Have A Little Faith In Me (10 page)

Love and happiness wasn’t the natural state of Man.  Aching, terrible loneliness was.  How dare they.  How dare they defy that, how dare they remind him over and over that nobody else knew that truth but him…

He graduated high school, and was offered a full time job at the seafood warehouse.  Well, almost full time – 39.5 hours a week, like everyone else.  He took it.  Then he went to bed for two days.

August rolled around.  Alex had been accepted to UGA, and was on his way to Athens, Georgia on a full scholarship to Hodgson School of Music.  Dex was going nowhere.

As he walked to Alex’s house for the last time, the day his friend was leaving for school, Dex realized that he’d made a mistake, hanging out exclusively with Alex.  Especially as a musician – he could have formed a band, could have…

Yeah, right,
he thought.
  With a bunch of flakes and slackers and deadbeats who’d skip practice or fuck around or whatever.
  Alex was dependable, consistent, helpful, forgiving… 

I love him.

The admission swept over him now, now that it was too late to do anything about it.  He stopped in his tracks.  The words had formed on their own, had been formed in the back of his head all along, he knew.  He hadn’t asked for them.  Didn’t want them.  They were like a truck that hit you in the intersection, even though you had the right of way.  Or thought you did, anyway.

He looked up at Alex’s house, the big old house that needed a paint job it would never get from the Carrolls, who probably didn’t even notice that it was needed.  He knew every poster on every wall, every musical instrument in every corner, every one of Mrs. Carroll’s special meals and even more special desserts.  He knew every record in Mr. Carroll’s collection, every anecdote about the famous musicians he’d played with before giving it all up to teach.  He knew the moments of perfect silence in the house, the two beats before he and Alex started to play, together.  Moments of silence that only a power failure might – might – have brought in his own house.

They said some big storm was coming, a hurricane.  You could feel it, too, the change in the air.  Something dark and cold and mean.

I hope it comes,
he thought angrily. 
I hope it wipes this whole fucking town off the face of the earth.  And me with it.

“Dex!” Mrs. Carroll said, surprised.  She had a big and clearly heavy box in her hands.  “What are you doing here?  You should be helping your parents get ready.”

“For what?”  He took the steps two at a time and took the box from her.

“The Hurricane!  Katrina!  It’s coming this way.”  She ran back inside and emerged with yet another heavy box.  “They’re about to issue an evacuation order for the whole Gulf Coast.”

“It’s just a storm. They said it didn’t do much in Florida…”

Alex came out, struggling with several instrument cases.  “Dude.  Seriously, this is major shit.  You gotta go home and get packed up.”  The wind was picking up, blowing his hair around wildly.

“I…”  This wasn’t what he wanted at all.  Not what he expected.  Somehow he’d thought he’d have one last minute alone with Alex.  One minute in which anything could happen, even a kiss he could regret, repudiate, later.  But that minute was gone.

Alex put his cases down and hugged his friend. “Hey, UGA isn’t that far.  And I’ll be home for Thanksgiving, man.  Go home and get shit done.” 

Suddenly he embraced Dex, startling him.  “I love you,” Alex said, his face buried in Dex’s chest.  “I’ll always love you.”

It wasn’t brotherly love, either, Dex knew immediately.  The admission, the affection, was so startling that it went right around his defenses.  He started crying, just…blubbering. 

He wanted to say it too.  But he couldn’t.  Pastor Panko’s face was in his mind.  His friends, his family, his church, his co-workers.  Everyone, everything, said NO to what he wanted to say, to do, to run away with Alex, to just…not be who he was anymore.  For a single moment, it was just right, the idea that he would jettison all of them just to be with Alex. 

“You’re my best friend,” was all he could manage to say in return.  “You’ll always be my best friend.” 

He should have said it.  I love you, too.  But he couldn’t.  It was the right thing to do, right, to deny that feeling? 

So then why did it feel like he’d just put a knife in his own guts?

“Alex,” his mom said gently.  “We have to go.”

Alex nodded, pulled back, wiped his own tears away.  “I’ll see you soon.”

“Yeah,” Dex agreed.  “You will.”

“Dex, go home, get your family out of here,” Mrs. Carroll said.  “This is going to be bad.  Very very bad, do you hear me?”

He saw the look on her face, and that was when he knew it wasn’t just a storm.  “Yes, ma’am.”

When he got home, the front door wouldn’t shut without Dex putting his weight behind it, the winds were getting that bad. 

“What are y’all doin’?” Dex shouted when he saw the other kids playing in the living room.  “Why aren’t you packin’?  There’s a goddamn hurricane coming.”

“Jus’ a storm,” Mike mumbled from the La-Z-Boy.  “No big deal.”

“Dad.  You’re watching the TV now, and they’re issuing an evacuation order.  Right there, in front of you.”

“Yeah, shit.  I keep changin’ channels and that’s all I get, damn it.”

“Fuck,” Dex sighed.  “Kaleb!  Carrie!  Lisa Sue!  Pack your shit up!  We gotta go!”

“That’s what I told him,” his mom said, carrying a basket of laundry.  “We gotta go to the shelter they got set up.”

“Shelter’s full up,” Mike said.  “See, I’m payin’ attention.”

Dex moved almost as fast as the wind outside.  He grabbed his father by the front of his shirt and lifted him out of the chair.  “You fucking dumbass, you’re gonna kill us all.  Now get the fuck upstairs and pack your god damn suitcase.”

That was when the power went out.  Mike looked at his son from his half drunk stupor, blinking.  “Okay, okay.  Jesus, you don’t know your own strength,” he mumbled as he went upstairs.

He got the kids to pack their backpacks full of food, after threatening to spank Carrie.  “Take the goddamn Barbies out and put in there what I tol’ you put.” 

She burst into tears.  “Mommy!”

“Dex…” his mother said softly.  “Honey, you better come look at this.”

Dex ran downstairs to the living room window.  “Oh, shit.”

In the short time he’d been home, the street had flooded.  He couldn’t even see the sidewalks over the rippling waves of water.  A minivan stacked with belongings was stalled out in the middle of the street, its occupants frantically throwing their possessions off the roof and into the flood, so they could get on top of the van and out of the rapidly rising water.

“Everyone get in the bathroom.  The inside bathroom, not the master bathroom.”  He grabbed a jacket from the peg by the door.

“Dex, where are you going?”

“To get help.”

He was soaking wet before he got ten feet from the door.  Only his big strong legs kept the wind from knocking him over. 

He had to get to the coast.  There would be people there, first responders, someone who could help them.  He moved along the street, hugging the fronts of houses for the tiniest bit of windbreak.  A dog was swept down the stream, swimming frantically for its life.  He couldn’t stop, couldn’t help it.

He heard the wrenching groan even over the howling wind.  He ducked as something large flew over his head.  Not that ducking would have helped if it had landed on him, since it was the roof off a storage shed.  He watched, awestruck as it sailed out of sight, as if it was as light as a kite that had broken off its string. 

He had to hurry.  Sheds were light, unmoored to the ground, but still.  Next time it might be something bigger, heavier, deadlier.

He got to the shore line, nearly crawling, keeping a low profile so the wind wouldn’t knock him down.  There was nobody there.  Everyone had run. The tide was starting to push boats up and over the water’s edge, threatening the buildings at the shore. 

There was one van, with a weatherman standing outside like a fucking idiot, bracing himself against a pole, knee deep in water now.  The cameraman was filming from inside the van, clearly having more sense.

“Get out!  Get the fuck out of here!” Dex yelled at him.

The wind rattled the antenna off the top of the van.  The cameraman leaned out.  “Signal’s gone, let’s go,” he said to the weatherman.  He looked at Dex.  “Get in, we’ll give you a ride.”

That was when Dex heard the screams.  There was a two-story gazebo by the waterfront, headquarters for a tourist boat company, a gazebo that was slowly, methodically disassembling itself.  A family of four was waving at him from the doorway.

“We gotta help these people!”

“Fuck that,” the weatherman said.  Then he paused, shocked at himself.  “Here.”  He took off his rain slicker.  “At least take this.  Good luck.”  He jumped in the van and it tore away.

Dex put the black slicker on, trying to hold the hood over his head as he pushed towards them. 

“Thank God,” the woman cried out from the doorway.  “Oh thank you.” She and her husband were in their sixties, at least, and the kids must be their grandkids, Dex thought.  “We don’t know what to do.”

Dex looked around and saw it.  “Over there.  The lighthouse.  We gotta get to the lighthouse.”

“But that thing weighs a ton!” The man exclaimed.  “That comes down on us, we’re dead!”

“It’s not coming down.”  He remembered something he’d seen one day, hanging out with Alex and watching some science show on Discovery Channel, perfect for triggering those stoned “wow” moments.  It was about giant skyscrapers, and it talked about how square buildings were more vulnerable to high winds, where round buildings parted the winds. 

He knew the lighthouse was made of cast iron, too.  It wasn’t going anywhere.  Unless everything went.  In which case, it wouldn’t matter where they ran.

He picked the kids up, carrying one under each arm.  They never would have made it otherwise.  The water was rising, and rising.  It was only a short way across the road to the lighthouse, but it seemed like a million miles.

The door was unlocked, mercifully.  Dex herded his charges inside. 

A falling brick made the little girl scream.  The interior of the lighthouse was lined with them, and the force of the storm was shaking them loose.

“It’s falling apart!” the old man shouted.

“No, it ain’t.”  The center of the lighthouse was a metal spiral staircase.  “Get under these stairs.  And don’t move.  Right?”  He made eye contact with the woman, who was in shock but nowhere near to the degree that her husband was.

She nodded.  “Where are you going?”

“I…I have to get home.”

“God protect you,” she whispered. “God save you.  Thank you.”

Dex nodded.  “Stay here.”  And then he was gone.

He was only a few feet away from the lighthouse when a pane of glass sailed straight over his head, still in its window frame.  It was like something out of one of the Surrealist paintings that Alex had shown him in a book.  Then it exploded against the ground.

He turned around and went back to the lighthouse.  The wind was terrifying; it was getting even faster, too.  He was scared now, so scared.  Another minute out here and he’d be swept away. 

The family was huddled under the stairs, crying, folded together like one of those families frozen in time in Pompeii, buried under the ash, nowhere to go, no way to escape the apocalypse.  Dex sat on the steps of the staircase, his face hooded in the black raincoat, and he prayed.  That was all that was left to do.

“God, please save me.  Please don’t let me die here.  I swear I’ll…I won’t waste it, I won’t waste this life.  I’ll make something of my music, my life.  Please, please, don’t let me die now.”

He must have passed out from exhaustion at some point.  He woke up to silence.  The storm had finally passed.  He opened the door to a cloudy sky, and the end of the world.

Everything was gone, all the way up the shoreline to the casinos.  How they were still standing was beyond him. 

Later he had time to reflect on it.  You heard these stories, you couldn’t believe them.  Crazy-ass generals who stood up in a firefight, bullets whizzing everywhere like popcorn popping, and they never got a scratch.  Tornados that devastated an entire town, except for that one house, in the middle of it all, untouched as if it had been under a force field.

But they were true.  Because he had survived the hurricane. 

He looked back at the family.  They were asleep, and he left them there.  They’d find their way out.  Now he had to get home to his family.  If he still had a home.  Or a family.

At that thought, he began to run.

Dex froze at the sight of his neighborhood.  What he thought was his neighborhood.  What he was pretty sure was his street, from the curve of it.  But he couldn’t see his house.

That was because a whole casino barge, formerly anchored at the waterfront, was in the middle of the street, obscuring his view.  The storm had pushed it inland like a gigantic piece of flotsam.  He walked towards it, afraid of what he’d find, sure that his house, his family, was flattened beneath it.

As he rounded the corner of what was left of the barge, he saw his mom, standing in front of a tumbledown thing that looked like their house.

“Mom!” he shouted, running toward her. 

She looked up.  “Dex!  Oh, God I thought you were dead!”

He ran to her, hugged her with an animal ferocity.  “Is everyone…”

“Yeah, we lived, thank God.”  She looked to the side.  “The barge pushed the house off the foundation, about thirty feet down the road.  Oh Jesus I thought we were all dead then.”

“Where is everyone?”

“Trying to get into one of the Red Cross shelters.  They’re full up though.  I came back for your daddy’s asthma medication.  I thought I could…”  She looked at the house, began to sob.

“You can’t go in there,” Dex said.  “That’s gonna fall down completely any minute, you know that.”

“I know.  Our whole life is in there… Oh shit, Dex, what are we gonna do?”

“We’re gonna get you clean and dry and we’re gonna…we’re just gonna go from there.”

Dex had seen them on TV, of course – war refugees in far-away places, their faces in shock, huddled together, waiting for relief.  Now he was one of them. 

They couldn’t get clean, or dry.  They lived outside their house because…there wasn’t anywhere else to go.  There was no way out of town and, shit, even if the roads were opened, who knew where the car was now.  There was nobody to stay with here, because nobody had electricity, running water, anything.  Thank God it was August, anyway, and they wouldn’t freeze to death at night. 

Somebody said there was a Salvation Army truck on the way.  How it would get through, he had no idea.  There was nothing to eat.  No water to drink.  The Federal government could conquer Afghanistan faster than it could get relief to Biloxi.  What he heard about New Orleans made Dex shiver. 

The National Guard came in, to maintain order.  Looting was the only way to find food and water, and Dex had turned his family into scavengers of the first rank.  When they’d found a case of bottled water under some wreckage near the Quickie Mart, it had been like finding a chest of gold. 

“Don’t,” he said, silencing their whoops.  The law of the jungle was in effect, and any cries of triumph could bring bigger, stronger predators down on them.

It didn’t take long for folks to grab onto any strand of hope, however thin.  The sight of a helicopter, could it be full of supplies?  Or was it just the President, gazing down on them as someone took his picture, making sure he looked concerned?  No, not yet – he’d only just cut short his vacation in Crawford, Texas, to return to Washington.

Then a rumor, a story, grew in dimension, as the cable news reporters descended.  The hook to the story, the easy lead, was written for them, and they spread it like wildfire.  There were over a hundred people dead in Biloxi, but the story became about four who lived.

Two grandparents, their grandchildren in tow, who’d been caught in the storm.  A man in black, hooded in a rain slicker, had led them to safety in the Biloxi Lighthouse.  The old man had cataracts and his wife had lost her glasses, and of course the children weren’t watching the man’s face.  So they couldn’t say, who he was.  A stranger, who’d risked his life to save theirs.

The media coined the phrase “The Angel of Biloxi,” of course, and the people of the city ran with it, embraced it, because it gave them what they needed – a miracle.

“It was an angel,” his mom said when she heard the story from a neighbor.  “A real angel, from Heaven.  That’s why they can’t find him.”

Dex froze.  An awful sense of doom came over him.  And he prayed, silently. 
Dear God, do…not…let anyone know it was me.

He couldn’t say why, yet.  Why it would be the worst thing in the world, to be the Hometown Hero. 

Lyrics started writing themselves in his head.  “Hometown heroes are never alone, hometown heroes can never leave home…”

Yeah.  They had to stay.  Forever.  Frozen into statues on green civic spaces.  And the arms that would hug him, the hands that would shake his, slap him on the back, would hold him here. 

No.  He would let them believe it was an angel.  That was better anyway, wasn’t it?  To let people think God himself had come down and saved those folks.  With all the evidence around them that God could give a shit, they would cling to that story instead.  It would give them hope.  It would give them a little faith in the future.

“Yeah, momma,” he agreed.  “It was an angel, for sure.”

“Oh my god, you’re alive,” Alex said with nearly gasping relief.

Dex finally got his turn to make a call from one of the emergency phones.  It had killed him, knowing that Alex knew the death toll in Biloxi, and that it was entirely possible that Dex was one of the dead.

“Yeah, man.  I’m alive.  Fuck all if I know how.”  He told Alex about the storm, up to the point where he found the grandparents and grandchildren.  Then he hesitated.

“So…I wanna tell you a secret,” he said, hunching over and whispering, making damn sure none of the others waiting for the phone could hear him.  “And you have to promise to never, ever tell anyone.”

“You got it.”

Dex recounted the story of the rescue.  “And I just…you know, if I come forward, it’s over for me.  I mean, I have to stay here for a while, to help my family, but...”  He blew out a sigh.

“What do you mean, it’s over for you?”

“I’ll be stuck here.  They’ll…lionize me, they’ll bronze me, I’ll be like…”

“A fly in amber.”

Dex sighed.  “Yeah.”

Alex hesitated.  “Look, far be it from me…way far be it from me to want you to stay there, trust me.  But.  If you come forward, think of what it would do for your family.  I mean, shit, look at those fucking poor fat people who took fertility pills and popped out what, seven kids they couldn’t possibly afford?  And look at all the shit people just…gave them.  Houses, money, everything.”

“Yeah.  Yeah,” Dex sighed.  The trap was closing, wasn’t it?  What wouldn’t people give to the Angel of Biloxi and his family to restore their lives?

“And then, when you have all that taken care of, and the noise dies down, then you can slip away.  Maybe a year from now.  I mean, it’s your script, man.  You’re not stuck in this script that’s gonna be written for you.” 

“Yeah.  Shit.”  He laughed.  “Thanks, man.”

“Get shit done, Dex, and I’ll…I’ll see you soon.”

“Yeah.  Yeah, you will.” 

Dex hung up with a heavy heart.  Why did that statement feel so much like a lie?

He was a good boy.  A good son.  He would make the sacrifice.  He would do what he had to do for his family. 

“Maybe a year from now…” Alex had said.  Right.  A year from now.

He walked away from the phone bank at the shelter and went in search of a TV news crew.  He’d tell them everything.

“They found him!” someone shouted.  “They found the Angel.”

Dex looked around.  People were gathered around a TV set.  There onscreen, a young man was being interviewed. 

“I just did what anyone would do in that situation,” he said.  THE ANGEL REVEALED was the tag onscreen. 

Dex looked at him.  He
knew
that guy.  It was a punk kid from his high school!  That little fucker!

He laughed.  Rolling gusts of laughter that made people look at him funny, like he was crazy.  But who wasn’t crazy, here, now? 

The machinery was in motion now, without him.  He looked at the faces around him.  They were…alight with joy.  They were riveted to the screen. 

There was no way to step forward now without ruining it for them.  Without making it something ugly, a dirty “he said/he said” competition for attention.

I’ll find a way
, he swore. 
I’ll find another way to help my family.  I don’t know how.  But I will.  And then…then I can live my own life at last.

Life went on, somehow.  Nobody died of hunger or thirst, though it felt like it some days.  The Dexters got cleaned up and got on the list for a FEMA trailer.

Dex stayed busy during the days, wielding a chainsaw on the roads to help clear fallen trees.  But after a day of that, there was nothing to do other than sit around, killing time.  Fortunately, one of the aid workers had a guitar, which he lent to Dex.  His own guitar was long gone, of course, with everything else he owned.

He couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d said to himself just before the storm hit.  How he’d wished the storm would come and take the whole town away.  Well, it had.  And of course that wasn’t his fault, it would have happened with or without his wish…but still.

A memorial service was coming up.  He started writing a song.  He loved John Hiatt, loved his song “Damn This Town.”  It just…said everything about how he felt about Biloxi, before the storm.  “Damn this town, I’m leavin’…” 

And then at the end, the singer reveals that he’s 58 years old and hasn’t left yet, so you know he won’t, can’t, it’s too late.  It was a constant reminder to Dex that time could fly away from you, that your whole life could be over before you’d started it.

But now he looked around him, at the people who’d lost everything, who’d never had anything to begin with, for the most part.  How could you damn them?  How could you damn the town that wasn’t even here anymore?

He could play the music to “Damn This Town,” that was for sure.  He’d played it a hundred times at least.  Now he found himself writing new lyrics to the melody.

At the memorial, he swallowed hard as he went up to the stage.  He’d never performed before anyone before.  Other than Alex. 

He looked out at the audience.  They wanted something from him, some catharsis, something that would make sense of it all.  He started to sing the new lyrics he’d written, softly at first, hesitantly.

It took my old school in a blast of wind

Save this town, it’s drownin’

All the buildings look like they’ve been skinned

Save this town, it’s drownin’

Then he found his voice.  The voice he’d never dared to raise, singing so softly in the garage.  He believed what he was singing.  He had faith in himself at last.

We had good homes and okay jobs

Save this town, it’s drownin’

Now we’re roaming, looking like slobs

Save this town, it’s drownin’

Save this town, I take it all back

Damn this town, I used to wisecrack

Damn this town, save this town

Afterwards, people congratulated him, thanked him.  He walked away knowing something new about himself. 

He could do it.  He could sing and play and be a musician.  He
was
a musician.  Sure, they weren’t the greatest lyrics anyone had ever written.  Sure, he’d had to borrow Hiatt’s structure to do it.  But
he
had made that song what it was here, now, to those people. 
He’d
made music, he’d made a moment.

Once that kid took credit for what he’d done, it had been like… It
was
his script now to write, entirely his. 

For the first time in his life, Dex felt free as a bird.

When the CNN news crew approached him, his first thought was that the “Angel” had recanted.  That he’d been identified at last. 

“Dex?  Dex Dexter?” the female reporter asked him.

“Yeah…”

“We wanted to interview you about the song you performed at the memorial service.”

He relaxed.  “Yeah, sure.”

“You know that clip’s being used on news stations around the country?”

“Uh, no…”  How could he?  What a dumb question.

“You’re famous, Dex.  What does that feel like?”

“Famous?”

She handed him a telephone.  “We have someone who wants to talk to you.”

Dex took the phone.  “Hello?”

“Dex, this is Sam Griggs.  I saw your clip.  You have some real talent, son.”

“Oh shit,” Dex said, ignoring the reporter’s frown.  She’d hoped to get his reaction, no doubt, but not one she couldn’t use on TV.  Sam Griggs ran one of country music’s most successful labels.  He’d shepherded the careers of some of the biggest stars in Nashville, and grown enormously rich in the process.