The Gulf

by Belle Boggs

  Many of the students hadn’t wanted to leave; that was the surprising part. When evacuation was first suggested as a possibility, an idea spread around the Ranch that the students could stay, helping to prepare their school for the storm’s landfall by writing and praying. God would protect them, they surmised. They would weather the storm like Noah in his boat and would be able to finish their second session in a memorable and probably quite inspiring way. They imagined themselves feverishly finishing seven-hundred-page novels, arriving at the closing insights of their memoirs, being struck by bolts—figurative bolts—of inspiration for long sequences of poems.

  Regina thought this was a brilliant idea, initially. “It is time to take a STAND,” she said in a second email to students. “The recent negative press should only make our resolve, our faith, more durable.” She changed her mind after getting some strongly worded advice from her insurance company, and Eric broke the news to the students at Friday morning’s breakfast, asking them to pray for the Ranch from home, to keep writing, to check their email for updates. He did not mention the article or Marianne, and no one asked.

  She was finding it hard to pack. She’d had to beg for boxes from the Kangaroo, and now she could not remember which supplies, which staplers and pens and notebooks, she’d bought with her own money. Should she even bother? But what would she do without a stapler? Without pens and notebooks and folders? It seemed that everything in the office was indispensable; she’d have to take it all. Then there was the question of books—where were the books she’d lent to the makeshift library? How could she leave without her Rich and Merwin, her Lowell and Levertov?

  But when she checked, they’d all been returned, as if by their very association with her they’d lost all usefulness. Marianne got a box, and set about packing them. She didn’t know where she was taking them, or how. She didn’t have an apartment; she didn’t have a car. She had no job, and no prospects for a job. Eric wasn’t speaking to her.

  She thought of Sophie, smugly drinking wine at the Manatee—was she leaving? Though Martin Rice had refused to divulge his sources, she was sure now that Sophie was involved. Sophie owed her something—an explanation, a place to stay, a ride to safety.

  She started toward the Manatee Inn with her box of books balanced on a rolling suitcase, but turned around before she got to the sidewalk. Eric could mail her books to her—that was the least he could do, after tricking her into founding a sham institution of higher learning, and then selling it to an even shadier operation. For love, Frances said! Marianne left the books next to her orchid, which had dropped two more flowers, and lifted the suitcase by its handle.

  “Didn’t think I’d see you again,” Sophie said when she arrived. She smelled like turpentine and whiskey, and held the door wide open.

  Marianne looked around the cottage, protected from the storm by the main building, which sat between it and the water. Sophie had her storm shutters closed, yellow candles flickering, Loretta Lynn on the turntable. A new painting leaned half-finished on its easel. “You’re not evacuating?”

  “We don’t evacuate,” Sophie said. “We’re the captains. We go down with the ship.”

  “My ship is sunk. You should know that.”

  “I read the paper. I’m sorry. You’ll survive it, though.” She poured whiskey into a jelly jar and handed it to Marianne, then turned back to her easel.

  “Nope,” Marianne said, and took a bracing sip. “I’m done. And you didn’t just read the paper—you must have called Martin Rice. Maybe you called the protesters too.”

  Sophie continued painting—a snowy egret in a dark pool of water. “Did you think you could keep it a secret?” Marianne didn’t answer, and Sophie continued. “You were drowning, kid. I saw it on your face, when Tad Tucker was waving you and your students around like he owned you. I mean, do you even know what that man is about?”

  “Of course I do,” Marianne said. “I mean, now I do—we were in the process of extricating—”

  “Bullshit,” Sophie said. “I did you a favor.”

  “I have no job! And nowhere to live! And everyone at the Ranch hates me! Understandably, but still—”

  “Then why did you talk?” Sophie’s brush scratched violently against the canvas, but her voice was calm. Maybe it was the smell of turpentine or the maddeningly patient questioning, but Marianne was reminded of teenage fights with her mother before she got sick. Sophie was right: Marianne didn’t have to meet with Martin Rice. She could have referred his email to Regina, who would have rebuffed him handily.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I was drunk. Sort of.”

  “You do know,” Sophie said. “What you did was brave.” She turned to look at Marianne.

  “You could have told me first.”

  “You could have told your students first. You had a lot of chances. A lot of warnings. The protesters—”

  “You put them up to it?”

  Sophie shook her head. “I have friends, and maybe I let something slip. It’s a small community, I told you that from the start. And there are reasons for people to be fighting this organization you got yourself mixed up in.”

  She went back to painting moonlight on the water, around the egret’s legs. Her gestures turned gentle, almost tender.

  “You’ll start over,” Sophie said. “You’re young. And Christians—they’re supposed to be good at forgiveness. Real Christians anyway.”

  “I want to leave, Sophie. I want to evacuate.”

  “What about your ex? Is he still there?”

  Marianne nodded. “Some of the students too. I’m not like you—I’m a serial ship-abandoner. I bail out. I did it to my sister after my mom died, I did it to Eric after he proposed, and now I’m abandoning the Ranch.”

  “You have unfinished business there,” Sophie said. The wind was picking up. Sophie stabbed her brush into its glass and took off her smock. Marianne wondered if she’d finish the painting, or if she considered it finished now. “You need to go back, before it gets worse.”

  “Maybe I could stay here?”

  “People are still in your inn, your school, whatever you want to call it. You opened the doors to them. Think if they need something and you’re not there. What if something happens and you’re gone—how will you feel then?”

  It was true. Janine was there, and Davonte, and even Tom—she was responsible for all of them. She’d personally chosen them, invited them, made coming to the Ranch seem like something worthwhile, something to change their lives for the better. She drained the rest of her glass.

  Sophie opened her door and peered outside, then came back to her workstation and blew out the candles, picked up the needle in the middle of “Fist City.” “I’ll drive you,” she said. “I think I’m gonna head inland.”

  “What about going down with the ship?”

  “My guests are gone, the Manatee will be fine. Or it won’t be. But you should gather your folks and make a plan.”

  They rode in silence, and when Marianne got out, she didn’t thank Sophie. She felt like a child being returned to the scene of a crime, to apologize, come clean. She gripped her suitcase obediently and carried it through the storm’s stinging raindrops, all the way to her door.

  She turned and waved. Sophie drove away, into the pale and greenish dusk. Marianne opened the door to her room. A hurricane was coming; there was that. She hoped it would swallow her up.

  When Janine first read the newspaper article, she wanted to disappear. How had she let herself be used that way? How could she have given money and time to such scam artists? What would Rick think, and her daughters, when they found out? How foolish she’d been to think that she was being celebrated for her talent, when all Marianne wanted to do was use her. For money she could understand: everyone needed money, and of course school wasn’t free. But the idea that Janine’s own beliefs would be fodder for Marianne’s book—that she was being mocked—it was as bad as anything she’d felt during the worst of Terri Schiavo’s or
deal. Janine skipped class on Thursday, something she’d never done in her life, and locked herself in her room. She couldn’t stand to look at anyone.

  But then the storm came closer, and closer, and Beth got a call from the Weather Channel. Manfred came by with a sandwich, and Eric Osborne apologized to her, and Lorraine brought her some cigarettes. Regina sent her several emails (she didn’t write back), as well as one group email suggesting that Marianne might, in fact, be crazy. Janine wondered if that could be true. She had not seen her since the reading. She wasn’t sure what she’d say if she did.

  Janine didn’t have any choice but to stay and help everyone get ready. It would be fine, Eric assured them, just a Category 1. He’d seen plenty of storms during his childhood, when he used to visit his aunt in Tampa. It would be fun, he said. They’d take precautions.

  The safest places on the Ranch, Eric told them, were the dormitory rooms that ringed the parking lot—they were farthest from shore, with inland-facing windows, and were on a slightly higher incline than the rest of the Ranch. For added security, Eric and Tom nailed up plywood, moving efficiently down the cracked cement walkway with a mouthful of nails, while Janine brought in grocery bags bulging with canned food and white bread and peanut butter. They each chose a separate room, but as soon as the first hard drops of rain hit the roof and the initial gusts of wind creaked the tree limbs and the plywood, Donald and Eric and Tom gathered in Janine’s room, where they’d stashed the provisions. Janine sat at the foot of the bed, switching between the local news and the Weather Channel, searching for a glimpse of her daughter. Donald calmed his nerves by eating peanut butter sandwiches and reading gossip websites on his laptop. Tom worried about his motorcycle, which he’d wheeled into the gardening shed, and read a book about Afghanistan’s opium trade. Eric couldn’t sit still, kept going out into the storm and reporting back to them every few minutes.

  “Wind’s getting gustier,” Eric said, dripping rain. He picked up his phone and texted someone. “Soon it’ll be hard to stand up.”

  “Oh,” said Janine, thinking of Beth. “I hate to think of her out there by herself.”

  “I’ve never heard of anything happening to a weather reporter,” Eric said. “Ever.”

  “What about those storm chasers?” Donald asked.

  “That’s for tornadoes,” Eric said. “A hurricane is different. More predictable.”

  “Tell that to the Katrina victims,” Donald said.

  “In comparison.”

  “There she is!” Janine said. She turned the volume way up. Beth stood near a pier as waves crashed behind her in a gray sea. She held the microphone with one hand and kept her hood up with the other as rain lashed her parka. She had a pleasing on-camera voice—loud enough to compete with the sound of the storm and the surf, but not panicked. “The normally bustling streets of Sarasota are unrecognizable today as tourists and residents alike have evacuated Helen, likely to make landfall as a Category 1 storm later tonight,” she said. “Behind me the Venice fishing pier is being battered by wind and waves, but we have not had any reports of damage yet.”

  “The Weather Channel,” Tom said. “Big time.”

  “Oh,” said Janine, wiping away tears. “Look at her.”

  “My mom watches the Weather Channel all day,” said Donald. “She leaves it on steady, programs in wherever I am so she can keep track. She’s probably got it on right now. I gotta tell her I know a Weather Channel star. I’m gonna email her.”

  “I should call Rick,” Janine said, reaching for her phone. She punched in the numbers with shaking fingers, held it up to her ear. On television, they cut away from Beth. Janine wondered if what she’d said was true—if residents were also evacuating, or if that was just meant to make the report more exciting. It did seem quiet along their stretch of the key, all the businesses closed down. Even the gas station was darkened and empty, though no one had bothered to board it up.

  “Eric, the internet’s out,” Donald called.

  “That happens,” Eric said. “In a hurricane. Probably won’t be back until tomorrow.”

  “Shit,” said Donald. “Can you fix it?”

  “No,” said Eric, looking at his phone. “I’m not getting a good signal either.”

  “Honey?” Janine held her hand over one ear. “Watch the Weather Channel. We’re safe here, just riding out the storm, plenty of food, good company. Love you!”

  She snapped her phone shut. The lights flickered.

  “Stay on,” Janine pleaded.

  “Don’t do this to us, Helen,” Donald commanded the ceiling. He closed and unplugged his laptop.

  Then it was dark.

  It was very dark, and very quiet except for the sound of rain battering the roof.

  Janine reached for her handbag. She pulled out a keychain flashlight and aimed it around the room, over Donald’s and Eric’s and Tom’s faces.

  “I told you we needed to leave some spaces to see out of,” Tom said. He pulled his flip phone out and waved it around the boarded-up window. “It’s totally blocked. It’s like a tomb in here. I can’t take it.”

  “I’ll get the candles,” Janine said. “We bought flashlights too, and batteries. You should save your battery, just in case. We can take the boards down tomorrow, you’ll see.”

  “You’ve done this before,” Donald said. “That’s good.”

  “Marianne is all by herself over there,” Tom said. “Somebody want to go check on her?”

  “I could go,” Eric offered.

  Janine didn’t comment. It was lonely and a little strange, being the only woman in the room, but she didn’t think she could stand to go through a hurricane with Marianne, to sit on a bed with her and hold her hand and reassure her. She’d been arguing in her head with Marianne ever since she read the newspaper article, though she hadn’t spoken a word to her. In her mind, Marianne sat at a desk in Janine’s classroom, her hands folded meekly, while Janine interrogated her. Why did you go to the newspaper, and not to us first? Do you really have so little respect for us?

  Janine lit two candles and placed them on the dresser, just below the mirror, where they flickered with an amber light. “I filled the bathtub and the sink,” she said. “Just in case.”

  “Just in case what?” Donald asked.

  “For drinking or flushing.”

  “I’m not drinking bathwater, no offense,” he said, moving to claim a bottle of water.

  “It isn’t bathwater. No one is going to take a bath in it,” Janine explained.

  “It touched bath. That makes it bathwater.”

  “It’s hot in here,” Tom said. “Stuffy.”

  “I could open the door,” Eric said. “Just a crack.”

  They agreed—just a crack, just enough to let some fresh air in.

  “But be careful,” Janine said.

  “It’s just like a really long thunderstorm,” Eric said.

  Eric went to the door, with Tom behind him, and opened it a crack, then halfway. Janine and Donald followed Tom, hoping for a cooling gust of wind. Outside, the light was gray and eerie, hourless, and they could see rain bouncing where it hit the pavement. It looked like someone was throwing bucket after bucket of water into an already drenching rainstorm. Rain overflowed the gutters and poured off every side of the roof. Wind tossed the palm fronds and creaked the long oak branches. Somewhere they couldn’t see, a tree limb snapped and crashed. Small branches, driven by the wind, thumped the roof loudly.

  “I’m gonna move my bike before it gets any worse,” Tom said. “A big limb could smash that shed flat.”

  “Or it could fall on you,” Janine said.

  “Where are you gonna move it, anyway?” Eric said.

  “To my room,” he said. “I want to be able to see it.”

  “Tom, you can’t put a motorcycle in your room,” Eric reasoned. “It won’t fit through the door.”

  “Fine, gimme the keys to the dining hall, I’ll put it in there.”

  “I don
’t think it’s safe to go out,” said Janine. “You can always replace a motorcycle.”

  “It’s fine, “Eric said. “I’ll go with him. It’s not too bad, I’ve seen worse. The power will be back tomorrow, the next day tops.”

  Janine could see that he was enjoying this, being the experienced one among them, though how many years ago was it that he was last here? Ten years ago? Fifteen? Beth had told her that storms were getting worse because of global warming—stronger, more unpredictable—and it seemed to Janine that this was true. Though she also wondered if there was just more coverage of storms, television programs you could watch twenty-four hours a day, like Donald’s mom. Eric pulled on his raincoat. Tom flipped up the collar on his jean jacket.

  “Pay attention out there,” Donald called as they shouldered their way into the storm. “We should put something about a hurricane in my novel.”

  Janine looked at her phone. “I’m getting a text. It’s Lilian, from class. She wants to know if we have any extra rooms. We do, don’t we?” Janine scrolled through the message. “She says she didn’t evacuate, she was afraid her husband would sneak in and change the locks on the condo. But now she says no one else in her condo is around, and she’s lonely. I should tell her to come, right?”

  “Tell her to bring more bottled water,” Donald said.

  Janine typed a response, then knelt next to the bed and clasped her hands.

  “I thought you said we’d be fine,” Donald said. Janine closed her eyes more tightly and continued praying.

  “We all need strength,” she said finally, standing up.

  Lilian arrived in her silver Mercedes with several bags of fancy nonperishable groceries, a large cooler full of ice, a battery-powered radio, battery-powered lamps, and two suitcases full of clothes and toiletries. It took several trips into the storm to bring everything inside, and everyone got soaked. Lilian stayed rather dry in her yellow anorak, standing under the eaves and calling out encouragement and instructions.