We had only just set the numbered pieces below each window when a huge diesel truck pulled into my driveway. The driver’s door opened, and a hulking guy stepped out, seemingly without having to lower himself to the pavement. He was seven feet tall if he was an inch. He had smooth, very dark brown skin, a bald head, and biceps like tree trunks.
“My friend Keith,” Hank said to me. “I called and asked him to stop by for a spell.”
I said nothing, but I wondered. Hank had said he didn’t know anyone but me, so who was the girl he was spending time with and how did he know Keith? Maybe Hank was one of those informants who’d had their identities changed, and he wasn’t allowed to tell people like me the truth about his friends.
Introductions were made; Keith held onto my hand for a few extra seconds. “I feel as though I already know you, Jane,” he said with a smile as big as everything else about him.
“It’s not all true,” I said. “Some of it, maybe, but not all. I wasn’t topless, for one thing. Just the dancers were. I was a waitress. I don’t even know how to dance.”
Keith’s confused gaze switched to Hank and then back to me. If Hank hadn’t started laughing, I’d have continued jabbering until I made a fool of myself. Or maybe I already had.
“He doesn’t know what you’re talkin’ about, Jane. He just knows you through me. What I said. And I didn’t say one word about you being topless.”
“Oh.”
“It sounds like an interesting story though,” Keith said. “I’d like to hear it sometime.”
He chuckled and nodded at Hank. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was a nod of approval. Hank lowered his eyes and brought them back up. The cowboy’s nod. Now what did that mean?
“Keith’s gonna help me put up the plywood. Whether you’re holding the plywood or using the hammer drill, it takes strength. He’s got fifty times yours, so you can go ahead and work on other preparations. This will only take us thirty minutes.”
Hank smiled and though Keith was standing right there, it seemed as though his smile was just for me. I dragged my eyes away and scuttled to the pile of crap.
By the time they were finished putting up the plywood, I had separated the bamboo and was dragging the first long piece into the woods. When Hank asked what I was doing, I explained. He and Keith conferred for a minute and then Keith offered to help, saying that if he had known earlier in the week, he could have cut the stalks up and taken them to the dump. But it was too late now, which I already knew. He told Hank to go on to his friend’s house and he would finish up with me. I felt a pang of regret when Hank left, but my gratitude far outweighed it.
*****
“Did you hear that?” I asked Keith. He was shoving the last piece of bamboo into a thicket of palmetto bushes so dense that I feared we’d never get it out again.
“There,” I said. “Did you hear that?”
Keith cocked his head to one side. “I heard something, but what was it?”
I didn’t know. It was a mix between whining and crying, but so faint I couldn’t make it out. As we stood waiting for the sound to repeat, Little Boy came cozying up and rubbed against my leg. He wasn’t usually so affectionate, and I wondered if he was afraid. The winds had been steadily building, and there was only an hour or two before dusk. Maybe this was a night Little Boy wouldn’t mind staying inside, and he was trying to tell me so.
The sound came again, in between the guttural caw of a crow and the shrill voice of a hunting hawk. Little Boy stood up on his hind legs and tapped my hand with his paw.
Keith gawked. “I’ve never seen a cat do that. It’s as though he’s trying to take your hand.”
Yeah, it seemed a little strange, but I didn’t have much experience with cats, so who could say for sure? Little Boy repeated his antics, then took off trotting toward an old shed that had fallen half apart during the winds from Hurricane Cindy. When he got to the door of the shed, he stopped and turned around to give me a look.
“I think he wants you to follow him,” Keith said. I thought so too, so I did, though I wasn’t anxious to get close to the shed. Snakes were known to live in places like that. At least I had on boots.
I heard that strange whining again, only this time my brain told me it sounded like kittens. Uh-oh. Keith had figured it out too, evidently, because he was shaking his head. He was braver than I was, probably because his feet were big enough to crush a snake to death, so he pushed on the shed’s door, which was half open already. I stepped forward when I saw him smile. Sure enough, there was a cat standing over three tiny kittens, which were evidently crying because they couldn’t reach Mama. The way Little Boy was prancing around, I assumed the kittens were his. I should have taken him to the vet. Like a typical male, he was cavorting with every female he could get his paws on, with no care to the consequences of his rakish behavior. He was getting fixed as soon as the hurricane passed, no ifs, ands, or buts.
“Now what?” asked Keith.
“Well, I can’t leave them here. This shed will be blown to smithereens.” I took another step forward, and the mother cat, who had lain back down to nurse her kitties, growled. Oh dear.
I took another step anyway, and she got up, shaking the kittens off. They mewed, waving their tiny legs and bobbing their heads, trying to catch hold of her again. This was no good. I didn’t want to scare the mother off; I didn’t have anything to feed kittens with. I scooted back, not knowing what to do.
The mother cat did though. She picked up a kitten and carried it to me, dropping the squirming gray and white ball at my feet. Keith stared, dumbfounded, then pulled his shirt off over his head and turned it inside out.
“Here,” he said, handing it to me. “You can hold them in this.”
For a second I couldn’t come up with two words to string together, thanks to the sight of Keith’s half-naked body. There was more muscle showing than I’d ever seen on one guy, and he was totally hair-free. I wondered if he was a professional body-builder because I couldn’t imagine any normal man with muscles like that. A six-pack didn’t begin to describe what I was looking at.
When he realized my predicament he shrugged, which only served to send a ripple through a plethora of muscles, including a set of enormous pecs that put my rack to shame. “I am what I am,” he said with a sheepish grin.
Boy, howdy.
He was still holding out his shirt, and I understood his plan. I couldn’t put the kittens next to me without the protection Keith’s shirt offered because my shirt was covered in brown fibers from the bamboo husks. Those fibers gave off a powder that made sensitive skin itch like crazy, which was why I was wearing gloves to my elbows. I wasn’t sure the powder affected kittens the same way, but I didn’t want to take any chances.
I stripped off my gloves, took the shirt from Keith, and knelt to pick up the kitty. I placed it gently in the shirt. Its blue eyes were open; I thought that meant it was at least a week or two old, but I wasn’t sure. The mother cat strutted up with the second kitten and dropped it right into the shirt, next to its sibling. I waited while she got the third one. Once I had all three kittens, we set off toward the house, the mother cat following me and Little Boy trotting along behind. I sent Keith in first, telling him where the canned cat food was and instructing him to bring some on a plate to the patio. If I could coax the mother cat into the house for food, that was all I’d need to do.
Ten minutes later she, along with the kittens and Little Boy, was in the house, and Keith had his shirt back. I shut off the bedroom doors until I could figure things out. Now I had even more to do to get ready for the hurricane, but I wasn’t complaining. Instead, I was thinking that if the bamboo had been picked up on Monday, I might never have known about the kittens and they would have perished.
It was true that God worked in mysterious ways. As the sky darkened and the wind and rain took turns battering my house, I could only hope that God had a plan in the works for me too.
Chapter 18
I was
scared shitless, and the worst wasn’t upon us yet.
It was Saturday, early afternoon, and the house was dark. I’d lost my electricity a couple of hours earlier, as had everyone else on my street. I knew this because our neighborhood had an agreement to keep porch lights turned on during storms. That way, we could tell who was with or without electric. When my power went off, I’d walked outside and peered down the street. All the porch lights were off, just like mine. As far as I knew, everyone on our street, except Sheila, was home. Sheila had gone to New Jersey to join her husband, but as she always did when she traveled, she’d left her porch light on.
I’d noticed earlier that Hank’s porch light wasn’t on. I guessed no one had told him of the rule. The thought of Hank led to one of Bryan Rossi, and I wondered if he was also spending the hurricane with a woman. Everyone was spending it with someone they were close to except me; I was spending it with stray cats.
The squalls from the outer bands of the hurricane had already started sweeping through periodically, and with my windows boarded up, the house was a tomb. The only room with any natural light was the family room, since neither the sliding glass doors nor the window were covered by plywood. So that’s where I was hanging out. A trip to any other room required a flashlight. Now I understood the purpose of hurricane lanterns. Trying to search one-handed for an item in a pitch black room while hanging onto a puny flashlight with the other hand was a nuisance.
I’d called all my sisters hours ago to check in one last time. Nicole and Steve and their ten-year-old son, Hunter, were staying at their new home in Summerton, five miles away. Hilary and her kids, Chase and Sara, were hunkered down too. Hilary lived ten miles west of me, and though her property was somewhat isolated, she had two generators, and the electrical panel was hooked into them so she could keep things running. She also had a safe room designed for hurricane shelter. Chase was eighteen, a big, strapping kid with a level head, and Sara was two years younger and the same—without being big and strapping. They had a Jeep and one of those swamp rovers, so I figured they’d be fine.
Katherine, Marci, and my mother had chosen to evacuate. Katherine and her husband, John, lived on Manatee Island, as did my mother. Manatee is what we call a barrier island. The barrier islands lay between the Florida mainland and the beaches, and causeways stretch over the rivers between the bodies of land. The barrier islands were always put under evacuation during hurricanes, mainly because they had no hospitals of their own. If the causeways were damaged, emergency vehicles couldn’t get to residents.
My mother would have evacuated without the mandatory order since she feared she’d have a heart attack and no one would be able to get to her. I suspected Katherine and John would have preferred to ride out the storm at home. They didn’t have to worry about their kids. Jack, who was almost 22, and Janice, who had just turned 20, attended college out of state, where they went year-round. But someone had to evacuate with Mom. Being the family martyr—I mean, caretaker—comes at a high price.
Marci had fled to Las Vegas with friends after dropping her daughter, Erin, off at her ex-husband David’s house. Erin’s birth certificate listed David as her father, but he wasn’t. David, who’d married Marci thinking she was pregnant with his child and only found out the truth two years ago during the divorce, didn’t care. He loved Erin as much as anyone could love a child, and he continued to pay child support for the privilege of pretending. I was the only person in the whole wide world who knew Erin had learned the truth. I’d been flabbergasted when she told me.
“Aunt Jane,” she’d said in that grown-up little girl’s voice, “do you think my daddy would love me less if he knew I wasn’t really his little girl?”
She didn’t even look over at me when she asked the question. We’d been sitting in the back of my fourth lot with twin easels holding sketch pads and a tray of charcoal between us. We were drawing the wax myrtle that was now history. Each of us wore a large-brimmed hat to protect us from the sun. She looked darling in hers with her tiny face ensconced by dark curls under the big white hat.
I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t sure what she knew and anyway, what did one say in such circumstances? It wasn’t as if I’d had any experience. I didn’t have kids and I felt, emotionally at least, a kid myself. I was afraid that whatever I said might cause some kind of psychological damage.
She put down her piece of charcoal and wiped her hands carefully on the antimicrobial wipes as I’d taught her to do. She swung her head around to gaze up at me through long sweeping lashes with her big blue eyes. “I heard Mommy tell Aunt Hilary that she didn’t have to let Daddy see me since I wasn’t really his little girl and that if he didn’t come through for her, she wouldn’t.”
Oh, Marci, I thought. Do you have a clue what you’re doing? In Marci’s defense, I was sure she had no idea Erin was listening, but still. Why did no one ever see the toll their post-divorce pettiness took on their kids?
“No, sweetie, I know for a fact that your daddy wouldn’t love you less because he already knows about that and it doesn’t make a bit of difference to him.” There. I’d done it. I’d told Erin something that Marci should have told her, and if Marci didn’t like it, that was too bad.
I didn’t condone that kind of decision—it was the sort of thing Katherine did—but in this case, I didn’t see how I could keep from telling Erin the truth. She needed to know that David knew and it didn’t matter.
“He loves you dearly and considers himself your daddy. He’s the one who’s been there for you since the day you were born, and he will always be there for you, no matter what.”
Erin smiled, a huge, gap-toothed smile, since both her front teeth were missing. Her face was lit up with joy, so I blinked away my tears and smiled back. I told her how lucky she was to have a daddy who loved her so much, and then we went back to our sketches.
Today I was glad she was with David, though I didn’t know if David had evacuated or not. Either way he’d make sure she was safe.
Granny would be safe too. Her assisted living building was made of concrete block and was fully equipped with hurricane shutters and generators. Old people couldn’t live without their oxygen—or TV. Sue lived beachside, so she evacuated with her parents. Mark and Jill were still in the hospital. Mark’s recovery was going well; he’d be out in a couple of days, and Jill would be out soon after that. I’d suggested the hospital move Mark into Jill’s room so they’d be together for the hurricane, and to my surprise, they did.
It occurred to me that I was the only person who didn’t have anyone to be with and for a minute I tried to start a pity party for one. It didn’t work because I knew I could have evacuated with Mom. Heaven help me if being alone ever looked scary enough for that.
I was sitting on the area rug in the family room, stroking Little Boy and his girlfriend in turn. The cats were antsy, and I couldn’t blame them. The momma wasn’t really wild. She belonged to someone—she was well groomed and wearing a rabies tag—but whoever owned her evidently hadn’t gotten her spayed. I hoped they weren’t worried about her, but I couldn’t think about that now. The tiny kittens were so adorable. One looked like a Maine coon and was bigger than the other two, especially in the paws. Momma had been two-timing Little Boy. The other two were probably his. At least they looked like him.
Little Boy didn’t seem to care one way or the other about the kittens, but he was quite interested in Momma, and she, likewise, in him. I wondered how I would keep them from doing the dirty deed if we were stuck in a closet together. The fierce shrieking of the wind was about all the shrieking I could handle.
I gazed out of the sliding glass doors into the backyard one last time before the light of day was completely gone, and then wished I hadn’t. The rain was blowing in sheets parallel to the ground, flinging objects I didn’t recognize across my line of sight. I couldn’t make out my fence or any of the trees in front of it.
When the wind started to pound against the plywood on the windows
, I got into the closet. Hank had warned me that since my plywood sheets were warped, they might flex during the storm, and he was right. What he didn’t mention was that the flexing would sound like sonic booms. At about the same time the plywood started flexing, horrific pounding thundered from the roof.
I found I didn’t have to worry about a mating ruckus with the cats because Little Boy would have none of our safe place. Though I tried to get him inside the closet, he took off and hid on his own. Momma stayed with the kitties and they were with me.
There was one thing I hadn’t thought to hunt down, and that was earplugs. I needed them too. Between the roaring roof, the pounding windows, the shrieking wind, the howling cat, and the hissing kittens, I thought I would lose my mind.
I sat there with fingers in my ears and prayed, hoping to gain a sense of peace in the midst of chaos. It could have worked except every now and then, a bad thought sneaked through, stealing any peace my prayers might have brought me. Maybe a microburst would topple a tree into my roof or a tornado would rip the roof right off. The realization that I could be a victim of Mother Nature—dead before morning—hit me, made it hard to breathe. I wanted to chant my favorite mantra, but I had no idea when it would all be over. It was the longest night of my life.
*****
All day Sunday the wind howled and the rain pelted. According to my weather radio, the western eye wall of Flossie had come ashore before midnight Saturday but because of the eye wall size and the slow movement of the storm, it took almost twelve hours for the eastern side to move ashore.
To make matters worse, landfall was just south of us, which meant we were in the northeast quadrant, the most dangerous area of a hurricane. Once again my goose bumps had been right. If only they could predict other approaching problems as easily.
The storm took as much time to move out as it did to move in. I was able to check in with my sisters to find everyone alive and well. Katherine, John, and Mom had fled to Panama City, where John’s parents lived, but after just one night had to flee back since Flossie was predicted to make a second Florida landfall there. A lot of the people who’d evacuated were in the same mess; they’d be stuck on the roads for some time.
Rules of Lying (Jane Dough Series) Page 16