Isaac's Storm (3 page)

Isaac
harnessed
his
horse
to
a
small
two-wheeled
sulky
that
he
used
moldy
when
hunting
and
with
a
gentle
click
of
the
reins
set
out
for
the
beach
three
blocks
south.

IT
WAS
A
gorgeous
morning,
the
breeze
soft
and
suffused
with
mist,
jasmine,
and
oleander.
Stratus
and
cumulus
clouds
filled
most
of
the
sky,
some
bellying
almost
to
the
sea,
but
Isaac
also
saw
patches
of
dawn
blue
rimmed
with
cloudsmoke.
To
his
left,
behind
the
clouds,
the
sun
had
begun
to
rise
and
at
odd
moments
it
turned
the
clouds
orange-gray,
like
fire
behind
smoke.
Seagulls
hung
in
threes
at
fixed
points
in
the
sky
where
they
rode
head-on
into
the
unaccustomed
north
wind,
wing
tips
flinching
for
purchase.
The
wheels
of
Isaac's
sulky
broadcast
a
reassuring
crunch
as
they
moved
over
the
pavement
of
crushed
oyster
shells.

By
now
the
most
industrious
children
were
rising
to
do
their
chores
and
get
them
out
of
the
way
so
they
could
go
to
the
beach
as
early
as
possible.
Everyone
reveled
in
the
refreshing
coolness.
Rabbi
Henry
Cohen
was
awake
and
preparing
for
Saturday's
services.
Dr.
Samuel
O.Young,
an
amateur
meteorologist
and
secretary
of
the
Galveston
Cotton
Exchange,
was
having
breakfast
and
planning
his
own
early-morning
trip
to
the
beach.
At
18th
Street
and
Avenue
O1/2,
in
a
small
two-story
rental
house,
Louisa
Rollfing
made
breakfast
for
her
husband,
August,
who
was
due
downtown
that
morning
to
continue
the
painting
of
a
commercial
building.
Louisa
looked
out
the
window
and
as
always
felt
just
a
hint
of
disappointment,
or
maybe
sorrow,
for
although
she
liked
Galveston,
she
still
was
not
used
to
the
landscape.
To
her,
palms
and
live
oak
did
not
qualify
as
trees.
She
missed
the
great
green-black
forests
of
her
childhood
home
in
Germany
with
trees
"so
old
and
large,
that
in
some
places
it
is
almost
dark
in
daytime."

Visitors
approaching
Galveston
from
the
sea
saw
it
as
a
brilliant
swath
of
light
between
sea
and
sky,
like
mercury
floating
on
a
deep
blue
plain.
In
the
summer
of
1900,
a
boy
named
John
W.
Thomason
Jr.
—
later
to
become
a
well-known
writer
of
military
history
—
arrived
to
spend
his
vacation
with
his
grandfather
in
a
cottage
off
Broadway,
half
a
dozen
blocks
from
Isaac
Cline's
office.
"The
Gulf
breeze
cooled
the
city
at
nightfall;
one
of
the
most
beautiful
beaches
in
the
world
offered
delightful
surf-bathing;
and
you
saw
everybody
there
in
the
afternoons,
bathing,
promenading
or
driving
in
carriages
on
the
smooth,
crisp
sands."
He
left
town
on
Saturday,
September
1,
exactly
a
week
before
Isaac's
trip
to
the
beach,
very
sad
to
leave.
He
looked
back
with
longing
as
his
train
clicked
over
the
long
wooden
trestle
to
the
mainland
and
his
newfound
friends
receded
into
the
steam
rising
from
Galveston
Bay.
"That
city
as
it
was,"
he
wrote,
"I
never
saw
again,
nor
some
of
the
boys
and
girls
I
knew
there."

Where
critics
most
faulted
Galveston
was
for
its
lack
of
geophysical
presence.
The
city
occupied
a
long,
narrow
island
that
also
formed
the
southern
boundary
of
Galveston
Bay,
spanned
by
three
railroad
trestles
and
a
wagon
bridge.
Its
highest
point,
on
Broadway,
was
8.7
feet
above
sea
level;
its
average
altitude
was
half
that,
so
low
that
with
each
one-foot
increase
in
tide,
the
city
lost
a
thousand
feet
of
beach.
Josiah
Gregg,
one
of
America's
most
celebrated
traveler-raconteurs,
wrote
in
his
diary
in
November
1841
of
hearing
about
a
past
flood
in
which
"this
island
was
so
completely
overflowed
that
a
small
vessel
actually
sailed
out
over
the
middle
of
it."
He
did
not
believe
the
story.
He
could
see,
however,
that
someday
flooding
might
"even
endanger
lives."

Regardless
of
one's
view,
the
fact
was
that
Galveston
in
1900
stood
on
the
verge
of
greatness.
If
things
continued
as
they
were,
Galveston
soon
would
achieve
the
stature
of
New
Orleans,
Baltimore,
or
San
Francisco.
The
New
York
Herald
had
already
dubbed
the
city
the
New
York
of
the
Gulf.
But
city
leaders
also
knew
there
was
only
room
on
the
Texas
coast
for
one
great
city,
and
that
they
were
in
a
winner-take-all
race
against
Houston,
just
fifty
miles
to
the
north.
As
of
1900,
Galveston
had
the
lead.
The
year
before,
it
had
become
the
biggest
cotton
port
in
the
country
and
the
third-busiest
port
overall.
Forty-five
steamship
lines
served
the
city,
among
them
the
White
Star
Line,
which
provided
service
between
Galveston
and
Europe
and
in
just
over
a
decade
would
lose
a
great
ship
to
hubris
and
ice.
Consulates
in
the
city
represented
sixteen
countries,
including
Russia
and
Japan.
And
Galveston's
population
was
growing
fast.
On
Friday,
September
7,
Isaac
had
read
in
the
News
the
first
brief
report
on
the
Galveston
count
of
the
1900
census,
which
found
that
the
city
had
grown
30
percent
in
only
ten
years.

Galveston
now
had
electric
streetcars,
electric
lights,
local
and
longdistance
telephone
service,
two
domestic
telegraph
companies,
three
big
concert
halls,
and
twenty
hotels,
the
most
elegant
being
the
Tremont,
south
of
Isaac's
office,
with
two
hundred
ocean-facing
rooms,
fifty
"elegant"
rooms
with
private
baths,
and
its
own
electric-power
plant.

What
most
marked
the
city
was
money.
As
early
as
1857
Galveston
had
achieved
a
reputation
as
a
cosmopolitan
town
with
a
passion
for
fine
things.
One
of
its
French
chefs
distinguished
himself
with
a
fusion
of
frontier
and
Continental
cuisine
that
featured
"beefsteak
goddam
a
la
mode."
By
1900,
the
city
was
reputed
to
have
more
millionaires
per
square
mile
than
Newport,
Rhode
Island.
Much
of
their
money
was
vividly
on
display
in
the
ornate
mansions
and
lush
gardens
of
Broadway,
the
city's
premier
street.

The
city
offered
everything
from
sex
to
sacks
of
Tidal
Wave
Flour.
For
the
grieving
rich,
the
giant
livery
and
funeral
works
of
J.
Levy
and
Brothers
offered
a
very
special
option:
"A
child's
white
hearse
and
harness,
with
white
horses."

WINDOWS
WERE
OPEN
in
all
the
houses
Isaac
passed,
and
this
imparted
to
the
city
an
aura
of
vulnerability.
Suddenly
the
noise
of
the
sulky's
wheels
seemed
more
jarring
than
reassuring.
Ordinarily
the
great
bathhouses
at
the
end
of
the
street
would
have
brightened
Isaac's
mood,
but
today
they
looked
swollen
and
worn;
they
floated
on
cushions
of
greenish
mist
like
castles
from
the
mind
of
Poe.

Isaac
drove
until
he
had
a
clear
view
of
the
Gulf,
then
stopped
the
sulky.
He
stood,
pulled
out
his
watch,
and
began
timing
the
long
hills
of
water
that
rolled
toward
the
beach.
The
crests
of
the
waves
were
brown
with
sand,
but
on
the
surface
between
crests
the
spindrift
laid
intricate
patterns
of
shocking-white
lace.

Isaac
knew
the
low-pressure
center
of
the
storm
had
to
be
somewhere
off
to
his
left,
out
in
the
Gulf.
It
was
a
fundamental
tenet
of
marine
navigation,
one
he
explained
during
a
lecture
at
the
Galveston
YMCA
on
a
Saturday
evening
in
1891.
Large
crowds
gathered
for
such
talks.
They
consumed
the
spoken
word
the
way
later
men
would
consume
television.
In
the
northern
hemisphere,
Isaac
told
his
audience,
the
winds
of
tropical
cyclones
always
move
counterclockwise
around
a
central
area
of
low
pressure.
"Stand
with
your
back
to
the
wind,"
he
said,
"and
the
barometer
will
be
lower
on
your
left
than
on
your
right."

The
swells
came
very
slowly,
at
intervals
of
one
to
five
minutes.
To
lay
observers,
this
slow
pace
might
have
seemed
reassuring.
In
fact,
the
slowness
made
the
swells
far
more
ominous,
a
principle
Isaac
only
vaguely
understood.
Many
years
later
he
would
write,
"If
we
had
known
then
what
we
know
now
of
these
swells,
and
the
tides
they
create,
we
would
have
known
earlier
the
terrors
of
the
storm
which
these
swells
...
told
us
in
unerring
language
was
coming."

ISAAC
TURNED
HIS
sulky
around
and
headed
back
toward
his
office.
The
breeze
was
now
head-on
and
ruffled
the
mane
of
his
horse.
The
oyster-shell
paving
gave
way
to
heavy
wooden
blocks
and
these
imparted
to
the
sulky
a
beat
like
that
of
a
swiftly
moving
train.
The
north
wind
brought
Isaac
the
perfume
of
a
waking
city:
the
clean,
almost
minty,
smell
of
freshly
cut
lumber
from
the
Hildenbrand
planing
mill;
coffee
from
the
bulk
roasters
in
the
alley
between
Mechanic
and
Market;
and
always,
everywhere,
the
scent
of
horses.

At
the
Levy
Building,
Isaac
walked
the
three
flights
to
the
bureau,
stopped
inside
for
a
moment,
then
continued
up
to
the
roof.
To
the
east
and
south
he
saw
the
sea;
to
the
west,
the
spires
of
St.
Patrick's
Church,
still
under
construction.
The
bureau's
storm
flag,
a
single
crimson
square
with
a
smaller
black
square
at
its
center,
rippled
from
a
tower.

The
barometer
showed
that
atmospheric
pressure
had
fallen
only
slightly
from
the
night
before.
"Only
one-tenth
of
an
inch
lower,"
Isaac
said.

Nothing
in
the
sky,
the
instruments,
or
the
cables
from
Washington
indicated
a
storm
of
much
intensity.
"The
usual
signs
which
herald
the
approach
of
hurricanes
were
not
present
in
this
case,"
he
said.
"The
brick-dust
sky
was
not
in
evidence
in
the
smallest
degree."