Galveston (23 page)

The Gilchrists’ property was only a couple of miles away from the Water’s Edge, but the storm was altogether different there—belligerent and bullying, but not deranged. Burt and his wife stood on their porch and watched the storm as night fell. Their clothes fluttered and the wind was too loud to speak above—which Burt considered something of a blessing—but they could hold on to the wooden pillars and see
what the hurricane was up to. They watched as a sheet of plywood came flying through the air. It rippled a little, like a flying carpet. The board smacked their little birdhouse and the thing went down.

That was the worst that happened. The storm shutters were never really tested. Some water got into the laundry room, but the laundry room was designed to get wet now and then.

Still, their lives were ruined. Burt’s wife—her name was Vera, née Dawson—was able to forgive Burt his dalliances with Doris Blembecker, but Burt couldn’t get his head around the fact that Vera had slept with Pete Carney, his best fucking friend. Burt couldn’t believe that Carney was capable of this act, and his anger with Vera had mostly to do with her having allowed the heartbreaking betrayal to take place.

Maywell Hope herded everyone down to one end of the Pirate’s Lair, as far away from the bar, the windows, the passageway as they could get. The wind tore off more plywood sheets from the windows in the dining area, the panes of glass rattled and rippled.

It was deep night now, and they had given their hearts over to despair. Sorvig made deals with God, although she suspected He would never honour them. Gail went over a mental list of regrets, and what stung her most was how paltry these regrets were: breaking up with Josh over a misunderstanding, being too proud to take him back, that sort of thing. Gail had wasted her fucking life, which was bad enough, but this seemed such an awful way to die, destroyed by brutal bad luck.

Jimmy Newton lowered his head and listened to the storm, like a music lover might listen to a symphony, searching for nuances, variations on themes. He kept his thoughts to himself, but Maywell, studying Jimmy’s face closely, seemed to read them. “What is it they say, Newton?” he demanded. “Mind what you wish for, you may get it.”

“They say that,” Jimmy agreed, trying to placate the pirate. But Newton had wished his whole life for this storm, and he had no problems with its arrival. He had no problems at all, no little human problems. He was not a pudgy little man who lacked social skills, he was Mr. Weather and he was in the middle of a beautiful storm, and that was all he’d ever wanted. So Jimmy listened as though the storm were a symphony, and in his heart he sang along.

Polly held Maywell’s hand and remained calm, perfectly still. This was a monumental act of will, however, because it was not in her nature to remain still. She’d done what she could in terms of preparation—including ordering a radio tube from a supplier in Florida, paying for a plane ticket, dispatching Lester to fetch the thing—but now she could do no more. This desire to do, to fix, to be busy, bubbled away inside her, starting in her belly, rising to her chest, catching in her throat. And as it boiled away, this desire changed and became panic. Polly knew she would not be able to be still much longer.

The storm seemed to be following the builder’s progress in reverse on cottages “J” and “K,” removing the extra-structure first, tearing away the flimsy wallboards, making doors and windows disappear. Then it got to work on the wooden skeleton.
The joists were bound by tornado ties, and the storm had to work at these. Not for long, of course; Claire knew a little trick, which was to twist the four-by-fours in opposite directions until the metal connectors buckled and popped away.

“We went home late in the afternoon,” said Caldwell, his words coming in short, airy bursts. “We lived on C Street.” Galveston, Texas, was laid out in a very orderly manner, the avenues named alphabetically, proceeding from the beach. “You must have lived around there.”

Beverly made no answer. Caldwell took hold of her thin waist and slowed the motion of his hips. “I used to see you sometimes, you and your daughter, walking along the streets. She had such beautiful hair. Long, golden hair.”

The world around her was being destroyed by cyclonic action. Beverly had awaited this moment, spent money she didn’t really have in order to find it. But now, when escape to Galveston was possible, she found herself tethered to the world by physical things: Caldwell’s large hands, his muscled thighs, his thickly veined cock. Not that he was doing anything that hadn’t been done before, or doing it with especial tenderness or ferocity. But he was doing it with uncommon need, a need that was almost infinite and served them both.

Maywell knew that something was up with Polly. He decided to distract her, although it was hard to arrive at a method. Polly and he didn’t have a lot to say to each other, not that Maywell considered that a fault in their relationship. They both worked hard all day, made love quite a bit, and otherwise were silent and content in each other’s company. So if Maywell were to
pipe up now—ask a question about the running of the Edge, say—Polly would prickle up suspiciously and maybe lose what hold she had.

He considered telling Polly he loved her, which needed to be done sometime, and this seemed like the time, being as there might not be much left of it. He licked his lips, which were dry, made papery by the sun.

But before he could speak, Polly suddenly bolted down the passageway and into the dining area. Maywell was two steps behind her—two steps too many, he knew, he’d been caught napping, he’d been rendered insensible by his imperfect, pirate’s love—and he put his hand on her shoulder, began to turn her around.

“Come on back, now,” he said.

“I have to do
something …”

The window exploded. Or imploded, really, sucked into the black hole of the dining area. The glass was pulverized, the molecules seeking release, freedom, escape. Tiny grains drove themselves into Maywell’s face. There were some larger pieces in the air, though, oddly shaped triangles, and it was one of these that embedded itself in Polly’s neck, severing the jugular vein. Her blood spouted into the air. She collapsed into Maywell’s arms, and he dragged her back into the Pirate’s Lair.

“We went home late in the afternoon,” Caldwell continued. “Is that when you went home, Beverly? Anyway, Jaime, Andy and I went upstairs to the bedroom. The ground floor was covered by a foot of water. I thought, everyone in town thought, that that was as high as the water could rise.”

Caldwell was standing now. Beverly had her arms wrapped around his shoulders, her legs around his waist. Sweat mixed with tears on her face.

“Bev? Do you remember what it was like? Sometime during the night the storm surge came. All at once the water appeared in our bedrooms, exploding up through the floorboards. Andy came running into our room, he climbed into bed with us. I didn’t know what to do. The water kept rising. There was this banging sound, I wasn’t sure what it was. I found out later it was the streetcar trestle, torn loose and battering the house. The house collapsed around us, and we—my family—floated away on the mattress. No one knows what became of us, our bodies were never found.”

Maywell held his hand over Polly’s wound, trying to clamp the vein together. Blood geysered through his fingers. “There’s a first aid kit somewhere behind the bar,” he said to Gail and Sorvig, and then he turned to Jimmy Newton. “Radio for help.”

Jimmy reached into one of the pockets of his jacket, pulled out a flashlight, pressed a thin but strong beam of light into being.

“Why didn’t you take that out before?” asked Sorvig.

“We didn’t need it before,” answered Newton.

“But don’t you understand how much it would have meant to have light, just a little light?”

“Sorry,” muttered Jimmy. “Now come on.”

Newton and the girls headed toward the bar, pushing their way through the unruly storm that flooded down the passageway and into the Pirate’s Lair.

As the girls found the little white tin box with the red cross on it, Newton aimed the flashlight at the radio. “Fuck,” he sighed. He worked his way back, knelt down in the blood beside Maywell and Polly. “You want to get her head up, I think,” said Jimmy. “Rest it on your lap there. Keep pressure on—”

“Did you make the radio call?”

“I can’t. There’s no electricity, there’s no radio battery …”

“What the hell do you mean?”

“I mean—”

“Damn you, Newton.”

“Look, Maywell,
I’m
not the guy who didn’t put a battery in the frigging radio.”

Maywell’s face trembled and collapsed. “I don’t understand such things,” he confessed, and then his features went rigid once more.

“Okay, look, I brought a little portable generator up here.”

“Get it.”

“Yeah.” Newton tried to remember, through the fear and the exhilaration, where the thing was. Somewhere in the dining room, he thought. A squat little machine with ports for two battery packs. Newton couldn’t think why he’d left it in there, but he didn’t suppose it mattered why. That’s where the thing was. It was in the big room that Hurricane Claire was currently destroying.

He started for the dining room, crawling so as to be as small as possible, to present as little of himself to the fury. He knew that there was plenty wrong with the plan. For one thing, he didn’t think anyone would be able to get to them. Even the mighty Sikorsky helicopter would have a difficult time slicing
through this storm, which Newton was certain was a five (at last, a fucking five!). For another, there wasn’t a lot of time, as in no time at all: the lady was a goner. But Jimmy wasn’t about to argue with Maywell Hope, and besides, you can’t be a useless shit
all
your life. So Jimmy Newton crawled away to find the portable generator.

Lester had been delivered onto the land. God had answered his prayer, even though it had been petulant (“Are You going to help out or what?”), and because he had been granted salvation, he knew there was some task he was meant to accomplish, a greater good to serve. Lester understood that the electricity was gone—it was gone on the entire island, the stars that indicated civilization had flickered and died—so he approached the shack that housed the generator. The little building was withstanding the tempest admirably. He grinned with satisfaction, because he’d built the thing. He was aware that his skills as a handyman were subpar, certainly not on a level with his skills as gardener, but he’d built the little shed and apparently done it well.

He was going to start the generator, head back to the main building and then plead with Polly to give him more liquor. The Lord made liquor, after all, for just such an occasion. Lester felt the one-hundred-and-fifty-
third
sam coming to him; he’d been waiting for many, many years, and now it was coming and it began,
Oh, Lord, Thou hast taken Thy grain and rendered it into golden water …

He was about ten feet away from the shack when the wind spun him around like a top. Lester was dancing with a wind
devil, an uncouth bully boy. He found that it was best not to battle, so he closed his eyes, opening them only when he sensed release; and when he opened them, he could see, dimly, that he was being torpedoed toward the generator shack.

When his head met the wood, the shed blew apart. It seemed no more substantial than if Lester had constructed the thing out of Popsicle sticks. He landed on top of the generator, a metal box that sat like a squat god upon a slab of concrete. His own wind was knocked from him, rushing away to join in the great celebration. He clung to the generator and tried to breathe, and while he was doing so, he tried to recall how to start the thing. He had to flip one lever down, another up, but this had to be done correctly. If he confused down with up, up with down, then the machine would create no power, it would only sputter and die, and then Maywell would be cross with him. Maywell would whip the hat from his head and wipe his brow with the back of a hand and mutter, “Lester, how many damn times do we have to go over this?” Lester would be forced to grin and shrug like an idiot. “Sorry, sir,” he would say. And although he hated calling Maywell “sir,” he wished he was having that conversation right now.

The levers were on either side of the generator, and Lester remembered there was a phrase, some aid to memory that Maywell had invented. It went “Left down, up right.” Lester was pretty confident that was the phrase, because he remembered that the second half made a word:
upright.
He grabbed for the levers and was about to move them when it occurred to him that
downright
was a word as well. His hands went back to the side of the machine, and he clung with all his might.
The storm wanted Lester and it wanted the generator too. Even though it was secured into the concrete with six-inch bolts, the whole machine rocked and bucked.

Downright upright.
Lester knew that any power and light he created would be short-lived, but that was no reason to abandon the notion. Something hit him on the side of the head, but he was so intent that he hardly noticed.
Upright downright.
Lester decided to proceed along these lines:
downright
was a bad word, at least it was so in Lester’s experience.
Lester
, people would say,
you’re downright lazy. Lester, you’re downright drunk. Upright
, though, was a good thing. Men walked upright and were therefore better than monkeys. With that observation, Lester placed his hands on the levers and took a deep breath.

Maywell wanted to tell Polly of his imperfect love, but he worried that it would alarm her. If he were to do it now, she would understand that the situation was very grim. He was unwilling to admit to himself how grim the situation was, so he kept his silence.

Everyone kept his, her, silence. When Gail and Sorvig returned with the first aid box, they opened it and neither said aloud how useless the thing was, full to brimming with unguents for sunburn and a collection of Band-Aids.

Gail fingered through the contents and found the largest plastic bandage, a square perhaps two inches long and wide. Sorvig plucked out a long ribbon of gauze. Sorvig said something to Gail, something that Maywell couldn’t hear for the awful baying of the storm. “Just hurry up,” he snapped, angry
with the girls for possessing this dispassionate bedside manner, although he himself seemed poker-faced, detached.