Daniel padded upstairs and changed into a pair of shorts that were already stained from an art class project. He grabbed fresh socks and changed into a new t-shirt, then rummaged through his bedside table for his cheapo digital camera. Back downstairs, he grabbed his shoes by the front door and slid them on. He let himself out into the motionless air and heavy calm of Hurricane Anna’s wake.
Even though the sun was just coming up, the sky was already bright blue to the east. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, almost as if the storm had swept them all up and dragged them off toward Columbia and North Carolina.
Daniel made his way into the front yard and studied the massive tree propped up against the house. The shingled roof was dented in around the trunk of the tree, the flat plane punctured and demolished. He worked his way through the tangle of branches from another fallen tree to admire the peeled-up root ball of the old giant oak. A wall of soil stood up from the yard, held together by the tree’s tangle of roots. Where they had been pried up from the earth, a deep depression lay full of several inches of Anna’s rain. The void of the missing roots formed a massive bowl, like a giant spoon had descended from the heavens and taken a bite out of their front yard. Daniel fished his inexpensive digital camera out of his pocket and took a picture of the mud-caked wall of roots, marveling at the way the ends had been torn from the violent ripping of the tree’s demise. He took a picture of the tree resting against the house, the missing dormer making it appear as if the façade were winking at him. As he panned the camera to take one of the littered yard, he noticed movement in the house. His mom opened the front door and looked out at him, shielding her eyes with a crisp salute.
“I’m gonna look around the neighborhood,” Daniel said, his voice sounding much too loud in the post-storm calm.
“Don’t go too far,” his mother said. “And be back before lunch.”
Daniel waved his consent and turned the camera off to conserve the battery. It was already low, and he realized how poorly he’d planned for the storm. His cell phone, his Zune, his camera, and who knew what else was inadequately charged. As much as Daniel mocked others for being reliant on their gizmos and for having far too many of them, he felt his own connection to that digital pipeline now that it had been ruptured.
The driveway was almost completely free of downed trees, but was lined on either side with crashed and crushed limbs. The long arms of the oaks sagged broken on the ground. The magnolia leaves, waxy and bright green, were tangled everywhere. Daniel strolled past them to the middle of the cul-de-sac and turned to marvel at the destruction. The white and yellowing flash of tree-wound was everywhere visible through the mangled canopy of woods. Each spot of raw and splintered yellow highlighted another limb broken, another trunk snapped in two, another tree destroyed or crippled. And the undergrowth was now a tall field of oddly green branches and bushy leaves. It looked like a blind barber had descended on the neighborhood with a gigantic set of clippers, buzzing the trees at random, making a mess of everything.
Through the tangles, Daniel could see more rootballs standing up on end like walls of caked mud. Each one had a large tree attached, the trunk resting along the ground and terminating on a jumbled cauliflower of leaves. Somehow, the trees were larger at rest than they had seemed pointing up at the wide sky. Daniel took a picture of one downed tree that had clipped a neighboring tree, slicing it pretty much in half. He saw lots of smaller trees that had fallen, only to be caught in the crook of another tree’s arms. These angled trunks stood out everywhere once he looked for them. He powered his camera off and heard a screen door slap shut somewhere. Through the new jungle, he could see the neighbors from across the cul-de-sac walking across their front yard to survey the damage to their own house. Daniel waved when they spotted him. He didn’t recognize either one of them and didn’t know their names.
He turned away from the heavily wooded cul-de-sac and wandered up the street, fighting the urge to take pictures of everything. Two houses down, the lone tree in an otherwise cleared yard had fallen against a neighbor’s house. The thick trunk hadn’t made a direct hit, but the massive kraken of limbs had ensnared the house. The gutters hung like a twisted, glittering tassel from the edge of the roof. The front door was completely hemmed in from the crash. Daniel hoped the back door was obstruction free, or the occupants were going to be climbing out windows.
Several of the houses he passed stirred with the same sort of early-morning activity: People standing outside in pajamas, some of them clutching steaming mugs, all sporting bewildered eyes. They waved at Daniel and each other, and he marveled at how few of his neighbors he recognized. Somewhere in the distance he heard a chainsaw buzz to life, the throttle worked over and over as it revved up and down with the cough of a machine long asleep. Daniel welcomed this intrusion into the quiet. It was the sound of a thing working and of progress being made. Somewhere, a piece of the littered ground was being cleared. When he looked out at all the incredible damage, he wondered if it would be months or even years before they had a handle on it all.
“Hey you.”
Daniel whirled around and looked for the person calling out.
“Over here.”
Someone by the bushes of the next house was waving at him. Daniel turned and walked toward the house. He noticed a huge swath of shingles had been ripped from the roof, leaving the black tar paper underneath torn, a layer of raw plywood exposed beneath that. The person by the bushes waved him over hurriedly. Daniel broke into a jog, wondering if someone was hurt. When he got closer, he saw the person was kneeling down by a solar panel, an open toolbox by her feet. It was difficult to peg the girl’s age. She had her hair tied back and covered with a red bandana; her face was plain and young-looking with no makeup.
“Can you hold something for me?”
Daniel shrugged. “Sure. I guess.”
He bent down and studied what she was doing. She immediately went back to work, not bothering to introduce herself. Daniel found the behavior odd and somehow intriguing.
“There’s not enough wire to twist together, so I need you to hold it while I solder them.” She pointed to the two pieces of wire, one of them sticking out of the base of the solar panel, the other coming from a stripped wire that led to a small black box.
“Okay,” Daniel said. “I’m Daniel, by the way.”
“That’s awesome,” she said. “Just hold that one right there so it overlaps with the bit of wire coming out of the red part.”
“What’re you fixing?” Daniel grabbed the one wire and held it close to the small piece of wire coming out of the solar panel. Tracing the severed cord leading away from the panel, he saw that it headed out toward a row of landscaping lights scattered among the bushes and aimed back at the house. He wondered why it would be urgent to get the mood lighting going in the middle of the morning, right after a major storm.
“I’m not fixing anything,” the girl said. “I’m making something.” She held up a small wand-like device that had a butane cartridge shoved in one end. The thing hissed, and smoke curled from the tip. With her other hand, she held a coil of silver wire, one end of it straightened and sticking out like an index finger from a fist. She dabbed the smoking tip of the wand against the coil of wire and some of it melted and coated the end of the device. She then bent close to the solar panel and touched the wand and the wire to the connection Daniel was making. With a few deft touches—her hands were much more still and confident than Daniel’s—the joint was made solid, a bright touch of solder reflecting the morning light before it cooled and lost its sheen.