Into the Hurricane

by Neil Connelly

  “Sweeney,” I say, “the iron bridge is going up at five. The sheriff told you that, right? Everybody is leaving the island. It’s going to get flooded by the storm.”

  He flashes me a smile. “Not my place. I’ll guarantee that and sign my name.”

  Sweeney lives at the center of the wildlife sanctuary in a cabin raised up on I-beams set in concrete. I made a house call to his tree fort back in the spring to fit a new motherboard into a Frigidaire that wouldn’t stay cold. “You ready to bet your life on that?” I say.

  He seems to consider this for a moment, then returns his attention to the deer carcass. “Something’s entirely wrong about this. Entirely. You ever seen an entry wound like that?”

  I take a step closer and bend. The bloody hole where the bullet entered the deer’s hindquarters looks the same as every other entry wound I’ve ever seen. But I’m not sure Sweeney’s interested in hearing my version of reality. “What are you thinking?”

  His eyes tighten in thought, and suddenly he rises, cocking his gun and loading another bullet into the chamber. He scans the empty road and then the gray sky. “The Feds have got drones. Damn fast and quiet as a bad intention.”

  “Drones?” I say. “Those helicopter things with the cameras?”

  “Sometimes they got more than cameras,” he says, sparing me a warning glance. “Trust a man who knows.”

  “Why would the government want to kill a deer?” I ask, realizing too late my insulting tone.

  But if Sweeney heard it, he doesn’t care. Attached to his belt, a walkie-talkie crackles static, and he listens closely. The garbled message ends. Content that we’re not under attack, he relaxes. I feel just a bit bad for saying what I’m about to, but Sweeney’s got no business staying in harm’s way.

  “Maybe you could take the deer up north,” I say. “To a lab or something.”

  He nods deeply. “That’s not half a bad idea. They’d have a hard time disputing scientific evidence.”

  “Right,” I say. “Good point.” I’m not sure who “they” is, but it doesn’t matter.

  “I might just could do that,” Sweeney says. “Give me a hand.”

  Together we load the deer onto the hood of his Humvee, secure it with rope. While helping him, I have to stand on the bumper, and I almost slip on the winch attached to the front grille. I helped him use it once to pull a tourist’s minivan from a culvert. Once we’re done, Sweeney shakes my hand. “I’m glad you come by when you did, Eli. You’re a good kid. I don’t believe none of what everybody says about you.”

  I pump his hand and say thanks, then watch him climb into his truck and loop around on the road. He lays on the horn as he drives away, and he raises a fist out the window, an act I’m not sure how to interpret.

  After he’s gone, I go back to my bike and realize that Sweeney never asked me the most obvious question—what are you still doing here?

  A light rain begins, and again I head west on Infinity Road, and in just a few minutes, I reach the Chains. Slowing, I pass the tree where somebody nailed a sign up: DON’T EVEN TRY GOING ACROSS IF SOMEBODY’S COMING. YOU GOT TO WAIT! I head down a fifteen-foot slope like a boat ramp, leading to the quarter-mile stretch of land that links the eastern Shacks to the western. The road itself is no wider than a single lane, with the gulf on one side and the intercostal on the other. Certain times of year, the road washes out during high tide, so I’m not surprised to find the ocean already pushing waves up over the sides, rolling across the cracked blacktop. I take my crossing slow and steady, keeping my tires on the yellow dotted line whenever I can see it through the water.

  On the far side, I scoot up the ramp and zip along for a couple miles till I pass the old fort where Celeste used to tell me tales of long-ago battles. When I near that oak just off the shoulder, I try not to look, but my eyes betray me. The damage has healed up over the years, and there’s no evidence of the crash. But my mind calls forth a ghostly mirage, and I see Celeste’s red truck crumpled into the tree. There I am behind the wheel, twelve years old with a bloody forehead.

  I’m glad now to keep going. Not far past the oak, I come up on the lighthouse. Lucy stands tall and dignified in the thin rain. I park my bike in the gravel lot, among the sprouting weeds and the rippling puddles. The cyclone fence is fifteen feet high, put up on my dad’s insistence after what happened with Celeste. At the gate, I swing my backpack off my shoulder and read the faded notice about the property being closed to the public for safety reasons. There’s also an address where to send donations to help preserve this historical treasure for future generations. An old rusted chain loops through the giant fence and the gate. I drop my pack and unzip it. I spread the bolt cutter’s metal jaw and fix it on one of the links, press my grip together so it chews through the steel. Once I finally break through, I need to unwind the chain, which ends up being longer than I am tall. I drop it clanking on the gravel, where it coils like a metal snake.

  The actual door to the lighthouse rotted out long ago, leaving only a stony archway. My flashlight casts a white ball of illumination and a spooky glow onto the stone steps that curl along the inside wall. As I climb, I shine the light down on the stairs and listen to the echo of my footsteps. About a third the way up, and then again near the top, I pass tall rectangular windows with the glass blown out, leaving only huge iron frames that remind me of crosses. The slanting rain makes the steps slick near the windows, and the wind rushes through the openings. Up near the very top, I come across a musty smell and some spray-painted graffiti on the curved rock wall. “Shax 4 Life!” one reads. Another proclaims “Heather Loves Blake!”

  I sit on one of the last steps and set the flashlight down, aimed up into a square-shaped opening. Used to be you just climbed through there and were in the crow’s nest, but now they’ve got it blocked off with this sort of metal trapdoor. One more project for the bolt cutters. The thick curve of the lock takes more work than the chains did, but after a bit of effort, I finally chew my way through, and it drops away into the darkness. I hear it clatter down the stairs to the ground two hundred feet below.

  Even with the lock gone, the door’s awful heavy, and I need to shove up hard—shoulders first—to flip the dang thing up and over on the hinges. I climb up into the rustling air of the crow’s nest, the round room that caps the lighthouse.

  Dead center in the middle of the circle is a thick stump of concrete, all that remains of the base of the actual light. All the windows here are long gone, so the soft rain coming in cools my skin. Looking south, I see the open gulf, normally flat as a sheet of glass. Right now it’s a series of small white-tipped waves curling toward shore and crashing over the wall of rocks they dumped a quarter mile out to prevent erosion. Way past that barrier, beneath the covering of gray clouds, the horizon curves softly. That’s one of the things I love most about being up here—you can see straight to the edge of the world. Nothing can sneak up on you. Or so you’d think.

  The Sabine River, which splits Louisiana from Texas, empties just west of here, and when I look south to the horizon, a half-dozen oil rigs rise out of the ocean. To the east, up past the Chains and halfway to the rigs, I see the Capricornia, a paddle-wheel gambling boat. She’s sitting in about ten feet of water, depending on the tide. Back at the beginning of the summer, on its way up to Lake Charles from over in Gulfport, the Capricornia’s engine erupted. Rudderless and aflame, the boat drifted till it ran aground in the shallows. Apparently, there’s a lawsuit about who has the responsibility to haul the boat’s wreckage away. Pretty good bet that won’t be a problem after tonight.

  From here, the only sign of civilization is the water tower, so far east it’s just a tiny egg on stilts. I can picture at its base our little downtown, the courthouse, Cormier’s Grocery, Zeb’s Gas ’n’ Geaux, St. Jude’s, and that fancy new sporting goods store.

  I try to keep my eyes from sliding down, letting them roam everywhere but the place I want to see least. Finally, though, they track down to the rocks
piled up at the base of the lighthouse on the beach side. This was the last place I saw Celeste alive, and it’s no shock to see her standing there now, looking up at me, whole and unbroken. Like I figured she would, she came to watch, maybe to be a witness herself. Maybe today I can finally give her peace, and her spirit can move on. I listen in my mind for one of her nasty comments, but nothing comes. Maybe there’s no point, seeing as how she’s getting what she wants at last.

  I drop my backpack and dig a hand inside to fish out the last of our beachcombing treasures. I set them in my other palm: the spiraling white seashell shaped like a cone, the green piece of glass worn smooth by the sea, the striped nautilus big as a half-dollar, and the bright blue feather of a bird I never could identify. I lift the spiral seashell, hold it over the rusty railing, and release it. It drops away into nothingness, down toward where Celeste waits on the rocks. I figure that the green piece of glass, which is slightly larger and heavier, might make more of an impact, something I can see at least. But when I let it go, it too just seems to vanish from view, swallowed by the air before it can crash. The nautilus curves like a tiny hurricane, or the lighthouse stairs. When I tilt my palm and let gravity take it, the same thing happens—it just turns invisible middrop. And it’s a crazy notion that settles in me, but maybe when I fall, I’ll just fade away. Maybe the emptiness I feel at my core will finally spread out and the molecules of my body will come apart from each other and I’ll disappear. That doesn’t sound so terrible.

  Last I hold the feather, four inches long and dark blue. I know what’s next, and maybe I linger a bit. As I’m hesitating, Celeste sends a rush of wind, trying to yank the feather from my grip. She’s staring up at me in the gentle rain, so light I can barely feel it now. It’ll be okay, I hear her say, sweet and coaxing. Just come on.

  I extend my arm over the rail, with the simplest resolve: When the feather hits the ground, or when I can’t see it anymore, I’ll slip under the rusty rail and follow it.

  The moment I release the blue feather, the storm snaps it up. The feather twists into the air, fluttering like a butterfly. It’s a freakish wind, something on the edge of supernatural, and it floats the feather around the lighthouse. I follow it along the curve of the crow’s nest. Only on the northern side does it finally start to ease its way down to earth. My eyes stay with it only for an instant, though, because a rattling mechanical sound steals my attention. Out on Infinity Road, a quarter mile to the east, a vehicle is approaching fast. Even at this distance, I can tell that muffler needs replacing. Its choking complaint gets louder, echoing over the flat marshland.

  The red Jeep pulls into the parking lot, right next to my motorcycle, and the engine and the muffler’s growl cut off. The driver’s side door swings open and out climbs a tall girl—a real one, no ghost. She glares up at me with her hands posted on her hips, clearly ticked at my presence. At first, I think her hair is colored crazy, but quickly I decide it’s got to be a hat or something. What kind of girl would dye her hair green?

  WE STUDY EACH OTHER FOR A GOOD BIT, ME ON THE platform and the girl down below. She leaves her Jeep and crosses through the fence’s unlocked gate, then plants herself right below me by the entrance. I can’t quite decide if she’s real, ’cause I can’t figure any reason why anybody would be crazy enough to be at the lighthouse now. If she’s some sort of spirit like Celeste, she’s an angry one. Even from two hundred feet up, she looks pissed something fierce. But that’s not my problem. I came here on a mission of sorts, and spectators weren’t invited.

  After a bit of this stalemate, both of us just staring at each other, I wave her off, giving her the universal “go away” sign. Either she doesn’t understand or she’s redefining stubborn. With both hands cupped to her mouth, she hollers something, but by the time the sound reaches me, the words are lost. I shake my head with an exaggerated motion so she knows her message didn’t get through. I try waving her away again, this time with both hands, as if I’m shooing an animal. I yell, “Get lost!”

  She raises one hand. From this distance, I can’t be absolutely certain, but I think she just gave me the finger.

  I recall my backpack and yank an apple out. At the railing, I cock my arm, take aim, and hurl it her way. Just before it beans her, she jumps clear, and the apple smashes to bits in the rocky gravel. The girl turns to the pulverized fruit, back up my way, and then she charges toward the stairs.

  From up here on the platform, I can hear her pounding up the winding steps. I’m surprised, and a little impressed, that she’s not slowing down in the blackness. I don’t see the beam of any flashlight, so she’s making her way in thick shadows. As she nears the top, her footsteps grow louder and I can hear her breathing hard. Rather than slamming that metal door on her, I back up when she comes into the rounded room, and I’m surprised that, yeah, that hair on her head is neon green. Short and spiky. On top of that, she’s got tiny metal balls popping out both sides of her nose. She’s winded, sucking air, but even with her hands on her knees I can tell she’s tall. Soon as she catches her breath she says, “All right, jackweed, what exactly is your major malfunction?”

  Her accent tells me she’s not from anywhere within a thousand miles of here. “I’m looking at my only problem,” I say. “Tell me something—all the clowns at the circus you ran away from got green hair?”

  She straightens up to her full height, nearly half a head taller than me. “You’ll have to get in line if you want to make fun of my hair.” With her fingertips, she fluffs up the spikes along her forehead. Her nails are painted black.

  I ask, “What the heck are you doing here?”

  She looks around the crow’s nest, as if she only now realizes just where she is. When her eyes find the ocean, they kind of glaze over. I can tell she’s instantly someplace else—she takes this long, deep inhale and tightens her lips—but she pulls herself back. “I got business to attend to. How about you like climb back on that sorry antique scooter down below and putter off into the sunset?”

  “That sorry bike’s a 1987 Ducati Indiana with a 650 cc engine. Probably the only one you’ll ever see.”

  She glances over her shoulder. “Look, peewee, I got a long list of things I care about, and the engine on your cycle sure as hell ain’t one of them. You up here trying to earn a Boy Scout badge or something?”

  I shake my head. “Don’t trouble yourself about why I’m here.”

  As if it to insert herself in the conversation, Celeste blasts a wind so strong it rattles the roof.

  The girl glances up. “This thing safe?”

  “For now,” I say, “but I can’t make any promises.”

  She cracks half a smile. Like she’s an engineer making an inspection, she circles the curved balcony of the crow’s nest, one hand running along the empty metal frames of the observation booth. Her face mellows a bit, and I realize she’s kind of cute when she’s not all ticked off. She says, “This isn’t like I remembered.”

  Now I know where her mind drifted to before. “They’ve had this place locked up for a while. That memory’s got to be pretty old.”

  “Eight, nine years,” she says. “I was here with my dad.”

  “Camping? Fishing?”

  She throws me a look. “Ghost hunting. We started over in New Orleans, where he grew up, and we ended up doing a three-day tour of the state’s best haunting grounds.”

  This mention of spirits makes me glance down to the rocks. Celeste is walking down the beach, away from me. I wonder where she’s going for a second, then turn back to the tall girl. “Weird family vacation. You all find anything?”

  She shrugs. “Nothing but what we wanted to.”

  I’m not sure what that means, so I say, “My name’s Eli.”

  She nods. “I’m Max. Only make a joke if you’re really sure I’ve never heard it before.”

  Several come to me, but I ask instead, “What’s that short for?”

  “Maxine. Go ahead and call me that if you want to lose a few
teeth.”

  I can’t help but laugh, and Max makes a tight-lipped smile. I point to the slits along her pants, openings wide enough to show skin, and ask, “What happened to your jeans?”

  “I bought ’em this way.”

  “Full price?”

  Her smile broadens. “Are you this island’s number one wiseass?”

  “Pretty much. But I’m not native grown. I’m a transplant from Houston.” I point out to the distant horizon, the oil platforms. “See those rigs? My dad’s job moved us here when I was a kid.”

  She curls her lip and says, “Fossil fuels are killing our planet.”

  “Everybody this friendly where you’re from? Where’s home for you anyway?”

  “Home?” she asks, and inhales kind of sharply. She wipes at her forehead. “I came down from New Jersey.”

  Another gale rattles the tower, this one strong enough that we each grip the railing. We step back inside the round room where the beacon used to be and sit side by side, backs against the curved wall. Max says, “I do feel kind of weird. That final stretch of driving was like nine hours straight, and I don’t really remember the last time I ate.”

  I offer her an apple and a granola bar from my pack, which she accepts without thanks. She munches in silence, then asks if I have anything else. I pass her a water bottle and tell her to finish it off.

  After she’s done, she tosses me the empty and says, “That feels better. I appreciate it.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  She gets to her feet, a little unsteady but then gaining strength. She runs a hand along the iron frame of an absent window, looks up at the ceiling. “This old girl’s got good bones. Whoever built her did her right.”

  Without making it a history lesson, I tell her about the Mexican prisoners, as well as the ill-fated preservation project the locals tried to fund. She listens closely, and when I finish, she says, “It’s a shame they’re letting her fall to pieces. Restoring her would be pretty awesome.”