The Hurricane

22

After thanking Edward and Anna for the incredible meal and helping scrape the dishes into their compost bucket, Daniel gathered his newly charged devices and headed home. He felt a bounce in his step, even as he powered on the Zune and listened to radio chatter about the worst hurricane since Katrina. They were still talking about the landfall being “near Charleston,” which Daniel supposed gave the outside world the best geographical context. He was guilty of doing the same when he was out of town and people asked him where he was from. “Near Charleston,” he would say. And that was precisely where hurricane Anna had struck.

He turned up his driveway and looked toward the sound of the buzzing chainsaw, expecting to find Carlton wielding it, but it was his dad. Daniel steered his direction and pulled his ear buds out. He stepped over yet another tree that awaited transmutation into firewood.

His dad cut partway through a log, rolled it over with his shoe, then sliced through the rest. As the stubby cylinder rolled away from the tree, he killed the saw, which came to a rattling stop.

“Back already?” His father set the chainsaw down and pulled a rag from his back pocket. He wiped the sweat from his face and the back of his neck, a gesture that yanked Daniel through the years to a long ago past. He pictured his dad with his shirt off, a tool belt slung low over one hip, a rectangular pencil tucked behind an ear, a ten-penny nail held between pursed and concentrating lips, a hammer wielded like a dexterous extension of his flesh—

Daniel had no idea if his dad had been sober back then, but in his mind he had been capable of anything. He looked past his father to the house he had built with a few friends, a massive tree crashed right through the roof. One dormer was crushed, the other standing. Before, the house had appeared to be winking, now it looked more like it had suffered a blow, like it had a black eye. It had gone from something happy to something that needed stitches.

“Your mom put together some fine sandwiches if you’re still hungry,” his dad said.

“I filled up on salad, if you can believe that.” Daniel patted his stomach. “Is everyone still eating?”

“I think they’re working on your sister’s room and the living room.” He waved his hand at the yard. “This feels productive out here, but it ain’t really that necessary. It’s just busy work to keep from thinking on all else we can’t do.”

“Well, the Reddings down the street are gonna take their four by four to see if the roads are clear. I was wondering if we could borrow the chainsaw. They’ve got a chain and some other stuff to help move trees.”

His dad knelt by the chainsaw and opened a black cap. He leaned the machine to the side. “Let me top up the bar oil for you. You should take the gas can as well. Fill ’er up if anyone out there is pumping.”

He went to the tall pile of neatly stacked logs and grabbed a green container from the top. A thick, molasses-like oil dripped from it and into the chainsaw. “You know how to crank and use this thing?”

“I’m hoping Edwa—that mister Redding does,” Daniel said. “I’m mostly going along ’cause they said we could see if the roads were clear all the way to Hunter’s girlfriend’s house. I’m thinking they must be blocked in for him not to have come home yet, especially since he knows he has the only car.”

His dad put the cap back on the oil canister and tightened the plug on the chainsaw. He stood up and pulled his handkerchief from his back pocket again, wiping his hands on it. “Maybe I should come with you,” he said.

Daniel waved his hands. “No. That’s okay. I don’t want to impose on them—”

“Impose? I’ll be coming along to help.”

“That’s okay, Dad.”

“Let’s go ask your mom.” He picked up the chainsaw and turned toward the house.

“Dad, I really don’t want you coming along.”

His father threw a hurt look back at him. Daniel immediately felt bad for how it had come out.

“It’s just that there’s a girl going along, and I really don’t want you embarrassing me.”

His father smiled. “It’s my chainsaw. I traded what was left of my boat for it and a ride. So if it’s going, I’m going.” He winked and marched toward the front door.

“Wait,” Daniel said. “You traded your boat for that saw?”

His dad stopped. “What was left of it,” he said.

“And how much was left of it?”

He shrugged. “Not enough to float, probably.”

“For a chainsaw,” Daniel said.

His dad turned around to face him. “These things are worth their weight in gold after a storm. You’ve seen that for yourself.”

“So you knew mom would let you stay.”

“I knew you guys would be in need of one.” He looked up at the tree leaning against their house. “Hell, I betcha I could whittle away at that thing if I was roped in and had some help.”

“And now you’re using it to come along and see Hunter.”

His father smiled. “Let’s not pose it to your mom quite like that,” he said.

With that, he turned and bounded up the steps toward the screen door, while Daniel remained rooted to the sidewalk, the deviousness of his father competing in his brain with the man’s generosity. He had a hard time sorting out which motivation had swept him back into their lives. The awful truth was that he preferred to think it was the former, so he could stay comfortable hating his dad. Once a person got used to the feeling, it wasn’t so bad. It was all the back and forth that proved exhausting.

••••

Daniel remained silent while his father introduced himself to Anna and Edward. A heavy chain was lifted from the garage floor and rattled into a coil in the back of a beat up Ford Bronco. Daniel’s father placed the chainsaw beside it, and Daniel added the small red canister, sloshing a quarter-full with fuel. They loaded up, Anna and Daniel sliding into the back seat, the adults up front. Edward pulled out of the garage. An elderly couple crouching by the recharging station turned and waved as they pulled down the driveway. Edward coaxed a friendly beep out of the Bronco’s horn.

“Just to warn you guys, it might be a short drive.” Edward turned to Daniel’s father. “We couldn’t even get out of the neighborhood yesterday.”

“There’s a way,” his father said. “If the street’s still blocked, I’ll show you how we got in along the power lines.”

They took a sharp turn at the end of the street, and Daniel reached for the oh-shit handle where it would have been in his mom’s car. It wasn’t where he expected, so his other hand went to the bench seat to steady himself. It landed on the back of Anna’s hand, which retreated as if bit.

“Sorry,” Daniel whispered. He wiggled in his seat to demonstrate a new level of commitment to keeping his balance.

“It’s okay,” Anna said, folding her hands in her lap. The two of them gazed out their windows and enjoyed the breeze as the Bronco rumbled through the neighborhood.

“There’s a bad one up here,” Edward said. He pointed over the dash and slowed down as they passed a house that had lost half its roof. Globs of pink insulation hung in the trees like cotton candy. Rafters stuck out like ribs over a gaping void, like God had been in the middle of a heart transplant when he got called away.

“We talked to the owners yesterday,” Anna said. “They’re staying with neighbors. Their story of the night of the storm was horrific.”

“I bet,” Daniel said. He met his father’s gaze in the side view mirror. Something in his dad’s frown suggested that his own survival story would be hard to match.

“Looks like they got that tree parted.”

Daniel and Anna both leaned toward the middle of the seat so they could peer through the windshield. Ahead, Daniel could see that it was one of the ancient oaks framing the neighborhood’s entrance that had fallen across the road. To the left, the head of the tree lay in a crumbled heap, the long arms of the great oak broken and twisted and sprouting bushy plumes of leaves up toward the sky in every direction. On the other side of the drive, a round disk of thick soil had levered up to vertical with the ripping of the roots. A clod of mud with tendrils poking out of it formed a massive wall at the base of the tree. The tufts of grass clinging to the other side were still green and seemingly oblivious to their topsy-turvy fate.

Daniel whistled at the sight of the fallen monster. It had fallen parallel to the main road, right across the entrance to the neighborhood, and had to be six or more feet thick. With the deep drainage ditch beyond, it had once been an impassible barrier. But now it was cut. Edward steered for the gap in the tree where a chunk not quite a lane wide had been removed. Daniel wondered just what kind of saw had been able to chew through the thing. He felt his shoulder brush up against Anna’s and tried not to pull away without it seeming like he was lingering on purpose. Any extra pressure might be seen as flirting, and too forward. Anything less would be intolerable to him.

As the Bronco crept through the gap in the tree, Anna leaned toward her window and Daniel reluctantly did the same, there no longer being an excuse to linger in the middle. He watched the yellow wall of concentric circles pass close by, the smell of fresh wood pervading the car. There were jagged splinters standing out near the center where the weight of the cut piece had ripped as it was pulled out. The bite marks of several angles of attack from various saws met in rough ridges. As they pulled out the other side, Daniel saw the removed piece was actually several. They had been dragged away, leaving a smear of bark in their wake. A car passed along in front of the Bronco, creeping down the main road at half the speed limit, a bank of shocked faces turning to gape at the fortress wall lowered over the neighborhood’s entrance and now cut clean through.

“We should stop and take pictures,” Anna said. She leaned out her window and aimed a small camera back at the tree. It made fake shutter sounds.

“On the way back,” Edward said. He turned to Daniel. “Which way?”

“Right,” Daniel said. He repeated the directions his mom had given him. “Down 105 for a few miles, then right on Harvey. The neighborhood’s called Willow Falls. Second house on the left.”

Edward nodded and hit his blinker. They turned slowly and headed down the highway. Several times a mile, each of them would take turns pointing to another scene of destruction: a large tree pushed off the road, a power line down and tangled up in the tree that took it, a snapped power pole, a mobile home that had been lifted up from its foundation and set back down roughly in the front yard, its walls canting to the side.

“Look at that barn,” Daniel said. He pointed to the old wooden structure, its red paint chipping; it was leaning over to one side and completely ruined.

Anna laughed. “It was already like that.”

“Oh.” Daniel remembered. “You’re right.”

She slapped him playfully on the arm, and both men up front laughed.

“This is a lot more clear than when I came through,” Daniel’s father said. “We actually stopped and cut that tree.” He pointed. “It was one of the ones we couldn’t drive around.”

The first stoplight they came to hung still and lifeless. Daniel was surprised to see it hanging at all. Edward slowed to a stop, waited for another vehicle to move funeral-slow through the intersection, then pulled across. Daniel tapped Anna on the shoulder and pointed down the road to where two power trucks were parked, both of their booms tucked down tight.

“Are they doing anything?” she asked, leaning closer to get a good look.

“Doesn’t look like it.” As far as he could tell, they were just taking notes. He could see an entire line of power poles leaning over into the woods, like the toppling of one had dragged the rest down with it. “How do they know where to even begin?” he asked.

“My friend with the company said they’d be getting a ton of out-of-state help,” Daniel’s father said.

“I imagine most of that help will be routed to Columbia and Charleston,” Edward pointed out. He pulled into the other lane to go around a large limb, then came to a stop on the other side of it. “Even if we were hit the hardest, there’s probably more damage in dollar values and in terms of population elsewhere.” He turned toward the back seat. “You kids wanna haul that limb out of the road?”

Daniel and Anna popped their doors and hurried out. They smiled at each other as they hoisted the large piece of timber and staggered toward the shoulder with it.

“On three,” Anna said.

They counted together and tossed it to the side. Daniel rubbed his palms as it tumbled into the ditch.

They hopped back in the Bronco, and Edward put it in gear. As they trundled along, a drive that might’ve taken fifteen minutes any other time was stretched into over an hour. Daniel and Anna jumped out anytime there was debris to move. The chainsaw was used twice to cut down trees leaning out over the road that looked like they could go at any time. These were cut into smaller pieces and hauled into the ditch. Daniel waved at a man in a pickup who drove by while they were working. Being seen out on the road, volunteering his time to pick up after the storm, filled Daniel’s heart with a slightly selfish pride. He couldn’t believe how much fun he was having moving trees around. And when his father asked if he wanted to cut the second tree into logs, an appraising glance from Anna made it impossible to refuse. He listened to his dad’s instructions, cranked the thing on the first try, then chewed slowly and hesitantly through the middle of a tree as thick as his thigh. He enjoyed the vibration and the shower of yellow snow kicked up from the tool. After the saw dipped through the end of the tree and the upper half sank to the road, he hit the power switch and handed it back to his dad. The smile on his father’s face as he took the chainsaw remained fresh in Daniel’s mind as he helped Anna and Edward drag away the upper half of the tree he’d just bisected.

It was strange how normal it all felt. Driving along a road with the barest of traffic, working to clear it of debris, listening to his father and Edward exchange small talk, tapping Anna on the arm to point out something, laughing at a joke someone made, taking sober instructions from his father—it was all such a bizarre transition for Daniel that he nearly forgot where they were going, that they were primarily out to find his brother. And that his brother would have no idea Daniel was coming, or who he’d be bringing with him.