Isaac's Storm (35 page)

Palmer
lit
a
kerosene
lamp
and
placed
it
near
the
window
of
the
front-most
bedroom.The
window
shattered;
the
blinds
disintegrated.
Everyone
retreated
to
the
back
of
the
house.
Palmer
brought
the
lamp.
Here
too
the
windows
shattered.
A
chunk
of
plaster
fell
from
the
ceiling
and
crushed
the
lamp.
Palmer
closed
a
pair
of
big
sliding
doors.
He
suggested
prayers
and
hymns.
His
son
said,
"I
cannot
pray,"
then
reconsidered.
"Dear
Jesus,"
he
said,
"make
the
waters
recede
and
give
us
a
pleasant
day
tomorrow
to
play,
and
save
my
little
dog
Youno
and
save
Claire
Ousley."

Rain
poured
into
the
room.
More
plaster
fell.

GARRY
BURNETT
RECOMMENDED
everyone
squeeze
into
the
bathroom,
arguing
it
was
the
strongest,
safest
place
in
the
house.
George
Burnett
believed
no
room
would
be
safe
if
the
house
collapsed
into
the
sea.
He
crawled
out
the
bathroom
window
onto
an
upended
roof
that
had
floated
against
the
house,
and
persuaded
his
mother,
wife,
and
child
to
follow.
They
sailed
off
into
the
storm.
The
Palmers
joined
Garry
Burnett
in
the
bathroom.
The
Boecker
family
stayed
behind
in
the
bedroom.
What
the
black
couple
did
is
unknown.

The
water
rose
high
onto
the
second
floor.
Gusts
of
wind
moving
at
speeds
possibly
as
great
as
150
miles
an
hour
—
perhaps
much
higher-penetrated
deep
into
the
house.
Palmer
held
tight
to
his
son
and
braced
his
back
against
the
bathroom
door.
His
wife,
Mae,
hugged
his
neck
with
all
her
strength.

Beams
fractured.
Glass
broke.
Lumber
ricocheted
among
the
walls
of
the
hallway
outside
the
bath.
The
front
half
of
the
house
tore
loose.
The
Boeckers
stood
in
their
bedroom
holding
each
other
close
as
the
wind
peeled
the
house
away.
The
bedroom
disintegrated.

The
water
rose.
The
Palmers
climbed
onto
the
lip
of
the
bathtub.
Judson
clamped
his
left
hand
to
the
shower
rod
and
held
Lee
circled
in
his
right
arm.
Youno
was
gone.
Mrs.
Palmer
grabbed
the
rod
with
her
right
hand,
and
with
her
left
held
on
to
her
husband
and
son.

The
house
trembled,
and
eased
off
its
elevated
foundation.
It
settled
in
deeper
water.
The
water
was
up
to
Palmer's
neck.
He
fought
to
keep
Lee's
head
clear.

And
Lee
asked,
"Papa,
are
we
safe?"

Judson
could
not
even
see
his
son,
for
the
darkness.
He
felt
the
boy's
small
hands
holding
tight.
His
hands
were
cold.
Maybe
Judson
did
have
time
to
offer
his
son
some
reassuring
lie;
more
likely
he
could
not
speak
for
the
great
heave
of
sorrow
that
welled
up
within
him
after
his
son's
question.
He
drew
his
son
close,
but
could
not
draw
him
close
enough.

The
roof
stood
up
and
fell
upon
the
family.
They
went
under
the
water
together.
Palmer
came
up
alone.
He
had
swallowed
a
great
volume
of
water.
He
coughed,
vomited.
He
saw
nothing
of
Lee
or
Mae.
There
was
no
light,
only
motion.
He
could
not
think.
His
mind
dimmed,
came
back.

And
he
was
outside,
free
of
the
house.
Treading
water.
He
felt
what
seemed
to
be
ground
beneath
his
feet
but
could
not
get
purchase.
A
wave
threw
him
onto
a
mass
of
floating
wreckage.
Window
shutters-many
of
them,
all
tied
together.
Someone
else's
raft,
but
it
was
empty
now.

He
called
for
his
son
and
wife.

THEY
ARGUED.
JOSEPH
wanted
everyone
to
leave
at
once
and
head
for
the
center
of
town.
Isaac
had
faith
in
his
house,
but
also
argued
that
conditions
outside
had
grown
too
dangerous,
certainly
for
his
wife,
who
was
pregnant
and
ill
in
bed.
"At
this
time
.
..
the
roofs
of
houses
and
timbers
were
flying
through
the
streets
as
though
they
were
paper,"
Isaac
said,
"and
it
appeared
suicidal
to
attempt
a
journey
through
the
flying
timbers."
Water
now
covered
the
first
floor
of
his
home
to
a
depth
of
eight
inches.

At
6:30
P.M.,
Isaac,
ever
the
observer,
walked
to
the
front
door
to
take
a
look
outside.
He
opened
his
door
upon
a
fantastic
landscape.
Where
once
there
had
been
streets
neatly
lined
with
houses
there
was
open
sea,
punctured
here
and
there
by
telegraph
poles,
second
stories,
and
rooftops.
He
saw
no
waves,
however.
The
sea
was
strangely
flat,
its
surface
blown
smooth
by
the
wind.
The
Neville
house
across
the
way
now
looked
so
odd.
It
had
been
a
lovely
house:
three
stories
sided
in
an
intricate
pattern
of
fish-scale
shingles
and
shiplap
boards
and
painted
four
different
colors.
Now
only
the
top
two-thirds
protruded
from
the
water.
Every
slate
had
been
stripped
from
its
roof.

The
fact
he
saw
no
waves
was
ominous,
although
he
did
not
know
it.
Behind
his
house,
closer
to
the
beach,
the
sea
had
erected
an
escarpment
of
wreckage
three
stories
tall
and
several
miles
long.
It
contained
homes
and
parts
of
homes
and
rooftops
that
floated
like
the
hulls
of
dismasted
ships;
it
carried
landaus,
buggies,
pianos,
privies,
red-plush
portieres,
prisms,
photographs,
wicker
seat-bottoms,
and
of
course
corpses,
hundreds
of
them.
Perhaps
thousands.
It
was
so
tall,
so
massive
that
it
acted
as
a
kind
of
seawall
and
absorbed
the
direct
impact
of
the
breakers
lumbering
off
the
Gulf.
The
waves
shoved
the
ridge
forward,
toward
the
north
and
west.
It
moved
slowly,
but
with
irresistible
momentum,
and
wherever
it
passed,
it
scraped
the
city
clean
of
all
structures
and
all
life.
If
not
for
the
wind,
Isaac
would
have
heard
it
coming
as
a
horrendous
blend
of
screams
and
exploding
wood.
It
shoved
before
it
immense
sections
of
the
streetcar
trestle
that
once
had
snaked
over
the
Gulf.

Something
else
caught
Isaac's
attention,
as
it
did
the
attention
of
nearly
every
other
soul
in
Galveston.

"I
was
standing
at
my
front
door,
which
was
partly
open,
watching
the
water,
which
was
flowing
with
great
rapidity
from
east
to
west,"
he
said.
Suddenly
the
level
of
the
water
rose
four
feet
in
just
four
seconds.
This
was
not
a
wave,
but
the
sea
itself.
"The
sudden
rise
of
4
feet
brought
it
above
my
waist
before
I
could
change
my
position."

For
those
inside
the
house,
it
was
a
moment
of
profound
terror.
(Joseph
claims
to
have
been
utterly
calm.
He
says
the
rise
occurred
just
after
he
had
called
his
brother
outside
to
try
to
persuade
him,
privately,
that
the
best
course
was
to
evacuate
for
the
center
of
town.)
Four
feet
was
taller
than
most
of
the
children
in
the
house.
Throughout
the
city,
parents
rushed
to
their
children.
They
lifted
them
from
the
water
and
propped
them
on
tables,
dressers,
and
pianos.
People
in
single-story
homes
had
nowhere
to
go.
In
Isaac's
house,
everyone
hurried
to
the
second
floor.
The
brothers
herded
the
refugees
into
a
bedroom
on
the
windward
side,
reasoning
that
if
the
house
fell
over,
they
would
all
be
on
top,
not
crushed
underneath.

Isaac
judged
the
depth
of
the
water
by
its
position
in
his
house.
His
yard,
he
knew,
was
5.2
feet
above
sea
level.
The
water
was
ten
feet
above
the
ground.
That
meant
the
tide
was
now
15.2
feet
deep
in
his
neighborhood
—
and
still
rising.
"These
observations,"
he
noted
later,
for
the
benefit
of
skeptics,
"were
carefully
taken
and
represent
to
within
a
few
tenths
of
a
foot
the
true
conditions."
It
was,
he
acknowledged,
incredible.
"No
one
ever
dreamed
that
the
water
would
reach
the
height
observed
in
the
present
case."

ONE
BLOCK
NORTH,
Dr.
Young
observed
the
same
impossible
increase.
Since
five
o'clock
he
had
noted
a
change
in
the
direction
of
the
wind.
It
had
begun
circling
to
the
east
and
gained
velocity,
as
did
the
current.
"The
debris
fairly
flew
past,
so
rapid
had
the
tide
become,"
he
said.
At
5:40
P.M.,
he
observed
a
sudden
acceleration
of
the
wind.
He
knew
the
time
exactly
because
his
clock
had
stopped
and
he
had
just
finished
resetting
it
by
his
watch.
(Clocks
began
to
stop
throughout
Galveston,
as
wind
burst
into
homes
and
buffeted
the
pendulums
that
drove
them.)
He
looked
out
a
west
window
at
a
fence
he
had
been
using
to
gauge
the
depth
of
the
water.
"And
while
I
was
looking,
I
saw
the
tide
suddenly
rise
fully
four
feet
at
one
bound."

Moments
later,
he
saw
houses
on
the
south
side
ofP1/2
between
25th
and
26th
—
half
a
block
north
of
Isaac's
house
—
collapse
into
the
water,
among
them
the
pretty
one-story
home
of
a
man
named
Alexander
Cod-dou,
the
father
of
five
children
whose
wife
happened
to
be
off
the
island.
The
houses
fell
gracefully
at
first.
One
witness,
watching
the
same
thing
happen
in
his
neighborhood,
said
houses
fell
into
the
Gulf
"as
gendy
as
a
mother
would
lay
her
infant
in
the
cradle."
It
was
when
the
current
caught
them
and
swept
them
away
that
the
violence
occurred,
with
bedrooms
erupting
in
a
tumult
of
flying
glass
and
wood,
rooftops
soaring
through
the
air
like
monstrous
kites.

Dr.
Cline's
house,
Young
saw,
was
still
standing,
although
floating
debris
had
torn
away
his
first
and
second-floor
galleries.

SOON
THE
WATER
on
Isaac's
first
floor
was
over
nine
feet
deep.
The
wind
tore
at
the
house
like
an
immense
crowbar.
The
ridge
of
debris
came
closer
and
closer,
destroying
homes
south
and
east
of
Isaac's
house
and
casting
them
against
his
walls.
Isaac's
house
rocked
and
trembled,
but
remained
firmly
footed
on
its
pilings.
Isaac
at
this
point
still
believed
the
house
strong
enough
to
survive
the
assault.
He
did
not
know,
however,
that
the
ridge
of
debris
was
now
pushing
before
it
a
segment
of
streetcar
trestle
a
quarter-mile
long,
consisting
of
tons
of
cross-ties
and
timbers
held
together
by
rails.