Isaac's Storm (18 page)

Camille's
rain
fell
with
such
ferocity
it
was
said
to
have
filled
the
overhead
nostrils
of
birds
and
drowned
them
from
the
trees.

SATURDAY,
SEPTEMBER
1,
was
a
big
day
in
the
home
of
August
and
Louisa
Rollfing,
a
day
for
serious
celebration.
August,
the
housepainter
secretly
identified
as
a
deadbeat
in
the
Giles
directory,
had
managed
at
last
to
make
the
final
payment
on
the
family's
treasured
piano.
The
moment
had
a
resonance
beyond
the
purchase
itself.
The
piano
was,
literally,
an
anchor.
It
was
heavy
and
big;
just
moving
it
into
the
house
had
required
a
huge
effort
—
it
had
to
be
lifted
in
through
a
window.

This
was
their
seventh
house
in
Galveston.
The
house
was
a
rental
like
all
the
others,
but
the
piano
made
it
feel
more
permanent,
and
Louisa
badly
needed
such
a
sign.
She
was
tired
of
moving.
At
each
new
address
she
had
thrown
herself
into
the
task
of
making
old
and
worn
rooms
look
not
only
new,
but
as
if
they
belonged
to
people
of
wealth.

She
and
August
had
been
through
so
much
turmoil,
both
individually
and
together.
Both
had
come
to
America
from
Germany,
August
first
at
the
age
of
one
and
with
tragic
bad
timing.
He
and
his
parents
arrived
just
as
the
Civil
War
began.
His
father,
William,
was
promptly
drafted,
and
just
as
promptly
killed.

Louisa
came
to
America
much
later,
as
a
young
woman.
She
had
lived
on
an
island
in
the
North
Sea,
but
had
grown
restless.
There
was
so
much
talk
of
America.
It
started
when
a
man
named
Daniel
Goos
came
back
to
the
island
to
visit
family
and
told
everyone
of
his
big
sawmill
in
a
place
called
Lake
Charles,
Louisiana,
where
he
had
a
wife
and
children
and
a
large
home.
He
needed
more
workers.
He
offered
to
take
sixty
people
back
with
him
to
America.
He
would
guarantee
them
jobs
and
advance
them
money
for
their
passage.
Many
people
Louisa
knew
went
with
him
and
they
in
turn
sent
for
brothers,
sisters,
cousins,
and
sweethearts,
until
it
seemed
as
if
everyone
was
headed
for
America.
A
cousin
and
his
wife
now
lived
in
Lake
Charles
and
wrote
often,
each
letter
arriving
at
Louisa's
house
in
a
huge
yellow
envelope
that
her
father
placed
in
the
window,
a
beacon
of
adventure
that
drew
Louisa
and
her
siblings
at
a
run.
"Just
to
hear
the
word
America
caused
an
excited
feeling,"
Louisa
wrote.

Each
year
more
people
left.
The
island
got
smaller
and
smaller.
Her
work
as
a
housekeeper
and
companion
for
an
elderly
woman,
Madam
Michelson,
made
it
positively
tiny.
There
were
days,
it
seemed,
when
Madam
was
the
only
person
she
saw.
Louisa
was
lonely
and
dissatisfied
and
the
idea
of
America
crept
deeper
and
deeper
into
her
heart,
until
one
day
she
simply
resolved
to
go.

Her
cousin
sent
her
a
ticket.
She
packed
her
things.
Her
confidence
held
until
the
night
before
her
journey
when
she
found
herself
lying
awake,
her
heart
racing,
sleep
an
impossibility.
"All
at
once
I
realized
what
it
meant
to
leave
everyone
that
was
dear
to
me."
The
only
thing
that
kept
her
going
was
the
fact
that
her
cousin
would
be
waiting
for
her
at
the
other
side
of
the
world.
"I
will
never
forget,
when
I
saw
Mother
at
the
window,
her
big
blue
eyes
filled
with
tears,
smiling
bravely
—
I
had
to
run
into
the
house
and
put
my
arms
around
her
and
kiss
her
again."

Louisa
sailed
on
the
North
German
Lloyd
liner
Nurnberg,
accompanied
by
two
young
widows
she
had
met
in
the
emigrant
hotel
where
everyone
stayed
before
the
voyage.
Louisa
was
booked
to
travel
in
something
called
steerage,
but
had
no
idea
what
that
meant.
No
one
had
told
her
she
was
supposed
to
bring
her
own
blanket.
Aboard
ship,
she
and
her
new
friends
entered
a
great
chamber
"with
nothing
but
wooden
boxes
on
short
wooden
legs,
with
a
thin
mattress
of
straw
on
it,
nothing
else
—
they
called
them
beds!
Rows
and
rows
of
them.
At
the
entrance
was
a
great
barrel,
and
we
wondered
for
what?"

Louisa
estimated
that
two
hundred
people
occupied
the
hold,
including
complete
families.
"Oh
I
thought
I
would
die.
And
cried
bitterly.
The
two
young
widows
felt
just
as
bad
as
I
did,
and
we
shook
hands
that
we
would
not
be
separated."

Soon
after
the
voyage
began,
everyone
got
seasick,
and
the
purpose
of
the
great
barrel
became
all
too
evident.

Louisa
rebelled.
She
and
her
friends
accosted
an
officer
and
demanded
a
more
private
place.
They
were
women,
after
all.
And
single.

The
officer
had
never
before
heard
such
a
request,
but
agreed
to
look
into
the
matter
and
later
that
day
offered
them
a
room
in
the
stern,
even
to
build
them
a
partition
for
privacy
—
provided
they
could
gather
enough
other
single
women
to
make
the
effort
worthwhile.
Louisa
and
her
friends
corralled
thirty-four.

The
journey
to
New
Orleans
and
from
there
to
Lake
Charles
took
forty-two
days.
Her
adventures
began
as
soon
as
she
arrived.
She
tried
her
first
banana,
and
fell
in
love
with
it.
She
met
her
first
black
man.
She
was
walking
through
a
lovely
stand
of
pine
trees,
when
he
appeared
suddenly
on
the
path
ahead.
"I
got
so
scared
that
I
just
sat
down,
but
he
only
said
'Good
Day'
and
passed.
He
did
not
kill
me"

She
caught
the
measles.
"I
got
very
sick,"
she
said.
"For
a
long
time
someone
had
to
be
up
all
night
with
me,
and
I
did
not
even
know
it."
She
finally
got
out
of
bed
six
weeks
later.
When
she
looked
at
herself
in
the
mirror,
she
saw
that
someone
had
cut
off
all
her
hair.
She
weighed
only
eighty-nine
pounds,
one-third
less
than
when
she
had
stepped
off
the
boat.
She
had
been
beautiful.
Now
she
was
ugly.
She
was
weak
and
vulnerable
to
other
illness.
A
doctor
advised
that
she
move
to
a
place
with
a
healthier
climate,
perhaps
Galveston.

Her
train
was
halfway
across
one
of
the
trestles
that
spanned
Galveston
Bay
when
she
awoke
and
saw
only
water
on
both
sides
of
her
coach.
She
was
terrified.
She
had
not
known
Galveston
was
on
an
island
and
wondered
how
exactly
she
had
ended
up
aboard
a
boat.

She
was
glad,
later,
that
she
had
been
unable
to
see
the
flimsy
trestle.
"I
would
have
been
scared
even
more."

In
Galveston,
Louisa
took
work
as
a
housekeeper
for
a
family
named
Voelker.
On
a
Sunday
visit
to
the
home
of
Mrs.
August
Rollfing,
the
widow
of
a
sea
captain
who
had
drowned
in
a
storm
off
Galveston,
she
met
Mrs.
Rollfing's
nephew,
also
named
August.
He
was,
Louisa
confessed,
"the
nicest
looking
young
man
I
had
ever
seen."

Not
just
handsome
—
but
talented.
He
was
a
painter,
and
he
played
guitar
and
piano,
and
sang
so
beautifully.
"He
had
a
lovely
tenor
voice
and
I
enjoyed
it
more
man
anything
else
in
the
world."

Some
while
later
he
proposed
to
her,
if
a
mite
obliquely.
"Don't
you
think,
Louisa,
we
could
always
be
happy
together,
and
that
we
should
get
married?"

It
was
a
lucky
thing
that
neither
put
much
stock
in
omens.

One
evening
in
November
1885,
a
week
before
their
wedding,
Louisa
sat
working
on
her
wedding
dress,
a
wonderful
thing
of
gray
cashmere
with
lace
trim.
She
stopped
work
around
midnight,
folded
the
dress
carefully,
and
brought
it
up
to
the
room.
"I
wasn't
even
asleep
when
the
fire
whisde
blew,
and
we
saw
a
fire
over
at
the
north."

A
powerful
north
wind
was
blowing
—
a
blue
norther
—
which
quickly
fueled
the
fire
and
blew
sparks
and
large
flaming
cinders
onto
downwind
homes.
Another
house
caught
fire.
Then
another.
Louisa
threw
on
some
clothes,
as
did
everyone
else
in
the
Voelker
house,
and
all
watched
the
blaze.
No
one
thought
the
Voelkers'
house
might
be
in
danger.
The
fires
were
still
all
so
distant.

Butterflies
of
flame
drifted
through
the
sky.
One
moment
the
air
was
hot
Midi
radiated
heat,
the
next,
bitterly
cold
from
the
fierce
north
wind.
A
neighbor's
house
caught
fire.
Voelker
climbed
to
his
roof
with
a
garden
hose.
Everyone
else
began
hauling
things
out
of
the
house.
Louisa
placed
her
trousseau
in
a
trunk,
which
wound
up
on
the
sidewalk.
The
house
caught
fire.
Trees
caught
fire.
The
trunk
caught
fire.
Even
Louisa's
coat
caught
fire.

That
night
half
of
Galveston
burned
to
the
ground,
and
with
it
Louisa's
trousseau
—
but,
luckily,
not
her
dress.

August
and
Louisa
married
on
schedule.
Even
disaster
could
not
dampen
their
spirits.
"I
can't
imagine
anybody
happier
than
we
were
at
that
time,"
she
recalled.
"It
took
so
very
little
to
make
us
happy
and
contented."

During
one
of
their
many
walks,
they
spotted
a
small
white
house
for
rent
at
32nd
and
Broadway,
and
leased
it
the
next
day.
It
had
a
front
porch,
back
porch,
dining
room,
kitchen,
bedroom,
and
a
picket
fence
that
surrounded
the
yard.
Louisa
threw
herself
into
fixing
it
up.
She
bought
a
bed
with
a
red
canopy.
She
put
up
cream
curtains
with
red
tiebacks
and
made
a
red-and-white
bedspread.
She
bought
a
large
rug,
lace
curtains,
and
a
hanging
lamp
with
prisms
and
colored
glass.
She
made
a
drape
to
cover
a
window
in
the
living
room
that
opened
on
the
kitchen,
and
August
decorated
one
side
with
a
painting
of
flowers,
fruit,
and
cupids.
Soon
the
house
was
awash
in
rich
colors
touched
with
flowers
and
gold.
"We
felt
as
if
we
had
heaven
on
earth."