The Sky Beneath My Feet - By Lisa Samson Page 0,82
hut included stainless steel grills, slabs of granite, and a fancy outdoor shower, but erecting the structure was as far as they got. Under the grass roof, there are a couple of folding lounge chairs, but that’s it. The wind whips at the corner of the roof, stirring the grass like the fringe on Holly’s wrap. I like it down here.
“Beth, really. Come here.”
I climb the steps and join her in front of the television, where a local newscaster is talking over some storm-tracker satellite images.
“Guess what?” Holly says. “It’s hurricane season. Can you believe this? We drove fifteen hours to get to the beach just in time for a hurricane. Are we the stupidest people in the world, or what?”
Thinking back to the convenience store, the missing water and the empty shelves suddenly make a lot of sense. The guy behind the counter could have been a bit more forthcoming—but then, he probably assumed everybody knew. According to the weatherman, mandatory evacuation orders were issued overnight to a variety of locations, but my knowledge of the Florida geography is too sketchy for me to know whether we’re affected or not.
“How does the Sunday school song go?” she asks. “‘The house on the sand went splat.’” She slaps her hands together on the last word for emphasis. “I knew something was wrong.”
She settles on the edge of the small couch, the remote in her hand, staring wide-eyed at the coverage. I have to smile. The storm is just outside. If she turned her head a little to the right, she could see the black thunderheads on the horizon, the churning gunmetal ocean, the occasional swooping gull bright white against the backdrop. Instead, she’s glued to the screen, watching a meteorologist’s commentary on some time-lapsed images of what’s happening before our eyes.
Meanwhile, I feel strangely energized by the coming storm.
By energized, I mean that my skin starts tingling from the feet up. I begin to feel pent up in the little house, so much so that I have to go onto the porch just to feel like I can breathe again. The humid breeze, though hardly cool, raises goose bumps on my flesh, visible tremors of anticipation. I imagine towering waves crashing down, sandstorms whipped into the sky, fat raindrops breaking like hailstones on the roof, even though the actual scene is relatively calm: just darkness in the distance, an empty stretch of sand, and a preternatural brightness to everything, as if the ground is somehow giving off light on its own.
“Beth, you shouldn’t go out there.”
“I’m just going to have a look.”
I go back down the steps, past the tiki hut, my bare feet sinking in the smooth, fine sand. It must be high tide. The frothing waterline seems so near the edge of dry ground. The first wave to hit my feet sends cool spray up my legs. A thrilling sensation. I walk a few feet farther out, until the waves reach my knees. The whole idea of people throwing “hurricane parties” suddenly makes sense to me. We’re so accustomed to nature as a passive backdrop, something to look at or build on or destroy. When wind and water and sky rear up and announce their presence, we’re either afraid (like my friend) or weirdly intrigued. Something within us speaks to something in the storm, saying, It’s nice to know you’re there.
When I wander back to the house, the sand now plastered to my wet skin, Holly opens the glass screen door with a flutter of relief.
“Thank God you didn’t get sucked in,” she says. “I thought for sure you were gonna be swept out to sea, Beth. And I thought Rick was the crazy one in the family!”
“You should go out there. It’s exhilarating.”
“The good news is, it’s been downgraded. It’s not a hurricane anymore, just a tropical storm. It’ll touch ground farther down the coast, but we’ll still get a bucketload of rain.” As she relays the news, disappointment creeps into her voice, the same disappointment a panicked housewife might feel having to report that the escaped inmates from the prison have all been rounded up. Fear, too, can be exciting. People are funny that way, prone to regret, even when the thing we regret is the aversion of disaster.
“If it’s just a storm,” I say, “then you ought to come out. There’s a little grass hut at the bottom of the steps. You can at least venture that far.”