The Hurricane

28

Things didn’t go back to normal; they went back to the way they were. The power company showed up a day later apologizing for the delays, explaining the hundreds of thousands who had been without power across the Low Country. They estimated it would be another week, at least, before the neighborhood had power.

Cell phone service was restored soon after that visit. Zola said she could go without a hot shower for the rest of her life, if only those bars remained. She and her friends wrote books to each other, one little line at a time, detailing their adventures from Hurricane Anna and her aftermath.

Chen’s parents got in touch almost immediately after service returned. They made their way down from Columbia with a list of supplies relayed by Daniel’s mom. They also brought an incredible buffet of fast food with them, a welcomed luxury. Edward and Anna came over to enjoy the feast. Hunter left with Chen and her parents to help out at their house. It didn’t seem like he was going far now that he was again a phone call away. Their mother cried anyway.

Six days after the storm, Carlton finally got in touch with the mechanics and was able to get his car back, giving the family enough mobility to pick up supplies. Power was restored a day later to the grocery store; several of the convenience stores reopened soon after. Daniel’s mom spent many hours on the phone with State Farm, mostly on hold, as they tried to find a rental and figure out when an adjuster could come see the car. The agent explained that they were as busy as they’d ever been and that it could take some time. She didn’t even mention the house to them.

Daniel spent the next week on the roof with his father. His dad had rounded up some materials and supplies from old contractors he had worked for; the lines at Lowe’s and Home Depot were too outrageous to consider. Houses everywhere wore bandages of blue tarps and plywood. Chainsaws and generators could not be had at any price. There were rumors of gouging as entrepreneurs from out of state came through with trailers full of both, selling them for twice the retail price. News trucks roamed Beaufort looking for such tidbits, reporting from ground zero, the point of impact, landfall.

Daniel felt removed from and above it all. He was too busy learning how to peel back shingles; cut sheathing with a handsaw; scab in rafters, which often meant hammering at awkward angles. He learned how to measure and cut plywood to fit, how to frame out a dormer, how to lay tar paper and tack it in place with roofing nails. A few times a day, Anna would come over to gauge their progress from the ground. Daniel would beam down at her, rattling off the day’s work or holding his arms in a ta-da pose. She would laugh and bring water up the ladder and smile at him with all the promises of more moonlight strolls through the neighborhood, holding hands and talking, enjoying the dead silence of the powerless world, laughing and kissing.

It was a momentous day when one of his father’s friends came through with a brand new window. They were laying shingles down when he pulled up in his truck and called out jovial insults to Daniel’s father, dropping his tailgate with a bang. It took a few shims to get the fit right, but the window went in with little effort. A handful of nails locked it in place. A piece of damaged siding salvaged off the back of the house was cut to cover the house wrap. The last of the shingles went on, and from the exterior, at least, the house was healed over.

On that last day, after Daniel had climbed down the ladder with a load of tools and supplies, his father had remained on the roof. Daniel looked up from the ground and saw him resting on one of the toe-boards, that two-by-four he had helped nail into place over a week ago. His father looked over the new dormer—a seamless copy of the original on the other side of the roof. He turned from it and gazed out over the yard, and Daniel didn’t ask or intrude into his thoughts. He went off to wash his hands and track down the smells from the kitchen, leaving his father to contemplate broken homes and what it took to mend them.

The next day, their father found a ride to Columbia, where there was plenty of work patching roofs. Daniel knew there was plenty more work even closer by, but didn’t challenge the decision. He figured his dad wanted to leave while he was still wanted—or needed, at least—rather than after he’d made things worse. Or possibly, it was getting too hard to take for him: being around the family he left, feeling a stranger in the house he’d built. Rather than wait at the cul-de-sac for his friend to arrive, he had gathered his meager belongings, said his goodbyes, and walked to the end of the neighborhood to wait. He was to the end of the driveway when Daniel realized he’d left the chainsaw behind.

Meanwhile, there remained a lot of work to be done on the inside of the house. The damage from the storm, like much damage, was more than skin deep. Zola’s room was a wreck; they took plenty of pictures, cataloged the damage, and slowly went to work. Bags and piles of sheetrock, strips of carpet, and mourned possessions went out. New insulation went in, covered by scraps of sheetrock it took half a day at Lowe’s to secure. After mudding and painting, putting down more carpet, moving Hunter’s bed into Zola’s room, it almost looked like a room again, like someone could live there.

And then there was Anna.

It was unusual for a first named storm to form so late in the season, even more unusual for it to become such a perfect storm and do such damage. Nobody could remember an “A” storm having such an impact. All the same could be said of Daniel’s Anna. From four houses down, she had come out of nowhere. She was as electronically unpopular as he, and Daniel found in their long walks and talks the sort of company he had been hunting for in the digital wilderness. In the two weeks he was out of school, and the neighborhood was without power, they hardly moved beyond holding hands, kissing, and lingering embraces. For Daniel, it was an inconceivable enough. He had gone from emotionally and romantically stunted to just right.

As he returned to school, and Anna continued her studies at home, Daniel found that he was moving into the world as an adult, despite his virginity. That last was now something he treasured and savored, rather than something he meant to destroy and conquer. He moved into the world as an adult with a secret, a man with a silly love in his heart, a girlfriend down the street that hardly any of his friends knew—and Daniel figured it was their loss.

••••

“Dude!”

Roby waved from across the courtyard, a goofy grin on his face. Daniel dug his thumbs into the straps of his backpack and hurried over to meet him.

“I’ve been trying to call you for two days, man.” Roby threw his arms around Daniel and slapped his backpack.

“I’ve had my phone off,” Daniel said.

“What for?”

Daniel shrugged. “I got kinda used to not being reached at any time by whoever,” he said. He left out that the “whoever” was usually his mom trying to get him to come home from Anna’s house. “How’ve you been? Did you guys get much damage?”

Roby rolled his eyes. “Did we get much damage? Dude, we had half our windows blown in. Someone said the gusts got over one-sixty up on the hill behind us. We were in the eye wall for like an hour.” He nodded his head. “What about you guys?”

Daniel shrugged. “Lots of trees down. One big one into the house. But it wasn’t that bad.”

“Sounds like you got lucky, then.”

“I don’t know about that,” Daniel said.

“Hell yeah you did. Didn’t you hear about Jeremy’s house?”

“Jeremy Stevens?”

“Yeah, dumbass.” Roby’s eyes widened. “You remember the party, right? The night of the storm?”

“I guess,” Daniel said. Some of that night drifted back to him. He remembered a ride in a cop car, loud music, having a little to drink—

“That’s weird. I’d kinda already had forgotten about that.” He scratched his head. “Probably because of all that came after. I mean, I had the worst two nights of sleep—”

“But you remember the video, don’t you?” Roby narrowed his eyes. “Dude, it’s all anyone’s been talking about.”

Daniel stared at him.

“The video of you and Amanda Hicks? Full frontal nudity? What the fuck, man?”

“Oh shit,” Daniel said. “Oh fuck. Fuck me, dude.” Sudden images of Anna sitting in front of her dad’s computer, two hands over her mouth, Daniel spinning naked before her. “I’m totally screwed,” Daniel said.

Roby laughed. “You have no idea how lucky you are, you shit! That video is like urban legend now. If you were one of the fifty or so people to see it, you’re like in this cult.”

“What do you mean?” Daniel was pretty sure he was going to throw up on the pavement. He felt like everyone walking past was looking right at him, smiling.

“Jeremy’s house had flood damage. His home computer is toast.”

“You’re shittin’ me.” Daniel still felt sick. It was going to take days to pass. “But everyone’s okay, right?”

Roby waved his hand. “Like that’s more important. But yeah, it wasn’t even from the storm, not directly. Their pool burst open and flooded half the downstairs.”

Daniel clutched his shirt. “And the computer?”

“I tried everything.” Roby frowned. “Couldn’t save your little video.”

“What do you mean? You went over there and tried to salvage it?”

“Like I want to see your little prick.” Roby glanced around the courtyard. “I told Jeremy I would try and get their family stuff off the drive, pictures and documents and what-not, which I did.”

“You did.”

“Yeah. I plugged the drive into my computer. Worked like a charm. The motherboard was the only thing that got wet.”

Daniel was about to explode. “For fuck’s sakes, Roby, what the hell did you do?”

Roby smiled. “I put you in my debt for let’s see . . . like, forever.”

“You deleted it.”

He raised his eyebrows and grinned coyly. “Or I kept a copy. You’ll never know.”

“Dude—”

“Speaking of which, we still have a ton of debris to round up and get rid of. I told mom that you’d be coming over this week and helping me do my share.”

“Seriously, man? You’re gonna blackmail me?”

His friend smiled. “Nothing I do to you will be worse than what I prevented.”

“But you’re my friend!”

“Yeah, well, then you should’ve gotten in touch with me at some point the past two weeks.”

“Man, I’m sorry, I’ve been busy. And hey, it’s not like we don’t go all summer without hearing from each other—”

“Yeah, but this was like the storm of the century. I was dying to talk to you about everything that was going on.” Roby frowned. “I tried to get my mom to drive us by last week and see how you guys were doing, but my dad is still militant about the gas. We’ve been driving everywhere at like twenty miles an hour. I thought he was gonna cut a hole in the floor and go Flintstone on us.”

Daniel laughed.

“I’m serious, dude. He got all end-of-the-world. You shoulda seen him. We were on rations for the first week.”

The more grave Roby tried to look, the harder Daniel laughed.

“I’m glad you think my suffering is funny.”

“Ditto. But hey, at least you got to spend a ton of time with your girlfriend, though, right?”

“I wish. She has an aunt and uncle nearby. She went to their house after the party and stayed there for the storm. I just saw her a week ago as she was heading back to Columbia. I think she’s gonna come back down in a few weeks, if her parents and NOAA say it’s alright.”

Daniel laughed.

“I’m not kidding,” he said. “Her parents have already set up hurricane rules for our weekends together.”

“Guess what?” Daniel asked. He figured now was a good time to fully explain neglecting his friend the past weeks. “I kinda met someone after the storm.”

“Yeah?” Roby’s eyes lit up. “A girl?”

“Guess what her name is. I’ll give you a hint: It’s real ironic.”

“Like real ironic or Alanis Morissette ironic?”

Daniel thought about that. “I’m not sure, actually.”

“Her name’s Wendy,” Roby guessed.

Daniel laughed. “No, but close.” He shrugged his bag higher up his back. “Her name’s Anna.”

Roby stopped laughing. “Serious?”

“Yeah, and we’re like boyfriend and girlfriend.”

“Who’s playing the girlfriend?”

“Shut up, dude.” The bell rang, signifying two minutes to class. Kids stood and stretched in the courtyard. Some hurried off, backpacks jouncing dangerously.

“What’s this girl like?” Roby jerked his head to the side. “Walk while you tell me about her. And don’t forget to kiss my ass for making sure the first time she sees you in the buff is the first time she sees you in the buff.”

“No, honestly, thanks for that. You being Jeremy’s geek-on-call worked out for me.”

“The girl,” Roby said, waving his hand in circles.

“Anna,” Daniel replied. “This girl’s a category five, to be sure. Insanely smart. Pretty in a normal kind of way, not like cheerleader pretty or tall and exotic—”

“Kinda plain?” Roby asked.

Daniel shook his head. “There’s nothing plain about her.”

Roby held open the door to the English building, and Daniel stepped inside and let his eyes adjust to the fluorescent lights. He wondered what he could say about Anna that wouldn’t sound silly, wondered if maybe Roby felt the same way about his girlfriend, how much more he and his best friend might now have in common. But before he could think of the first thing to say, they passed a bulletin board with a weeks-old newspaper tacked up for the students to see.

“Holy shit,” Daniel said. He stopped and stared at the full-page image on the cover of the Journal.

“You haven’t seen this picture?” Roby asked.

Daniel shook his head. “Haven’t really seen the news at all.”

“Listen, I’ve got to run to the end of the hall. I’ll catch up with you at lunch, okay? I want to hear about this girlfriend of yours.”

Daniel nodded and waved him off.

“And I want my ass kissed properly,” Roby yelled back as he blended in with the river of kids jostling and chattering down the hall.

Daniel barely heard him. He stood and stared at the newspaper behind the glass. In bold type across the top, it simply said: “ANNA STRIKES.” Below that, and taking up the entire rest of the page, was a satellite photo. It showed a storm spread wide across the entire state of South Carolina, long trails of feeder bands curling down through the Atlantic, the northwest corner of the storm brushing Charlotte. But the part Daniel found himself transfixed on was the eye. There was a perfect circle in the center of the storm, a hole in the white shroud directly over Beaufort. Daniel stared through the glass display at the center of that hole and imagined himself down there, looking up at the blue sky, asking Carlton if the worst was over. And Carlton was saying it had just begun.

It felt like a lifetime ago. Like something a different person had lived through. Daniel lost himself in that image and the memory of a temporary quiet at the center of so much noise and destruction, and he realized, in an instant, that the eye was the storm. That low pressure at the middle, that intense calm and quietude surrounded by a wall of maelstrom, that was the hurricane. It’s power came from the sucking void, was shaped by the spinning of the world, was fed by the warmth of the seas, and it had churned quietly along, oblivious and uncaring, passing right over his home, whipping an unknown frenzy across his life with its wide and powerful winds, rocking him, changing him, with its mighty calm.