Into the Hurricane

by Neil Connelly

  This pleased her, and I finally got a clue. For all involved, it was best if I got “cured.” So I figured out the words everybody wanted me to say and swore my visions had stopped. I told them Celeste had left me in peace. When I got home from that last session, she was in the tire swing hanging from the live oak. She grinned my way and winked. Our little secret.

  I know she’s nearby now. Just like I know this hurricane with her name is no coincidence. I can feel my sister giving me a chance to make things right. Me and her, we got a plan, and she’s not about to let me back out.

  I’m thinking this very thought when there’s a loud knocking on the front door—three angry bangs. After the jolt to my heart, I recover quick and tap down the volume on the TV, then lift the hammer from the coffee table. I slide up alongside the door, settle my back against the wall, and listen.

  “Eli!” a voice yells. “Something about the term ‘mandatory evacuation’ fail to penetrate that thickened skull?”

  I open the door and greet Sheriff Trouille. His white moustache needs a trim, and his face is stubbled with five o’clock shadow. I say, “I told my mom I’d finish boarding up the house. I thought I was the last one on the island. Just packing my things.” As evidence, I show him my hammer.

  “Uh-huh,” Trouille says. “Well, your mother got through to me at the station and raised all kinds of hell, insisting I come check on you. Imagine my surprise to actually find you here. Son, that storm is a Category Five. You know what that means?”

  “It means it’s big. I know that.”

  “Well, there ain’t no six on the scale, boy, so yeah, it’s about big as they come. When Hurricane Audrey hit back in the fifties, the water stretched near thirty miles up to the airport. By morning, I expect where we’re standing now will officially be part of the Gulf of Mexico. So unless you’re planning on growing gills or that motorcycle’s got a submarine mode, it’s time to get your butt on it and head north.”

  I look around the yard, where his squad car sits, and try to imagine the ocean in this far. Trouille says, “The governor has ordered we raise the iron bridge by five o’clock, way ahead of landfall. He’s worried some TV crews or out-of-town loonies might try to get on the island in search of a front-row seat. I assured him all our local loonies would be long gone by then.”

  I ask, “So everybody else is gone?”

  Trouille frowns. “Except the ones I can’t convince. Yesterday I drove out to the Odenkirk place and visited Mother Evangeline, what with her special circumstances and all, but I couldn’t talk sense into her. Seems she sees God’s hand in this, like everything. And Sweeney’s got it in his head that it’s his patriotic duty to protect this land—from what, I’m not entirely sure. Anyway, he’s hunkering down at that glorified tree house of his. The folks at FEMA told me to instruct anyone who insists on staying to write their Social Security number down their forearm with a permanent marker.”

  “Say what now?”

  “Like with a Sharpie. To make it easy to identify the body later. Real cheery, those FEMA people.”

  “That’s a scare tactic,” I say. “Just trying to freak folks out.”

  Trouille holds my eyes. “Well, it’d work on me, I’m telling you. I know you’ve had some problems, son, but it’s time to screw your head on straight. You hearing me?”

  “Yeah,” I tell him. “Yes, sir.”

  “Good, ’cause I don’t give a damn about your personal rights. Your momma, she’s endured enough. Once we’re done at the station, I’m swinging back out this way. If you’re still here, I’ll arrest you for the fun of it and transport your scrawny butt over that bridge in handcuffs. Don’t test me, son.”

  In the last nine months, Trouille’s had me in handcuffs twice, so I know he’s not bluffing. Behind closed doors, once I’ve calmed down, he’s always talked to me with kindness. He convinced the wronged parties—each of whom deserved the whooping I gave them—not to press charges, probably telling them all kinds of personal details I’d rather he not share. At Celeste’s funeral mass at St. Jude’s, as Father Arceneaux spoke of God’s mysterious ways, I can remember Trouille in uniform, his face all teary, standing over her coffin. I helped carry it out to the hearse, but when they brought it up to the cemetery in Hackberry, I refused to go.

  “I won’t be here,” I tell him. “I promise.”

  He stares into my eyes, searching for the truth. “Be sure you’re not.”

  I head over to the garage and Trouille walks beside me. When I reach up to close the door, he glances into my workshop and his eyes go wide. He’s looking at the second bay, where Celeste’s red pickup rises up like some dusty tombstone. The front grille is still smashed in. The windshield is still shattered. “Is that the—?” He knows better than to finish the question. Instead, he just runs a hand across his moustache and states the obvious. “They kept it all this time?” he asks. “Never had it repaired?”

  I pull the door down. “Some things aren’t meant to be fixed.”

  Trouille sighs before turning to his squad car. He takes a few steps, then stops. Without facing me, he says, “She’d want you to be safe. You know that, yeah?”

  By his somber tone, I know he’s not talking about my mother. I look around for Celeste. The yard is empty, and there’s no one on the porch. “It’s not for you to say what my sister’d want.”

  The sheriff hesitates for a moment, then opens his door. “Stay safe, son.” He gets behind the wheel, backs up into a K-turn, and steers away. I stand there, under the graying sky, watching him go.

  Inside the house, I head for Celeste’s bedroom. Dad wanted to take all her stuff to the Salvation Army, but Mom refused to touch anything, so her room is the same today as it was six years ago. Open one of Celeste’s dresser drawers and you’ll find neatly folded clothes, waiting for her return. Her maps of Africa and posters of ziggurats and European castles are still tacked to the walls, and her bookcase is crammed with sideways books—not kissy-kissy romance crap, but history, philosophy, world religion. On her desk sits a sphinx figurine. Next to it a stone Buddha meditates.

  From under her pillow, I pull my latest sketchbook and slide up onto the bed. Among my earliest memories is picking busted crayons from a shoebox with Celeste, the two of us working on a coloring book. All through grade school, I doodled in the margins and even made my own comic strips. These days, I’m not half bad with a decent charcoal pen, and some of my drawings don’t suck. As I flip through the oversized pages, I pause on one sketch where I tried to catch the view out the window here, looking over the stretch of grassy wetland. Behind that one, there’s a dozen attempts at Celeste’s smiling face. I always struggle with the unique shape of her eyes, which used to make folks ask her if she had an ancestor from Asia. Even beyond the shape, her eyes were special. They used to shine with such love, such joy and hope. I can never capture that emotion on the page.

  Fact is, the first time she came back to me, I was drawing. I was sitting right here on her bed, erasing and re-sketching till the page was wearing thin, and she appeared, a masterpiece fully drawn. She looked at my attempt and said what I was thinking. That really stinks. You’ll never get it right.

  When Mom drove me up to the University of Louisiana at Lafayette for freshman orientation last month, I wasn’t all that interested in the dorms or the gym or the big rooms where I’ll supposedly take classes toward my degree in business marketing (handpicked by Dad). Mostly I’d agreed to go because my parents will be happier without me moping around here day in and out. But when I was figuring out my schedule, this advisor guy showed me a list of electives, and my eyes fell on Basics of Drawing. There was one seat left.

  As we were leaving campus, I imagined my future self, leaning back onto the base of a magnolia tree just ahead, sketchbook on my lap, far away from Shackles Island. At college, nobody would know anything about me and my past. Something felt like it was rising inside me, a shining thing, and that’s when Celeste stepped out from behind the tree, cas
t in black and white. I didn’t get to go to college, she said in my mind. Why should you?

  On the car ride home from Lafayette, Mom asked me why I didn’t seem excited anymore. I told her my stomach was bugging me, and she left it at that.

  For a few days, I tried to brush away what had happened on campus, but my brain kept dragging me back. It was the first time in a while Celeste had shown up, maybe months, but her appearance in that quad made it clear she’d be there when I went to school. In the classroom when my professors lectured, in the library when I was studying, at the dorm or cafeteria or soccer field when I was trying to make new friends. I knew then that Celeste would shadow me for the rest of my days. So not long after that college trip, when Dad’s regional manager flew in from Dallas and Mom asked me to come along to a fancy crawfish dinner over at DI’s, I begged out and stayed home. I sat at Celeste’s desk and wrote a letter to Mom, apologizing for how I’d failed her and the fights I’d gotten into, sorry for being such a poor excuse for a son. I wasn’t sure when I’d use it, but I kept the note, just for security, folded up neat in the back of this sketchbook. I’d pull it out every now and then, in private, puzzling over how to do the thing I knew had to be done. Imagine my surprise and delight when I first heard word of this hurricane. It was a golden opportunity, a disaster sent to save me.

  It’s not that I’ve ever wanted to be dead. I don’t want to be dead. I’m just sick of being alive like this.

  So get on with it, I hear in my head. Celeste is suddenly sitting at her desk next to me. What you waiting on?

  She’s got a point. I’d figured on spending the afternoon here, heading out in the evening as the storm came on, but Trouille has forced my hand. I can’t risk being here if the sheriff comes back. After a quick shower, I slip on my cargo pants and a gray T-shirt, my good hiking boots. From under my bed, I tug out my backpack. I scoop up the last few treasures from my beachcombing days with Celeste—the shells and the feather, the piece of smoothed glass. When I’d discover some special object on our hikes and bring it to here, she always said the same thing: Attaboy. Lord, I miss hearing her say that.

  Out of habit, I grab two water bottles and a couple apples from the fridge, a handful of granola bars from the pantry. Recalling how dark it can get inside the lighthouse, I swipe Dad’s good flashlight from the laundry room.

  I cross our yard and slip inside the workshop, where I get the bolt cutters and shove them in my backpack too. One last time, I pull down the garage door and lock it up.

  On the horizon’s edge, Hurricane Celeste has made the sky gray. The rain still hasn’t started, but you can feel it, hanging damp in the late-morning air. Only after I climb on my motorcycle do I realize I’ve forgotten my helmet in the house, but I don’t guess I’ll be needing it all that much. I slide in the key, lean up on one leg, and kick-start the engine. Then I cruise down the dirt driveway to Infinity Road.

  At the T-shaped crossroads, I pause and drop a foot to steady myself. Turning right will lead me past the water tower and marina, toward town. I’d pass the iron bridge that leads over the intercostal and north. Up there, I could weave through traffic, be in my cousin Harvey’s place in DeQuincy in a couple hours, dry and safe.

  But when I glance in the opposite direction, away from town and the iron bridge, I see Celeste. Her charcoal ghost walks away from me down the shoulder of the road like some wandering hitchhiker. I know she wants me to follow.

  I crank the handlebars hard left and give the engine gas. Dirt and grit kick up as the back wheel fishtails, and I swing out onto Infinity Road. My hair blows back as I race west past my ghostly sister, on toward the thin strip of land that connects the two halves of the island. I know she’ll accompany me, that her haunting will go on. And I nearly smile at the thought of where I find myself headed—the last lighthouse in Louisiana, where Celeste and me will face the end together.

  SHACKLES ISLAND HAS THIS LONG TRADITION OF BEING A home for castaways and misfits. If you listen to legend, the infamous pirate Jean Laffite buried treasure here, and the outlaw Leather Britches had a hideout in the marshy forests. To help ships avoid the shallows around the island and guide them into the Sabine Pass, they put up a lighthouse in 1846. Prisoners from the Mexican-American War built it—forced labor in the Louisiana humidity. A bunch died, and some of their troubled souls still haunt the marshlands. That’s the kind of crap that gets shoveled to the tourists. For a hundred years, the lighthouse beamed, but over time it was shut down and abandoned, all but written off. Maybe that’s one more reason why I’m drawn to it.

  White as bone, steady and constant, she rises up to a height of two hundred feet. Even from a couple miles away, doing seventy miles an hour straight down the center line of Infinity Road, I can see her. Those Mexican prisoners named her “La Luz” for “the Light,” but Celeste, she always called her “Lucy.” Down on the shelly beach, with Lucy standing guard, Celeste would tell me stories about the ships that had sailed here in the past, the battles fought off these shores, the cutthroats and monsters that dwelled in our woods. She’d pretend to be afraid. But the truth is, as we hiked the island exploring, neither one of us ever got scared. Safest I ever felt in my life was with my big sister.

  A gulf wind gust shoves me to the side, and I need to lean hard to keep the cycle from tipping. Celeste’s landfall is still twelve hours off, but she’s playing games with me. Once I’ve steadied myself, I spare a glance in her direction and think to my sister, You’ll need to do better than that.

  No doubt this is more evidence for Dr. Jody’s theory of my delusional view of reality, something I had to pretend to accept as part of my “cure” just to get out of therapy. Dr. Jody was convinced Celeste’s ghost was all in my head, a projection of subconscious guilt or some fancy egghead name like that. But I know the truth. See, me and Celeste always had a deal on those long hikes: We’d stick together. There came a time at the end when I had to leave her, when I didn’t think I had any choice. That’s why one of the only times I can predict she’ll show up is when I head north to Hackberry or Lake Charles. She’s always waiting for me at the iron bridge, along the side of the road. As I pass, Celeste always says the same words, the last she ever spoke: Just stay, Eli! Don’t you leave me! That’s something I never told anyone, not Dad or Mom or Father Arceneaux or Dr. Jody.

  Up ahead on Infinity Road, I’m surprised to see someone parked on the shoulder. I recognize the familiar Humvee as I near and pull behind it. With its huge wheels, camouflage paint job, and twelve-foot antenna, a beast like this tends to stand out. The Humvee’s owner, Sweeney Soileau, stands off the side of the road, facing the high grass. Tall and lanky as a scarecrow with the creamy brown skin of most Creoles, Sweeney doesn’t turn as I approach, and when I get to his side, I see what he’s focused on. Nestled in the brush is a wounded deer. The doe’s front legs, spindly like sticks, tremble as it struggles to rise. Flattened on the ground, its hindquarters are stained with blood. The deer’s ears twitch as it stares at me with big marble eyes, dark brown like Celeste’s.

  Sweeney pulls off his ratty Saints baseball cap and combs a bony hand through his hair. “What you know ’bout this?”

  “I know it’s not deer season.”

  “I heard that,” Sweeney says. “Damn thing spooked out of her poor mind. Came across her now just a few minutes back.”

  Trailing from the doe to the road is a slick patch of wet redness. Sweeney shakes his head. “What kind of sick-in-the-brain you got to be to not finish this job? It’s not like she run off in the woods and needed tracking. She right on the road when I come by, waiting to die.”

  I think of the Odenkirk boys, maybe out for sport on the eve of disaster, but I don’t offer any names. “You trying to decide what to do?” I ask.

  “No,” Sweeney says, tugging his cap back on. “Ain’t much deciding at this point. Just working up my grit. When a thing has got to be done, it’s best to get on and do it.” With this, he strides back to the Humvee, opens the
door to lean in. When he straightens, he is holding a pistol. He cocks it on his way back to my side. My gut clenches at what’s coming next, and just like with Celeste, I find myself a frozen witness. I don’t even blink as Sweeney levels the gun and shoots the doe cleanly in the head. She collapses. Everything goes still and quiet. He spits into the grass and says, “Hellfire.”

  Even around these parts, Sweeney’s known as a bit of an odd bird. He served in the Army Corps of Engineers and claims to have seen combat in Iraq, though plenty of folks think he’s making that part up. Others maintain the war is precisely what made him like he is, a bit off-kilter. These days, he’s the park ranger at the Chenier Wildlife Sanctuary, which takes up a good chunk of the center of the eastern Shacks.

  He kneels now in the grass by the dead deer, and I can’t tell if he’s praying or checking for signs of life. “I don’t figure this at all. Ain’t a living soul around, and that bullet wound is fresh. Like the last half hour, if you made me guess.”

  “Hard to be sure,” I say. “Sweeney, what exactly were you doing out here driving around?”

  From his knees, he glances up at me. “On patrol. Trouille’s raised the white flag, and the island is unprotected save for yours truly. Something mighty unorthodox is unfolding before us. Know them wild hogs everybody says is gone for good? Yesterday I saw three, in a field just past the Chains, setting together staring at the sun. And this morning, there must have been two dozen hummingbirds at my feeder, but not fighting like you always see them. No, they were taking turns. I never heard such a thing. This hurricane’s got everything all haywire.”