I came back to where he was. “She’ll miss the whole hurricane.”
“Yeah. Probably will,” he said. “Better get off those wet things, now. Then you should try to get some sleep yourself.”
“I couldn’t sleep through this. I wouldn’t want to.”
Even through the shriek of the wind, I could hear his chuckle. “Nope,” he said. “Probably wouldn’t.”
When I had changed out of my wet things and cleaned myself off as best I could, I went into my parents’ room. Daddy had gone down and fetched Grandma’s chair so she could rock and moan as was her custom. Somehow, the Captain had changed from his wet clothes into my father’s bathrobe, which barely met at his middle. Daddy and Momma were perched on the side of their bed, and the Captain sat on the edge of the only other chair. They had lit a candle in the room, which flickered because of the wind coming through the chinks of the house. Momma patted the bed beside her. I went and sat down. I wanted to snuggle up on her lap like a toddler, but I was fourteen, so I sat as close to her body as I dared.
We gave up trying to talk. It was too hard to fight the wind screaming like a giant wounded dove. We could no longer hear the sounds of
Grandma’s prayers or the rain or the water.
Suddenly there was silence. “What happened?” Though as soon as I asked, I knew. It was the eye. We were in the quiet eye of the storm. Daddy got up, took the flashlight, and went to the stairs. The Captain rose, pulled the bathrobe together, and followed him. I started to get up, too, but Momma put her arm across my lap.
“You can’t tell how long it will last,” she said. “Just let the men go.”
I wanted to object, but I was tired. It wouldn’t have mattered. The men were back almost before they started.
“Well, Sue, there’s two foot of Bay water sloshing about down there.” Daddy sat down beside her. “I’m feared it’ll make a mess of your nice parlor.”
She patted his knee. “As long as we’re all safe,” she said.
“Ohhhh, Lord,” Grandma cried out. “Why must the righteous suffer?”
“We’re all safe, Momma,” my father said. “We’re all safe. Nobody’s suffering.”
She began to cry then, bawling out like a frightened child. My parents looked at each other in consternation. I was angry. What right had she, a grown woman, who had lived through many storms, to carry on like that?
Then the Captain got up and went to kneel beside her chair. “It’s all right, Louise,” he said, as though he were indeed talking to a child. “A storm’s a fearsome thing.” When he said that I remembered the tale I’d heard about him cutting down his father’s mast. Was it possible that a man so calm had once been so terrified? “Would you like me to read to you?” he asked. “While it’s still quiet?”
She didn’t answer. But he got up and, taking the Bible from the bedside table, pulled his chair in close to the candle. As he was flipping through for the place, Grandma looked up. “T’ain’t fitting a heathen should read the Word of God,” she said.
“Hush, Momma!” I had never heard my father speak so sharply to her before. But she did hush, and the Captain began to read.
“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” He read well, better than the preacher, almost as well as Mr. Rice. “Therefore we will not fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof…”
Into my mind came a wonderful and terrible picture of great forested mountains, shaken by a giant hand that scooped them up, finally, and flung them into the boiling sea. I had never seen a mountain, except in a geography text. I was fourteen, and I had never even seen a real mountain. I was going to, though. I was not going to end up like my Grandma, fearful and shriveled.
They told me later that I finally slept through the worst part of the hurricane. When the eye passed, the wind came up from the south even more fiercely than before. “Grabbed this old house by the scruff of the neck and shook the bejeebers out of it,” my father said. “But I couldn’t wake you for nothing. Snoring away like an old dog.”
“I didn’t snore!” I was horrified at the thought of the Captain watching me while I snored.
“Snored so loud, you plumb drowned the wind.” He was teasing me. At least I hoped my father was teasing.
It was not one of those hurricanes like the one that was to hit the Atlantic Coast in ’44, not one of those hurricanes that go down in the books. No island lives were lost in the storm of ’42. No human lives, at any rate. The storm did accomplish without conscience what we had been too fainthearted to do. It reduced the island’s cat population by at least two-thirds.
11
It was the bluest, clearest day of the summer. Every breath of air was delicious with just enough of a clean, salt edge to wake up all your senses. If the Captain and I had just stood on the porch with our eyes closed, it would have been a perfect day. For while our noses and lungs feasted on nature’s goodness, our eyes were assaulted by evidence of her savagery.
The water had left our living room, but it was still in the yard, level with the porch. Riding the muddy surface were sections of picket fence, giant tree limbs, crab pots, remnants of floats and crab houses, boats, and…“What’s that?” I had grabbed the Captain’s arm.
“A coffin,” he said matter of factly. “These storms will dig them up sometimes. Just replant them is all.” His mind was clearly not on the dead. “Look here,” he said. “There’s no safe walking to my place this morning. We’d best go back in and give your mother a hand.”
The thought of our sodden, muck-filled downstairs dragged at me like a lead weight on a crab pot. “Don’t you want to see what happened to your house?” I asked. This was a day for adventure, not drudgery.
“Plenty of time to see later when the water’s down,” he said, turning to go back inside.