Into the Hurricane

by Neil Connelly

  “Oh,” Max says. “Well, that sounds bad.”

  “Pretty much bad as bad can be. That’s why we’ve got to get you off this island.”

  Max wonders why Eli doesn’t include himself in the evacuation plans, but she holds her silence, something she’s become an expert at. With nothing to do, she instinctively reaches into her pocket for her cell phone, then remembers that not only is it still in the Jeep, its battery is dead. It gave out at a rest stop she’d pulled into outside Mobile, Alabama. Groggy and exhausted from fifteen hours on the highway, she cranked back her seat and closed her eyes.

  Then her cell phone hummed. Angie again, this time at 4:00 a.m. Max had seven messages she’d ignored and one blinking bar of power. She let it ring and passed out. When she woke two hours later, the screen stayed black. Max bought some stale coffee and hit the road. Now she wonders what was in those messages. Trying to avoid these unpleasant thoughts, she turns to the mossy stone walls and asks Eli, “So what kind of place is this supposed to be now?”

  “Old Spanish fort. Used to be a high wall along the beachfront and a tall watchtower. At one point, they even had cannons, or at least that’s what they’ll tell you if you pay six bucks for the guided tour. With the beach erosion and all, it mostly collapsed a while back. Nature is patient, but sooner or later, she swallows pretty much whatever she lays her eyes on.”

  Max can’t help thinking of her last glimpse of her father, the tubes in his arms and the beeping machines and his lips dry to the point of cracking.

  “So what’s your plan?” Eli asks.

  Max is glad to leave the hospital. “Plan for what?”

  “The Odenkirks. You just going to ask nicely to have your Jeep returned? Way they were eyeing it up, they’ve got some need for it, so it’s unlikely they’ll just hand it over.”

  “I don’t need the Jeep,” Max says. “Just got to steal back what’s in it.”

  “Right,” Eli says. He looks down at the half-eaten granola bar in his hand. “Your, uh, your dad.”

  Max nods.

  “Any chance you’d care to explain that a bit? Just for those of us who can’t read minds?”

  Max shoots him a look, but he’s flashing her a sort of hopeful smile, and it drains the heat from her anger. “I’m talking about his ashes. Like his ashes after he got cremated.”

  “He’s dead?” Eli says, then, “sorry, that was stupid. I didn’t know what you meant.”

  “I stole the urn from the funeral home,” Max offers, a little proudly. “My stepmom, Angie, probably had a galactic shit fit.”

  Eli considers her and says, “A galactic shit fit seems called for. How come you brought it all the way out here?”

  Max makes circles in a puddle with her one sneaker. “Already told you. We visited here once, long time back. Spent two nights at a fleabag motel called Kajun Komforts.”

  “Komforts got torn down winter before last,” Eli says casually. “Still, retracing a road trip in a hurricane sounds kind of crazy. What makes that lighthouse so special?”

  She offers the same story she told Clayborne back at the funeral home. “On my father’s deathbed, he made me promise I’d bring his ashes to the lighthouse. It was his dying wish.”

  Eli winces and says only, “Damn.” Then there’s just the slosh of rain against the stony walls.

  Max looks at Eli. “You think I’m still crazy for coming here?”

  Eli rises now. “Maybe a little bit, yeah. Could have waited till the storm passed. But mostly it sounds like you’re being a good daughter, or some close approximation.”

  She’s surprised how these words swell her heart. She’s been wanting, maybe needing, to hear someone declare her a good daughter. Even if it’s based on a lie.

  Extending his hand, Eli says, “Rain’s easing up. Let’s get to it.” His voice is full of heroic resolve, but Max ignores his hand and stands on her own. Eli turns and starts walking, and she wonders what he’d think of her as a daughter if he knew the whole story, about the arguments she had with Angie, the fight that made the neighbors call the cops, the stunt she pulled to ruin their wedding.

  Max hustles to catch up to him on the gravel road, sloshing out of the water up onto drier land. The rain and wind have abated, and the sky has a few streaks of bruised blue.

  “Okay, so I told you my deal,” she says. “Now how about you tell me what you were doing up on that lighthouse?”

  Eli turns his face to look at Max but keeps walking. He shifts his eyes back to the road and says, “Nope.”

  Max wants to ask too about what Judge said, about Eli being messed up in the head, but that will also clearly have to wait. They walk in silence for a while, side by side. She’s glad Eli mentioned that Kajun Komforts got totaled. Driving in this morning, she got a little lost in town and was sure she’d stumbled across the location of the old hotel, but in its place was a modern monstrosity, a big, gaudy building shaped like a castle that sold sporting goods. She recalls that final leg of the long trek south with her father, when they retreated from the world after her mother’s departure. Each day they’d visit some crappy tourist trap, acting like any other vacationing sightseers. At night, in cheap hotels, they’d watch old movies while Max’s dad cracked beer can after beer can till he passed out. Max fell asleep to the TV’s glow, afraid to be alone with her thoughts. That whole week, they never spoke a word about her mom, not until the lighthouse.

  The cloudless sky outside the crow’s nest was the blue of a robin’s egg. They gazed together at the sun setting over the distant Texas horizon. Max’s dad said, “It’s nice up here, the way you can see all around. No surprises. And it’s peaceful and quiet. A place like this would be as good a spot as any to have your ashes scattered.”

  Max knew the time was right to ask the question that had been hounding her. “Mom’s not coming back, is she?”

  Her dad shook his head. “It’s just us now.”

  He turned to her, and she slid inside his thick arms, planting her cheek against his chest. Then the tears came for both of them, not great heaving sobs but quiet, like a release. Max told him, “Just us doesn’t sound so horrible.”

  Her dad pulled back, wiped at his eyes, and smiled. “Just us is going to be awesome. I promise.”

  Max nodded her agreement. And somehow, she sees bringing his ashes back to that place as a fulfillment of that promise. Just us. When they left the lighthouse, he drove them back home to New Jersey to begin restoring the life they’d lost. Her dad started taking her along on renovation jobs, showing her how to properly handle everything from a socket wrench to a miter saw. After school and on weekends, she helped him salvage properties others wanted to demolish. At night, he began drinking ginger ale instead of Budweiser. When Angie, whom he met later at an AA meeting, first came by their house, Max was happy for him. She didn’t yet realize that Angie had come to steal her father.

  Without warning, Eli stops suddenly. He glances toward the ocean and then inland. “All right,” he says. “This is where things get interesting. Up ahead there’s a dirt path that leads to the Odenkirks, but likely as not they’ll see us coming if we head straight in. You up for some bushwhacking?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Not if you want to get what’s in that Jeep.”

  Together they cut across an open field of high grass, with the ground gradually growing less and less solid. As she and Eli near a forest, their feet sink into the mud, so with each step, it takes effort to tug them free. It’s like the earth itself is trying to hold Max back. She keeps thinking at the forest they’ll find drier ground, but when they reach its edge, she sees the strange truth. The trees sprout from what looks to her like a small lake, with knobby roots jutting out along the muddy shore. About twenty feet from them, something shuffles at the base of one of the trees, and some creature slides into the water and swims away, leaving a V in its wake.

  “What’s that?” Max asks, stepping behind Eli just a bit.

  He s
ays, “Nutria. Sort of like a raccoon-sized rat. Won’t bother us if we don’t bother it. We’ll cut through these cypress and come up on the far side of the Odenkirk compound, if I’m right.”

  “Compound?” Max says.

  Eli hesitates. He kicks a stick out into the water and says, “Where they live, it’s kind of hard to explain. My mom told me that way back when—before World War II—there used to be a whole village back in those woods called Evermore. Some hard-core God-fearing religious families came south from Kansas, wanted to be secluded from the evils of society, that kind of thing. They called it a religious community.”

  “Sounds like a cult.”

  “Yeah. Anyway, sixty years ago, Hurricane Audrey washed through Cameron Parish, drowned most of the folks in Evermore, and sent the survivors north. For a while, nobody lived out there, but a couple decades back, Mother Evangeline and her brothers showed up with their families, claimed they were descendants, and set about reclaiming what was left. From all accounts, it didn’t work out so good.”

  “What’s that mean?” Max asks.

  “A fire killed one of her brothers and his wife. Another brother took off after his wife when she ran off. Neither one came back. Both cases, kids got left behind with Mother Evangeline. I also heard her husband got real sick, but she refused to have a doctor come out, said the Lord would provide, and he died. Fact of the matter is, most folks say that woman’s crazy as a June bug in July.”

  Max can’t tell exactly what that means, but she knows it isn’t good. When she’s quiet for a few seconds, Eli bends to retie the laces of his boots. “Might want to be sure yours’re on good and tight.”

  Max follows his lead.

  Once he stands and wades into the water, he extends a hand back for Max and says, “Watch your step now.”

  “I’m fine,” she says. “What’s with you and wanting to hold my hand?” As she descends, the dark water rises quickly up past her knees, and her feet squish in the mucky bottom. “Anything dangerous in this water?”

  “Like snakes and alligators?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Only everywhere.”

  As she walks, Max’s eyes keep darting back and forth. Even though the rain isn’t coming down too hard just now, it’s enough to splatter the surface of the water. She’s convinced she sees eyes in the bumps of a drifting log. A long tall bird, angelic white, bends its curved neck above its watery reflection, then plunges its beak straight down. When it pulls back, there’s a tiny fish flipping in its grasp.

  Not long after, Max goes to lift her back foot and finds it won’t move. She tugs and twists a bit, then hears Eli, who has stopped ahead of her. “Don’t force it.”

  “But I can’t move,” she tells him, trying not to let on how freaked out she’s getting.

  “Hang on,” he says. “Trust me, you don’t want to be barefoot out here.” He slides the backpack off his shoulder and hands it to her. Then he puts both hands on her immobile leg. She can feel his fingers working down her thigh, and he kneels slowly into the fetid water. He has to lift his chin to keep it above the surface, and now his hands take hold of her ankle. “Gentle now,” he says. “Keep your foot in that shoe for sure. Easy up.”

  Together they pull, and her foot refuses to budge. For an instant, Max imagines herself trapped here in this swampy forest, and her heart accelerates. “Just dig it out!” she insists.

  “Stay calm.” She feels Eli’s thumbs cram down inside the lip of her sneaker. “Try again.” Even the second effort brings no movement, initially. But then with a great heave she’s free, and she stumbles back to catch her balance.

  When they start walking again, he stretches out his hand, and this time she takes it. It’s clammy and cool, but she’s glad to have it to hold.

  Max loses track of time as they slog along, with Eli guiding her through the cypress maze. At last they reach the far side, and the muddy ground angles up toward the shore. Right where water meets land, Max spies a makeshift dock and a long, skinny canoe. Eli holds up an open hand, scans the area, then leans in. “One of the Odenkirks’ pirogues. Stay quiet. Stay close.”

  She nods, and they pick their way through the knobby roots along the bank. Her soaked jeans stick to her skin, and her sneakers are covered in muck, squishing with each step. Up on land, they follow a waterway that runs from the cypress swamp, an inlet where the water is free of trees.

  Just after they come around one bend, an acrid stink curls Max’s nose. She sniffs and turns to see something in the air above the bayou. Hanging from a chain looped over a low branch, just a foot above the surface, is a wet carcass of fur and flesh and bone. Flies swarm around the rotting meat. She gags and covers her mouth, turning away and lurching to all fours. The muscles clench in her gut, but she holds steady.

  “The hell is that?” she asks.

  Eli takes a knee at her side and drapes an arm over her shoulder. In a low voice, he says, “Used to be a nutria. The Odenkirks must be hunting gator ahead of the season.”

  “With that?” Max asks.

  “Gators don’t care much for fresh meat. As scavengers, they’d just as soon go after something already wounded or outright dead. Stinkier the better. Even when they catch something, they set the dead body under a log to rot for a few days. Makes it easier to tear up and digest. So that bait’s a real treat. Gator’ll come along, balance up on a tail, and snap it down. Won’t know about the big hook inside or that there chain, attached to the base of the cypress. Later on, Odenkirks come by, see the bait’s been taken. All they got to do is tug on the chain and wait with a gun.”

  “Doesn’t seem very sporting.”

  “It’s how everybody does it.”

  “Everybody? Like even you?”

  Eli nods. “Sure. Since I was nine. You gonna call PETA or something? You’re in the Shacks now. You’ve got to change the way you’re thinking.”

  “I’m thinking I’m crazy being out here.”

  Eli chuckles. “I’m glad you’re starting to see the light.”

  Max falls silent. She sits back and focuses on her stomach, which feels settled. After a minute, steadying herself with an arm on Eli’s shoulder, she rises up. But as she stands, her eyes fall on something that makes her gasp. Still gripping Eli’s shoulder, she squeezes twice. “Eli,” she whispers.

  He stands too and follows her gaze twenty feet into the woods, where a pair of huge hogs studies them with unblinking eyes. Eli says just one word, quiet and low. “Razorbacks.”

  The boars are brown-black beasts, the bigger one the size of a small bear. Even in the rain, clouds of breath mist from their open mouths. Jagged white tusks, dirty and crooked, jut up from their lower jaws, extending on either side of their snouts and wrinkling their lips into snarls. A line of prickly hair sprouts from each forehead and runs the length of their backbones. There’s something wrong with the face of the larger one, and Max decides it must have been burned sometime because the flesh there seems melted.

  She holds very still, since that’s what Eli’s doing, and says, “Why exactly are we not running like hell?”

  Slowly, Eli turns his head side to side. He reaches for her hand and slides his fingers around hers. “Better to help them figure out we’re not what they’re smelling. Come on over with me real easy.”

  They shuffle to the side, away from the nutria carcass, and the burned razorback raises its snout and sniffs the stale air. When it grunts and starts toward them, Max tries to bolt, but Eli holds her fast. “If we walk away, they won’t follow. Run, and it’s their instinct to chase.”

  With that, they slowly back farther away, and the hogs advance to the water’s edge, where they lift their heads and stare at the bait, out of range. “Keep coming,” Eli says. After a few more steps, they turn around, saying nothing. Max is just beginning to feel some sliver of relief when the silence behind them is cracked by a strange sound, the distant barking of dogs. It pierces the swamp air like an alarm. Together Max and Eli turn to the razorba
cks, fifty yards away and startled, charging now right at them.

  “Go, go, go!” Eli shouts, and he sprints into the woods. Max follows, her eyes searching for a tree with branches low enough to climb. But these trees aren’t like the ones back home. Each stark column has no purchase for twenty feet or more. Eli turns again, now circling back in the direction of the riotous barking, and Max can’t waste the breath to ask what he’s doing. She can hear the razorbacks snorting behind them and gaining ground. But she keeps her eyes straight ahead, and over Eli’s shoulder she sees the pack now, a quartet of lanky thin hounds, bounding across the terrain. They snap their jaws and sprint in their direction, locked onto the hogs.

  Eli, still running, glances back at her and says, “Don’t get between ’em.”

  Max has no time to warn Eli. Judgment Odenkirk, thick as a tree himself, steps out from behind a cypress dead in their path. He swings something in his hands, and it connects with Eli’s half-turned face. The sound is sickening, like a baseball caught flush by a home-run bat. Eli crumbles, and Max barely stops herself from tumbling over him.

  Judge’s eyes don’t go to Max’s face but fix tightly behind her. They narrow as he swiftly repositions the rifle on his shoulder and says flatly, “Git down.”

  Max drops just as the gunshot explodes. She covers her head, and there’s a second report. The dogs swarm over her, and she feels their paws pouncing on her back. When she lifts her face, her ears are ringing. Next to her, Eli’s eyes are closed, and blood wells from his forehead. She looks up at the Odenkirk boy, who holds the rifle at his side now. He’s focused beyond her still, and when she follows his gaze, she sees one slumped hog, motionless, and beside it a writhing mass of claws and teeth. The four dogs, sinewy with thin muscle, are locked in combat with the remaining razorback, which swings its head to gouge the hounds. One leaps in and locks on a leg, and another jumps onto the hog’s back, then sinks its teeth into the rear of its neck. The razorback whinnies and bucks, like a bronco trying to ditch a rider. With one tusk, it catches a dog in the side, tossing it yelping into the brush.