Part 7 (1/2)

”Come get some soup, honey,” their mom said.

The four of them ate in the kitchen. Zola sat on one of the stools by the island, but the rest ate standing up. For Daniel, it was from having been p.r.o.ne so long. He suspected it was also out of abject hunger. He was too famished to take the time to get comfortable; and the noise outside made him feel too revved up to rest. There were three empty cans of vegetable soup by the sink, and after second helpings, the pot was sc.r.a.ped clean. Carlton turned the stove off with a click of the k.n.o.b, and Daniel wondered how many of the canisters they had. His brain was in survival mode.

After the meal, Daniel and Carlton went through the house closing the windows against the rain. The threat of the low pressure sucking off the roof was gone, if indeed there was anything to the myth. Now there was just rain spitting in to soak the carpet and furniture.

Daniel surveyed his room as he fastened the window upstairs. He felt guilty for how untouched it was. The carpet wasn't even all that wet since his room was on the back of the house and out of the direct blow of the wind. Compared to the wreck of Zola's room, it was nothing.

When he and Carlton got back downstairs, his sister and mom were tackling the living room, even as the wind blew a steady thirty or forty miles an hour outside. The gla.s.s had been swept up. With a mop and bucket, they worked on getting the puddles up from the fake hardwood floor. They wrung the mops out by hand and chatted quietly while they worked. Carlton mentioned the radio again, and Daniel retrieved his Zune from the book bag in the bathroom.

The same station came in a little better than before. They were still talking about the storm. Daniel and Carlton took an earbud apiece and listened to the numbers. The storm had reached category five status just before landfall, an upgrade after getting some better wind readings. It was still a category three even with the eye sixty miles inland. A clip from the Governor was played; he was already declaring it a national emergency to open up federal funds. There was talk of an evacuation nightmare as last-minute residents from Charleston had clogged 26 and 601, leaving themselves locked in gridlock traffic while the storm dumped rain and hail on top of them. Even though the station was based in Charleston, the name Beaufort came up over and over again. The eye had pa.s.sed right through the city, nearly at high tide, which had caused ma.s.sive flooding. Power was out for several counties, wrapping up hundreds of thousands in the same sort of living situation Daniel and his family were experiencing. Hearing about the wide swath of damage, at how many were affected, had Daniel thinking of Hunter and Roby and everyone else he knew. Part of him felt a twinge of excitement that school might be out for part of the next week, plunging them right back into an extended summer vacation. An even bigger part of him, however, was dying to be around his peers to hear their stories. There was some guilt to how giddy he felt; perhaps the sensation was as much from the unusual sleep schedule as from the afterglow of surviving something dangerous. He wrestled with the conflicting emotions as he spent the rest of the day's light working around the house mopping up, collecting shards of gla.s.s, and fastening a shower curtain over the blown-out window (which appeared to have been caused by a broken piece of limb, found halfway across the room).

Carlton took Zola up to scavenge more items from her room, which left her in tears once again. There was little to be done to keep the wind and rain out of the room. Carlton grabbed a hammer to beat back some exposed nails where broken bits of roof truss poked down through the shattered sheetrock, just to keep anyone from running into them. Daniel felt like they were all searching desperately for something to do, for some way to burn energy, to beat back the storm, or to save their house and possessions. They had spent nearly a full day cowering and helpless, and now it felt recuperative to do anything at all.

The mood lasted until the sun began to set, which seemed to happen suddenly for summertime; the clouds to the West once again gobbled up the remaining daylight prematurely. The wind continued to blow outside, though abating somewhat each hour. If felt like they'd always lived with it, this new wind. It blew as they ate another meal of soup, the fuel canister on the Coleman sputtering as it emptied. It blew as they congregated back by the hallway to drag blankets and pillows out into more s.p.a.ce. The four of them ended up in the master bedroom, which had remained dry. It wasn't so much for safety-the house seemed to have survived and would not get worse-it was more for comfort. It was to be near each other as Daniel and Zola curled up on the floor and their mom and stepdad took to the bed. The wind continued to blow as they fell into another long, dark, and fitful sleep, the house creaking with aftershocks as the family slumbered.

16.

Daniel was the first to wake the next morning. His mouth felt full of cotton; his head pounded from getting too much sleep. He extricated himself from the knotted tangle of sheets and covers and padded softly across the carpet, out of his mom's bedroom, and through the house.

The quiet outside was unfamiliar and haunting. Once again, the birdsongs were notably absent. The house had also become lifeless. In the perfect stillness, Daniel realized how much residual buzzing he was used to hearing. The refrigerator normally hummed, but he didn't know that until he heard it not humming. The compressor usually clicked now and then, but it hadn't for over a day. There was n.o.body on the family computer; its whirring fans had fallen silent as well. The living room TV was peculiarly quiet. Normally, at all times of day, someone was vying for control of it.

Daniel padded upstairs and changed into a pair of shorts that were already stained from an art cla.s.s project. He grabbed fresh socks and changed into a new t-s.h.i.+rt, then rummaged through his bedside table for his cheapo digital camera. Back downstairs, he grabbed his shoes by the front door and slid them on. He let himself out into the motionless air and heavy calm of Hurricane Anna's wake.

Even though the sun was just coming up, the sky was already bright blue to the east. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, almost as if the storm had swept them all up and dragged them off toward Columbia and North Carolina.

Daniel made his way into the front yard and studied the ma.s.sive tree propped up against the house. The s.h.i.+ngled roof was dented in around the trunk of the tree, the flat plane punctured and demolished. He worked his way through the tangle of branches from another fallen tree to admire the peeled-up root ball of the old giant oak. A wall of soil stood up from the yard, held together by the tree's tangle of roots. Where they had been pried up from the earth, a deep depression lay full of several inches of Anna's rain. The void of the missing roots formed a ma.s.sive bowl, like a giant spoon had descended from the heavens and taken a bite out of their front yard. Daniel fished his inexpensive digital camera out of his pocket and took a picture of the mud-caked wall of roots, marveling at the way the ends had been torn from the violent ripping of the tree's demise. He took a picture of the tree resting against the house, the missing dormer making it appear as if the facade were winking at him. As he panned the camera to take one of the littered yard, he noticed movement in the house. His mom opened the front door and looked out at him, s.h.i.+elding her eyes with a crisp salute.

”I'm gonna look around the neighborhood,” Daniel said, his voice sounding much too loud in the post-storm calm.

”Don't go too far,” his mother said. ”And be back before lunch.”

Daniel waved his consent and turned the camera off to conserve the battery. It was already low, and he realized how poorly he'd planned for the storm. His cell phone, his Zune, his camera, and who knew what else was inadequately charged. As much as Daniel mocked others for being reliant on their gizmos and for having far too many of them, he felt his own connection to that digital pipeline now that it had been ruptured.

The driveway was almost completely free of downed trees, but was lined on either side with crashed and crushed limbs. The long arms of the oaks sagged broken on the ground. The magnolia leaves, waxy and bright green, were tangled everywhere. Daniel strolled past them to the middle of the cul-de-sac and turned to marvel at the destruction. The white and yellowing flash of tree-wound was everywhere visible through the mangled canopy of woods. Each spot of raw and splintered yellow highlighted another limb broken, another trunk snapped in two, another tree destroyed or crippled. And the undergrowth was now a tall field of oddly green branches and bushy leaves. It looked like a blind barber had descended on the neighborhood with a gigantic set of clippers, buzzing the trees at random, making a mess of everything.

Through the tangles, Daniel could see more rootb.a.l.l.s standing up on end like walls of caked mud. Each one had a large tree attached, the trunk resting along the ground and terminating on a jumbled cauliflower of leaves. Somehow, the trees were larger at rest than they had seemed pointing up at the wide sky. Daniel took a picture of one downed tree that had clipped a neighboring tree, slicing it pretty much in half. He saw lots of smaller trees that had fallen, only to be caught in the crook of another tree's arms. These angled trunks stood out everywhere once he looked for them. He powered his camera off and heard a screen door slap shut somewhere. Through the new jungle, he could see the neighbors from across the cul-de-sac walking across their front yard to survey the damage to their own house. Daniel waved when they spotted him. He didn't recognize either one of them and didn't know their names.

He turned away from the heavily wooded cul-de-sac and wandered up the street, fighting the urge to take pictures of everything. Two houses down, the lone tree in an otherwise cleared yard had fallen against a neighbor's house. The thick trunk hadn't made a direct hit, but the ma.s.sive kraken of limbs had ensnared the house. The gutters hung like a twisted, glittering ta.s.sel from the edge of the roof. The front door was completely hemmed in from the crash. Daniel hoped the back door was obstruction free, or the occupants were going to be climbing out windows.

Several of the houses he pa.s.sed stirred with the same sort of early-morning activity: People standing outside in pajamas, some of them clutching steaming mugs, all sporting bewildered eyes. They waved at Daniel and each other, and he marveled at how few of his neighbors he recognized. Somewhere in the distance he heard a chainsaw buzz to life, the throttle worked over and over as it revved up and down with the cough of a machine long asleep. Daniel welcomed this intrusion into the quiet. It was the sound of a thing working and of progress being made. Somewhere, a piece of the littered ground was being cleared. When he looked out at all the incredible damage, he wondered if it would be months or even years before they had a handle on it all.

”Hey you.”

Daniel whirled around and looked for the person calling out.

”Over here.”

Someone by the bushes of the next house was waving at him. Daniel turned and walked toward the house. He noticed a huge swath of s.h.i.+ngles had been ripped from the roof, leaving the black tar paper underneath torn, a layer of raw plywood exposed beneath that. The person by the bushes waved him over hurriedly. Daniel broke into a jog, wondering if someone was hurt. When he got closer, he saw the person was kneeling down by a solar panel, an open toolbox by her feet. It was difficult to peg the girl's age. She had her hair tied back and covered with a red bandana; her face was plain and young-looking with no makeup.

”Can you hold something for me?”

Daniel shrugged. ”Sure. I guess.”

He bent down and studied what she was doing. She immediately went back to work, not bothering to introduce herself. Daniel found the behavior odd and somehow intriguing.

”There's not enough wire to twist together, so I need you to hold it while I solder them.” She pointed to the two pieces of wire, one of them sticking out of the base of the solar panel, the other coming from a stripped wire that led to a small black box.

”Okay,” Daniel said. ”I'm Daniel, by the way.”

”That's awesome,” she said. ”Just hold that one right there so it overlaps with the bit of wire coming out of the red part.”

”What're you fixing?” Daniel grabbed the one wire and held it close to the small piece of wire coming out of the solar panel. Tracing the severed cord leading away from the panel, he saw that it headed out toward a row of landscaping lights scattered among the bushes and aimed back at the house. He wondered why it would be urgent to get the mood lighting going in the middle of the morning, right after a major storm.

”I'm not fixing anything,” the girl said. ”I'm making something.” She held up a small wand-like device that had a butane cartridge shoved in one end. The thing hissed, and smoke curled from the tip. With her other hand, she held a coil of silver wire, one end of it straightened and sticking out like an index finger from a fist. She dabbed the smoking tip of the wand against the coil of wire and some of it melted and coated the end of the device. She then bent close to the solar panel and touched the wand and the wire to the connection Daniel was making. With a few deft touches-her hands were much more still and confident than Daniel's-the joint was made solid, a bright touch of solder reflecting the morning light before it cooled and lost its sheen.

”See if that's gonna hold.”

Daniel tugged the wires, and they held fast.

”One more,” she said, pointing to another pair that had been stripped back. Daniel was sad there was only one more to do.

”What exactly are you making?” he asked.

”A very weak power station. I think.” She smiled up at him before leaning close and coating the wires with another neat connection. Daniel waited for the solder to dull as before, then tested it.

”You're good with that.”

”My dad's into radios,” she said, as if that explained how she had become proficient as well. She twisted a k.n.o.b on the soldering iron and set it on a stand propped up in the gra.s.s. She pulled out a roll of black electrical tape and began covering the new connections with tight coils. ”My name's Anna, by the way.” She smirked up at him. ”I'm thinking of changing it.”

Daniel laughed. ”Yeah, that's not gonna be the most popular of names for a while.” He rested back on his heels and watched her work. ”What's your middle name?”

”Florence.”

She laughed, and Daniel joined in.

”That's no good either,” he said.

”I know, right? That's a name I'm keeping in the wings until I'm seventy or something.”

”Definitely a name to grow into.”

She put the tape away and moved to the small black box. After adjusting a k.n.o.b on it, she flicked a switch and a dim red light glowed. She pulled a multimeter from the toolbox and unwrapped the pair of red and black wires from around it.

”What's this gonna do?” Daniel asked. He couldn't see the solar panel running anything huge, like a fridge or a coffee maker.