Sudden Sea (17 page)

They made it back as far as the old fort and staggered in, too tired to try to reach their car or one of the houses, wanting only to get out of the storm. The two clammers had burrowed in, too, and the four of them huddled in a bunker room, winded, stunned, hypnotized by the voice of the storm. It had switched keys to a haunting keen that got into the brain.

To longtime Napatree residents, it seemed as if the impossible was happening. The Atlantic Ocean was beating the houses on Fort Road to pieces. There was no escape. Road, cars, and every means of communication were gone, washed away in the first waves.

Jeff and Catherine Moore had no phone, no electricity, no water, and ten people in the house: their four children; May Doherty, who had been Catherine’s maid of honor and was Aunt May to the Moore children; and three in help: Andy Pupillo; their cook, Loretta; and sixteen-year-old Nancy, who helped out with the younger girls. While Jeff got up from his sickbed to board up the first-floor windows, Catherine began preparing the house for a long, dark night. She collected all the candles and matches she could find and put some on each floor. Then she went hunting for life jackets. She could find only three. She gave one to Aunt May and strapped the youngest girls, Cathy and Margaret, into the others.

To the four Moore children, the storm was the most exciting thing that had happened all summer, and they were loving every minute of it. They ran from window to window, whooping at each huge breaker that crashed against the seawall, sending spume flying. Jeff and Catherine were trying to secure their home without letting the children know how worried they were. The storm was furious, walloping the houses on either side of theirs. They didn’t want the children to see the Fort Road houses collapsing, and they wanted to keep their family together in one place, quiet and accounted for. The safest spot they could think of was the garage, with its thick cement walls. Catherine bundled the girls, their seven cats and kittens, and Aunt May into the Buick, turned on the car radio, and supplied plenty of snacks and drinks to keep them occupied. Geoffrey and Major, his Newfoundland, got in the Ford beach wagon.

In the Burke cottage, a couple of houses down from the Moores’, Jerry Shea, Ed Fiddes, and Joe Reardon were making renovations. The three carpenters didn’t realize how serious the storm was until they were packing up to leave for the day. Joe Reardon glanced out a back window and started yelling:
Where do you think you’re going? Come back!
Their car had taken off with all their tools, and no driver.

The carpenters made a dash for the old fort, thinking a concrete bunker would be a secure spot to wait out the storm. They went a couple of yards when the wind tackled them. Jerry Shea felt as if he had been hit by the Seven Blocks of Granite, Ford-ham’s then impregnable defensive line. The men retreated to the house. By then, the first floor was flooded and more water was flowing in fast. They headed for the stairs with the ocean a step behind them. As they reached the second floor, a wave took out the stairway. Holed up in one of the bedrooms, they stretched out on the beds. Jerry Shea linked his hands behind his head. “Ain’t this the life, boys! We may as well wait for the end in comfort.”

The words were no sooner spoken than the beds skidded across the room and careened into the opposite wall. The room jolted like a train car derailing and tilted at a 45° angle. A second tremendous wave had taken out the center of the house.

The carpenters jumped out of bed and raced for the attic. They found the door leading up to it closed. They jiggled the knob, banged on the door, pushed against it with the force of their combined weight — all to no avail. The attic door was wedged tight. Attacking it with chairs, the desperate men smashed a hole and crawled through. In the attic they forced open the dormer windows, and when the water rushed in, they climbed onto the roof.

It was icy cold. Jerry Shea thought he saw the Moores’ house floating by. The house in motion was actually the one they were riding. A few moments later the roof split, ending their ride abruptly. Jerry and Ed were flung into the water. Joe held on. He could not swim a stroke. The water was full of wreckage twisting and crashing in the current. As Jerry Shea began to surface, he was crowned — anything could have hit him, a car, a kitchen stool, the deck of a boat. He went down again. He was alone when he resurfaced. He couldn’t find Ed or Joe. Shea rode with the current until a mattress came by: “No sooner had I pulled myself onto it than a gust of wind and water took me, the mattress and all, and I was flung for some distance, landing on the floating roof of a cottage.” There was a cable on it that looked like a lightning rod wire. He wound his arm around it, thinking at least his body would be found and his wife and four children could collect his life insurance.

In the cottage next door to the Moores’, Jim Nestor was begging his aunt to hurry, but Ann Nestor would not be rushed. There were six Nestor sisters, all unmarried except one, and two brothers. The sisters wintered in Westerly and summered together on Napatree. Jim, the youngest of the nephews and nieces, had been spending summers with his aunts ever since he was old enough to be on his own. He would be starting his sophomore year at Brown at the end of the week.

On this stormy afternoon Jim was alone in the cottage with his aunt Ann, and the Nestors’ two maids. Although it was a substantial house with a huge fireplace in the living room and eight bedrooms, by 4:30
P.M.
the Nestors had decided to evacuate. Ann Nestor, who taught English at Westerly High School, would not think of leaving home without an overnight bag. “Don’t hurry me, Jim,” she said as she packed. “All in good time.”

With her customary aplomb and in her own good time, Ann Nestor, overnight case in hand, led the way out the back door, trailed by her two maids — Margaret Tetlow, a widow with four young children, and Ethel Watson. The three women were dressed for the storm in raincoats, hats, and boots. Ann Nestor and Margaret Tetlow stepped out first, just as the sea broke over the cottage. It swept them away instantly. Seeing them go, Ethel Watson panicked and jumped into the swirling water after them. Jim was the last to leave the house. The three women had vanished.

The Nestors’ house had a wide porch on the side that faced the Moores’. The space between the two houses, usually a patch of sand, had become a raging river. Wrapping himself around a porch post, Jim held on. Wind and water hammered at him, ripped off his clothes, then beat down the house around him. Jim jumped off the porch as it collapsed and plunged into the wild river.

When the rain spoiled their game at the Watch Hill Golf Club, the three friends — Harriet Moore, who was married to Jeff’s brother Cy, Violet Cottrell, and Denise O’Brien — trooped back to Harriet’s Napatree house to see the waves. The turbulent ocean was magnificent. The women were standing at the window admiring it when the glass in the porch blew out, taking the porch furniture with it. The next thing they knew, Harriet’s metal glider-couch was flying across the front yard and careening through the dining room window of the next-door cottage, a distance of maybe fifty yards, and waves were breaking on the front porch. The time was about four o’clock.

With the Atlantic Ocean at her doorstep, Harriet’s first thought was her new living room curtains. The water would ruin them. The friends went to work. They pushed the piano in front of the porch doors to keep them from blowing open, then they took down the curtains, folded them carefully, and put them away in a chest of drawers. They had no sooner finished the task than the house next door, with Harriet’s glider still in the dining room, sailed off its foundation into the bay.

Unbeknownst to the watching women, Herb Greenman, the caretaker, and his friend Frank Pasetti were inside the disappearing house. They had been nailing up the winter shutters when the roof collapsed. Greenman was pinned under it, his ribs broken. He called to Frank. There was no answer. Greenman was sure that he was going to die beneath the roof. All at once, the house began to tremble. It felt like an earthquake. Room by room shattered. Suddenly freed, Greenman found himself being tossed in the turmoil of Little Narragansett Bay. It seemed as if he had exchanged one death sentence for another. Piercing pain from his broken ribs made every movement agony. He did not have the strength to save himself. Greenman had given up hope when a bathtub bumped by him carrying a rag doll. The doll seemed to be riding the wind gusts. Though tattered and torn, she was still bobbing along. Alone in the mad sea, Herb Greenman laughed out loud. Pain seared through his chest, but he didn’t care. “Old girl,” he shouted over the tumult, “if you can make it, so can I.”

While Harriet Moore and her friends were watching the house next door disappear, the ocean moved into her living room. It brushed the piano aside like a piece of sheet music and swamped the first floor. Harriet wasn’t afraid, though. Life was fine and her house was strong. A little water, even a few feet of the Atlantic Ocean running through the first floor, was a nuisance to clean up, not a danger.

Harriet Chappell Moore was a society girl from New London, a young woman to the manner born who would have gone hungry if she didn’t have a cook. She was a marvelous hostess, an avid golfer, a wonderful gardener, and, at age thirty-two, a new mother. After years of trying to have children of their own, she and her husband, Cy, had recently adopted Mary, a six-year-old with strawberry blond pigtails, very blue eyes, and a captivating smile. With no lights, no electricity, a house full of water, and little Mary to think about, the three friends decided the most sensible course of action would be to drive back to Watch Hill, which was higher ground. Harriet’s cottage was one of the closest to town, so it would take only a few minutes.

Violet and Denise went out to the concrete garage behind the house while Harriet went upstairs to get Mary and their maid, Margaret Kane. She found them surrounded by mops and towels, trying unsuccessfully to keep the ocean out of the bedrooms. From the upstairs rooms it felt as if the house were under a cataract. Tons of water were spilling over it. Harriet could see the spume on the underside of the waves through her bedroom window. Even then she didn’t think they were in danger. She sent Mary and Margaret down to the garage while she gathered up a few necessities — a dry coat for Cy, a raincoat and rubbers for Mary. On the way downstairs, she stopped to put five letters, which she had written that morning, in a high place, safely above the rising water.

Harriet believed her house could weather any storm, but Violet and Denise had no such illusions. All the Fort Road houses were solidly built, and they were splintering. When Harriet came down, they told her they were stranded. Even if they could get their cars out, there was no hope of driving away. Fort Road was under ten feet of water, and the garage was filling fast. The friends were trying to devise a survival plan when an earsplitting roar shook the ground they stood on. The house and garage began to break up around them. Harriet scooped up Mary, and the four women made a dash for the house. They bolted up the back stairs to the kitchen door. The door was locked.

The back stairs were a short flight of perhaps six steps enclosed by a latticework wall. Harriet, Mary, and Margaret crowded together on the top step. Violet and Denise stood below them, gripping the rail. With each wave, the stairs groaned and shook. They felt the treads moving under their feet, and through the lattice they could see gray surf thundering by. They masked their fear with humor. Denise was wondering aloud if the living room curtains were faring better than they were, when a third wave came. With a frightening grinding sound, all the stairs caved in except the top one where Harriet, Mary, and Margaret stood. The last Harriet saw of her friends was the soles of their shoes as the ocean swept them away.

Sucked into the vortex, Violet and Denise struggled to keep their heads above the warring water. Swimming was impossible, but they tried to stay together and buoy each other through the terror. “A very friendly mattress appeared and we climbed aboard,” Denise recalled. “During our sail across the bay, the mattress became soggy, so we hailed a roof and changed horses midstream.” The two friends hugged the roof. Although they were inches apart, they were screaming at the top of their lungs to hear each other above the storm:

“Shouldn’t we go back for Harriet?”

“I don’t think we can, Vi.”

“We can’t leave her there.”

Violet barely spoke the words when there was a cracking noise that she described as “the most horrifying I have ever heard.” Harriet’s house split squarely down the middle and erupted like a volcano. Beds, bureaus, chairs, mattresses, everything shot into the air like clowns out of a circus cannon. The friends knew there wasn’t a chance that anyone had survived.

“God forgive us,” Violet said.

Chapter 16

Providence

H
alf a dozen radios were playing in the appliance department of the Outlet Company, the biggest department store in downtown Providence.
Backstage Wife
was humming from the Philco console:
“Can a small-town girl from Iowa find happiness with one of America’s most handsome actors, Larry Noble, matinee idol of a million other women … ?”
Anthony Eden was speaking over a sleek Emerson table model, denouncing Chamberlain’s “straw peace”:
“We slither ever closer to the abyss. The idea that safety can be purchased by throwing a small state to the wolves is a fatal delusion.”

It was all background noise to Jimmy Brennan. Jimmy managed the Outlet’s radio department, and he had learned to program his attention like one of the machines he sold, tuning the broadcasts in or out at will. He usually listened for the afternoon weather. When he heard a bulletin about a hurricane in Connecticut, he went downstairs to tell his friend Florence Simmons in the ladies’ shoe department.

Florence laughed at him. “Oh, Jimmy, there’ll never be a hurricane. We’ve never had a hurricane.” She was still smiling a few minutes later when a woman ran into the store, incoherent and crying hysterically — something about her baby blowing out of her arms. Florence could not make any sense of the story. It sounded crazy — as crazy as a hurricane in New England. From inside the Outlet, she couldn’t hear the wind or see what the weather was doing. Florence was trying to calm the woman when a policeman came in, his cap gone and his shoes squeaking with water. He was carrying a boy about two years old in his arms.