Ground Truth

My brother's funeral over, the dark-clothed congregation clots the church doors, a lingering aftermath moving into flat light—the sky low and swollen, a storm siren's long expansive notes, evenly measured, so loud the pauses between ring with aftersound. Used to it, no one here appears alarmed, the church ladies filing into his house bearing heavy covered dishes, the funeral flowers. On the muted television tuned to the weather, a small area of Watch now upgrades to Warning; the words stream across the bottom of the screen calling conditions perfect, this town, this house disappeared beneath the map's isolated lesion, its red edges uneven, stalled. The forecasters rely they say on spotters to confirm what the radar cannot—they call it ground truth; until then no one knows anything for certain beyond this inward watching. The room hums, an airless, crowded hive. Their mouths are full, plates layered—fried chicken, deviled eggs, casseroles, bright congealed salads with fruit suspended inside. All of it dust. I have come here too late, his body gone, already ash. The storm's body could be forming now, tightening from cloud to the gyre that will consume its path, all of it a becoming—spiraling a wall of water, mud, dust, and sand; with dispassion taking up into itself the fence line, a barn—the house beside them spared with the same dispassion. Or this, more likely now: siren silenced, the winds diminishing, the light, afternoon's concession to another dusk—severe, more common truth.