When the game devolved into lining the chips up like dominoes, Pia called it quits and positioned herself horizontally on the couch. I refreshed everyone’s hot chocolates and brought two sleeves of saltines to the table. August stuffed them into his mouth, one after another, and blew cracker dust at me while explaining why Chutes and Ladders is the best game ever invented. Then he stopped and looked around, apparently remembering why he was there.
“Do you think my dad’s going to die?”
“No, buddy. I don’t,” I said. “He’s going to be fine. You heard what those rescue guys said.”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “Because I really like my dad. I don’t like his ponytail, but he’s real nice.”
We both ate more crackers.
“Are you gonna have a kid?” August asked.
I glanced at Pia on the couch, who was asleep or pretending to be.
“I don’t know, buddy. We’ll see.”
August shrugged, already bored with the conversation. “Okay.”
We ate more crackers and played Go Fish until dinner, which was organic macaroni and cheese from a box made with water boiled on the woodstove. Daylight disappeared quickly and, although it was only seven o’clock, we were all ready for bed by the time the last macaroni had been eaten. So we left our warm living room for the frigid upstairs. There would be no tooth brushing or face washing or pajama changes. Such civilities were a waste of energy and resources to us by then. Instead, we went straight to bed, peeling back cover after cover and eager for sleep to take us before we had time to think about the day’s events.
I hadn’t given any consideration to the sleeping arrangements for the night. How seven-year-olds sleep was a mystery to me, but August left no room for deliberation. He crawled in between Pia and me and made himself right at home. Maybe this was a perfectly normal way for a child to sleep or a symptom of his boundaryless home life, or maybe it was a response to the frightful things he’d seen that day. I liked it either way. I could smell his unwashed hair beneath my nose when he tossed around to find just the right position, and he made no acknowledgment of the light kicks his socked feet delivered with each movement. When August finally settled and his breath began to slow, I felt a small, sticky hand reach for mine. He squeezed tight and held on for as long as his sleepy muscles would allow.
TWENTY-THREE
THE SNOW CONTINUED for two more days. There were no breaks in the precipitation or lighter phases to give us hope. It just fell fast, constantly, until we were barricaded inside by nearly six feet of it.
We tried at first to make the most of the snow. August and I went outside to build an igloo and burrowed a tunnel through the dense bottom layer that went for a few feet before we lost interest and left the dead end. Eventually, there was just too much and the permanent chill in our bodies dictated that each day be spent close to the woodstove. After our last outside adventure, we surrendered to the suffocating wall of snow that was building up around the house and sealed off the front door with duct tape in an attempt to preserve heat.
Without power or phones, our only connection to the outside world was the news that crackled through our crank radio. There seemed no bounds to the crisis. Up and down the coast, people were dying in their homes of hypothermia, dehydration and whatever struck first when their medications ran out. Every now and then, we’d hear the first few sentences of a death so macabre that I would lunge at the radio and turn it off before August was exposed to the details; we heard enough to know that some people were resorting to desperate and hopeless measures. Rescue crews were working around the clock and supplies were being flown in from everywhere, but even with the support of the rest of the world, these efforts were no match for The Storm.
I turned the radio off whenever I had the chance, but it was a constant source of tension between Pia and me. She wanted to take it all in, to live in the chaos and feed on its energy. She sat on a small wooden chair parked beside the radio in the corner, with a wool blanket around her shoulders, and listened intently for hours. Sometimes, she took out her little notebook to memorialize thoughts that remain unknown to me, but mostly she just sat. When I insisted on turning the radio off, she’d storm to the kitchen for more wine or recline on the couch with a magazine. Almost no words were exchanged between us by then.
The boredom was the worst for August. He scanned our small bookshelf repeatedly and opened kitchen cabinets, hoping that something interesting would finally appear to him, but nothing did. At my urging, we built a fort out of sheets and pillows, which was fun at first—we brought nature magazines and snacks inside—but it was too cold to hang out in for more than a few minutes, so we eventually let it collapse. Occasionally I would see August’s face fall, suddenly aware of his parents’ absence and the uncertainty of his father’s future. I did my best to distract him and offer comfort in small ways, but it never felt like enough. Pia wasn’t burdened by any such obligation.
On the afternoon of the third day of The Storm’s blizzard phase, our nerves got the better of us. Pia found half a pack of cigarettes in an old coat and smoked them all through the broken window in the guest room. August began tearing pages out of an enormous book of poetry that I didn’t know we had and throwing the balled-up sheets across the living room into a basket. I didn’t bother dissuading him. Instead, I watched each ball arc over my head and bounce somewhere in the general proximity of its target. When he got one in, he’d do a little dance with a karate-style kick at the woodstove. I think he was trying to provoke me, to make something happen in that quiet, gloomy space, but I couldn’t muster much beyond a high five. Finally, the sun began to set and we made a dinner of canned beans and salsa on rice cakes, followed by handfuls of chocolate chips. With nothing left to do, we retired early to the bedroom. It was the only place warm enough to spend the night, so we were all in there together.
Sleep had ceased to feel restorative by then. Our muscles were restless and our nerves couldn’t turn off. With no idea how many more cold nights we would need to endure, our captivity was beginning to feel like a life sentence.
In the blurry moment before my eyes opened the next morning, I imagined that we would all pad downstairs and make pancakes with blueberries and maple syrup before going out to play in the snow. But then I remembered where we were and all that had happened. August and Pia slept quietly beside me, closer to each other than either would have chosen. I liked having them both there in bed with me—warm and safe and shielded from the elements. They weren’t bonding with each other as I would have liked, but we were all together, which was something.
It was probably six o’clock in the morning; there was no way of knowing from our boarded-up bedroom. I crawled out of bed and squinted through the exposed crack at the bottom of the window. At some point during the night, the snow shifted to rain and the temperature had risen noticeably. I had pulled my socks off in my sleep and was surprised to find that my toes felt warm for the first time in days. Was it possible that The Storm was breaking?
The Storm was breaking, according to the all-knowing voices coming from the radio. Pia and August woke up a few minutes after me, and soon we were all huddled around the woodstove, drinking hot things and listening to the latest storm report.
“The hurricane portion of this weather event has moved out to the Atlantic and been downgraded to a tropical storm,” the deep radio voice said. “And the nor’easter has dissipated as well, leaving the East Coast to dig out from the mess it left behind.”
“So what happens now, John?” an NPR host asked the expert. “Are we out of the woods?”
“We are most definitely not out of the woods. The worst thing that anyone can do now is get a false sense of safety from this warming air. This is where the real damage starts up north. Some regions got as much as eight feet of snow. That’s going to melt, fast. And it has nowhere to go because the ground is already saturated a
nd our water systems are overflowing. We’re about to experience the worst flooding North America has ever seen. Roadways, homes, cars, schools—everything will be underwater. People need to get to safe, high ground and stay there. In some cases, that means evacuating your homes. I know FEMA is working with states to set up another round of rescue operations all the way up the coast, so listen to your local news for evacuation instructions and points of safety. It’s going to take months to get power working in some areas. And the cost to our economy will be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. There may be no recovering from some of the damage ahead.”
August’s eyes were like saucers and I knew that we should minimize the bad news he was exposed to. I turned down the radio dial and shot Pia a glance that said “don’t fight this.”
Without the chatter, a new noise could be heard outside: moving water. In addition to the light rain, there was a constant drip coming off the roof, and another that sounded like it was upstairs in our cordoned-off guest room. There was also the low hum of rushing water, like a stream running all around us. Snow was melting everywhere and searching for a place to go.
August pulled off his fleece and announced that it was getting hot before going to the window to peer through the lookout space.
“Can we pee off the back porch, Ash?”
“Yeah, if we can get out onto the porch,” I said. “Put your boots on.”
We went outside to feel the warming air on parts of our body that hadn’t been exposed to oxygen in days. August smiled as he added to a rushing stream that snaked through the deep snow in our backyard. He hadn’t asked about his parents yet, but I knew I needed to be prepared with an answer. The truth was that I had no idea when we would be able to leave the house or where they were. Landlines would be dead for weeks and, even if we could get through to someone on a cell phone, Pia’s phone had long since run out of power. What were others in Isole doing at that moment, I wondered. I decided to walk to Peg’s house when things dried up for some guidance.
Things didn’t dry up. As the morning hours passed, the water sounds amplified and closed in on us. The temperature had changed so dramatically in twenty-four hours that we were down to our long underwear and let the woodstove die out intermittently to cool the downstairs. All the ice that had formed in the guest room was melting through the ceiling now, collecting in a pot on the kitchen table. And the wet smell of worms had returned after days of icy reprieve. (Whether they were dead or alive in that box, I didn’t have the courage to find out.) Worst of all was the scene outside. Snow was melting at an alarming pace, transforming into pools and rivers, sliding off the roof and dissolving into anything that was already liquid. We were located halfway up a gradual, sloping hill, so it looked as if it was coming down from August’s house and moving toward Peg’s, but in some places the water seemed to just swirl around in circles. The creek that bordered our backyard overflowed first and then grew into a large, amorphous lake with no perimeter. We were in a houseboat.
There was no way to know if the runoff plan we’d been fighting for would have prevented the flooding and saved our town, but I burned with anger when I thought about Crow as I watched the water accumulate; maybe this could have...maybe been prevented. I didn’t let myself linger on that thought; there was too much before us to worry about. That chance was behind us.
The three of us rattled around downstairs all day as we had for many days already. We were bored and angry, but relieved to have a weather change, something that suggested we were nearing the end of our captivity. We played Go Fish and gin rummy. August and I melted chocolate chips in a pot on the woodstove and called it fondue. For a while, it felt like the mood had lifted. We were hopeful, but we shouldn’t have been.
In early afternoon, I walked to the front door to check the status of the flooding. I stood in my boots on the outside doormat and watched as the water rose up, up, up over the edge of the front porch. It was less than two feet from our front door with no sign of stopping. Jesus Christ, it’s here, I thought. It would only be a matter of time before the water got to the door and then filled the downstairs. I felt sick all of a sudden. We were way beyond card games and peeing off the back porch. This was a level of survival I was not prepared to consider. I was most certainly not prepared to keep another small human alive in it. Get it together, I said to myself. Get it together. I didn’t want to scare August any more than was necessary.
“Holy shit!” Pia yelled from behind me when she saw the encroaching water.
August ran up behind me.
“Everyone inside,” I announced. “We’re moving this party upstairs!”
No one was fooled by my forced lightheartedness. Pia spun around and began filling a giant metal pot with food that would require no preparation (crackers, condensed milk, beans, tuna). I asked August to gather up all his warm clothes and hold on to them while I slid boxes of candles, water tablets, batteries and matches to the foot of the stairs. Thank God for Pia’s prepper boxes. I threw the hand-crank radio on top of the stack, so grateful for that one small connection to the rest of the world.
“Are we going to drown, Ash?” August asked, his arms overflowing with dirty boy clothes.
“No, buddy. We’re not going to drown. Things are going to get really wet and we’re going to have to move upstairs—but it will be like we’re just camping out up there for a while. Did you bring the cards?”
“Got them,” he said with great importance.
Please don’t let this kid’s parents die, I prayed to no one from inside my own head. Please don’t die. This was a moment for prayer, but I had no experience with such an exercise. I wasn’t even sure whom I thought I was praying to, but not praying seemed reckless.
“Enough talking. Let’s get upstairs!” Pia yelled. She was too frantic and preoccupied with the moment to concern herself with the impressions of the terrified seven-year-old in her presence. But she was right, too; the water was coming in and we were out of time.
I prompted August to go first while I hoisted two heavy boxes, one on top of the other, and followed him up the stairs. I could hear Pia at my heels with a rattling pot of canned goods and whatever else she deemed essential. We hurried upstairs and set our haul down at the top. I made two more trips for water jugs and then assembled a makeshift wall around the foot of the stairs using two armchairs, knowing full well that it wouldn’t do much. Before running back upstairs for the final time, I saw the water. It crept beneath the front door and spread menacingly across our floor. The pace at which the water was rising seemed impossible, supernatural even, but it was real. At that rate, I knew it would be upstairs by nightfall. What then?
I joined the other two in our bedroom and suggested with false cheer that August build another blanket fort, which he ignored. He was hovering around Pia, who was on her knees, fiddling with the radio. I crawled into bed and listened to the loud, choppy sounds of static as she redirected the antennae and walked around searching for the elusive connection. Eventually, August joined me and we flipped through old issues of Scientific American together from under the covers. Our eyes tried to read, but we couldn’t see past the fear to the pages in front of us. There was little point in pretending to be occupied or calm. We were waiting for the water.
Pia set up a makeshift kitchen area in the corner of the bedroom and prepared dry tuna salad on saltines, which none of us ate. I opened the windows and, after much wrestling, managed to tear away the sheet of plywood that stood between us and the outside. It was a relief to experience daylight again, but that privilege also came with the ability to watch water rise up around our leaky ark. August couldn’t pull himself away from the window and I was out of ideas for keeping him busy.
Eventually, he broke down. With his back to us, I could see August’s small body heaving and convulsing with each sob until finally he stopped trying to conceal his tears and he ran to the bed to curl up in
a ball beside me. His cries grew louder and shuddered through his whole body. I looked at Pia with searching eyes, but she was distracted and unmoved. This wasn’t her thing, not anymore. I fought tears of my own and rubbed August’s back with a firm hand until, after what felt like a very long time, his body released. Sleep washed over him quickly and he went deeper and deeper into safety. I envied his escape and lay down beside him, trying desperately and unsuccessfully to join him.
The next hour passed like a coma—I was alive, but incapable of moving and only faintly aware of my surroundings. I could hear the occasional tinkering of Pia around me, but I made no effort to see what she was doing. I couldn’t even investigate the rising water levels downstairs, though I knew they were close because the incessant sounds of sloshing water grew louder with each minute. It was as if I was dying very, very slowly. And it wouldn’t have been a terrible way to go, given the options at that moment. That’s how my paralyzed brain reasoned—moving back and forth between hope and utter despair, alternately fantasizing about our escape and considering accepting my own death.
It was sometime in the late afternoon when I saw the lights outside the window. That was enough to jolt me out of my state and onto my feet. When I pressed my face against the cool glass, I could see there was a massive machine parked on our road. A tank maybe? Was that possible? Pia, who had been writing in her notebook on the floor, stood up and stared out the window. She ran to the radio and tried again to connect with the outside world while I tugged my rain boots on.
“Let’s just go!” I whisper-screamed at her. I didn’t want to startle August, who had begun to wake up. “This might be our only chance to get August out alive. We have to go NOW.”
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