The Hurricane (9 page)

Daniel spun around and took in the utter destruction of
their front yard. He heard a cat mew pathetically in the distance. He couldn’t
see past the tall walls of fallen limbs to see how bad off the rest of the
neighborhood was.

“How long do we have?” he asked.

Carlton ran his fingers through his hair. “Depends on how
large the eye is and how fast the storm’s moving. I hope we don’t have long.”

“You’re ready for it to come
back?
”

Daniel didn’t understand.

“I’m ready for it to move
on
. I’d hate for it to
stall here.”

Daniel nodded.

“Do you think it’s safe to run around the house and see how
everything else looks?”

His mother shook her head. “There might be power lines down
or something else we can’t think of. Let’s just get back inside.”

“I’m going to go upstairs and see how bad the damage is,”
Carlton said. “And we should try and eat something before the winds pick back
up.”

Zola appeared behind him, dragging her blanket, which she
held wrapped around her shoulders. “Can I go upstairs, too?” she asked. Before
anyone could answer, she dropped the blanket and turned and ran toward the
stairs. Carlton kissed Daniel’s mom and ran after her.

“Sucks about the house,” Daniel told his mom. He followed
her into the house and watched her close the door and secure the deadbolt.

“It’s insured,” she said. “I just hate it for Zola. I hope
it’s not that bad.”

“It looked pretty bad.”

She waved him toward the kitchen. “I don’t want to try the
gas just yet, so let’s do cereal.” She went to the cabinet and pulled out a mix
of boxes. “We also have these Poptarts if anyone wants to eat them cold.”

“How long will we be without power?” Daniel grabbed the milk
out of the fridge and shut the door as fast as he could, trapping the cold
inside what had become a lifeless cooler.

“It might be a few days, as bad as it looks outside. And it
might look even worse once the other side of the storm gets done with us.”

“It doesn’t feel like anything’s about to happen,” Daniel
said. Looking out the window, it looked like a normal morning with just some
heavy rainclouds on the horizon.

Zola stomped down the stairs with the heft of a mule and
burst into the kitchen, crying. She had her sodden bookbag on one shoulder, a
stuffed animal in her hand.

“It’s ruined!” she cried. She ran into her mother’s arms and
threw her hands around her back. “Everything’s ruined!”

Their mom didn’t say anything. Carlton walked in and went
immediately for the cereal. Daniel noticed, in the sad and quiet exhaustion on
his mother’s face, how worn out she was. Her work weeks were invariably
draining, but she always had the weekend to recharge herself. A glance out the
windows—past the leaves and twigs plastered to the glass and to the debris
field beyond—suggested it would be some time before anyone rested.

The light outside dimmed like a curtain drawn over the sky.

“Get some breakfast,” their mother said. She let go of Zola
and passed her a bowl. Carlton crunched loudly on his cereal and leaned over
the sink to gaze up at the sky.

“Make it quick,” he mumbled around his food.

An eerie shade fell over the house. A distant howl drew
closer. It sounded like wide and fast columns of highway traffic were whizzing
nearby. Daniel shook some cereal into a bowl, did the same in the bowl held out
by his sister, watched his mom splash some milk on both, then grabbed a spoon
from the counter and followed Carlton back down the hall.

“These’re the worst winds,” Carlton crunched over his
shoulder. It sounded more like he was steeling himself for what was to come
rather than trying to enlighten Daniel.

The four of them filed back into the bathroom. Daniel and
Zola sat in their corner and ate while their mom and Carlton sat on the edge of
the tub. An empty bucket floated on the water behind them, and Daniel realized
how badly he needed to pee.

There was a crack outside, a sharp report like a canon, and
the roar of the wind was right down their necks. It grew even darker in the
house, almost as if the sun had changed its mind and slunk back over the
horizon, ducking from the storm. The four of them stopped crunching on granola
as the pitch and intensity of the wind grew and grew, but still seemed so
distant.

And then the wall of hurricane Anna reached their yard.
There were more gunshots of snapping trees, audible over the din of the wind.
The house shuddered violently as it was hit by the edge of the storm. Daniel
felt a surge of nausea clench his stomach. A hollow pit of anxiety and fear of
this indomitable thing had returned, much like he’d felt in the surf with Roby
those years ago.

The house rattled and creaked. Something snapped
somewhere—bits of the roof peeling off, a window shattering, another limb or tree
smashing into their home—it was impossible to tell.

The wind groaned through the cracked windows, belching in
after them. Daniel could feel the air grow colder, could feel a breeze on his
cheeks, could smell the wet rot of disturbed soil and bark. None of them were
eating. None were reaching to light a candle. They sat with their spoons in
their hands, dripping milk, waiting for the world to end.

“It was like this before, just before the eye came,” their
mother said. Daniel didn’t know if she was trying to reassure them or let them
know how lucky they’d been to sleep through it. Daniel thought about how that
earlier chaos had just ended suddenly with the eye passing over. This time, it
would be another half day of powerful winds clawing at their house, their
neighborhood, their entire town. Zooming out, he had a sudden and terrific
shift in perspective that made his mind reel. Daniel thought about all the
millions of Americans going about their days in other states, glancing perhaps
at the weather, asking friends what that storm was named again, marveling at
the size and shape of the thing on their functioning and powered TVs . . . and
Daniel was in the
middle
of it all. He was terrified for his life in the
middle of someone else’s idle curiosity. He was one of those numbers people
rattled off: so many dead, so many injured, so many without a home, so many
displaced, so many orphaned. He was a living statistic.

The house shuddered, and Daniel’s brain did the same. He
remembered Hurricane Katrina, when he was younger. He had watched the news for
two days, marveling at how water could literally burn, at people being
airlifted from their homes, and he had been little more than curious and awed.

Closer to home, he thought of the people standing in the
storm’s eye right then. His neighbors and fellow South Carolinians. What where
they going through? What were the winds like in Charleston? Were people in
distant Myrtle Beach surfing and laughing? Were people in Florida thrilled and
relieved? Were kids watching on their TVs, hoping it would be a bad storm so
they could be entertained by the news?

There was a great crash on the other side of the wall near
him and Zola, and his sister jumped, spilling some of her cereal. She screamed
and moved up against him, groping for his hand with one of hers. Daniel put his
bowl down by his feet and wrapped his arms around her. Her spoon and bowl
rattled together as she held them with one trembling hand.

“It’s okay,” Carlton told them. He slid across the edge of
the tub. His cereal had been put aside; his hands went to their shoulders.
Daniel felt himself and Zola leaning into his strong touch rather than pulling
away as they normally might have. Their mother moved to the floor and huddled
up close. She rested her hands on their knees, and the ring of touching almost
felt like a séance or a blessing before a meal. With all of them quiet, Daniel
could hear naked and raw wind and rain in the living room. At least one window
had blown out.

The wind continued to rattle the house, but the initial wall
of fury gradually dissipated. It slid further inland, tormenting others. What
was left was a deafening howl and the hiss of sheets of rain. The goose bumps
of fear subsided on Daniel’s arms and legs. The four of them unwound from their
familial knot of terror. Soggy cereal with warm milk was stirred, but little
more was eaten. They took turns in the hallway, watching the trees bend through
glimpses out the kitchen windows, while others went to the bathroom one at a
time. Daniel saw trees nearly denuded of leaves in the height of summer, their
naked limbs whipping, their trunks bent and bobbing. He leaned out to see
better and watched as the entire yard swayed in synchronicity, following the
furious waves of rain and screeching gusts of wind like seaweed caught in the
tide.

Taking his turn in the bathroom was the worst. It was the
being alone, the moving shadows cast by the solitary flickering candle, the
sound of his family conversing in the hallway out there with the storm. Daniel
made the mistake of looking in the toilet as he finished his business.

“Is it okay to flush?” he yelled through the door.

Everyone else had gone. His mom said it was fine. Daniel
flushed and was refilling the bowl with a bucket of tub water when his family
came back inside.

“I hope Hunter’s okay,” he said aloud.

“Me too,” said Zola.

“The Deng’s have a nice brick house. He’ll be fine.”

Daniel looked to his mom. “You’ve been to his new
girlfriend’s house?”

She shook her head. “No, but you can bet I asked about how
safe he’d be before I told him he could stay the night.”

The rain pelted the living room on the other side of the
bathroom wall. More dust fell from the ceiling.

“What if our house goes down around us?” Zola asked. “It
isn’t brick.”

“It won’t,” Carlton said.

Daniel was pretty sure he couldn’t know that. It was just
what adults said to assuage children’s fears.

“When will I find out if my friends are okay?” she asked.

“Well,” Carlton said, “it was about eight hours or so after
the heavy winds that the eye got here, so it’ll be at least that long again
before we’re through this.”

“And then I’ll be able to get online?” she asked.

“Honey, it’s gonna take them a while to get power restored—”

“What about my cell phone?”

“Zola—” Daniel started.

“Let’s try and get some rest,” their mother said. She
gathered bowls together and placed them in the bathroom sink. When the house
shook, the spoons vibrated against the porcelain. The four of them shifted
about like campers in a too-small tent, tugging blankets and pillows out from
underneath each other and trying their best to get comfortable.

“There’s no way I’m going to be able to sleep through this,”
Daniel muttered as his mom puffed out the candles.

But as before, he was wrong.

He endured the sleep of the sick. It was a sleep punctuated
by repetitive awakenings, each more blurry-minded than the last. It was a sleep
of sticky sweatiness, of damp pillows, of tossing and turning and being kicked
by his neighbors. It was the horrid daytime sleep of headaches and demi-awareness.
Dreams started seeming more real—and the dark, stuffy, smelly, noisy room into
which he awoke felt less and less true.

At some point in the day, Carlton and his mother moved out
into the hallway. They slept with their feet inside the door to keep it propped
open. Daniel and Zola stretched out and found new, cool spots on the tile and
around the other sides of their pillows. They slept some more to while away the
hours as the wind outside became less of a menace and more of a nuisance. The
wind was never going to abate. Daniel felt like the noise had moved into their
lives, like another stepfather, unwanted and unannounced, and now they would
have to get used to it. It felt like a fever that wouldn’t go away. And just
like when he was sick, Daniel thought about how little he appreciated that time
of wellness. He never thought about the lack of deafening wind on a normal day.
The absence went unnoticed. When he was sick, he always promised himself he’d
never again take for granted being well. But once the fever passed, life
continued as usual, and he rarely paused to appreciate his wholeness.

If the wind ever goes away
, Daniel thought to
himself,
I vow to soak up the silence
.
The quiet.
He’d let the
ringing dissipate from his sore ears, eek from his rattling bones, slide away
from the anxious lining of his skin, and appreciate the calm stillness left
behind.

He promised.

••••

The smell of soup pulled Daniel from the hazy mist of his
fretful sleep. He slowly stirred. There was pressure behind his eyes from sleeping
at the wrong time of day. He stood and rubbed his face, glanced at himself in
the mirror, and realized how dirty and grimy he felt. He could still taste beer
on his breath, now stale. He rummaged in the bag of toiletries his mom had
stashed below the sink and found his deodorant, his toothbrush, some
toothpaste. He slid the former up his shirt and applied some over his sweat. He
ran some water over his toothbrush, but the gurgling, hissing drip reminded him
of the absence of power—and that he’d just used what was left in the pipes. He
brushed as he walked out of the bathroom and turned to survey the damage in the
living room.

Carlton looked up from an embrace with his mother. She was
facing away from Daniel, but obviously wiping hurriedly at her eyes to keep him
from seeing that she’d been crying. Daniel looked away from them and studied
the mess in the room. Shattered glass twinkled all across the carpet like
spilled jewels. A sheet had been hung from the blinds over the blown-out
window, but the wind kept pushing it back, and rain kept filtering down to soak
the insides of their home. The entire floor was soaked. Puddles had formed here
and there, revealing defects in the otherwise level floor. The TV and stereo
cabinet had been rained on for hours and were likely ruined. Daniel looked at
his old original Xbox sitting on the floor and wondered if maybe this would be
an excuse for him to finally get a newer 360.