Devil Storm

by Theresa Nelson

  “You feelin’ all right, Walter?” Alice’s brown eyes considered him anxiously. Even though he had been better for several days now, she still watched him every minute, fretting over him like a little old lady.

  “I’m fine, Sister,” said Walter. “Just fine—you don’t have to worry so.”

  Alice looked doubtful. “How’s your arm?”

  “It’s fine—just a tiny bit sore, that’s all.” Walter stretched it out and wiggled his fingers. “See there? Practically good as new.”

  She frowned at him. “Don’t you ever get sick like that again, Walter Carroll. You like to scared me to death.”

  “Yes’m, Miss Alice.”

  “I’m not foolin’, Walter!”

  “Wah-wah,” said Emily. She was standing up, smiling in the middle of her crib. “Wah-wah!”

  “Why, look at Emily!” Alice cried. “She’s not holdin’ onto anything. Look, Walter!”

  “I’m lookin’.”

  “Wah-wah,” Emily said again. She took two steps with her arms outstretched, then clutched the side of the crib and beamed with pride.

  Alice clapped her hands. “She walked, Walter—did you see her? She took two steps all by herself! Hooray for Emily!”

  “Ray!” cried Emily.

  “Good for you, Emily!” said Walter, lifting her out of the crib and standing her up on her wobbly little legs in the middle of the floor. “Here, now, try it again—that’s right—” Emily took three steps this time, then sat down hard on her bottom.

  “Ray!” she crowed.

  “Well, looka there, Alice—she’s walkin’ better’n you, now! See, I told you she’d learn to walk if you quit carryin’ her around all over the place. Good thing for her you sprained your ankle!”

  “Aw, it wasn’t ’cause of that. She just wasn’t ready before now, that’s all. Come on, Emily, walk to Sister.”

  They walked her back and forth between them for a good while after that, laughing and hooraying and raising such a ruckus that their father and mother came in to see what was going on.

  “Well, I’ll declare—look at my baby girl walking!” Papa cried.

  “My, my!” said Mama, and then the two of them sat right down on the floor with the children, and everyone laughed and exclaimed and applauded as Emily careened recklessly from one to the other. Walter couldn’t remember the last time they had all been so happy together.

  He swung the pail and whistled as he started out to tend to the milking; he had been up to doing light chores for a couple of days now. Lord, but he felt good. It was a perfect day—a little warmer than usual, maybe, but perfect all the same. The sky was pink as rose petals. The water was greenish blue, running at the beach in heady swells. Gulls wheeled above it, mewing like kittens. It felt to Walter as if some terrible curse had been lifted from the world, as if all creation had been made over, given a second chance.…

  “That old man had us all half-crazy, Miz Long,” he told her, leaning his head against her comfortable haunch as the milk squirted into the pail. “But that’s over now, ain’t it?”

  Papa was dressed in his Sunday best by the time Walter came back inside. He had seen another load of melons off in the Barretts’ boat yesterday; today he was bound for Galveston again. “I wish I could take you with me, son,” he said. “I know it’s been a long time since you had a holiday, but your mother thinks it’s too soon after your fever for you to go traveling.”

  “I don’t mind, Papa.” It was the truth. Nothing could bother Walter today. “I can stay here and keep an eye on things while you’re gone.”

  “I’d appreciate that, son.”

  They took the wagon over to the depot again. Alice and Emily sat up in front with Papa. Walter stretched out in back with his hands behind his head, enjoying the feel of the sun on his skin, only half-listening to Alice’s chatter as the wagon bumped along on the sand.…

  “Audie Merle’s baby brother is nearly eighteen months old and he’s not walkin’ yet—d’you know that, Papa? And Emily’s still two weeks shy of a year! Mama says early walkin’s a sign of superior intelligence, and every one of us was early. She says William and me both walked when we were just ten months, and Walter walked at nine. I guess that makes him the smartest, but I don’t know, he says he never could do arithmetic worth a flip.”

  Little Emily pointed at a cow. “Dog,” she said, quite plainly.

  “No, Emily,” Alice laughed, “that’s an old moo-cow. Say mooo-cow … mooooo-cow …”

  “Dog,” said Emily.

  Alice collapsed in giggles. “Aw, come on, Emily, say moo-cow. You’re s’posed to be smart!”

  “Dog,” Emily insisted, and everybody laughed. It felt so good to laugh again.…

  Once they saw Papa off on the Gulf & Interstate, the children took their time going home. Walter held up Dowling for a while and let Emily sit in his lap, while Alice climbed out of the wagon and picked wildflowers for their mother—black-eyed Susans and bottle brushes and butterflyweed and great flaming tufts of goldenrod.

  “Well, aren’t they lovely!” Mama exclaimed when they put them in her hands. She looked so pretty standing there smiling, with the flowers lighting up her face, that on a sudden impulse Walter grabbed her waist and spun her around the kitchen.

  “Merciful heavens! Stop that, Walter—you’re going to break both our necks!” Mama protested, but she didn’t look all that displeased.

  Alice was waltzing with Emily, too. “Don’t stop, Mama! ’Member when you and Papa showed us how you used to dance?”

  But Mama had pulled away from Walter and was leaning against the kitchen table, breathless, her cheeks flushed. She shook her head. “That was a long time ago, Sister.”

  “No, it wasn’t—’member, Papa told ’bout the time he played like he was Episcopalian so he could dance with you at the All Saints Ball—don’t you ’member, Mama? And you said he was the handsomest one in his sailor suit!”

  Lillie Carroll turned her face away and pinned up a loose curl at the nape of her neck. “You children run along now,” she murmured vaguely. “I’ve got to see to these preserves.…”

  “Come on, Sister,” said Walter. “Mama’s busy.” He wished to goodness Alice would have sense enough to keep her mouth closed just once.

  Walter and Alice walked out to the beach in the afternoon. Alice was hardly limping at all now. The sky had clouded over some time after dinner, and the water was rough. Might be some rain later on, Walter reflected. Be good—cool things off a little.

  Alice dropped down on her knees and started pushing the sand in a pile. Walter walked on a way without her, then came back and watched. “What are you makin’?” he asked after a while.

  “A house,” said Alice. “Like the one I’m gonna have someday.”

  “Where you gonna get a house?”

  “My husband’ll build it for me,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “Your husband?” The idea of little old scrawny Alice with a husband was too much for Walter. “You got one picked out already?”

  “Course not,” Alice replied. “But it don’t hurt to think ahead.”

  Walter hooted. “Don’t tell me—it’s Junior Johnson, right? Tell the truth, Alice, you gone on old Junior?”

  “You just hush, Walter Carroll.” Alice threw a handful of sand at her brother.

  He laughed. “What’s for supper tonight, Miz Johnson?”

  “You better not call me that—” She held up another clump of sand in her fist. “I mean it, Walter!”

  “All right, all right.” Walter sat down and crossed his legs. This was too good to miss. “Come on, tell me about this house of yours.”

  Alice looked at him suspiciously. “Not if you’re gonna laugh—”

  “I won’t laugh, I promise,” said Walter, straightening out his face as best he could.

  “Well, all right … Looka here—this is the parlor, and there’s the kitchen, and right over there’s the sleepin’ porch.”

  “Wh
y, it’s just like our house.”

  “Mm-hmm … and here’s where the stairs’ll go, up to the second story.”

  “What’s this stickin’ up out here?”

  “Those are my palm trees, two on each side of the house—see? And here’s the kitchen garden. I’ll have snap beans and tomatoes and such in back, and my flowers up front—love-in-a-mist and lobelia and pinks, just like Mama’s.”

  “How many children you gonna have?”

  “Four,” Alice answered without hesitation. “Two boys and two girls.”

  “Well, that’s just exactly like our family!” exclaimed Walter. “Ain’t you gonna have anything different?”

  “No,” Alice said firmly. Then she paused. “’Cept—”

  “’Cept what?”

  “’Cept aren’t any of my children ever gonna get sick and die.”

  “Oh.”

  Walter picked up a lightning whelk and held it to his ear. It was funny to hear the real ocean with one ear and the ocean caught inside the shell with the other.…

  “Ain’t it hot, though?” he said after a time, just to say something.

  Alice nodded. “Sure is. I’m sweatin’ somethin’ terrible.”

  “Maybe it’ll rain tonight, kinda clear the air.…”

  “That’d be good.” Alice began poking windows in her sand house. “If it rains, let’s go out to the barn and tell ghost stories, like we did that other time. ’Member that day, Walter? That was when you first told me ’bout old Tom comin’ back.”

  Walter remembered, all right. Lord, did he remember.

  “I guess he wasn’t really all them things we thought, was he?” Alice said wistfully, when another moment had passed.

  “Naw,” said Walter. He crossed his arms and stared out at the water. The waves were ugly brown now, full of sand. They sounded like thunder, crashing on the beach. “Naw, he wasn’t nothin’ but a crazy old man.…” Walter didn’t want to think about Tom anymore. “Come on, Sister,” he said suddenly, jumping up. “I’ll race you to the sand hills.”

  Richard Carroll took one last bite of Mary Agnes’s lemon mystery pudding and leaned back from the crowded dinner table at the home of his Galveston relatives. He was doing his best—and failing—to follow the convoluted course of Cousin Jack Carroll’s latest anecdote.

  “So you see, Richard, the point is, if she really wanted to marry him, she ought to have stayed home!” Laughter shook Cousin Jack’s big frame from his head to his toes and sent tears streaming down his broad, pink face. “Ought to have stayed home!” he repeated, giggling helplessly, “stayed home!” Cousin Jack roared with laughter, screamed with laughter, wiped his eyes and composed himself, then collapsed again, convulsed.

  Richard laughed too, not so much at the story, of which he could make neither head nor tail, but because it was impossible to resist Cousin Jack’s all-embracing merriment.

  Mary Agnes smiled dimly; she never understood her husband’s jokes either. “Well, if you gentlemen will excuse me, I believe it’s time to put these children down for their nap. Come along, K.K., Bussy; you, too, little Jack. Now, Richard, you just make yourself right at home.”

  He stood up. “Thank you for your hospitality, Mary Agnes—and that dinner! I believe it was the best yet.”

  “You flatter me,” Mary Agnes replied, coloring a little. “We all know what a famous cook Lillie is. My fried chicken could never hold a candle to hers.”

  “Now, I wouldn’t say that,” said Richard, though it was the truth.

  “Well,” said Mary Agnes, disentangling a twin from her skirts, “I do hope we can count on you for supper. You’ll be staying the night, won’t you?”

  “If it won’t be putting you to too much trouble. I do still have some business to attend to this afternoon. The fellow I generally see at the bank wasn’t in his office this morning.”

  “No trouble atall,” Cousin Jack interjected heartily. “No sense in you trying to rush back to Bolivar this evening. You can go back tomorrow just as well.” He began to chuckle again. “Ought to have stayed home—tell the truth, Richard, isn’t that just about the funniest thing you ever heard? Ought to have stayed home.…”

  The gentleman was still out of his office when Richard arrived back at the bank. Being in no particular hurry, he passed the time quite pleasantly reading a copy of The Galveston Daily News that he’d picked up on his way. It was mostly devoted to stories about the current presidential race, which he had been following with interest; he was a William Jennings Bryan man himself. When he had read enough to decide afresh that the News was making a boneheaded blunder in backing McKinley again, he turned to the weather report on page 8. It had occurred to him that he ought to have a look at the forecast; his barge crossing had been a trifle choppy. If there was rough weather due, he still had time to catch the evening train back home. Storms unnerved Lillie so; he didn’t like to be away if there was any chance of one. But the outlook for today was reassuring—“partly cloudy, with showers and cooler on the coast.” Cooler—that would be a welcome change.… He adjusted the stiff collar that was sticking to his neck.… For tomorrow, Saturday, “fair, with fresh, possibly brisk northerly winds on the coast.”

  Just below the weather report another article mentioned “a tropical storm … centered over southern Florida and moving slowly northward.…” Nothing for Texas to worry about. Besides, Richard had seen the sunrise that morning—just the faintest blush of pink—nowhere near a sailor’s warning red. So there was no need to hurry home. That was good; there were a couple of boats he had been intending to take a look at in the morning. High time he owned his own boat. He smiled to think how pleased Walter would be.…

  The waiting room seemed unusually stuffy. Richard stood up and removed his coat. He was just hanging it carefully on the back of his chair when the secretary appeared.

  “Mr. Arnoult will see you now,” he announced, then shook his head sympathetically as Richard began putting his coat back on. “Hot as Hades, isn’t it?”

  “That it is,” Richard agreed. “But I understand it’s supposed to cool off later on this evening.”

  “Glad to hear it,” said the secretary, holding the door open for him.

  Lillie Carroll sat beside the crib on the sleeping porch, fanning the baby. It was too hot to sleep. The sun had long since set, but the clouds that stretched from horizon to horizon held in the heat, pushed it at the earth like an old wool blanket. Emily was fretful with it. Her yellow curls clung damply to her head, her cheeks were as rosy as if she’d run a mile.

  Lillie’s wrist ached. She transferred the straw fan to her other hand. Lord, it was a ragged old souvenir. Richard had brought it to her from Brazil when they were courting—what was it?—fifteen years ago? More like fifteen hundred, it seemed, sometimes.…

  The fan was painted with faded colors that had once been bright—yellow birds and blue birds and red roses and green leaves—all of them surrounding a gaily dressed señorita who held out her hand to a kneeling, mustachioed señor … a silly, sentimental picture, Lillie thought now, but once it had given her pleasure.…

  Emily closed her eyes and put her thumb in her mouth. Lillie reached over and tried gently to remove it, but the little girl whimpered and wouldn’t let go. Well, never mind. Lillie was too tired to fight about it; surely one more night of thumb-sucking wouldn’t ruin the child’s mouth forever. William had a beautiful mouth, though he sucked two fingers for the longest time.…

  She sighed. Strange it’s still so hot, with the Gulf as rough as it was this afternoon.… Usually big waves meant a stiff wind blowing in off the water, but what wind there had been today had come in gusts from the north, and that had brought little relief. The Carroll house wasn’t built to welcome the north wind.

  Lillie’s eyes traveled to her two older children. Walter and Alice lay quietly in their beds, their eyes closed. Gracious, Walter’s getting big! His toes nearly touch the foot of his bed now. He must have grown a head taller this
summer. He’s his father’s son, all right, no question about that. Just as William was mine.… The old ache rose in her throat. Lord, she missed him so. Sometimes she felt as if she just couldn’t stand it any longer. But she had to stand it, didn’t she? There was nothing else she could do. She had prayed to God to let her die too, but it hadn’t done any good. “His ways are not our ways, Sister Carroll,” Dr. Croombs had told her after Emily’s birth. “We can only thank Him for sending another healthy child to take the place of the one He has called.…” Take his place! As if anyone could ever take William’s place! Lillie had had to bite her tongue to keep from calling the old man a fool; he was only trying to help, after all.

  “God’s ways are not our ways.…” Well, that, at least, is the truth. As Lillie saw it, the only real mystery was that anyone still cared for a God with such ways.…

  My, but it’s warm. Lillie was perspiring, and she seldom perspired. Alice must have dropped off; her breathing was slow, regular. Lillie’s eyes rested on the soft, almost babyish curve of her jaw, the stubborn chin relaxed in sleep. She looked so vulnerable just now. They all did—even Walter, big as he was.…

  A change of light drew her eyes to the window. Through a rent in the clouds, the moon was shining, bright as day nearly, and just a cat’s whisker away from being full. Then the clouds closed again, and she looked away. To see the moon darkened was never a good omen.…

  Emily was asleep at last, her thumb still clamped in her puckered lips. Lillie rose quietly from her rocking chair and started across the room.

  “’Night, Mama.”

  The sound of Walter’s voice startled her. He’s been awake all this time, then?

  “Good night, son,” she said.

  Tom sat alone in the small jail at High Island, listening to the faraway roar of the surf. It’s comin’, he told himself. Old Gulf’s comin’ for Tom, ain’t it? Been waitin’ for me all this time, now it thinks it’s gonna get me.… Cain’t tell, though. Fooled the devil this long, maybe I’s gonna fool him again … cain’t tell, cain’t tell.…