by Sarah Lark
“Ruth, if you’re feeling a bit better, we must hurry away from here … if the storm comes, it may carry away the entire settlement …”
Ruth rubbed her neck with the damp cloth. “That feels good. Thank you, Nora. You can’t really be serious that a storm can take this whole building … just what kind of country is this?” Nora tried to get her to close her dress and get going, but she reacted painfully slowly. It was only when she saw water streaming into the room that she seemed to finally come to life.
Now Nora was truly afraid. The water was rising rapidly.
“Come on, Ruth! Come on!” Nora carried the baby on her arm.
“Is anyone else there?”
A man’s voice called from outside. Nora threw the door open and more water sloshed into the infirmary. She recognized the voice and a wave of relief went through her body.
“Doug? Thank God. We’re in here!”
Nora pulled Ruth up, and then saw Doug storm into the room. He picked up the older child and dragged them all out of the hut. Outside, there was a wall of rain, through which it was nearly impossible to see, and an area of the slave quarters had turned into a sort of lake. The water was already waist deep and the wind seemed to be pushing it forward. It pulled at Doug’s hair and his braid had already come undone. Nora’s curls were immediately soaked and whipped at her face.
“Nora, for heaven’s sake … we have to get out of here quickly.”
Doug linked arms with Ruth. It would help to get ahead faster.
“The … blacks,” Nora looked around.
“They’re all gone, Kwadwo did a good job, but the overseers slowed everything down at first … and I’m the last one, but I didn’t see you go with my father … Hold onto me tight, Mrs. Stevens, but walk on your own.”
Ruth could hardly stand upright and it wasn’t much better for Nora, either. The two women were wearing Sunday dresses and Ruth’s was rather modest. Her skirt made of dark cloth certainly made things difficult, but didn’t impede her movements nearly as much as Nora’s voluminous crinoline.
Doug noticed it with a single glance. “Take that thing off, Nora, it’s holding you back!”
Nora fumbled with the skirt as she struggled toward the windmill beside Doug. Ruth whimpered that it wasn’t the right way to the house, but to Doug and Nora it was clear that they would never make it back to Cascarilla Gardens. The path to the farm buildings was relatively steep. If they could just get moving … the flood tugged at Nora’s leaden skirt.
“Stand still, Nora!” Doug had to shout for her to hear him over the wind. “I will help you.”
He let go of Ruth for a heartbeat, pulled a knife out of his pocket, and quickly cut the fabric from below Nora’s hips.
Ruth cried out, appalled. Apparently, she was even thinking of propriety at that moment. Nora, however, felt freed after fighting her way out of the rest of the skirt. She was finally moving forward with the baby wrapped tightly in her arms. Doug tried, not only to keep the small child above water, but also to hold Ruth and pull her along. The young woman wailed and prayed, which created a nerve-wracking cacophony along with the screams of the two little ones and the raging wind.
Nora fumbled laboriously along the slippery ground. The path to the buildings was paved, but not very well. She eventually slipped off her shoes, held the little one more tightly and began to swim the best that she could. The water was now almost up to her neck and she could move forward much faster by swimming, especially because the wind was blowing in their direction. The waves carried her. But the baby … and Doug with Ruth.
At that point, the first of the farm buildings on the hill came into sight, but she was still far from dry land. The roof of the distillery stuck out of the water like an island. A rescue island? Nora considered heading towards it, but then it might well be that the water continued to rise, and the roof would be flooded over.
Doug seemed to be considering the same thing. He must have seen that the womens’ strength was waning. And they urgently had to get out of the water. Roofs, crude furniture from the slave quarters, and entirely uprooted trees floated past them. They ran the risk of being struck and possibly killed by something. The waves were getting higher. The storm was getting stronger.
“We have to get up there, Nora!” Doug gasped. “Keep swimming!”
Nora gathered all of her strength to keep from being pulled along by the current. And she was finally clinging to the edge of the roof of the distillery. She tried to heave the baby up onto it, but she did not succeed. It had already taken all of her energy to keep the child’s head above water. While she was swimming, she hadn’t always managed it, and it was possible that the baby had already drowned — it had stopped crying in any case.
After an eternity in an inferno of wind and rain that had submerged the world around her in almost complete darkness, Nora heard Doug’s voice beside her.
“Hold on, Mrs. Stevens, hold on! Just grab on, damn it!”
“The children … Mary, Sam …” Ruth whimpered.
Doug heaved a wet bundle onto the roof. The little girl that he had carried was also no longer moving. Only the wind tugged at the fine hair and clothing of the child.
Doug struggled with Ruth, who was clinging to him. “Good God, Mrs. Stevens, hold onto the roof ridge for a moment until I reach the top and can pull you up … the wind is still pulling the child down …”
Nora had too much to deal with on her own to keep following the drama, but then there suddenly seemed to be a shadow above her. She heard Ruth screaming and praying, so she was alive and embracing her child. And finally Doug took the baby from her arms.
“Can you still go on, Nora? Do not let go now!”
Nora shook her head, which surely no one registered in the storm, but then she also felt Doug grab her under her armpits. He pulled her onto the roof, as he already had done with Ruth and the children. For a heartbeat, she lay in his arms.
“Nora … Nora …”
Doug whispered her name before he faltered. She saw his face in the twilight, strained, exhausted, but he picked himself up again and continued to fight against the storm.
“We have to secure ourselves somewhere. If it gets worse …”
Doug threw himself around the chimney of the distillery, which would at least provide a small windshield. He pulled Ruth and the children into his shadow.
“The tree …” Nora gasped. She felt as if the wind were ripping the words from her mouth.
Behind the house there was a huge Guaiacum tree. The slaves would usually tie the mule teams beneath it in the shade. The trunk was extremely thick — the tree would not be uprooted so quickly by any storm. And its branches reached up over the roof of the distillery.
Doug nodded. “We can tie ourselves to it … at least the children may find a bit of protection in the foliage … come on, Mrs. Stevens! Come this way!”
Ruth hardly reacted. Doug pulled her and the children to the tree and Nora dragged herself behind. Reddish, dirty water washed over the roof.
Doug quickly cut off Ruth’s skirt and then cut it into strips that he used to tie the children to the thickest branches of the tree.
“If it rises any higher,” Nora shouted above the noise of the water, “they will drown.”
“Then we’ll all drown,” Doug cried, and strenuously tightened another knot. The wind nearly pulled the fabric out of his hand.
Nora clung to the boughs of the tree. She managed to climb a bit higher. Exhausted and bewildered, she and Doug watched as the rest of the slave quarters drifted past them. Roofs, household items, dead pets … and one living — Doug pulled a soaking wet cat onto the roof with a quick movement, which immediately dug its claws into the back of his hand. Then it hissed and retreated to the top of the Guaiacum tree.
“Very grateful,” Doug muttered, and rubbed the scratches on his hand.
Nora sobbed as a mighty wave hurled the first corpse against their refuge. Old Harry.
“How can … he
… oh God!” Nora began to sob. She herself had allowed the old slave to stay in his hut that morning. Apparently, no one had thought to get him, and the storm tide must have taken him by surprise.
“He climbed onto one of the roofs,” Doug said, full of rage. “That’s what the slaves always did otherwise, and he surely did it again when he realized that he was alone. But this time … that goddamned Hollister!” He shouted the last words into the wind.
“Don’t … don’t take the Lord’s name in vain!” Ruth seemed to be coming around.
“Curse again, then maybe she will wake up and hold on for herself,” Nora shouted as loudly as she could against the storm. Her arms ached and it must have been even worse for Doug. He not only had to cling to a branch to hold himself there, but also Ruth, who seemed completely apathetic to the situation. No one knew if the children were all right — either they weren’t making a sound or they couldn’t be heard over the roaring storm.
It relentlessly pelted down on them. Huge waves crashed against what had remained of the slave village. Until this point, Nora had never been able to understand how the sea could flow over the shoreline like a river from its banks, but she also would have never considered such strong winds possible. It did not seem like their tree could be uprooted — the distillery would have to be knocked over first. It was as if the tree and the building were clinging to each other. But the wind tore the leaves from the branches and snapped the crown. The cat fled to a lower branch, now sitting just above Nora and Doug, and seemed almost subdued. Nonetheless, its claws were dug deep into the tree bark.
Ruth now actually managed to hold on with her own strength, but screamed like mad for her children. She tried to untie them and pull them towards her. She eventually managed to get to the young one — but then she cried out again at the sight of him in her arms.
“He is dead … Oh God, he is dead …”
Doug and Nora looked at each other helplessly. They couldn’t check to see, but it was possible. Even very probable.
“I want to go to him … I want to die, too!” Ruth’s fingers loosened from the branches — and also from the tiny bundle. Doug tried to reach for it but wasn’t quick enough. The body of Ruth Stevens’s youngest child drifted away. Ruth let out an almost inhuman tone and tried to grab the cat.
“It’s alive, the cursed beast is alive and my little Sam—” Nora felt her way over to the other woman. She hated herself for what she had to do, but she gave her two resounding slaps. Ruth went silent and fell into a renewed state of apathy.
“Tie her tight!” Nora shouted against the storm. “Tie her tight before she kills herself and the other child!”
Doug strained to sit up; cut new strips of fabric from Ruth’s dress and tied her hands firmly to two branches. He thanked the heavens for his months at sea. He had rather thoroughly learned to make secure knots, while hanging in the sails in the wind and rain.
But Nora already saw the next horror coming their way. In addition to dead dogs, cattle, trees, and shrubbery, another dead body was floating by. Or not? The figure with short, curly hair clung desperately to a thick branch — and was screaming for help.
Doug Fortnam didn’t hesitate. They had lost one child, but there was another about to drown. He slid into the water and reached the girl with two powerful swimming strokes. However, it was not as easy to get back to the roof with the child. “Here, hold on tight!”
Nora had left the safety of the roof and climbed over to Doug in the tree. Now she was lying on a branch and forced it down into the water with the entire weight of her body. She begged God to keep it from breaking. Doug desperately seized the little girl in his arms. Nora helped the child to pull herself up and Doug managed it alone. Gasping and coughing, he lay in a forked branch. Nora noticed with relief that the water hadn’t risen on the roof at all in the last few minutes. A glimmer of hope. The little girl whimpered. Nora recognized Sally, one of the youngest housemaids.
“Sally, where … How did you get …”
“Was with Annie in forest …” Nora didn’t need to hear any more. The two girls had been chatting away instead of dutifully going straight from service up to work in the house. “Came wave. Big huge wave …”
Nora didn’t ask about Annie. She pulled the trembling, crying Sally close and rocked her in her arms. Doug then put his arms around them both and they clutched the stronger branches of the tree. Nora closed her eyes; glad to not have to see the water and the horrors floating past any longer. It felt so safe to feel Doug’s strong, protective chest against her back. He seemed to be warming her, even though he was also shivering with cold and exhaustion himself. His lips sometimes whispered her name, and she thought she felt gentle, comforting kisses on her neck, as if from another world. She would have gladly given into them entirely, if Sally hadn’t been there, sobbing uncontrollably, and stammering incoherently.
“Only my fault. Spirits angry because Sally do bad things. God angry, reverend said don’t do …”
“Sally, it’s not so bad,” Nora tried to console her.
Then the girl went quiet and seemed to have fallen into a trancelike state of sleep.
Then the weather suddenly cleared up. Just as quickly as the wall of rain had risen before them, it disappeared from one moment to the next. There was almost no breeze at all, the sky was nearly cloudless, and a pale sun lit the horrifying scene.
Doug broke away from Nora.
“Is it over?” she asked hoarsely.
He shook his head. “No. For heaven’s sake, stay here. This is the eye, you know? The eye of the hurricane: a wind and rain-free zone. It will continue again soon. And it may be that it gets worse. Don’t move, Nora, I will check after Mrs. Stevens.”
Nora very quickly heard that Ruth was still alive. She shouted at Doug to untie her, wildly determined to throw herself into the water and search for her child. Doug checked on the older child, Mary — and there was finally good news.
“Mrs. Stevens, Mrs. Stevens, listen to me! The baby is dead, there’s no hope for him, even if you find him. But you have another child. Here, look, Mary is alive …”
Then Doug untied one of the woman’s hands, so that she could cradle the weak little whimpering thing.
“It’s only a question of how long,” he whispered to Nora. “She’s deathly pale and it’s just going to get colder.” The eye of the hurricane, as Doug had briefly explained to Nora, was a cold zone. They were all chilled to the bone and the wind was returning.
“Give her to me, I’ll get her warm,” Nora said, pulling Mary towards her and Sally, while Ruth fought wildly against Doug, who was mercilessly tying her hand back again.
“It’s for your own good, Mrs. Stevens; you can’t hold the child alone.”
Ruth began to scream when the storm flared up again, and then she alternated between muttering prayers and cursing God. She seemed now to be completely out of her mind. Sally also began to openly grieve — alternating prayers with self-reproach. The girl was convinced that the gods had only sent the storm to punish her for some misconduct.
Nora didn’t count the hours, but later she found out that it was afternoon before the storm finally subsided. First, it stopped raining, then the wind died down, and the water drained away. Exhausted, Nora and Doug perched on the dry roof and took stock. Both Sally and Ruth’s daughter were alive — but the latter was in particularly desperate need of warmth and dry clothes. They themselves were both left uninjured aside from a few scrapes.
“And I can thank you for the worst of it!” Doug said reproachfully to the cat, which was sitting on a branch and preening itself.
Ruth Stevens seemed to be sleeping. Nora would have liked to do the same, but she still couldn’t give into her weakness.
“How do we leave here? Will the water drain completely?” she inquired.
Doug shrugged. “At the moment, it’s going quickly,” he remarked. The water was now only half as high as the building. “The sea will undoubtedly withdraw. But wha
t happens to the flooding from the rain, I don’t know … It might take days before the slave quarters are dry again.”
“But by then … by then this child will die,” Nora said, in desperation.
Those words seemed to pierce through Ruth. She straightened herself up. Doug had untied her after the storm.
“Mary … Where is Sam?”
She began to sob as she remembered Sam’s death. Nora quickly placed little Mary in her arms. The child whimpered again.
“Here is Mary.”
Ruth held the child close, but then shifted her around, as her chest seemed to ache. That gave Nora an idea.
“Maybe try to breastfeed her?” she suggested. “She urgently needs nourishment and warmth.”
Mary couldn’t have been weaned very long before her little brother was born. Perhaps she would remember it.
Ruth glared at Nora. “No! No! The … the milk belongs to Sam … and Sam is—” Ruth’s gaze stopped on Sally, who was looking at the water around her with glassy eyes.
“She … this nigger brat! Why is she alive? Why is she alive and Sam is dead?”
Sally went back to reproaching herself. “Is because the gods angry, Sally bad …”
It was then that they heard voices.
“Not faster, Joe! Go slowly!”
“But faster underneath, Billy. You chicken!”
“I don’t want drown! You can no steer like that.” Just then, a raft appeared, pulled along by the flowing water. There were two of Kwadwo’s stable boys sitting on it, apparently quite entertained. With two boards, they tried to steer the primitive boat, which didn’t actually require much of them — the water was flowing in the direction of the slave quarters. They would have to be careful not to be pulled out to sea, but maybe that was what they wanted. They would be stranded on a beach that no backra owned …