seemed to have forgotten how the nightmare had nearly destroyed us, more than just our lives, our love. Indeed they were now skeptical about the Indian and told me that the rain would have stopped, no matter what I did.

But they hadn't been in the hospital to see him dance. They didn't understand.

I set the phone down and swallowed with sadness. Stepping from our house – it rests on a hill – I peered in admiration toward the glorious sky.

I turned and faltered.

To the west, a massive cloudbank approached, dark and thick and roiling. Wind began, bringing a chill.

September twelfth. The temperature was seventy-eight. It dropped to fifty, then thirty-two.

The rain had stopped. The old man had done what I asked. But I hadn't counted on his sense of humor.

He had stopped the rain, all right.

But I had a terrible feeling that the snow would never end.

If there's a touch of humor in "The Storm," there's nothing at all humorous in this further story about the Midwest: a gross-out shocker. Although the story was published in 1984, its origin is eleven years earlier. In the summer of 1973, I spent thirty-five days on a survival course in the Wind River mountains of Wyoming. The course was conducted by Paul Petzoldt's National Outdoor Leadership School and trained its students in a variety of mountaineering skills: climbing, camping without a trace, crossing wild streams, living in snow caves, scavenging, etc. At the end of the course, our food was taken away from us. We were each allowed to keep a compass, a map, and a canteen. We were shown a spot on the map, fifty miles away, over the continental divide, and told that three days later a truck would be waiting to pick us up.

How did we eat? We weren't supposed to. The idea was to replicate an emergency situation. Scavenging uses more energy than is supplied by the plants that are scavenged, so that was out. We could have caught and eaten fish, which would have given us adequate protein, but that would have been as a last measure. The idea was to prove to us that we could go three days without food, in strenuous conditions, and still be functional at the end. I was weak and light-headed when we came over the mountains and reached the dusty trailhead that was our destination, but I could have gone a day or two longer, and I certainly had acquired confidence about the outdoors. The course completed, I set out toward Iowa along Interstate 80, but my old four-cylinder Porsche 912 developed engine trouble, and in the Nebraska panhandle, I had to leave the highway, hoping to find a mechanic. That's when I came to this very unusual, very scary town. While the story is fictional, the setting is not.