‘That’s good,’ he shouted over the storm. ‘Isn’t it?’
Before I could answer, Gabriele appeared. Across the room, she and Gator were up to something. ‘Anybody seen Jeremy?’ Gabriele screamed over the roar of the wind. ‘Hell-oh! I could use a little help over here!’
Gabriele helped Gator push the table he’d been sleeping under against the door, then she marched over to roust out the boaters. Six or seven of them began dismantling the pile of furniture, setting the chairs aside fire brigade-style, so they could get at the tables to make barricades.
Meanwhile, Helen sat on the roof like an F-15 fighter jet, all engines full throttle. I heard a shriek as nails lost their hold and the plywood that had been covering the picture window tore away. Pale light entered the room; the plexiglass began to flex with the force of the wind, growling and howling like feedback on the speakers at a Black Sabbath concert. And yet it held.
‘Away from the door!’ Gabriele yelled, her hair flying.
Helen wanted in. She thumped and rattled and knocked at the doors. I could see the door frame flexing under the pressure, the hinges straining. The doors banged and bowed and managed to hold on until with one last desperate crack, the hurricane bar splintered. Helen ripped the doors away and entered the building.
Suddenly I was on the floor, clawing at the carpet. Salt water mist filled the air and I struggled to breathe. ‘Paul!’ I shouted, but the wind tore the words away.
Eyes stinging, I looked around for Molly. She sprawled on the floor next to me, whimpering. I crawled over and covered her body with mine.
The room became a wind tunnel as Helen screamed through like a banshee, picking up books, bottles, cups, coolers, even our lounge chairs and hurling them aside in her fury.
‘Hannah!’ A table was inching toward us. At first I thought it was Helen’s doing, then I saw Paul underneath, pushing it along. He shoved the table against the wall, and I helped Molly crawl under the makeshift barricade where we huddled together for protection.
I didn’t think there could be any trees left, but Helen found them. Trunks crashed and thumped against the building. Raindrops drummed on the table over our head and I realized the roof was leaking. I tilted my head and looked up. The ceiling fans spun like windmills gone wild and light streamed through cracks in the rafters.
Across the room, Alice began to scream, ‘Stop it, stop it, stop it!’ I hoped Jaime was there to comfort her.
It felt like hours before the winds abated, but according to Paul’s watch, it was only forty minutes. When the wind died and we were sure Helen had gone, we crawled out from under the table, dirty, wet and disheveled, like survivors of a war-torn country after a ceasefire.
Paul and I stood up, took inventory of one another. Nothing cut or broken.
One of the boaters had been struck by an airborne chair, injuring his arm. After we made sure she’d suffered no injuries herself, we let Molly hustle off to nurse him.
I was about to check on Alice when Gabriele stumbled into the room out of the hallway, hair loose and wild, a flashlight in her hand. ‘Has anybody seen my brother?’
From a corner behind the bar, a small voice began singing: The eensy weensy spider went up the water spout; Down came the rain and washed the spider out…
TWENTY-TWO
CONDITIONS MODERATE RAPIDLY TODAY AS HELEN EXITS, WITH SOUTH WIND BELOW 50 KNOTS BY MID-DAY. CLEAN-UP EFFORTS CAN BEGIN STRAIGHTAWAY.Chris Parker, Wx Update, Bahamas, Sat 6, 10a
The sun came out, shining on a settlement I barely recognized.
With Justice in the lead, Paul and I straggled back to town behind Molly and Gator, weaving through piles of debris, stepping over logs, and sloshing through puddles up to our ankles. Everywhere residents were emerging, dazed and blinking from the shells of their ruined homes. Where walls remained, jagged holes stood as reminders of doors that had once welcomed visitors, or windows that had once been open to the tradewinds, flower boxes blooming, curtains gently swaying.
Golf carts, generators, and air conditioners had been picked up by the storm, whirled about and discarded, sometimes hundreds of yards from their original locations. Behind the hardware store, a delivery van had overturned; the driver’s-side door yawned open, the seat missing. Next to it lay, incredibly, one of Tamarind Tree’s tiki torches.
The Pink Store, I was relieved to see, had suffered little damage. The slats of the jalousie windows were twisted and bent, allowing water to blow into the store, but Winnie’s pharmaceutical shelf appeared to be the only casualty. The wind had toppled it, sending boxes of Tylenol, Dramamine and cold tablets tumbling, bottles of shampoo, Pepto-Bismol and Benjamin’s Balsam cough mixture, too. They lay in two inches of water on the floor, a soggy jumble.
Winnie was already at work, sweeping everything out.
‘How’d they fare up at the school?’ I asked.
She paused in mid-sweep. ‘Trying to make it.’
I turned to Gator for a translation. He waggled his hand. ‘Means so-so.’
‘Anybody hurt?’ I asked Winnie.
‘No, praise the Lord.’
A few yards down the road, Tropical Treats hadn’t fared so well. Hurricane Helen had hurled a generator through its roof. It landed smack-dab on the ice cream freezer where crushed tubs of ice cream oozed and dripped, forming multicolored puddles of ice cream soup. ‘And I was going to buy you a rum raisin cone,’ Paul teased.
I poked him in the ribs. ‘Rain check.’
The marina was worse than I feared. As it came into view, Gator grunted. His dive shack had disappeared, tie-downs and all. The dock had twisted and heaved, planks were torn away leaving gaps, like missing teeth. Some floated loose below, knocking against the pilings.
Paul, Molly and I picked our way carefully down the dock while Gator stayed behind, kicking desultorily through the debris that had been his place of business.
One sailboat had sunk. Three others were still afloat, but all had parted company with their masts. One mast leaned crookedly against a piling; another had been hurled through the window of the marina office. I stuck my head inside. File cabinets had toppled, their drawers yawned open. Papers, magazines and books lay in a sodden, pulp-like mass on the linoleum.
I worried about Gator’s boat, Deep Magic. When I’d last seen her, she’d been tied into a slip, held off the finger piers by a web of lines strung from port to starboard, like a giant cat’s cradle. Three anchors had been set off her bow. I headed in that direction, calling to Paul and Molly over my shoulder, ‘I’m going to check on Deep Magic!’
I saw Gator was already aboard his boat, grinning hugely.
I ran down the dock, cheering wildly. ‘She’s OK! She’s OK!’
Gator patted Deep Magic’s console. ‘Good old gal. Never let me down yet.’
‘Can you give us a ride back to Pro Bono?’
‘Dunno. Depends on the engine starting.’ He twisted the key and the engine sputtered, rumbled and then growled to life.
‘Where’s your dinghy?’ Paul asked, coming up behind me.
I glanced at Deep Magic’s stern, embarrassed that I hadn’t noticed. The davits were twisted and bent where they’d tried to hold on to Gator’s dinghy, but lost it in a tug of war with Helen.
Gator shrugged. ‘It’ll turn up. They always do.’
I tugged on Paul’s sleeve. ‘Do we have time to check on Wanderer?’
Gator nodded. ‘Go ahead. Things I need to do.’
‘Want to come?’ I asked Molly.
She’d plopped herself down at the end of the dock, legs dangling over the water. ‘I think I’ll stay with Gator, Sugar. I’m absolutely beat.’