In Oklahoma the tornado siren went off. I knew exactly what to do. I am Japanese. We drill for disasters the way other nations drill for war. I had a helmet. I had a flashlight. I had a whistle, a radio, three days of water, and a laminated evacuation map I made myself. I got under the table. Then I heard laughter. Outside. I looked through the window. My entire street was on their porches. Lawn chairs. Coolers. A man was grilling. I want to be very clear. The sky was green. The sirens were singing the song of the end of the world. And Dale from next door was flipping burgers and watching the horizon like it was a football game. He saw me in the window, in my helmet, and waved me over. I asked him, should we not take shelter. He looked at the sky for a long moment, the way my grandfather looked at the sea. He said, "It's still two counties over." Two counties. He measured the apocalypse in counties. Casually. The way you say the pizza is ten minutes away. Then he handed me a lemonade and explained the system. The siren does not mean hide. The siren means come outside and check. You go inside when the weatherman takes off his jacket. You go to the shelter when he rolls up his sleeves. I thought he was joking. He was not joking. In Oklahoma the weatherman is not a man on television. He is a prophet. Families have trusted the same one for thirty years. Children stay calm in storms because his voice is calm. Japan built satellites to watch the sky. Oklahoma watches one man's sleeves. Both systems work. Then the sky turned a green I have never seen, and the birds went silent, and every person on every porch stood up at the same time, without a word, like a church rising for a hymn. The weatherman rolled up his sleeves. Dale turned off the grill, picked up his chair, and said, "Alright, come on." His whole family, and me, went down into the shelter under his garage. His wife had snacks ready. His daughter asked me about my helmet. We waited out the storm the way you wait out rain at a bus stop. It passed north of us. We came up. The porches refilled. Dale turned the grill back on. I asked him if he is ever afraid. He said, "Sure. That's why we watch." I have lived in Japan for forty years and I have never once watched. We prepare for nature. We hide from it, respectfully, behind walls our grandfathers spent lifetimes building. In Oklahoma they sit on the porch and greet it by name. I understand now. This is not recklessness. It is a very old kind of courage. The kind where fear and dinner happen at the same time. The burgers were excellent.

In Texas they told me to stop at Buc-ee's for gas. I have been to shrines. I have stood in temples that took two hundred years to build. I was not prepared for the gas station. There were one hundred and twenty fuel pumps. I counted them because I did not believe them. A man beside me was filling a truck the size of my first apartment, and he was not filling it because it was empty. He was filling it because he was here, and here is where a man fills things. Inside was a hall so vast I lost the horizon. A wall of jerky. A wall of fudge I did not know the country produced. A brisket sandwich handed to me by a man in a beaver costume. And I want to be clear, the beaver is not a mascot. The beaver is a saint. The people speak of him the way my grandmother spoke of the mountain behind her house. And the bathrooms. I had been warned about the bathrooms and I had dismissed the warning as the pride of a loud people. I was wrong to dismiss it. The bathrooms are famous across the whole state and they have earned it. I have slept in worse hotels. I nearly bowed upon entering. A janitor was polishing the floor with the devotion of a man tending a garden he loved, and when I thanked him he said "welcome in," which I have since learned is what Texas says instead of hello, and also instead of I am glad you exist. I went in for gas. I was inside for ninety minutes. I came out with fudge, a shirt printed with a joke I do not fully understand, forty dollars of jerky, and a feeling I can only describe as having been to church. I did not need any of it. I needed all of it. I have walked through the great cathedrals of the old world. I lit no candle there. I lit no candle at Buc-ee's either. But I did fill the truck. And I understand now that in Texas, this is the same thing.