“Come on back, now,” he said.
“I have to do something …”
The window exploded. Or imploded, really, sucked into the black hole of the dining area. The glass was pulverized, the molecules seeking release, freedom, escape. Tiny grains drove themselves into Maywell’s face. There were some larger pieces in the air, though, oddly shaped triangles, and it was one of these that embedded itself in Polly’s neck, severing the jugular vein. Her blood spouted into the air. She collapsed into Maywell’s arms, and he dragged her back into the Pirate’s Lair.
“We went home late in the afternoon,” Caldwell continued. “Is that when you went home, Beverly? Anyway, Jaime, Andy and I went upstairs to the bedroom. The ground floor was covered by a foot of water. I thought, everyone in town thought, that that was as high as the water could rise.”
Caldwell was standing now. Beverly had her arms wrapped around his shoulders, her legs around his waist. Sweat mixed with tears on her face.
“Bev? Do you remember what it was like? Sometime during the night the storm surge came. All at once the water appeared in our bedrooms, exploding up through the floorboards. Andy came running into our room, he climbed into bed with us. I didn’t know what to do. The water kept rising. There was this banging sound, I wasn’t sure what it was. I found out later it was the streetcar trestle, torn loose and battering the house. The house collapsed around us, and we—my family—floated away on the mattress. No one knows what became of us, our bodies were never found.”
Maywell held his hand over Polly’s wound, trying to clamp the vein together. Blood geysered through his fingers. “There’s a first aid kit somewhere behind the bar,” he said to Gail and Sorvig, and then he turned to Jimmy Newton. “Radio for help.”
Jimmy reached into one of the pockets of his jacket, pulled out a flashlight, pressed a thin but strong beam of light into being.
“Why didn’t you take that out before?” asked Sorvig.
“We didn’t need it before,” answered Newton.
“But don’t you understand how much it would have meant to have light, just a little light?”
“Sorry,” muttered Jimmy. “Now come on.”
Newton and the girls headed toward the bar, pushing their way through the unruly storm that flooded down the passageway and into the Pirate’s Lair.
As the girls found the little white tin box with the red cross on it, Newton aimed the flashlight at the radio. “Fuck,” he sighed. He worked his way back, knelt down in the blood beside Maywell and Polly. “You want to get her head up, I think,” said Jimmy. “Rest it on your lap there. Keep pressure on—”
“Did you make the radio call?”
“I can’t. There’s no electricity, there’s no radio battery …”
“What the hell do you mean?”
“I mean—”
“Damn you, Newton.”
“Look, Maywell, I’m not the guy who didn’t put a battery in the frigging radio.”
Maywell’s face trembled and collapsed. “I don’t understand such things,” he confessed, and then his features went rigid once more.
“Okay, look, I brought a little portable generator up here.”
“Get it.”
“Yeah.” Newton tried to remember, through the fear and the exhilaration, where the thing was. Somewhere in the dining room, he thought. A squat little machine with ports for two battery packs. Newton couldn’t think why he’d left it in there, but he didn’t suppose it mattered why. That’s where the thing was. It was in the big room that Hurricane Claire was currently destroying.
He started for the dining room, crawling so as to be as small as possible, to present as little of himself to the fury. He knew that there was plenty wrong with the plan. For one thing, he didn’t think anyone would be able to get to them. Even the mighty Sikorsky helicopter would have a difficult time slicing through this storm, which Newton was certain was a five (at last, a fucking five!). For another, there wasn’t a lot of time, as in no time at all: the lady was a goner. But Jimmy wasn’t about to argue with Maywell Hope, and besides, you can’t be a useless shit all your life. So Jimmy Newton crawled away to find the portable generator.
Lester had been delivered onto the land. God had answered his prayer, even though it had been petulant (“Are You going to help out or what?”), and because he had been granted salvation, he knew there was some task he was meant to accomplish, a greater good to serve. Lester understood that the electricity was gone—it was gone on the entire island, the stars that indicated civilization had flickered and died—so he approached the shack that housed the generator. The little building was withstanding the tempest admirably. He grinned with satisfaction, because he’d built the thing. He was aware that his skills as a handyman were subpar, certainly not on a level with his skills as gardener, but he’d built the little shed and apparently done it well.
He was going to start the generator, head back to the main building and then plead with Polly to give him more liquor. The Lord made liquor, after all, for just such an occasion. Lester felt the one-hundred-and-fifty-third sam coming to him; he’d been waiting for many, many years, and now it was coming and it began, Oh, Lord, Thou hast taken Thy grain and rendered it into golden water …
He was about ten feet away from the shack when the wind spun him around like a top. Lester was dancing with a wind devil, an uncouth bully boy. He found that it was best not to battle, so he closed his eyes, opening them only when he sensed release; and when he opened them, he could see, dimly, that he was being torpedoed toward the generator shack.
When his head met the wood, the shed blew apart. It seemed no more substantial than if Lester had constructed the thing out of Popsicle sticks. He landed on top of the generator, a metal box that sat like a squat god upon a slab of concrete. His own wind was knocked from him, rushing away to join in the great celebration. He clung to the generator and tried to breathe, and while he was doing so, he tried to recall how to start the thing. He had to flip one lever down, another up, but this had to be done correctly. If he confused down with up, up with down, then the machine would create no power, it would only sputter and die, and then Maywell would be cross with him. Maywell would whip the hat from his head and wipe his brow with the back of a hand and mutter, “Lester, how many damn times do we have to go over this?” Lester would be forced to grin and shrug like an idiot. “Sorry, sir,” he would say. And although he hated calling Maywell “sir,” he wished he was having that conversation right now.
The levers were on either side of the generator, and Lester remembered there was a phrase, some aid to memory that Maywell had invented. It went “Left down, up right.” Lester was pretty confident that was the phrase, because he remembered that the second half made a word: upright. He grabbed for the levers and was about to move them when it occurred to him that downright was a word as well. His hands went back to the side of the machine, and he clung with all his might. The storm wanted Lester and it wanted the generator too. Even though it was secured into the concrete with six-inch bolts, the whole machine rocked and bucked.
Downright upright. Lester knew that any power and light he created would be short-lived, but that was no reason to abandon the notion. Something hit him on the side of the head, but he was so intent that he hardly noticed. Upright downright. Lester decided to proceed along these lines: downright was a bad word, at least it was so in Lester’s experience. Lester, people would say, you’re downright lazy. Lester, you’re downright drunk. Upright, though, was a good thing. Men walked upright and were therefore better than monkeys. With that observation, Lester placed his hands on the levers and took a deep breath.
Maywell wanted to tell Polly of his imperfect love, but he worried that it would alarm her. If he were to do it now, she would understand that the situation was very grim. He was unwilling to admit to himself how grim the situation was, so he kept his silence.
Everyone kept his, her, silence. When Gail and Sorvig returned with the first aid box,
they opened it and neither said aloud how useless the thing was, full to brimming with unguents for sunburn and a collection of Band-Aids.
Gail fingered through the contents and found the largest plastic bandage, a square perhaps two inches long and wide. Sorvig plucked out a long ribbon of gauze. Sorvig said something to Gail, something that Maywell couldn’t hear for the awful baying of the storm. “Just hurry up,” he snapped, angry with the girls for possessing this dispassionate bedside manner, although he himself seemed poker-faced, detached.
Gail deftly tore away the outer wrap, removed the protective backing, which disappeared instantly. “Move your hand,” she told Maywell. He lifted his fingers, and Gail capped the bloody well with the bandage. Then she lifted Polly’s head slightly from Maywell’s lap, and Sorvig began to wrap the gauze around Polly’s neck.
Maywell told himself that Polly knew how he felt about her, despite the fact that his gestures of affection were rather crude; he was given to butt-slapping, for example. It was not as though Polly had ever told Maywell she loved him, either. He understood that in some sense she wasn’t allowed to love him, not fully, because of the ghost of her dead husband. He often felt the ghost’s eyes upon his back as he attended to his labours in the bedroom, and he sensed there was something, somewhere, that Polly was not offering to him. That had always been fine with him.
“Not too tight, now.” He nodded toward the wrapping of the gauze.
Gail said, “Right,” even though it was the other, Sorvig, who was undertaking the operation.
Mind you, the matter here was not whether or not Polly loved Maywell. That matter was gone—it had been plucked up by the tempest and blown out to sea.
“May,” Polly said, although she had energy enough only to pop her pale lips apart, allow a little air to escape, shaping it into this sound that somehow made his name.
Jimmy Newton moved on hands and knees over broken glass, shards that shifted and swirled like the bottom of the sea. He thought about climbing to his feet, but the storm, trapped inside the dining room, was fierce and gladitorial, and Jimmy would simply be slammed up against the walls. Anyway, he had to locate the portable generator, and this lower vantage point would assist in that, so he tried to ignore the fresh cuts and lacerations he was acquiring with every second he spent on his knees and palms.
There wasn’t a lot of dining room left, no longer much distinction between inside and out. Human construct and the distinctions it tried to impose upon the world didn’t signify. It was like that game Jimmy played in airplanes, trying to determine when, precisely, the plane was entering a cloud. It was impossible; you could tell when the plane was outside the cloud, you could tell when the plane was inside, but there was no edge or border. The whole world was like that now, an endless moment of transition.
Jimmy Newton tried to remember where he’d left the portable generator, but the truth of the matter was that he didn’t pay all that much attention to the details of his life. Never had, really. He’d never even considered paying attention to his life, that’s how little attention he paid to it.
He crawled toward one corner of the room, but the contraption was not there. A chair rushed at him from out of the shadows, denting his forehead before lifting off slowly, awkwardly, like a helicopter with twisted blades. Jimmy Newton let out a little pained puff of air and a cuss word.
Then he was set upon by another inanimate object. This one was small, and scuttled through the opening made by his arms, nestling against his chest as though it wanted to suckle. Newton raised himself up on his haunches, took hold of the object, which was a box with two ports for video camera batteries. “Aha!” he exclaimed, and he cast a canny eye upwards. Jimmy had never thought much about heaven. The way he figured it, it was like the cloud game: he’d be able to tell if he was there, but he wouldn’t be able to tell if he was entering.
CALDWELL HAD LEFT GALVESTON—he’d floated away with his family, the three of them clutching snapped timbers. Now he was back—he was back now—and Caldwell knew that time was running out, that the eye-wall was coming, that their world was going to be destroyed.
Caldwell gently spilled Beverly onto the bed. She reclined on one elbow, her back—and lovely backside—presented to him, through the dark and roiling mist. She raised her leg and he placed one hand on the bed and snugged the other between her legs so that his middle finger fell upon the moist lips of her pussy. His finger touched her clitoris, falling upon it with tentative authority. Beverly opened her legs wider.
The storm pushed him onto the bed, almost tenderly, as if Hurricane Claire wanted to get Caldwell out of the way while she destroyed what little there was left of cottage “K.” Beverly reached down, took hold of Caldwell’s cock, moved her wrist and hips slightly, and drew him into her.
She closed her eyes and listened. There was a sound that was louder than the wind now, though the wind was so loud that it caused a deep pain. The sound was the sea pounding upon Dampier Cay with redoubled insistence, a god come down from the heights to demand supplication and awe.
She was reminded of how the waves beat against the walls of her small home on Avenue C, the house she shared with Margaret. The evening of September 8, 1900, the waves had come knocking and the water rose. Beverly mourned the ruination of the carpet on the floor below; she was sure that much of the furniture would need repair. But she was not worried, not terribly worried, until the first big crunching sound came.
“What was that again?”
Caldwell grunted, “Railway trestle.”
“Right.” Beverly took hold of the stained bedsheet and returned. There was another huge crunch. Margaret was terrified, then again, the girl was almost always terrified at some very profound level. This is why she valued so the touchstones of normalcy, because they gave the illusion that the world was not profoundly scarifying. This is why she insisted that her mother purchase Lowry’s Cleansing Powder, because it was advertised widely and sold the most, even though Beverly knew there were other detergents that produced cleaner clothes. The crunching sounds kept coming, as though there were some monster out there with huge teeth and an endless appetite.
Beverly pressed down, eased up, trying to find the precise pressure that would bring release. Not that she was aware of doing this, because her thoughts were occupied with the huge crunches, the plangent thunderclaps.
The house began to shake, at first in coincidence with the trestle’s assaults, and then independently of them and continuously. Beverly gathered Margaret into her arms. The child was too frightened to cry, although her little body spasmed with silent sobs. Beverly ran her fingers through Margaret’s hair, long and golden and oh so soft because of the nightly ritual, two hundred strokes with the ebony hairbrush. Then she closed her eyes. She did not pray, because she was angry with God, but in her mind she bargained with Him, hard-nosed, almost belligerent, trying to negotiate safe delivery of her daughter.
No, said God.
“Yes,” said Beverly.
She came as the timbers gave way, and screamed as the house collapsed and water rushed forward to claim her.
THE LIGHTS CAME ON just as Jimmy Newton crawled back into the Pirate’s Lair with his portable generator. In the weak new light he saw the three people kneeling beside Polly. The girls were leaning back. There was nothing further they could do, this is what the attitude of their bodies told him. Maywell, on the other hand, was inclined forward, his head close to Polly’s, waiting in case she had words to speak and breath left to speak them.
When the lights came on, Maywell looked around briefly and said, “Lester must have started the generator. Newton, get on the radio. Tell them we have an emergency.”
Jimmy Newton abandoned the portable generator without rancour—even though he’d cut his hands and knees to ratshit getting the thing—lumbered to his feet and made for the bar, throwing himself through the opened hatch. The dial on the radio glowed very faintly. Newton took down the microphone, spun the dial to the emergency f
requency.
“Miss Polly,” called Lester from the passageway, “if you don’t mind, ma’am, I would surely appreciate a drink.” This was the sentence that Lester had composed and rehearsed—it was appropriately sober, both meek and assured—so his mouth spoke it even as his eyes tried to take in the scene before him.
Maywell looked up at him and said, “Damn you, Lester,” and Lester was rocked on his feet, because Maywell had never damned him before, and Maywell’s damnation possessed authority. Lester stumbled forward a few feet and then dropped to his knees. He tried to work out for himself what had happened, he tried to make sense of all the blood and the dark wrappings around Polly’s neck.
Jimmy Newton was sending out an SOS. He knew the Mercator coordinates of Dampier’s Cay, indeed that’s how he knew his present location best, as numbers assigned to a particular conception of the world. So he spoke these into the microphone and chanted, “S-O-S.” By way of response he received a lot of static.
“Tell them we have a medical emergency,” Maywell Hope called out.
Newton didn’t have the stomach, the heart, to tell Maywell that he was by no means confident the message was being received anywhere in the universe. So he said, “We need paramedics,” into the microphone, adding, for Hope’s benefit alone, “We have an injured woman here.”
“I’m going to pray for Polly’s soul,” Lester told Maywell.
“She doesn’t need you to pray for her soul,” muttered Hope. Polly’s lips were moving, but no words came.
Jimmy Newton couldn’t resist. He spun the dial and found the right frequency and said, “NOAA? Come in, NOAA. This is Jimmy Newton.”
“Newton?”
The voice was faint. Maybe it wasn’t even there, but Jimmy was pretty confident he’d heard his own name. “What is she?” Newton demanded. “Is she a five?”
“Five,” came the return.
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