The Hurricane (15 page)

He turned down the now familiar driveway. The address on the
mailbox was 2238. Daniel memorized this, filing it away with brown hair and
green eyes. All he needed was Anna’s last name and date of birth, and he could
practically picture her driver’s license. He wondered if she were the sort of
person to donate her organs once she was through with them. Seeing a neighbor
at the charging station, retrieving a freshly charged device, made him think
she probably was.

Daniel waved to the gentleman standing by the solar panel,
his phone powering on and giving him reason to frown. He started holding it up
to the sky, searching for a signal, while Daniel bounded up the front steps.

He knocked on the screen door, and a man inside yelled,
“Come in.”

Daniel pulled the screen door open and slipped inside. He
wiped his feet, made sure the door didn’t slam on the jamb, then followed the
sound of cabinets opening and closing toward the kitchen. Anna stuck her head
around the corner and smiled at him, then disappeared again. Daniel walked back
to the kitchen to find the two of them chopping vegetables on either side of a
sink, the open windows letting in what little breeze stirred outside.

“Smells good in here,” he said, meaning it.

“We picked a lot of stuff out of the garden before the storm
hit,” Edward said. “Good thing, too, because the garden flooded.”

“You want to snap peas?” Anna asked.

“Sure,” Daniel said. He went to the sink to wash his hands,
then realized the habitual gesture was futile.

“The tap’s right there,” Anna said. She pointed to a garden
hose snaking through the window and tied down to aim at the sink. Daniel put
one hand under the nozzle and squeezed the large, plastic trigger. A thick
stream of warm water gurgled out. He rubbed some soap on his hands then rinsed
them one at a time.

“How much water do you have?” he asked. He leaned close to
the window and tried to trace the hose as it disappeared up and out of sight.

“Oh, we’ve got tons,” Anna said. “I’ll show you later.
You’ll love it.”

Daniel smiled at her and thought about how shallow the word
“love” was when used in such a way. To suggest that he loved ice-cream was now
tantamount to heresy. It was a word reserved for a specific function, and none
else.

I’m being an idiot
, he thought, in a sudden bout of
rationality.

“How bad was the storm for you guys?” Daniel asked. He
started snapping the tips off the peas and placing the unused bits in a large
bowl of vegetable scraps.

“The house held up okay,” Edward said. “We lost some
shingles, and our fruit trees out back aren’t gonna make it, but I’d say we
were very lucky. Especially since no one got hurt.” He finished slicing a
tomato and held out a piece to Daniel.

“Thanks.” Daniel popped the thick, meaty hunk of dripping
redness in his mouth and nearly fainted. “Damn, that’s good,” he said. “Pardon
my language,” he added, and the other two laughed at him.

“There’s nothing like a fresh tomato,” Anna said. She nodded
out the window toward the large garden with its vine-covered trellises and
tomatoes growing up large wire cones. Daniel saw peas on webs made of string
and what looked to be corn stalks bent over from the wind. Some of them had
been propped back up. “Unfortunately, we lost a lot of good stuff that we
didn’t pick ’cause they weren’t quite ripe.”

“Didn’t think the storm would be
that
bad,” Edward
said. He swung the knife in Daniel’s direction and bounced it once or twice. “I
saw the tree that caught your house. Nasty wound, that.”

Daniel popped peas two at a time and set them in a pile with
the rest. “Yeah,” he said. “There’s no telling when we’ll get that thing off or
get the roof fixed. It went right through my sister’s bed. Felt like an
earthquake.”

“How old’s your sister?” Anna asked.

“Fourteen. She’s a freshman. My brother Hunter is two years
older.” He watched as Anna sliced small mushrooms into perfect cross-sectional
bits with a tiny razor-sharp knife. “What about you? Just the two of you live
here?”

Anna tucked some hair behind her ear, a tic Daniel was madly
fond of. She nodded. “I have a younger brother, but he lives with my mom in
Pennsylvania.” She finished the last mushroom and scraped the slices into a
massive bowl already full of lettuce, some other greens Daniel didn’t
recognize, green peppers, onion, and other buried layers of goodness.

“Is that where you guys are from? How long have you lived
here?” He added the peas to the mix. The tomatoes were kept separate. Anna’s
father grabbed two large spoons and began tossing the salad while Daniel
followed Anna’s lead in setting the table.

“We’re all from Atlanta, actually,” she said. She looked to
her father, then back to Daniel. “And my parents are still married. She just
got a good offer from Penn State, and my dad works here, so it’s just
temporary.”

“And then you guys’ll move to Pennsylvania?” Daniel tried to
choke back the raw dread in his voice.

Anna lifted her shoulders. “Or they’ll move back down here
if she finds something closer.”

“Or we’ll all end up somewhere
else
,” Edward said
with a laugh. He scooped the mix of veggies and let them fall back in place, a
waterfall of bright and healthy colors.

“What about you?” Anna asked. “Have you always lived a few
doors down?” She straightened one of the forks and smiled up at Daniel. He
couldn’t tell if she was playing with him, or if she liked him.

“I was born in Beaufort. We moved into this house when I was
eight, so it’s all I really remember. My dad pretty much built the entire thing
by hand. He was a carpenter. Then my parents divorced a few years ago.”

Anna’s smile faded.

“It’s okay though,” Daniel said quickly. “Sometimes I think
it’s better than staying together and making everyone else miserable with the
fighting.”

Anna nodded. Edward turned and placed the massive bowl of
salad in the center of the table.

“Do you see your dad much?” Anna asked.

Daniel laughed, but obviously with more than humor in his
voice. Anna held her palms up and shook her head. “I’m sorry to pry,” she said.
“You probably think I’m nosy.”

The others sat down, and Daniel did the same. He draped a
cloth napkin over his lap.

“No, it’s okay,” he said. “I actually hadn’t seen him in
over a year until yesterday.”

“
Yesterday
?” Anna screwed her face up in confusion.
Edward craned out a large scoop of salad and dangled it ponderously in Daniel’s
direction. Daniel snatched up his plate and held it under the bushy load.
Edward released it, and the plate blossomed with leafiness.

“Yeah,” he said to Anna. “A guy from the power company
dropped him off on our doorstep. He’s living in our toolshed.”

Daniel grinned at her and basked in her look of disbelief.

“You’re not serious.”

“As a heart attack,” Daniel said.

Edward laughed at that. He got up, grabbed the tomatoes, and
added them to the table. Anna poured water from a pitcher into each of the
three cups. Daniel looked through the selection of warm dressings for the one
with the most fat.

“So, mister . . .” Daniel looked to Edward to fill in the
blank. He still didn’t know Anna’s last name.

“It’s Redding,” he said, “but I prefer Edward.”

“Okay.” Daniel swallowed. Even with permission, it felt
unnatural to call him by his first name. “What do you do?”

“I’m a chemical engineer,” he said. “I work for a plant
outside of town. It’s terribly boring stuff, I’m afraid.”

“It’s actually not,” Anna told Daniel, stabbing a hunk of
tomato. “He breeds and grows micro-organisms that turn regular stuff into
useful compounds, kinda like how England once turned chestnuts into acetone.”

“Oh, yeah,” Daniel said. “Solid reference. Now I know
exactly what you’re talking about.”

Edward laughed. “You kids dig in.” He jabbed his salad with
an audible crunch.

Daniel took a bite and was pleasantly surprised. The three
of them ate amid a chorus of pleasant munching sounds. He forked a tomato and
added it to his plate.

After a minute of contented silence, Daniel asked, “Any word
on when we’ll get power or phones back?”

Edward held up a finger; his mouth was full of a large bite
of salad.

“It’s just that my brother was away when the storm hit,”
Daniel said. “He had my mom’s car, and my stepdad’s is in the shop, so we can’t
get word to him.”

Edward wiped his beard with his napkin, then returned it to
his lap.

“Power might be out for weeks,” he said. He nodded toward
Anna. “We tried to go out yesterday morning to see what the damage was around
town, but couldn’t even get out of the neighborhood.”

“There was a huge tree down across the entrance,” Anna said.
“Most of those chainsaws you heard yesterday were probably from the guys
working on it.”

“We were gonna try and get out this afternoon,” Edward said.
“I’ve got a chain and my old Bronco has four wheel drive. I was thinking we
could help clear some roads.” He lifted his shoulders like he wanted to do
more, but clearing roads with a chain was all he could think to contribute.
Daniel thought about the charging station outside and wished he was more like
these people.

“I could come and help,” he said. He lifted his fork with
another bite. “And we’ve got a chainsaw.”

Edward nodded. He looked to Anna.

“That’d be awesome,” she said.

Daniel thought he noted a bit of a blush on her cheeks as
she looked away from him and toward her plate. But it could’ve been the light
reflected off the large hunk of juicy tomato she was steering toward her mouth.

After thanking Edward and Anna for the incredible meal and
helping scrape the dishes into their compost bucket, Daniel gathered his newly
charged devices and headed home. He felt a bounce in his step, even as he
powered on the Zune and listened to radio chatter about the worst hurricane
since Katrina. They were still talking about the landfall being “near
Charleston,” which Daniel supposed gave the outside world the best geographical
context. He was guilty of doing the same when he was out of town and people
asked him where he was from. “Near Charleston,” he would say. And that was
precisely where hurricane Anna had struck.

He turned up his driveway and looked toward the sound of the
buzzing chainsaw, expecting to find Carlton wielding it, but it was his dad.
Daniel steered his direction and pulled his ear buds out. He stepped over yet
another tree that awaited transmutation into firewood.

His dad cut partway through a log, rolled it over with his
shoe, then sliced through the rest. As the stubby cylinder rolled away from the
tree, he killed the saw, which came to a rattling stop.

“Back already?” His father set the chainsaw down and pulled
a rag from his back pocket. He wiped the sweat from his face and the back of
his neck, a gesture that yanked Daniel through the years to a long ago past. He
pictured his dad with his shirt off, a tool belt slung low over one hip, a
rectangular pencil tucked behind an ear, a ten-penny nail held between pursed
and concentrating lips, a hammer wielded like a dexterous extension of his
flesh—

Daniel had no idea if his dad had been sober back then, but
in his mind he had been capable of anything. He looked past his father to the
house he had built with a few friends, a massive tree crashed right through the
roof. One dormer was crushed, the other standing. Before, the house had
appeared to be winking, now it looked more like it had suffered a blow, like it
had a black eye. It had gone from something happy to something that needed
stitches.

“Your mom put together some fine sandwiches if you’re still
hungry,” his dad said.

“I filled up on salad, if you can believe that.” Daniel
patted his stomach. “Is everyone still eating?”

“I think they’re working on your sister’s room and the
living room.” He waved his hand at the yard. “This feels productive out here,
but it ain’t really that necessary. It’s just busy work to keep from thinking
on all else we can’t do.”

“Well, the Reddings down the street are gonna take their
four by four to see if the roads are clear. I was wondering if we could borrow
the chainsaw. They’ve got a chain and some other stuff to help move trees.”

His dad knelt by the chainsaw and opened a black cap. He
leaned the machine to the side. “Let me top up the bar oil for you. You should
take the gas can as well. Fill ’er up if anyone out there is pumping.”

He went to the tall pile of neatly stacked logs and grabbed
a green container from the top. A thick, molasses-like oil dripped from it and
into the chainsaw. “You know how to crank and use this thing?”

“I’m hoping Edwa—that mister Redding does,” Daniel said.
“I’m mostly going along ’cause they said we could see if the roads were clear
all the way to Hunter’s girlfriend’s house. I’m thinking they must be blocked
in for him not to have come home yet, especially since he knows he has the only
car.”

His dad put the cap back on the oil canister and tightened
the plug on the chainsaw. He stood up and pulled his handkerchief from his back
pocket again, wiping his hands on it. “Maybe I should come with you,” he said.

Daniel waved his hands. “No. That’s okay. I don’t want to
impose on them—”

“Impose? I’ll be coming along to help.”

“That’s okay, Dad.”

“Let’s go ask your mom.” He picked up the chainsaw and turned
toward the house.

“Dad, I really don’t want you coming along.”

His father threw a hurt look back at him. Daniel immediately
felt bad for how it had come out.

“It’s just that there’s a girl going along, and I really
don’t want you embarrassing me.”

His father smiled. “It’s
my
chainsaw. I traded what
was left of my boat for it and a ride. So if it’s going,
I’m
going.” He
winked and marched toward the front door.