I hurried back to Andre’s bedroom, and my heart nearly quit. Out the rain-streaked windows, I saw what had carried the turtles. The back pasture was under water. Lapping water, rippling water, water that moved. Not rainwater. This was a living thing. It was the bayou, here, a stone’s throw from the house.
‘Miss Ogden.’
In the pasture, the bushy limbs of the salt cedar tussled in the wind. The lower branches dragged in the water. Little white-capped waves split as they rushed around clumps of bushes, just the tops of the plants showing. A fluttery feeling whooshed through me. Mama. Daddy. Our house by the bayou.
‘Miss Ogden.’
It was Mrs Williams. She was in the doorway and before I knew it, I got myself to move, my bare feet hurrying. ‘Andre,’ I said.
‘He’s in the kitchen.’
My legs wobbled out from under me. Mrs Williams caught ahold of my arm. Water, all this water. Like in ’86. Wiley in the current, Daddy and Frank T. going after him.
‘Miss Ogden.’ Mrs Williams’ hand was tight on my arm. ‘It’s an overflow. You said it yourself. Five inches deep. Oscar measured it. Five inches. That’s all.’
Andre’s dogs gone. The bayou a mile out of its banks. Mrs Williams’ hair undone and dripping wet. Nothing was where it should be; everything was in the wrong place.
‘Look at me.’ Mrs Williams’ voice was sharp. Red spots flared on her cheeks. Them spots danced.
‘Miss Ogden. Look at me.’
That voice of hers, it carried a slap, it made me do what she said. Her eyes were rings of blue, each ring a clearer blue than the last. Without a word she looked into me and saw how scared I was. Don’t you go falling apart, her eyes said. Do not even think about it. An overflow. That’s all.
Mrs Williams said, ‘Oscar’s hitching the wagon. He’s going to get your mother and father and bring them here. It’s safer on the ridge.’
Them words, they were another slap, but this time they made me draw up my shoulders, they made me shake off her hand from my arm. We were island people; nobody told us what to do. Daddy built our house to hold up. He’d laid the wide studs in the walls crossways like how old-time ships were built. We were close to the bayou but the pilings were six feet high. If the bayou came inside, we’d go up in the loft. We didn’t turn tail and leave the hog and chickens; we took care of our own. That was the lesson learned from the storm of ’86. Oscar didn’t know that, him not from here, him from Ohio. Daddy didn’t need nobody to tell him what to do. If Daddy thought him and Mama needed to be on the ridge, they’d be here by now. If Daddy thought it was safe to stay home, it was.
I said, ‘I’m going with Mr Williams. Mama and Daddy, they won’t want to leave.’ That was how I put it, the words just coming to me. I let her think I was riding with Oscar so I could talk them into coming back. But that wasn’t so. Oscar was taking me home, and I was staying there. Us Ogdens, we were Texans. We didn’t turn yellow and run.
Mud sucked at my boots, the rain was bitter sharp, and I had to walk to the barn with my head down and my eyes half closed. My bonnet was mushy, and my poncho was of no more account than that fancy coat of Mrs Williams’ had been. There weren’t no words for my shame, me getting so scared and her knowing it. Leastways I had found my grit; I wasn’t scared no more. Up ahead, Oscar had driven the wagon out of the stable yard and was coming my way. When I met up with him, the horses all twitchy and rolling their eyes, I hollered up to Oscar and said how I had to come with him since talking Mama and Daddy into leaving wasn’t going to be no easy thing.
‘Climb on up,’ he hollered back, and that was what I did, my conscience not overly prickly for telling him a half-truth. On the buckboard, I hunched down. The bottom of the floorboard was filled up with rain, but I put my feet flat in it. Beside me, rain ran from Oscar’s wide-brim hat and down his waxed poncho. He had taken down the buckboard canopy; likely it had buckled and scared the horses. They were plenty skittish as it was, sidestepping like they wanted to break loose and run back to the stable, but Oscar wouldn’t let them. He bore down and held on tight to the lines.
He kept that tight hold as we went by the house, Mrs Williams and Andre still on the veranda, her holding Andre’s hand but leaning out against the railing. Oscar looked over me and up at her. This thing between them was its own kind of lightning; I felt it, her blue eyes seeing nothing but Oscar, and a wave of yearning coming from him. It was a powerful want for the other that no amount of water could dampen. It made me hunch down all the more, me witnessing something so naked, and then we were past the house.
Me and Oscar headed west down the island. We stayed on the ridge as long as we could, the horses splashing through pools of rainwater that were a few inches deep. I gripped the sideboard, me and him rocking against the other when the wheels fell into mushy spots. My thoughts skipped from the feel of Oscar beside me, to that wife of his, then to Andre and how he was likely scared. After that, I thought about my brothers in the city somewhere and how Mama and Daddy had to be bracing for the big blow. From time to time I lifted my head and tried to see, the rain making it hard. Up ahead but close to the sand hills, the two tall buildings of St. Mary’s rose up in a fog of gray, and then I thought how it was a foolish thing to store orphans so close to the beach; they should be on the ridge. But the land had been given to the nuns and likely they didn’t know all that much about big blows, them not born here. When we got closer to St. Mary’s, I cupped my hands around my eyes and there it was, the gulf rushing under the buildings.
Seeing that brought a sharp pain to my insides. Them poor little orphans. And the nuns. They had to be scared to the bone. The buildings were on stilts, six feet up, and that should be plenty high. But the water was eating up the sand hill passes, widening them, the water coming like rivers. Them orphans would be all right, I told myself. The nuns talked directly to God, and God looked over every little sparrow. He wouldn’t let nothing happen to them, not to little children that had already lost their mamas and daddies.
At the outbuilding, what the nuns called the barn though it was too small to be called such, water lapped against the lower part of the walls. A grown man, one of the caretakers likely, and two boys made their way to the outbuilding, their heads bent into the wind. The boys shuffled and that told me the water must be up to their knees. Beside me, Oscar strained forward.
‘Should we stop?’ I hollered. ‘Help them?’
‘On our way back,’ he yelled. That was a poke to my conscience, but I didn’t say nothing about me staying with Mama and Daddy. Oscar called out to the horses like they could hear him and he took up the lines, steering Maud and Mabel toward the right. Oscar had a time doing it; they didn’t like it; we were leaving the high point on the ridge. The wind hit face on and with each step, the water got deeper and the soil turned mushier. Oscar gave them horses some slack, he let them toss their heads, but his knuckles were white, he held on that hard. This rain, it was like sewing needles coming at us and I wanted to close my eyes but didn’t, not all the way. I kept my gaze fixed on the front legs of the horses, the water to their ankles, then over their ankles and riding up to their shins.
A little black kitten swept by. It was on a board, wet and crouched down, and I couldn’t bring myself to watch. The horses kept stopping, the wagon hard to pull. Oscar called to them and they started up again, straining. The wind had gone cold, and my teeth chattered. I clamped my jaw tight but I couldn’t get the shaking to quit. I nearly lost heart; I almost told Oscar to turn back, we were going to lose a wheel, this water was too strong. But Mama and Daddy weren’t yellow; they weren’t running away. Finally, I heard Oscar holler something and there, up ahead, was home.
It was the prettiest sight ever. Didn’t matter there was water under the house, not one bit. It wasn’t but to the third step, and Mama and Daddy were on the back veranda, both of them with a lantern held high. They’d been looking for me, I was sure of it. Likely they were looking for Frank T. and Wiley, too. Daddy took to wav
ing Oscar off, his way of telling him not to come closer, it was too deep. Nobody had to tell the horses that. They’d come to a stop and nothing Oscar said or did could change their minds. Oscar took up waving to Daddy to come on, calling that he wanted to take Mama and Daddy to his house. ‘We’re dry,’ Oscar hollered.
All that waving back and forth was foolishness. They were two stubborn men both trying to get the other to change his mind. I took off my boots and stuffed my stockings inside of them. I tied the shoelaces together and slung them around my neck. I slid to the side of the wagon, my feet feeling for the wheel spoke, but Oscar grabbed hold of my arm. ‘Got to get them,’ he said. ‘Take them back.’
‘No,’ I yelled. ‘They won’t leave. And I won’t either. It’d take more than this to drive us out of our own home.’
I shook him off and then I was knee deep in rushing water. It was cold and muddy, and the ground was uneven and thick with tangled grass. Boards bumped against my legs, some of them painted, some fancy trim work, and I didn’t want to think how any of it got here.
‘I’m coming with you,’ Oscar said, the wind biting the edges off his words.
‘No, you ain’t,’ I said. ‘Go home. You’ve done enough, your folks are waiting.’ I hitched up my skirt, and just before I started to wade to the house, Oscar called out my name. Nan. Not Miss Ogden. Nan. Like what he called me before Bernadette died. Like how it was before we both had to step around the other, me thinking of the curse that hovered over me, and him just wanting to keep a distance. I looked up at him and real quick, I saw something in them green eyes of his. It wasn’t like how he looked at Mrs Williams; it wasn’t anything that strong. But I saw something.
‘Nan,’ Oscar said again. He said something else but only one word came through. ‘Tomorrow.’
He nodded for me to go on, and that was what I did. I went home, Daddy taking the back steps, coming to help me. I plodded to meet him, stumbling as my skirt wrapped around my legs. Daddy stumbled, too, his arms going every which way. The ground was mushy and rough all at the same time, the long grass clutching my ankles. The force of the water was as strong as a riptide. I took a few more steps, fell into a dip, and landed on my hands and knees.
Fear swelled. There was water in my mouth; the current was carrying me; I couldn’t get up; the boots around my neck pulled me down. I grabbed ahold of a rooted clump of grass; that stopped my tumbling. I pushed myself up and stood, spitting and swatting the hair out of my eyes. I got Daddy back in my sights. I climbed my way out of the dip and kept on, hearing that word ‘tomorrow’. Just before Daddy reached me, just before I took hold of his hand, I knew.
‘Nan. See you tomorrow.’ That was what Oscar said.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Hurricane
Water rushed over the bottom veranda step.
‘House is five feet up,’ Oscar said on the day he brought me here. ‘Never had a drop of floodwater inside.’
The waves thundered. Sea spray shot up over the tops of the sand hills, arching high, then raining down. Gulf water surged landward through the passes, carving and cutting, the sand hills crumbling and collapsing.
Currents crisscrossed and coursed over bushes and around the trees that Oscar called salt cedars. The barnyard fence had fallen. Rain poured from dark, swift clouds as though countless water buckets had been overturned. The horizon roiled with white-capped gray waves. The air whistled and swept the rain in sheets toward the gulf, the wind still coming from behind the house. I was on the front veranda by the door, and using a broom, I swatted at the frogs that leapt up the steps.
Oscar had been gone for two hours.
My clothes and face were wet from the rain spray that blew in from the sides of the veranda but I couldn’t bear to be inside. The windows were closed and earlier, I had drawn the storm shutters. The house was a cave, dark, hot, and stuffy. Unable to see out, I felt trapped and helpless. I labored to breathe, the walls pressing in around me. On the veranda, though, I could see the storm. Here, I could breathe even if the air was heavy with salt. Here, I looked into the shroud of wind-blown rain and watched for Oscar.
Two hours. Something must have happened to him. A wagon wheel had snapped, the horses had panicked. The wagon had overturned.
This morning when I’d gone to the barn to warn Oscar about the water coming through the sand hill passes, he’d been calm and reassuring. ‘We’re on the ridge,’ he’d said. ‘We’re all right here. There’s a little water in the back pasture, too. Just measured it. It’s only five inches. That’s all. We’ve had worse.’ In the barn’s dim light, the sheen of perspiration on his face glistened. He’d been pitching hay into what I thought might be a feed trough in one of the stalls. I was in the aisle, the stall railing between us. My skirt was muddy, and much of my hair had slipped loose from its pins and combs. The wind whined through the chinks in the walls. The cows were in the stalls, and the odors – dung, animals, my wet clothes – added to my ragged nerves.
Oscar reached over the railing and took my hand. ‘I’m worried some about the Ogdens,’ he said. ‘Frank and Alice.’ It was a moment before I realized these were Nan’s father and mother. ‘They could flood out; they’re close to the bayou. They might need to get to the ridge. Wouldn’t think much of it if Frank T. and Wiley were there to help. But they aren’t and that leaves Frank and Alice stranded without their horses.’ He paused. ‘I’m going to get them and bring them here. I’ll be gone an hour likely. An hour and a half at the most.’
I had been stunned into silence.
‘You and Andre are plenty safe up here on the ridge,’ Oscar went on to say, his fingers making circles on my palm. ‘Wouldn’t leave if I didn’t think it. Wouldn’t do it if you weren’t who you are. You aren’t the kind to let a storm scare you.’
He didn’t know me, I thought now as I swept frogs off of the veranda. The water was halfway up the second step.
Mats of torn grass swirled past in the water, going toward the gulf, then coming back in the crossing currents. Everything that had been in the garbage heap in the back pasture had been carried off. Glass bottles and rusty pails bobbed and tumbled. Empty tin cans and wagon-wheel rims bumped up against bushes, catching in the branches and then breaking free. The crystal earrings must be somewhere in the water. The waves had uprooted the road that wound through the sand hills and its scattered planks rushed past the house. There were snakes, too, their yellow stripes rippling as they swam. Sleek, shiny rats clung to pieces of broken boards.
Five frogs, six, now seven. I swatted at them, their brown speckled bodies leaping away from me, some of them jumping back into the water. I refused to give in to my panic. I would not allow myself to think the unthinkable about Oscar. He was not hurt; he was not in trouble. Not Oscar.
The veranda floor vibrated from the wind. This must be what an earthquake felt like, I thought. Except earthquakes lasted seconds, not hours. It was one-thirty in the afternoon. The storm couldn’t get any worse, I told myself. These massive waves, this unrelenting rain, this had to be the peak. And Oscar was somewhere out in the open.
Nine veranda steps, I thought. The water was only to the second one. I needed to keep my head. I could not allow myself to panic. The front door was held open with a door jamb and I looked into the house. I had lit every lamp and lantern but their narrow, jittering lights only deepened the shadows. Andre lay on the floor under the kitchen table, at last worn out from playing in the rain and from his fear of the storm. Three of the dogs, their heads raised, lay pressed close to him. The fourth one circled.
They had shown up just after Oscar and Nan rode past the house in the wagon. ‘Daddy!’ Andre had called. It was as though he noticed for the first time how dark the morning had turned. The wagon kept moving, Oscar’s shoulders set as he gripped the lines to control the horses.
‘Daddy!’ Andre’s cry was shrill with fear. The loose ends of Oscar’s and Nan’s ponchos beat and jerked in the wind. Rainwater filled the grooves in the mud ma
de by the wagon wheels. Still wearing my soiled wet clothes, my hair blowing loose, I held Andre’s hand and tried to get him into the house, but he bore down and made himself heavy. ‘Daddy!’ That was when the dogs loped up the steps and crowded around Andre, their fur soaked and muddy. The suddenness of their arrival distracted him. He patted them, his hands skimming their heads and backs, going from one to the next.
‘Where’d you go?’ he said to them. His voice trembled. ‘I was looking for you. Why’d you hide?’ Two of them were almost as tall as he, and their long pink tongues licked his tears. He swatted at the dogs but he grinned and I said nothing about filth or sanitation. I had turned back to watch the wagon, a blurring outline in the rain.
I coaxed Andre into the house with the promise of a teaspoon of honey. Another teaspoon convinced him to have his bath. He sat in the metal laundry washtub with his knees up and his hands gripping the sides. I soaped a washcloth with the bar of Ivory and was all at once lightheaded, its cloying fragrance too strong in the closed house. Outside, the dogs scratched at the front door.
‘Ma’am,’ Andre said, his voice wobbling. It occurred to me that this was his name for me. ‘When’ll Daddy get home?’
‘In a little while,’ I said. I needed that to be true. For the first time in my life, another person was completely dependent on me. I had helped Andre get ready for bed before, but Oscar had always been nearby in the barn. In the kitchen with the storm all around us, Andre looked smaller and younger than before. His back was narrow, and his chest was thin. Everything about him was fragile: his collarbone, his wrists, each finger, the oval shape of his nails. Caring for Andre must have exhausted Oscar when Bernadette died. It was no wonder he turned to Nan. No wonder he never said the first word against her. She had watched over Andre; she had dressed and fed him. She must have held him when he cried for his mother.
The Promise Page 21