The Hurricane (16 page)

“Wait,” Daniel said. “You traded your
boat
for that
saw?”

His dad stopped. “What was left of it,” he said.

“And how much was left of it?”

He shrugged. “Not enough to float, probably.”

“For a chainsaw,” Daniel said.

His dad turned around to face him. “These things are worth
their weight in gold after a storm. You’ve seen that for yourself.”

“So you knew mom would let you stay.”

“I knew you guys would be in need of one.” He looked up at
the tree leaning against their house. “Hell, I betcha I could whittle away at
that thing if I was roped in and had some help.”

“And now you’re using it to come along and see Hunter.”

His father smiled. “Let’s not pose it to your mom quite like
that,” he said.

With that, he turned and bounded up the steps toward the
screen door, while Daniel remained rooted to the sidewalk, the deviousness of
his father competing in his brain with the man’s generosity. He had a hard time
sorting out which motivation had swept him back into their lives. The awful
truth was that he preferred to think it was the former, so he could stay
comfortable hating his dad. Once a person got used to the feeling, it wasn’t so
bad. It was all the back and forth that proved exhausting.

••••

Daniel remained silent while his father introduced himself
to Anna and Edward. A heavy chain was lifted from the garage floor and rattled
into a coil in the back of a beat up Ford Bronco. Daniel’s father placed the
chainsaw beside it, and Daniel added the small red canister, sloshing a
quarter-full with fuel. They loaded up, Anna and Daniel sliding into the back
seat, the adults up front. Edward pulled out of the garage. An elderly couple
crouching by the recharging station turned and waved as they pulled down the
driveway. Edward coaxed a friendly beep out of the Bronco’s horn.

“Just to warn you guys, it might be a short drive.” Edward
turned to Daniel’s father. “We couldn’t even get out of the neighborhood
yesterday.”

“There’s a way,” his father said. “If the street’s still
blocked, I’ll show you how we got in along the power lines.”

They took a sharp turn at the end of the street, and Daniel
reached for the oh-shit handle where it would have been in his mom’s car. It
wasn’t where he expected, so his other hand went to the bench seat to steady
himself. It landed on the back of Anna’s hand, which retreated as if bit.

“Sorry,” Daniel whispered. He wiggled in his seat to demonstrate
a new level of commitment to keeping his balance.

“It’s okay,” Anna said, folding her hands in her lap. The
two of them gazed out their windows and enjoyed the breeze as the Bronco
rumbled through the neighborhood.

“There’s a bad one up here,” Edward said. He pointed over
the dash and slowed down as they passed a house that had lost half its roof.
Globs of pink insulation hung in the trees like cotton candy. Rafters stuck out
like ribs over a gaping void, like God had been in the middle of a heart
transplant when he got called away.

“We talked to the owners yesterday,” Anna said. “They’re
staying with neighbors. Their story of the night of the storm was horrific.”

“I bet,” Daniel said. He met his father’s gaze in the side
view mirror. Something in his dad’s frown suggested that his own survival story
would be hard to match.

“Looks like they got that tree parted.”

Daniel and Anna both leaned toward the middle of the seat so
they could peer through the windshield. Ahead, Daniel could see that it was one
of the ancient oaks framing the neighborhood’s entrance that had fallen across
the road. To the left, the head of the tree lay in a crumbled heap, the long
arms of the great oak broken and twisted and sprouting bushy plumes of leaves
up toward the sky in every direction. On the other side of the drive, a round
disk of thick soil had levered up to vertical with the ripping of the roots. A
clod of mud with tendrils poking out of it formed a massive wall at the base of
the tree. The tufts of grass clinging to the other side were still green and
seemingly oblivious to their topsy-turvy fate.

Daniel whistled at the sight of the fallen monster. It had
fallen parallel to the main road, right across the entrance to the
neighborhood, and had to be six or more feet thick. With the deep drainage
ditch beyond, it had once been an impassible barrier. But now it was cut.
Edward steered for the gap in the tree where a chunk not quite a lane wide had
been removed. Daniel wondered just what kind of saw had been able to chew
through the thing. He felt his shoulder brush up against Anna’s and tried not
to pull away without it seeming like he was lingering on purpose. Any extra
pressure might be seen as flirting, and too forward. Anything less would be
intolerable to him.

As the Bronco crept through the gap in the tree, Anna leaned
toward her window and Daniel reluctantly did the same, there no longer being an
excuse to linger in the middle. He watched the yellow wall of concentric
circles pass close by, the smell of fresh wood pervading the car. There were
jagged splinters standing out near the center where the weight of the cut piece
had ripped as it was pulled out. The bite marks of several angles of attack
from various saws met in rough ridges. As they pulled out the other side,
Daniel saw the removed piece was actually several. They had been dragged away,
leaving a smear of bark in their wake. A car passed along in front of the
Bronco, creeping down the main road at half the speed limit, a bank of shocked
faces turning to gape at the fortress wall lowered over the neighborhood’s
entrance and now cut clean through.

“We should stop and take pictures,” Anna said. She leaned
out her window and aimed a small camera back at the tree. It made fake shutter
sounds.

“On the way back,” Edward said. He turned to Daniel. “Which
way?”

“Right,” Daniel said. He repeated the directions his mom had
given him. “Down 105 for a few miles, then right on Harvey. The neighborhood’s
called Willow Falls. Second house on the left.”

Edward nodded and hit his blinker. They turned slowly and
headed down the highway. Several times a mile, each of them would take turns
pointing to another scene of destruction: a large tree pushed off the road, a
power line down and tangled up in the tree that took it, a snapped power pole,
a mobile home that had been lifted up from its foundation and set back down
roughly in the front yard, its walls canting to the side.

“Look at that barn,” Daniel said. He pointed to the old
wooden structure, its red paint chipping; it was leaning over to one side and
completely ruined.

Anna laughed. “It was already like that.”

“Oh.” Daniel remembered. “You’re right.”

She slapped him playfully on the arm, and both men up front
laughed.

“This is a lot more clear than when I came through,”
Daniel’s father said. “We actually stopped and cut that tree.” He pointed. “It
was one of the ones we couldn’t drive around.”

The first stoplight they came to hung still and lifeless.
Daniel was surprised to see it hanging at all. Edward slowed to a stop, waited
for another vehicle to move funeral-slow through the intersection, then pulled
across. Daniel tapped Anna on the shoulder and pointed down the road to where
two power trucks were parked, both of their booms tucked down tight.

“Are they doing anything?” she asked, leaning closer to get
a good look.

“Doesn’t look like it.” As far as he could tell, they were
just taking notes. He could see an entire line of power poles leaning over into
the woods, like the toppling of one had dragged the rest down with it. “How do
they know where to even begin?” he asked.

“My friend with the company said they’d be getting a ton of
out-of-state help,” Daniel’s father said.

“I imagine most of that help will be routed to Columbia and
Charleston,” Edward pointed out. He pulled into the other lane to go around a
large limb, then came to a stop on the other side of it. “Even if we were hit
the hardest, there’s probably more damage in dollar values and in terms of
population elsewhere.” He turned toward the back seat. “You kids wanna haul
that limb out of the road?”

Daniel and Anna popped their doors and hurried out. They
smiled at each other as they hoisted the large piece of timber and staggered
toward the shoulder with it.

“On three,” Anna said.

They counted together and tossed it to the side. Daniel
rubbed his palms as it tumbled into the ditch.

They hopped back in the Bronco, and Edward put it in gear.
As they trundled along, a drive that might’ve taken fifteen minutes any other
time was stretched into over an hour. Daniel and Anna jumped out anytime there
was debris to move. The chainsaw was used twice to cut down trees leaning out
over the road that looked like they could go at any time. These were cut into
smaller pieces and hauled into the ditch. Daniel waved at a man in a pickup who
drove by while they were working. Being seen out on the road, volunteering his
time to pick up after the storm, filled Daniel’s heart with a slightly selfish
pride. He couldn’t believe how much fun he was having moving trees around. And
when his father asked if he wanted to cut the second tree into logs, an
appraising glance from Anna made it impossible to refuse. He listened to his
dad’s instructions, cranked the thing on the first try, then chewed slowly and
hesitantly through the middle of a tree as thick as his thigh. He enjoyed the
vibration and the shower of yellow snow kicked up from the tool. After the saw
dipped through the end of the tree and the upper half sank to the road, he hit
the power switch and handed it back to his dad. The smile on his father’s face
as he took the chainsaw remained fresh in Daniel’s mind as he helped Anna and
Edward drag away the upper half of the tree he’d just bisected.

It was strange how normal it all felt. Driving along a road
with the barest of traffic, working to clear it of debris, listening to his
father and Edward exchange small talk, tapping Anna on the arm to point out
something, laughing at a joke someone made, taking sober instructions from his
father—it was all such a bizarre transition for Daniel that he nearly forgot
where they were going, that they were primarily out to find his brother. And
that his brother would have no idea Daniel was coming, or who he’d be bringing
with him.

“There it is,” Daniel said, pointing to the “Willow Falls”
sign on the side of the road. It was an old wooden sign and partially obscured
by a fallen tree. Edward turned the Bronco onto a dirt road wide enough for a
single vehicle. The ground to either side was rough with weeds and looked to be
mostly sand and crushed shell, the kind of ground that reminded Daniel they
weren’t far from the ocean. Edward piloted them down the lane, dodging a limb
or two. Mailboxes highlighted the occasional driveway, but the neighborhood was
even more heavily wooded than Daniel’s. The houses were set back far enough to
be invisible from the road. To either side, though, Daniel could see the
effects of the storm. Jagged spikes of timber stood up everywhere, the tops of
the trees angling down like they were taking a bow. Fallen limbs formed an odd
sort of underbrush. A smattering of trash could be seen along the banks, likely
ripped from a garbage can or scattered by scavengers.

“That’s the second one,” Daniel’s father said, pointing.

Edward slowed and turned onto the gravel drive. The tires
crunched along, the smell of salt in the air through the open windows. “We’re
gonna need the saw,” Edward said, rubbing his beard. Daniel and Anna leaned
into one another and peered ahead. Two large trees crisscrossed the driveway
ahead, their limbs throwing up a hedge of green.

They stopped the car, and Daniel’s dad let Daniel make the
first cuts. The trunks of the trees were held off the ground by their limbs,
which made cutting all the way through them easy. Daniel had less fear of the
tool this second time. He pushed the blade deep against the trunk, letting the
spiked collar on the chainsaw hold fast, giving him something to pivot against.
He let the chain do the work and stood back as the two halves parted. Another
smooth cut through the tree, and two through the other one, and Daniel shut the
chainsaw down. He handed it and the plastic goggles back to his father.

“Nice work, Son,” his dad said. He slapped him on the back.
The newness of that trite and clichéd moment—learning a skill from his father
and putting it on display—made Daniel feel slightly dizzy and more than a
little resentful. He found himself smiling, against his will, and saw that Anna
was smiling back at him.

The four of them dragged the two trees out of the road, the
limbs sweeping the gravel behind them. Back in the Bronco, they trundled along,
heading for a house partially visible at the end of the long and wood-lined
alley.

“Good golly,” Edward said, as they exited into a clearing at
the end of the drive.

“Holy shit,” Daniel’s father said.

Daniel leaned his head out the window to see. The Bronco
came to a crunching stop, the brakes squealing. He followed his father’s
pointing arm to see his mom’s Taurus parked in what must’ve once been a shady
spot. The tree that had formerly created said shade was lying on top of the
Taurus, the vehicle now flat from hood to trunk.

“Holy shit,” Daniel whispered.

He felt Anna leaning across him, her hand on his shoulder,
straining to see. Daniel would’ve delayed the moment had he been thinking clearly.
Instead, he opened the door and stepped out, allowing Anna to spill out behind
him.

“Mom’s gonna flip,” he said. He walked out toward the car,
then turned as a screen door slammed by the house.

“Daniel?”

His brother stomped down the wooden steps leading up to the
single-story house. He broke into a trot, hurrying his way, his face a mix of
surprise, relief, and joy.