Acts of Nature - By Jonathon King Page 0,26
traveled. Push your vehicle up to ninety or a hundred miles an hour on the expressway if you dare and then note the sound. Not the engine sound, because that won’t compare with the rush of air blasting over your car hood and roof. Just listen to the sound and then stick your head out the side window and let the air rip at your face. That’s a category four hurricane. That’s the strength of the wind, tearing at your world. For hours.
Harmon was staring at the television, but not seeing the weather woman with her graphics and maps and little spinning red pinwheel depicting the present location of Simone. He was instead seeing the Oakwood grain of his double front door during Andrew, his face pressed up against it, his then solid two hundred thirty pounds trying to keep it closed as the wind bowed the two-inch-thick planks into the entryway. His wife was in the hallway closet, crying, huddled with their two children. But he could not hear her or anything else but the wind blowing through the rubber seal of the doorway, the air under such pressure that the sound was like Arturo Sandoval hitting a high C note on his trumpet for what seemed an eternity. He had looked around behind him at the walls lined with his books, really the most important things to him other than his family, and cursed himself for not preparing better. And then, at that moment, as he watched, the ceiling at one corner of his living room began to rise like the devil himself was gripping the house with a giant hand and then peeled away the entire roof and sent it flipping away into the night.
The house had been a total loss. They were lucky to salvage some important papers, some pictures, some heirlooms. Most of his books had been ruined by the rain that had washed unimpeded through every room. After Andrew his family relocated farther up the state. Everyone in the house had survived unscathed but for the memories that crept back.
Harmon refocused on the television, took another drink of cold water. Back to work, he thought. Only the south side shutters left. He thought about Squires, could see his partner on the beachfront somewhere, sitting out in the open, laughing into the face of the rising wind and downing yet another draft at the hurricane party thrown by the locals down at the infamous beachside tavern called the Elbo Room. He was probably toasting the fact that the company wouldn’t be sending them out to the oil rigs since this one had turned east. He’d be buying shots and toasting hell itself. Some of us took precautions, some just said fuck it, let it come. If she hit them head on, it would be difficult to argue who was the smarter.
“Damn, Chez! It’s blowin’ like a snarly bitch out there now,” Wayne said as he came through the door, wind and rain swirling in behind him even though he’d only opened it far enough to squeeze through. “Old man Brown’s coconut tree is bent over like to touch its head on the ground and the water’s already up to the fourth step over to Smallwood Store.”
He shook himself like a dog that had just come out of the lake, the water flying off his slicker onto the linoleum floor and the nearby refrigerator. Buck and Marcus were again sitting in the kitchen, each with a hand of cards spread out in their fingers, a small pile of quarters and crumpled bills lay in the middle of the table.
“Hey, bring us a beer there, Stumpy,” Marcus said without looking up from his hand.
“Fuck you,” Wayne answered, peeling off the yellow foul- weather jacket.
Buck raised his own eyes at the boy’s answer and then looked at Wayne, and then at the fridge. Wayne got three cans of Budweiser out and set them on the table. One he put in front of the empty chair where he sat. He didn’t distribute the others, the smallest of rebellions.
“Don’t call me stumpy,” he said. Marcus just grinned into his cards. Wayne had lost his left thumb two years ago, working the stone crab boats with one of his uncles. He’d bragged about being allowed to work the traplines at the beginning of the harvest season. It was a man’s job. The stone crab traps, big as a large microwave oven and just as heavy, were strung out by the dozens