It was their signal, Jo and Bill's. A black towel over the driver's side window. It meant there better be at least an F3 on the ground before the other storm chasers should even think about disturbing them.
It was the Harding's version of "if the truck's a rockin', don't come a knockin'". The passenger side of Jo's truck always faced a tree, so only one window needed covering when the group spent the night in the field.
The signal had been invented after an unfortunate incident involving Jo, Bill, an F1 on the ground and a red-faced Dusty.
It was a week after their shotgun wedding in front of a judge. There were thunderstorms in the distance, but the sky was clear overhead when the couple turned in for the night. Everyone else was gathered around the small TV in Dusty's van, sharing a couple 6 packs of Bud.
It was April 1994, and the group was glued to the news reports about musician Kurt Cobain. He'd been missing for three days before being found dead, apparently by suicide.
No one paid attention to the loud voices coming from the truck. Jo and Bill argued a lot. An awful lot! So when the atmosphere inside the truck changed from anger to passion, and the windows fogged up, it went unnoticed. So did the rocking action of the truck.
Sleeping in the truck was challenging, but having sex in it was easy. Bill would usually sit in the passenger seat and Jo would straddle him. This time was no different. As passionately as they had been arguing, they began tearing their clothes off. Jo's breasts bounced up and down as she moved furiously over Bill. He licked and bit her breasts and massaged her ass. The windows fogged up as their motions became more desperate, until both were covered with sweat and right on the brink.
When a tornado warning popped up on the screen, describing a twister a couple towns away, the rest of the group jumped into action. They were used to dropping everything at a moment's notice.
It was only when they were ready to pull out to the road did they all realize the lead truck wasn't in position. Since his van was closest, Dusty jumped out and banged on Jo's window, before yanking the door open. Then he shut it again and ran to his van with a face as red as a tomato.
Jo and Bill had been so engrossed in each other that for a split second, so close to the edge, they didn't notice they had company. But that was all the time it took for Dusty to see more of his fellow storm chasers than he'd ever wanted to.
The moment was over. A minute later, the couple was dressed and out of the truck.
"What?" Jo glared in Dusty's direction.
"F1 on the ground, 20 miles away."
"Might as well go, looks like you all are ready. Next time you interrupt us like that, it better be at least an F3."
After the storm chasers had photographed the twister and returned to the field to sleep in their vehicles, Dusty approached the couple.
"I'm really sorry, guys. I should have noticed the fogged up windows. Maybe you should make some kind of signal that, you know, so if we all see it we know not to bother you."
Hence marked the beginning of "black towel time". Early in their marriage, it was at least once a day. The storm chasers all lived in their vehicles in the field for the spring and summer, so they were nearly always together.
The scenarios usually went something like this…
Jo and Bill would be looking at a radar or maybe the sky together, when one would grab the other's ass. Next moment they'd be up against a tree and then rushing into the truck. Someone would usually try to get their attention before realizing they'd disappeared again.
"Hey, Jo, Bill, this radar is… nevermind. The towel's up, I see."
"They must be trying to make more storm chasers."
"Must be. They spend more time banging than radar watching."
But "black towel time" became less and less. The fights became louder and more frequent. 6 months after their rushed wedding, at which they'd only known each other 6 months, Bill left.
It had been October, a week before Halloween. After an intense fight that kept the storm chasers and probably half the county awake all night, the Extreme deserted. He left his wife, friends, their makeshift home in a truck and their storm tracking equipment and took off in his little green Valiant.
Six months of marriage, and their only home was in a truck, on an unused field Jo had owned when they met. She'd bought it during grad school, to track storms from.
Bill wanted more than just sleeping in a truck and chasing storms. When they'd married, he thought it was enough. Six months later, it wasn't. He wanted a real home, and children.
That's what the last huge fight was about, whether or not they would have children. Bill very much wanted to be a father. Jo did not want a child who might lose her in a tornado the same way she lost her own father. To her, it would be better not to have children at all. She'd had an IUD placed shortly after meeting Bill, and had no intention of having it removed before absolutely necessary.
Both had spent the night arguing their own points of view and trying to convince the other to feel the same. It didn't work, of course, and the decibel levels kept increasing. As the first red-orange rays of the rising sun shone across the field, Bill packed up his belongings and left. He left behind a group of bewildered storm chasers and a devastated Jo.
The divorce papers arrived two months later, in December. Jo shoved them in her glove compartment and never looked at them. Not until Bill called her in June to say he needed them signed did she pull them out again, just long enough to scrawl some signatures on the designated lines and shove them back in the glove box again.
If she didn't read them, maybe she could pretend this wasn't happening.
The original agreement was to meet in a Wal-Mart parking lot, but when the day came, Jo didn't show. Bill had listened to the weather reports, and knew she was in the field. He and Melissa had already driven in from Oklahoma City, so they just continued another 15 miles to Jo's land.
.
.
.
.
.
After the F5 that finally sucked up Dorothy and made history, the exhausted crew of storm chasers all headed back to Jo's field. They'd been awake for a day and a half straight, and seen 6 tornadoes. That didn't even count the Wakita tornado. Plus they'd all watched Jonas and Eddie die after they got too close to the F5. Mentally and physically, they were spent.
By the time they reached the field, it was 6 in the evening. They grilled hot dogs they had picked up at a store and shared a couple 6 packs of Bud, a bag of oranges and two bags of potato chips.
Everybody crashed out either in the van or in Dusty's bus, except for Bill and Jo. They grabbed the tent out of the van and pitched it on the other side of the field, with a single sleeping bag. Their intention was to finish what they'd started in the well pit after the F5, then crash.
After the tent was up, Bill shoved Jo up against the tree and grinded into her. She grabbed the back of his head and pressed her lips into his as his hands found and squeezed her breasts.
"Guys, get a tent!" Jo and Bill pulled away from each other long enough to see Haynes shaking her head at them. Bill pulled the entrance of their tent open and they both hurried in.
Once the zipper on the entrance was closed, Jo and Bill grabbed each other. Bill landed on his back with Jo straddling him. He pulled her shirt and bra off and her breasts were right in his face. He grabbed them and buried his face between them, then sucked on her nipples as she shut her eyes and moaned. Jo rolled off of him and they both yanked off their remaining clothes. Bill climbed over her and pushed himself into her and she wrapped her legs around his back. The two lovers slammed into each other, seeking a long awaited release.
After, they held each other closely. "I've missed you, Jo!" "I've missed you, too, Bill!"
When the rest of the crew woke up the next morning, there was a black towel on the tent pole. Seeing as there was *not* an F3 on the ground, no one disturbed them. But they all hi-fived each other.
Bill stayed with the storm chasers and resumed being a professor at the University, instead of starting his new job as a weather reporter. The group was able to secure funding for a new warning system through more grants. Jo did analysis of the mountains of data created by Dorothy, and Bill ran the lab.
The couple moved into an apartment near the university's lab, rather than living in a truck on their land. Eventually, they planned to build a house on the field where they had once lived.
Did they live happily ever after? No, they still had the occasional arguments, and their own share of troubles. Twice, Jo became pregnant, only to miscarry weeks later.
Eventually, she gave birth to a 9 lb 3 oz baby boy the couple named Patrick Thornton Harding, after Jo's deceased father.
The group occasionally camped out on the Harding's land a couple times a year. Always with a black towel.