His wife sighs, shakes her head, adjusts her reading glasses. "Just what that poor miserable country needs."
I see them at breakfast in their nightclothes, George scanning the Sun's weather page while Carol reads with sympathetic indignation an op-ed criticism of the Bush administration's ill-funded public-education program called No Child Left Behind: all show and no substance, in her and the columnist's opinion. The news from Iraq, as usual, is all bad: Husband and wife agree that their government's preemptive invasion of that country was unnecessary, poorly planned, and disastrous, but neither has a firm opinion on what's to be done about the resulting debacle. Things aren't going well in Afghanistan either, and the news from sub-Saharan Africa remains appalling. After breakfast, stretching exercises, and an hour or so at their desks, Carol will change into warmup clothes for her tennis date at the Club while George attends to some errands in town. They'll kiss goodbye as usual, remeet for lunch — perhaps out on their pleasant screened porch, the day being sunny and unseasonably warm for late October — and plan their afternoon: a bit of autumn yard cleanup, maybe, before next month's major leaf-fall from the neighborhood's maples, oaks, and sycamores; some cricket spray around the house foundation before the first frosts bring the critters indoors. Then perhaps a bicycle ride on Heron Bay's bike and jogging paths, if they're not too tired, before cocktails and hors d'oeuvres on the patio, a shower, dinner prep (still good weather for barbecuing), and after dinner their customary hour or so of reading and/or Internet stuff, a nightcap hour of television, and to bed after the ten o'clock news and a check of the Weather Channel.
So?
So nothing, really. In a proper Story, one would by now have some sense of a Situation: some latent or overt conflict, or at least some tension, whether between the Walshes themselves or between them on the one hand and something exterior to them on the other (a neighbor, a relative, a life problem, whatever); then some turn of events to raise the dramatical stakes. In short, a story-in-progress, the action of which is felt to be building strategically to some climax and satisfying denouement. The narrative thus far of this late-middle-aged, upper-middle-class, early-twenty-first-century, contented exurban North American married couple, however, it's teller readily acknowledges to be no proper Story, only a chronicle: It's Beginning now ended, it's Middle has begun, and it's End draws nearer, sentence by sentence, as Hurricane Giorgio, after hitting Haiti with 90-mile-per-hour winds, turns northwest, crosses eastern and central Cuba (diminishing inland to Tropical Storm force and then restrengthening to Category 1 in the warm Florida Straits), veers north-northwest, and at a leisurely forward speed of 8 mph approaches landfall between the Keys and Miami. But an End is not the same as an Ending.
Just wanted to get that clear. Over the several days following, while Carol and George carry on with their drama-free lives, Tropical-Storm-again Giorgio drenches southeast Florida, turns north-northeast into the Atlantic below Cape Canaveral, and re-regains hurricane force before his next landfall, between Capes Fear and Lookout in North Carolina's Outer Banks; he then weakens yet again from Cat. 1 to Borderline T.S. as he makes his way toward Norfolk and the mouth of the Chesapeake, leaving the usual trail of flash floods and power outages. Closely following his progress, the Walshes and their fellow Delmarvans hope he'll turn out to sea or at worst pass just offshore; instead, at bicycle speed he moseys straight up our peninsula, his sustained winds diminishing to 35–40 mph with occasional higher gusts, before his disorganized remnants pass up into Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Much (welcome) rain to relieve a droughty autumn, and overall not a lot of damage: some roads temporarily flooded; relatively few trees and power lines down, the ground having been abnormally dry; the routine handful of casualties (macho teenager drowned in flash flood while trying to cross rushing stream; elderly couple killed in collision with skidding SUV on I-95 between Baltimore and Wilmington); some messed-up basements and damaged boats at docks and marina slips, but nothing like '03's shoreline-wrecking Isabel.
Except that, as happens on rare occasions, the system spun of a single, short-lived but very strong tornado, watches for which had been posted for much of Maryland's Eastern Shore but generally ignored beyond the typical storm-prep stuff, our Tidewaterland being non-twister-prone. Subsequently rated a high-end F3 on the Fujita scale (winds just above 200 mph), the thing touched down here in Avon County a few miles south of Stratford, fortunately sparing that colonial-era college town but bull's-eyeing instead, not one of those mobile-home parks that such tempests seem to favor, but handsome Heron Bay Estates.
I.e., us. Established by TCI during the Reagan administration as the area's first gated community. Successfully developed through the George Bush Senior and Bill Clinton years from blueprints and promotional advertisements to built-out neighborhoods of detached and semidetached houses and low- and mid-rise condos, all generously landscaped and tastefully separated from one another by tidal creeks and wetland ponds, winding roads, golf-course fairways, and small parkland areas. Amenitied with grounds- and gatekeepers, security patrols, clubhouses, tennis courts, marina facilities, pool and fitness center and activities building, community and neighborhood associations, web site, and monthly calendar-magazine; also with sightseeing excursions to D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, and various Atlantic beach resorts; interest groups ranging from contract bridge, book discussion, gardening, and investment-strategy clubs to political, religious, and community-service organizations; Internet and foreign-language classes; neighborhood picnics, progressive dinners, and holiday parties. Populated by close to a thousand mostly white Protestant, mostly late-middle-aged, mostly middle- and upper-middle-class families, nearly all empty-nesters, many retired or semiretired, a considerable percentage with other homes elsewhere, plus a few quite wealthy individuals and a sprinkling of Catholics, Jews, Asians, and other minorities — even a half-dozen school-age children. Our lack of such urban attractions as museums, concert halls, nightclubs, and extensive restaurant and shopping facilities largely offset both by our reasonable proximity to those afore-mentioned cities and by nearby Stratford College, with it's public lecture and concert series, continuing-education programs, and varsity sports events. In sum, a well-conceived and admirably executed project — nay, community—developed to completion over two dozen years and then, in half that many minutes, all but obliterated.
Not for the first time in these pages, "So?" one might reasonably inquire: on the scale of natural catastrophes, a trifle compared to Hurricane Katrina or the 2004 Southeast Asian tsunami, with it's death toll of some 230,000. Indeed, although Heron Bay Estates was effectively wrecked, the human casualties of that spinoff tornado were remarkably low: only two deaths (one fewer than the earlier-mentioned toll of Giorgio's unhurried movement up the peninsula) plus numerous bone fractures and assorted lacerations, sprains, and contusions from flying debris, several of which injuries required emergency room treatment.
Indeed, that so many dwelling places and other structures could be destroyed with so comparatively few people seriously hurt, not to mention killed, would seem as fluky a circumstance as the twister itself — the more so since, unlike hurricane warnings, tornado watches hereabouts don't prompt evacuation. Granted, it was the forenoon of a late-October weekday: Those half-dozen youngsters were in school, their working parents and other office-going adults at their jobs in Stratford or elsewhere, and others yet doing various errands beyond our gates. Many of the snowbirds had migrated already to their winter quarters in more southern climes; numerous of those for whom Heron Bay was a weekend/vacation retreat were at their primary residences in the Washington-to-Philadelphia corridor, and some of our year-round resident retirees were off traveling. Even so, not a few HBEers were at home in their Egret's Crest or Shad Run condos, their Oyster Cove villas or Blue Crab Bight coach homes, their detached houses in Rockfish Reach or Spartina Pointe — at work in home offices, fiddling with their computers, or doing routine chores — while some others were enjoying bridge games at the Club, workouts at the fitness center, etc. And our staff, of course, were about their regular employment at the entrance gates, the golf course and grounds maintenance depots, the Community Association office, and the Heron Bay and Blue Crab Marina clubhouses. Bit of a miracle, really, that so many survived such devastation so little scathed — collapsed buildings ablaze from leaking propane lines or flooded by ruptured water pipes (in some cases, both at once) — and that only a couple were killed.