Acts of Nature - By Jonathon King Page 0,29
for its scream to come.
TEN
“She’ll hold together,” I said, like a mantra now, but I was wrong. The wind had increased fourfold in strength over the last hour. Sherry and I were now deep into the night. We’d lost the electricity from the generator long ago. In blackness the low hum had grown an octave higher, singing a song of nature pissed off. Then the east-side window of the room, behind where Sherry and I were huddled, suddenly blew out with an explosive sound of shattering glass. I covered both of our faces to shield us from the fragments, but when nothing came I turned a flashlight beam onto the back window and saw that every shred of glass and most of the window frame was simply gone, sucked out into the storm.
The change of pressure in the room and the instant exposure to the wind created a vortex of shredding papers and sailing books and dishes. Flapping fabric and smashing glass joined with the pitch of the wind to create a din that made me lose even my sense of direction. I thought of trying to somehow muscle one of the couch mattresses up to cover the exposed hole where the window had been and was still contemplating how I would manage it in the dark when the entire structure shuddered again and even the floor seemed to shift. I knew we were anchored into the substrata of the Glades on several foundation posts, but I still had the feeling of being on a ship floating on water and caught in a typhoon that would surely roll and sink us. The kitchen area window was the next to go, this one coming apart with a splitting sound, but the shards of glass this time seemed to follow a direct line through the room to the opening at the opposite side. The fractured glass was immediately followed by a rush of wind-driven water that now had a path into the building.
“Are we going to drown, Max? Damn, I’d hate to drown,” Sherry said over the howl. Her voice was not panicky or defeated but marvelously cynical for our situation. I didn’t want to repeat my lie that the building would hold together, but we were in the middle of the swamp, not on the coast. Since the depth of the water below us was barely three feet I figure as long as we could stay behind something to give us leeward shelter and keep the wind-born water out of our throats we certainly wouldn’t drown.
“We’re not going to drown,” I yelled, but not with full conviction. I had botched this situation so badly I wouldn’t blame her if she never trusted me again.
It had been late afternoon when the first bands of wind from the storm we’d watched forming in the west reached us. I misread it as a single passing front. After it cleared we actually thought about cooking a dinner out on the deck. Then the second band washed through, much stronger and wetter than the first and we retreated into the main building of the camp.
“A second front?” Sherry had chided me.
“Series of thunderstorms,” I answered, smiling, but unconvinced myself.
“I think maybe I’ll try to get some kind of weather report on the Snows’ radio.”
A shower of wind and rain quickly pelted the east side wall.
“I have a better idea, Max. Why don’t I do the radio while you tie down that canoe since it’s our only way out of here,” Sherry said.
I had on my boat shoes and a T-shirt but the wood planking was slick with rain when I stepped outside and the drops themselves stung when they hit my legs at a hard, wind-driven angle. I moved the Adirondack chairs into the storage building, then, thinking ahead, filled the generator to the top with fuel so we’d have electricity through the night, and then latched down all of the doors. The wind kept growing, the rain more horizontal. I made a decision to not just lash the canoe down, but to actually wrestle it indoors. The main room could accommodate its length and I was losing confidence that this was just going to be a temporary blow. I propped open the side door and dragged the boat in, but Sherry did not turn to ask me what the hell I was doing or even look up from her study of the controls on the radio.
“I’ve been through the AM band twice and only got