The Hurricane (7 page)

“How long before they fix the cell phones?” Zola asked.

“Please stop with that,” their mom said. Her voice sounded
strained.

Daniel frowned at Zola, who pouted and looked near to
crying. She flopped over on her side and curled up in a tight ball, knees to
her chin, her phone clutched in both hands.

“How long do we need to stay like this?” Daniel asked
Carlton.

“Just ’till it blows over,” he said. “It could be hours, so
if you can sleep, you should.”

Daniel leaned back
against the side of the tub and hugged
his knees. He rested his chin on
his kneecap and watched the candles throw shadows everywhere. Upstairs, the
house creaked and popped as it moved around on unsteady joints. The wind was
whistling louder and higher. Daniel thought about his father, who had built the
house many years ago. He wondered if he’d fucked that up like everything else.
The thought made him suddenly fearful about the sturdiness of their shelter.
Still, Daniel had heard heavy storms assault the house before. It had always
survived. As Zola kicked his feet to the side, making more room for herself, he
thought about how ridiculous it was for the four of them to be crammed into a
single bathroom. He was thinking this as he drifted off to sleep—

••••

There was a period before every hurricane where the only
things stirring in the air were excitement and anticipation. Daniel had grown
up with a series of near misses. He had watched news crews roll through town, had
spent entire days in front of the weather channel as track lines were plotted
and re-plotted. He had gone to the beach to watch the surfers in their wetsuits
paddle out through rushing walls of foam. He remembered standing up on one of
the many boardwalks that crossed over the grassy dunes to the hard pack of
Beaufort’s beaches beyond. The waves were crashing all the way up to the dunes,
slicking the sea grasses down like hair on a wet scalp. Daniel had stood at the
end of the raised wooden platform and held onto the rail as the angry ocean
leapt up, over and over, to crash across his thighs and knees, threatening to
sweep him off into the street.

Another time, with the sea not so enraged, he and Roby had
tried to swim out through the storm-angry breakers. Even without surfboards in
their hands, neither of them had been strong enough to dive down and swim
through the powerful currents engendered by the curling waves and walls of
foam. There had been a moment during that exhausting swim when the fun and excitement
had taken a bad turn. The raw power of the ocean around him, the roar of the
foaming and spitting sea, the endless reserves of strength nature seemed to
possess as it sent one riled wave after the other, never letting up—Daniel
remembered the fun turning to panic.

Swimming out of the ocean, calling for Roby, letting him
know that he was giving up, he had felt the largeness of the universe around
him. He knew, then, what it was to be a speck floating in the infinite. There
was no crying “mercy.” It wasn’t Hunter, who could be pleaded with. He couldn’t
change his mind, couldn’t beg the ocean to stop, to let up on the roaring foam.
As he swam back to where his feet could touch, straining on tiptoes to push
toward the beach, the piles of white froth on the surface of the water had gone
into his nose and mouth. The ocean was a rabid dog. But as he pressed further,
and the walls of crashing wave stopped spilling over his head, then crashing at
his back, then pushing against his knees, then lapping his running,
high-stepping, shivering ankles, Daniel saw it as something worse than an
enraged mutt. It was, instead, a destructive and unfeeling thing. It threatened
without
knowing
.

Roby’s eyes had been wide and dripping with fear as he
joined Daniel high up the dune. They had laughed with nerves and shivered in
the strong, chilling wind. The ocean, meanwhile, kept thundering. It was a
dozing giant, a disinterested beast that could kill with a sneeze, rattle with
its exhalations, strike one down with its barest of shivers. And that, the
soulless impersonal giant Daniel saw that day, scared him more than the
anthropomorphized monster he used to liken to an angry Earth. He was an ant
underfoot. A fly flattened by a mindless windshield. A grain of sand plummeting
from a shrugged shoulder and spiraling to its doom—

••••

Daniel woke to thunder and the sensation of falling. The
house was shaking, his mom crying out in alarm, powder from the ceiling
drifting into his eyes as he looked up. He had a sudden image of a wave crashing
over their house, of it disappearing in foam, his nightmare images leaking out
into the noise and clamor of the
real
.

“What was that?” Zola asked. She sat up and clutched at
Daniel. The house was still reverberating from the great crash. The echo of the
noise, the sound of it from his dreams—and then Daniel realized the boom that
woke them had been much louder than any of the other storm noises. The wind
outside was terrifying and loud. It seemed to have grown louder. Daniel could
hear the bones and joints of their house cracking and popping, almost as if the
nails his father had driven by hand were now coming loose.

Carlton lit a candle. “Sounded like something hitting the
house,” he said.

There was fear or sleepiness in his voice. Daniel could hear
a swishing sound beyond the howl of the wind as sheets of rain pummeled the
siding. It sounded like a massive straw broom was being raked violently across
the house, over and over.

“Like a boat, or something?” Daniel had images of Hugo in
his mind. They were miles from shore and the nearest marina, but he couldn’t
shake the image of waves crashing over their house, like in his dream.

“Probably a tree.”

“Is there anything we should do?” his mother asked. She lit
another candle, and Daniel saw for the first time that his all-powerful mom was
scared and at a loss. He pried Zola’s fingernails out of his arm and patted the
backs of her hands.

“Sorry,” his sister said.

“Can I take a flashlight and go look?”

His mom and stepdad both frowned at him. “This is the safest
place to be until the storm’s over,” his mom said.

“I’ve gotta pee,” said Zola, bouncing her knees.

“Just a quick look, Mom. Just to see what it was. I won’t be
long.”

Their mother looked back and forth between him and Zola,
then turned to Carlton.

“I wouldn’t mind seeing what’s going on out there,” Carlton
admitted.

“Alright. We’ll move out into the hallway and take turns
using the bathroom. Nobody flushes, okay? We’ll do that last.”

Zola groaned. “Are you serious?”

“And I’ve got a garbage bag here somewhere for the toilet
paper so it doesn’t clog up.” Their mom dug in the bag of supplies she’d been
using as a pillow.

“This sucks,” Zola said.

“You’re lucky you’re going first,” Daniel told her. He
grabbed one of the flashlights. Carlton flicked one of the others on and back
off again. The three of them shuffled into the hallway as Zola lifted the top
lid of the toilet, still complaining under her breath.

“Damn, the house is
moving
,” Daniel said.

“Watch your language,” his mom said.

“We forgot to crack the windows,” Carlton hissed. He flicked
on his flashlight as Zola pushed the door shut, squeezing off the light from
the candles inside.

Daniel turned on his flashlight. “Why would we crack the
windows?”

“It’s supposed to regulate the pressure inside and out. I
don’t know if it’s an old wives tale or if there’s anything to it—”

“My dad used to make us do it as well,” his mom said. “They
used to say it kept the roof from sucking off.”

“Is that what that noise was?”

“Nah, I think that was a tree hitting the house. It probably
sounded a lot worse than it actually was.”

“We should crack the windows, I think,” his mom said,
indecision in her voice.

There was a flushing sound in the bathroom.

“I’m sorry!” Zola called out. She cracked the door just as
their mom was reaching for the knob. “It was a habit. I couldn’t stop myself!”

The toilet gurgled; Zola pouted in the cone of light from
Daniel’s flashlight. “I’m sorry,” she said again.

“It’s okay,” their mom said. She patted Zola on the arm.
“You wanna come out while I go?”

Her eyes darted to the sides as the howling outside
intensified during an especially powerful gust. The house swayed. “Can I stay
in here
with
you? I won’t look.”

Their mom laughed. “Okay.” She kissed Carlton on the cheek.
“I would just crack a few of them several inches or so.” She squeezed Daniel’s
arm. “Be careful and don’t be long.”

Daniel nodded.

His mom slipped into the bathroom and shut the door. He
could hear Zola still apologizing and making excuses inside.

“I’m going to crack the ones in our bedroom first,” Carlton
said. “I’d like to grab an extra pillow and a blanket and drop them back off
here.”

“I’ll do the living room and then just peek upstairs real
quick,” Daniel said. “You’ll do the kitchen?”

“Okay,” Carlton said. He nodded, and Daniel caught the
barest of smiles. Carlton tucked the flashlight between his elbow and ribs,
clapped his hands once, and said, “Break,” like a football quarterback.

Daniel laughed and headed off in the other direction.

As the house rattled in the assault of wind and rain, he
stopped laughing and padded along silently, hoping the house wouldn’t take his
stepfather’s suggestion literally.

As Daniel crept down the hallway, playing his flashlight
across the floor and up the walls, he suddenly felt like he was on patrol. The
wild sounds outside made it feel as if he were on a ship being tossed on the
seas. He was a lone sailor checking the bilges after crashing onto a reef,
seeing how much water the ship was taking on.

It most certainly didn’t feel like his house. All the lights
were off. As he passed through the kitchen and into the living room, he saw
that even the appliances were dead. All the twinkling blips that normally
graced their powered-down faces had blinked shut. The place looked abandoned.
Condemned.

Daniel stole across the living room carpet toward the
windows looking out over the front yard. He set down his flashlight and
unlocked the window. Air hissed and whistled through the seams, the wind
outside like a passing freight train. With his fingers bent in the jamb, Daniel
lifted the window a few inches, and the air burst inside immediately. He had a
sudden impulse to slam the window shut as the storm clawed its way inside, but
refrained. He figured the whole point of opening the windows was to allow the
insides of the house to match the fury outside. He wasn’t sure if he was
imagining it or not, but he thought his ears had popped like descending in an
airplane. He squeezed his nose and blew out, then bent to retrieve his
flashlight.

Before he moved to the next one, Daniel pressed the lens of
the flashlight up against the window, shining it outside. The pathetic dribble
of light did little to wash away the darkness, but he could see several of the
trees outside bending in the wind. Unlike before, however, when the small trees
had been moving, Daniel could now see the
big
ones swaying. The little
ones were snapped in half. He could see flashes of white wood where their raw
and exposed interiors caught the light. Brambles of limb littered the yard
already, looking like a scattered hedge. Leaves sped by like jet-powered bugs;
the wet ones plastered themselves to the house and windows. Rain came in
sideways and in blinding sheets, like a powerful sprinkler dousing the house.
Daniel felt the water misting him across his thighs as it blew through the
screen and the new opening he’d made. It was hard to move away from the window.
He was transfixed by the incredible forces powering through their front yard.

Finally, he tore himself away and moved to the next window.
He cracked it, then ran to the dining room, bumping into a chair that had been
left pulled out from the table. Carlton yelled something from the kitchen, but
Daniel couldn’t hear over the wind he was inviting into the house. He flashed his
light through the windows to look for a tree or anything leaning against the
wall. Seeing nothing, he ran back to the living room and up the first few steps
toward the second floor, shining his light well ahead of him.

The storm sounded twice as fierce upstairs. It sounded like
the roof was off. The howl and whistle were completely unabated, like Daniel
would walk up the next few steps and find naked clouds roiling above, leaves
blowing through, just a few bits of low wall standing around him.

He took each step cautiously and reminded himself that it
would be raining on him and the carpet would be soaked if the roof were
actually gone. Once his head was higher than the second floor, he rotated his
light around through the pickets of the railing, just to be sure. All the walls
were there. Daniel kicked himself for being so stupid and afraid. He ran up the
last handful of steps and went straight for his room. Throwing the door open,
he first grabbed his book bag, which had his books, schoolwork, and a few comics
in it. He slung both straps on and moved to the window.

Daniel peered outside. He could see a second cone of light
shining out below where Carlton was scanning the back yard from the kitchen
window. If the front yard looked like a war in progress, the back looked like
the aftermath. One of the really big trees was down. The sight of such a large
cylinder of wood lying flat through the back yard was jarring. Limbs stood up
from it like smaller trees sprouting vertically from its bark. These were
whipping around like the pom-poms fans shake at the high school football games.
As Daniel cracked the window, he saw bits of bark and pine needles, along with
the usual leaves, stuck to the outer glass. The air shrieked as he let some in,
and the door to his room slammed shut with a loud bang.