Galveston

by Paul Quarrington

  Caldwell shrugged. “You see, something happened to me.”

  Hope drove another nail, sinking it with three well-aimed blows. “Something happens to a good number of us, sir,” he commented. “And I wouldn’t want to be one of the others.”

  Caldwell surprised himself by laughing at this. “You got a point there, Maywell.”

  “So you’ve found your storm, sir. You realize you may not walk away from this one?”

  “Life and existence aren’t the same thing,” said Caldwell.

  “There, you’ve lost me,” said Maywell, picking up a sheet of plywood and walking toward another window.

  Beverly helped Polly transport stuff into a storage area, a crawl space located beneath the Pirate’s Lair, accessed by a trap door behind the bar. Polly stood waist-deep in the opening, her arms outstretched, while Beverly delivered cases of liquor, pots and pans. Polly stacked them in an orderly fashion.

  “You and Mr. Caldwell,” said Polly, “seem to be hitting it off.”

  “Hmmm.” Beverly brushed hair out of her eyes and picked up a case of beer. “Isn’t that a funny expression, though? Hitting what off? Hitting something off what?”

  Polly could not resist sounding, for a second, like a holiday brochure. “The balmy, sunny climate in the Caribbean is responsible for many a romance.”

  “Is that so?” Beverly seemed to receive this as new data to be processed. “Then just think what might happen when the storm hits.”

  Jimmy Newton carried much of his equipment up to the main building at the Water’s Edge. He set his digital camera up in the dining room, mounting it atop a tripod; the camera was attached to his laptop, which sat on one of the tables; and the laptop was attached to a small metal tower, which Newton placed in what he calculated to be the exact middle of the room.

  Then he sat at a table, his hands folded neatly on top, and smiled into the lens. “Hey,” he said. “I’m here in Dampier Cay, which you guys have never heard of. I’m sitting in this place called the Water’s Edge, and we’re waiting for Hurricane Claire. She should make landfall in three, three and a half hours. There should still be a little light, so I’m going to try to get some footage, and hopefully all this new technological stuff will work and you guys should get it live. Oh,” he added, reacting to a sound behind him, turning to look, “here come my buddies Gail and Sorvig. They aren’t chasers, in fact they’re a little pissed off … Hey, girls, come here, smile into the camera and say hello to the folks back home.”

  Gail and Sorvig sat down at the table and looked quizzically at the camera. They had finally abandoned their swimsuits, and were dressed in jeans and T-shirts. Both held brushes and were pulling them through their wet hair. “What is that, Jimbo?” asked Gail.

  “That,” said Newton proudly, “is my groovy new digicam, and that over there is a GSM system, and with any luck at all we’re going live on the World Wide Web.”

  “Live?” asked Sorvig.

  “Yeah. Anybody you want to say hello to?”

  “Yeah,” said Gail. “We want to say hello to our boss, Andy Probert. Hey, asshole,” she began, and Sorvig completed the thought, “You should have let us change weeks.”

  It was perhaps six o’clock in the afternoon when the first winds, the first forceful and malevolent winds, came to Dampier Cay, heralded by a fanfare of waves suddenly breaking against the rocks on the east side of the island with a sound like a cymbal crash. And then the strange humming started; everything that was not of the earth but merely attached to it began to moan. Wires sang, high-pitched and plaintive. Power lines chanted wearily.

  Maywell Hope entered the pale blue church a little cautiously, like a drunk trying to steal into his own home in the middle of the night, afraid of shattering lamps and waking loved ones. He stood in the aisle between the pews for a moment, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. Like all Hope men, he had an odd relationship with the church. There was a sense in which he wasn’t even allowed in the place, certainly not when there was any kind of religious ceremony taking place. When weddings occurred, Maywell was expected to wait outside. The islanders maintained a superstition that it was good luck to have Maywell Hope throw the first handful of rice, but he knew they were simply being kind, that his presence inside would have made people uncomfortable. Not because of anything he’d ever done, or his father or grandfather, but there had long been a darkness attached to the Hope name. He had been born godless—born with a pirate’s heart—and everyone knew it. What they didn’t know was that it was Maywell Hope who painted the church, every year, carefully applying a coat of pale blue to match the sky.

  He took a few steps forward, knelt down and put a finger to Lester’s shoulder. The gardener was instantly awake, bolting upright, scrambling to his feet, spinning around to confront Maywell, who waited for the troubled dreams to clear from Lester’s eyes. “Come on up to the main house,” he said.

  Lester took a step forward and stumbled, still groggy with rum. Maywell put his arm around Lester’s shoulder to steady him, and together they left the church.

  THEN THERE WAS NOTHING to do but wait.

  They assembled in the Pirate’s Lair, which was dark and dismal behind its wall of boarded-up windows. Weak illumination came from the television set in the corner, tuned to CNN. There was a reporter and a small camera crew on Dampier Cay, staying at the big hotel at the other end of the island. Every now and again—although not as often as the people in the Pirate’s Lair might have hoped—CNN would cut to this coverage. The reporter, Seth Wallaby, stood on the grounds of the big hotel, the deserted pool behind him. He clutched a microphone in one hand; with the other he made sure that a small receiver stayed plugged into his ear. He was dressed in an old-fashioned manner, wearing a beige trench coat cinched by a wide belt. Its function was not so much to keep Seth Wallaby dry but rather to identify him as a journalist and to give some crude measure of the wind speed; the tails and lapels of the garment flapped and whirred audibly. Each time the network cut back to Seth Wallaby, the flapping was more excited.

  The advent of Hurricane Claire was not the big news of the day. NOAA predicted that its path would take it across a few islands—Jamaica was preparing for it—and then Central America. It would lose some power as it stamped across the land, and re-intensify out over the water, but the meteorologists felt it would then turn northwest. It might threaten Belize and the Yucatán, and perhaps other parts of Mexico were in danger, but Claire posed no threat to the United States of America, so CNN slotted its coverage appropriately. There was other, better, news. It had recently been discovered that a congressman was sleeping with another congressman’s daughter, and although she was of consenting age, the fact that one man was a Republican and the other a Democrat lent this item an enticing and salacious angle.

  Each time Seth Wallaby appeared, Polly tsked with irritation and said, “He could have stayed here. And his cameraman, producer, whatever. I would have given them a good deal. Our rooms are nicer.” This seemed a controvertible statement—the big hotel looked rather grand, with elegant wrought iron balconies—but no one saw fit to challenge her. Maywell would grunt each time she made the pronouncement, but it was a vague sound, and could have been either agreement or argument.

  “Do you remember when Miller Fulbright’s son was born?” he demanded of Polly.

  “What?”

  “Miller Fulbright. A few weeks ago. Had a baby girl. Named her Antoinette.”

  “Well, yeah, May, I remember, but I can’t see—”

  “He gave me a cigar.”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “I put it somewhere behind the bar here.”

  “Right. It got all dry and crumbly. I threw it away.”

  “Uh.”

  “Sorry!”

  “How long ago was this, you threw it away?”

  Gail and Sorvig had set up a little boom box near the far end of the long room. They were working their way through a small pile of CDs, dancing with grim purpose.r />
  Lester joined them from time to time. Surprisingly, he showed himself to be a fine dancer, although an idiosyncratic one. He bent at the waist and held his hands up high, and while his feet usually made small, deft steps, occasionally he would throw one high into the air. He would snap upright and fold backwards, his bosom aimed toward heaven, his pelvis gyrating.

  The wind was howling so loudly outside the Water’s Edge that the music from the machine was all but inaudible. Gail and Sorvig, Lester too, seemed to be dancing to the tempest, timing their big motions to the crescendos of the storm’s roar.

  Caldwell sat beside Beverly at the bar. He reached over to touch her, pressing his hand over hers.

  Beverly smiled at Caldwell. “Do you know about Galveston?” she asked.

  Caldwell nodded. “Yeah.” “Good.”

  A while later, the wind started finding its way into the building.

  Not the big wind, the mother, but offshoots and tendrils. The pages on Polly’s clipboard flapped and turned themselves. Potted plants leaned back, snapped upright; they lost leaves and petals, which floated in the air. The little winds pushed Beverly’s hair across her face, hiding her eyes.

  Then Claire began to demand entry into the main building, testing every nail that Maywell had driven. She tried to pry the boards away, making the wood scream as though tortured. When the nails held, Polly noted that fact aloud, saying, “Good job, May.”

  Jimmy Newton reminded her, “She’s not here yet. The storm hasn’t made landfall.”

  The radio cackled and a voice came into the Pirate’s Lair. “This is Burt Gilchrist and his wife. Please. Somebody.”

  Maywell scowled at the radio and rubbed his face. He lifted down the microphone and twisted at controls, making the radio yawp and yelp. “Hello, Mr. Gilchrist,” he said. “How goes it?”

  “I was unfaithful,” said Burt Gilchrist. “With Doris Blembecker. I confessed it to my wife.”

  Maywell looked at the other people in the Pirate’s Lair, trying to judge who would best deal with the situation. After a long moment he hammered the button with his thumb and said, “It’s good you made your peace, Mr. Gilchrist.”

  “She told me that she was unfaithful too.”

  “Well, what’s sauce for the goose and all that.”

  “What does that mean?” demanded Burt Gilchrist.

  “Now is not a time for anger,” said Maywell. “Now is a time to tell your wife you love her.”

  “Because we might die?”

  “We might.”

  “Is there a … do you have a priest there?”

  “No, sir. We surely don’t. Now, you’ve got to get off the radio, Mr. Gilchrist. We’ve got to keep the airwaves free.”

  “It was with Pete Carney. My best friend.”

  “Over and out, now,” said Maywell Hope.

  Thunder broke the air, an enormous rumble that shook everything. Gail and Sorvig fell into each other. Lester tumbled backwards onto his bony ass. Caldwell’s whisky glass leapt away from his hand and shattered.

  Jimmy Newton grabbed his thirty-five-millimetre camera and shouted, “Lights, camera … action!” Making for the doorway, he said, “Come on, Caldwell.”

  “No, I’m …” Caldwell didn’t know what he was.

  “I need to get pretty pictures for the magazines,” said Jimmy. “I need you to hold me.”

  There was another thunderclap. It rattled the molecules, shifting empty spaces from one end of the bar to the other.

  “You go ahead, Mr. Caldwell,” said Beverly. “It’s not time, yet.”

  Caldwell backed off his stool.

  Jimmy Newton put his shoulder against the door that led outside. He pushed and was met with steady resistance, the storm insisting, No, no, you don’t want to come out here. “Give me a hand, Caldwell.”

  “Get out of the way,” said Caldwell. Jimmy Newton moved to one side. Caldwell did a little skipping step, took a stride and then executed a small shuffle so that both feet pushed off at the same time. His right shoulder met the wood—a small rumble of thunder accented the contact—and the door popped open. Caldwell landed outside.

  He was instantly soaking wet, his hair plastered down across his forehead. He felt a desire to take off his clothes, to stand up and meet the shower as though he’d just come off the soccer field, or from the hockey rink.

  Newton scurried out, hunched over and trying as best he could to cover his camera with his upper body. “Hooeyy!” he screamed, exhilarated. “A fulguration!”

  Lightning cracked the air, and although the thunder that accompanied it was rowdy and bullying, the electricity itself seemed as fragile as the world it shattered. It buzzed, thin sprays, and went away. An inverted tree of turquoise luminescence vanished a moment after it appeared, and then there was another. They reminded Caldwell of the beautiful pale blue webbing Jaime’s veins made in her breasts while she was pregnant with Andy.

  Caldwell wanted the lightning to hit him, to embrace him with crackling energy. He knew it wouldn’t, because he had been around the world daring it to do so, and it had come nowhere near (except, of course, for that first bolt). For one thing—this was science—usually lightning doesn’t meet the earth, despite all appearances. Most of it rips through the sky, connecting with other shoots, and although ultimately one of these might touch something, a tree perhaps, it is like the ball carrier, and the rest of the team merely cheers and vanishes.

  Neither was lightning a constant, or even usual, companion to a hurricane. When there was, in Newton’s argot, a “light show,” Caldwell would grow quite optimistic, despite his lack of faith. He’d race outside to undertake some self-assigned duty, which the other chasers, the weather weenies, mistook for bravery. “There’s a woman in that car over there!” “There might be someone in that house!” But most times he emerged from the hotel, the light show stopped almost immediately.

  Caldwell had to confess that he was not single-minded in his pursuit of lightning. True, he sometimes travelled to places like Washington State, had once even paid a forest ranger thousands of dollars so that he might take his place for a week and sit up in the high tower. But Caldwell also knew that southern Ontario experiences as much lightning as anywhere on the globe, if not more; if Caldwell were really serious about the stuff, he’d stay put. Near home. He was unwilling to do this, of course. So he hunted hurricanes.

  Caldwell had never been drawn to tornadoes, though he had been interested in the newspaper reports of destruction, even devastation. Sometimes they came in gangs, thirty or forty of them lighting upon the earth. One such attack in Pennsylvania, in 1985, did damage totalling $450 million. It put a thousand people in hospital and killed seventy-five. Caldwell’s own hometown of Barrie had been set upon by a rogue tornado. The twister swept across Highway 400, picking up cars and tossing them aside. It came at Barrie Raceway and took the horses up into the clouds. Several people died, although at the time Caldwell hadn’t paid much attention; his own family was spared, after all. Jaime and Andy were at home, miles away from the tornado’s path. After the hole in Caldwell’s life, he had heard about the Weather Watcher Tours through Tornado Alley, but it wasn’t what he wanted. He had an image of himself in a farmer’s field, dodging and darting like a defenceman on the blue line, watching the twister’s every move warily, trying to get in its way. Hurricanes were bigger; once tracked down, Caldwell had only to stand still.

  “Okay, baby!” shouted Jimmy Newton. He ran down the little rise, where Lester had splinted the striplings. The wind had driven the plants parallel to the ground; Lester’s splints had cracked near the bottom but were still fast to the little trees with twist-ties.

  Jimmy stopped halfway and the wind pushed him over sideways. He landed on his ass and elbows, his hands still tight around the camera. “Pick me up, pick me up, pick me up,” he giggled. Caldwell put his hands in Jimmy’s armpits and drew him skyward. There was a lightning bolt then, close enough that Newton started, but Caldwell wasn’t im
pressed. He wrapped his arms around Newton’s shoulders and then set himself, one leg back, the foot twisted sideways for purchase, the other leg locked forward.

  “Okee-dokee.” Jimmy took his camera into his hands, raised it up, wiped rain from the tiny viewer and peered through. He aimed it at a naked palm tree that shook ecstatically. At the shore, Maywell’s boat twisted on its moorings, colliding with the wooden pylons like a wild horse bucking inside a stall. Jimmy depressed the shutter, muttered, “Another fucking Pulitzer Prize.”

  And this was the leeward side, Caldwell noted calmly. The storm was actually broadsiding the other side of Dampier Cay. Jimmy Newton seemed to have the same thought, because he batted Caldwell’s arms away, turned and began to make his way across the flagstone patio. Caldwell followed. The two men lowered their heads, bent forward and planted their feet with plodding intensity. Even though the patio was only twenty-odd feet across, these yards were hard won, and when Caldwell reached the other side, he was tempted to raise his arms above his head in triumph.

  Caldwell had not wanted to be a professional athlete, not even in his teens, when he might reasonably have dreamt such dreams. He played junior hockey, after all, for the Barrie Blades. This was how his family had ended up in Barrie; the Caldwells, as a clan, had nothing going for them except their fifteen-year-old son’s burgeoning hockey career.

  Caldwell took hold of Jimmy’s shoulders, braced himself against the wind. Newton raised the camera, aimed it at the sea. The long metal lens protector was useless here, rain finding its way down the shaft and onto the glass. Jimmy didn’t seem to care; after clicking the shutter a few times, he lowered the camera and simply stared at the approaching storm.

  Newton half turned his head and called back, “Hey, Caldwell. Suppose the surge clears this cliff?”

  Caldwell peered over the side. “You think it might?”

  “Wouldn’t that be fricking awesome?”

  Though Caldwell had never wanted to be a professional athlete, on some level he had always wanted to be a phys. ed. teacher. Even as a teenager he had dressed like one, wearing grey slacks and white golf shirts while his friends wore jeans and T-shirts. Where their hair was long and messy, he kept his neatly trimmed, his instinct being to keep himself as plain as possible.