water from seeping into the building if it comes up that high. The guys from the surf shop helped Aunt Sandy install the ones on the back door after the hurricane party. It never occurred to her that she and I might test the limits of our strength to put the front floodgate in place today.
When we’re done, she pauses, braces both hands against the doorframe, and scares me half to death by dropping her head forward and wheezing huge breaths.
“Are you okay?” I touch her shoulder before I realize that she’s not having a heart attack. She’s praying.
I close my eyes and bow my head, and a couple things strike me in the darkness of my own mind. I realize how much my aunt loves this place. How much it means to her. Much more than twenty acres of farmland she never uses and probably doesn’t intend to. I’m also struck by the fact that, in the hours since I learned about little Emily, it hasn’t occurred to me to pray. There’s been nothing in my mind but grief and crazy rage. My last prayers went unanswered, after all. Emily didn’t run through the trees to a rescuer. She wasn’t delivered safely home.
I try to force myself to offer up words for her family, to plead that, in her last moments, she wasn’t terrified and alone and cold. But all I find myself doing is reliving what those last hours may have been like—a stranger speeding away with her in the car while I sent the first responders in the wrong direction.
“Let’s go.” Aunt Sandy is all business again. We return to the Jeep, and instead of going home, we make the rounds, as she calls it. We visit the other shopkeepers. We check on the homes of friends who have evacuated. We canvass neighborhoods and ensure that the elderly women from the Sunday school class have gone to relatives’ homes or that they at least have a caretaker staying with them.
We work our way through traffic, on the shoulder about half the time, to Fairhope, a little fishing village around a marina, where the boats are now bound and double-bound to the docks. I wonder how they will fare in the storm.
Inside Bink’s Market, the Fairhope locals are discussing the incoming storm. We listen as we nibble on crab-and-sausage balls and crab rangoons, which the owner, Bink, assures us are famous. Meanwhile, three men at a table swap stories about the last hurricane and the one before that and the famous Ash Wednesday nor’easter that tore a hole through the island, bisecting it.
I wonder again where these people get their fortitude. The weather hasn’t ruined their appetites. As customers rush in and out, buying the last of the water, the bread, and the canned food, the fishermen play cards at a table in the corner and enjoy some of Bink’s shrimp po’boy sandwiches. We buy some to take home.
“George and I love the food at this place,” my aunt remarks as Geneva Bink wraps up our sandwiches.
I check out the size of the homemade bun and think of Aunt Sandy’s diabetes. Clearly she’s in denial if it’s as bad as Mom said.
Before leaving Fairhope, we pull into the driveway of a giant Victorian house. With its three-story turret, wide front porch, and wraparound veranda, it makes me think of the graceful, quiet life of days gone by. Dressed in faded paint and crumbling gingerbread trims, it looks like a bride who has fallen asleep beneath the live oaks and forgotten to wake up, her wedding gown weatherworn now.
“Pppfff!” A disgusted sound escapes Aunt Sandy as she looks at the house. “Well, at least she’s had someone put up the hurricane shutters for her, but I’ll bet she’s here. She sure doesn’t need to be. Ninety-one years old and still determined to ride out the hurricane. Ridiculous.”
I survey the place as we walk up the steps and knock on the door. “Ninety-one and she lives here? Alone?”
The reply is a frown of genuine concern. “One of my longtime customers. I don’t think she has any family. Haven’t ever heard her mention anyone for as
When we’re done, she pauses, braces both hands against the doorframe, and scares me half to death by dropping her head forward and wheezing huge breaths.
“Are you okay?” I touch her shoulder before I realize that she’s not having a heart attack. She’s praying.
I close my eyes and bow my head, and a couple things strike me in the darkness of my own mind. I realize how much my aunt loves this place. How much it means to her. Much more than twenty acres of farmland she never uses and probably doesn’t intend to. I’m also struck by the fact that, in the hours since I learned about little Emily, it hasn’t occurred to me to pray. There’s been nothing in my mind but grief and crazy rage. My last prayers went unanswered, after all. Emily didn’t run through the trees to a rescuer. She wasn’t delivered safely home.
I try to force myself to offer up words for her family, to plead that, in her last moments, she wasn’t terrified and alone and cold. But all I find myself doing is reliving what those last hours may have been like—a stranger speeding away with her in the car while I sent the first responders in the wrong direction.
“Let’s go.” Aunt Sandy is all business again. We return to the Jeep, and instead of going home, we make the rounds, as she calls it. We visit the other shopkeepers. We check on the homes of friends who have evacuated. We canvass neighborhoods and ensure that the elderly women from the Sunday school class have gone to relatives’ homes or that they at least have a caretaker staying with them.
We work our way through traffic, on the shoulder about half the time, to Fairhope, a little fishing village around a marina, where the boats are now bound and double-bound to the docks. I wonder how they will fare in the storm.
Inside Bink’s Market, the Fairhope locals are discussing the incoming storm. We listen as we nibble on crab-and-sausage balls and crab rangoons, which the owner, Bink, assures us are famous. Meanwhile, three men at a table swap stories about the last hurricane and the one before that and the famous Ash Wednesday nor’easter that tore a hole through the island, bisecting it.
I wonder again where these people get their fortitude. The weather hasn’t ruined their appetites. As customers rush in and out, buying the last of the water, the bread, and the canned food, the fishermen play cards at a table in the corner and enjoy some of Bink’s shrimp po’boy sandwiches. We buy some to take home.
“George and I love the food at this place,” my aunt remarks as Geneva Bink wraps up our sandwiches.
I check out the size of the homemade bun and think of Aunt Sandy’s diabetes. Clearly she’s in denial if it’s as bad as Mom said.
Before leaving Fairhope, we pull into the driveway of a giant Victorian house. With its three-story turret, wide front porch, and wraparound veranda, it makes me think of the graceful, quiet life of days gone by. Dressed in faded paint and crumbling gingerbread trims, it looks like a bride who has fallen asleep beneath the live oaks and forgotten to wake up, her wedding gown weatherworn now.
“Pppfff!” A disgusted sound escapes Aunt Sandy as she looks at the house. “Well, at least she’s had someone put up the hurricane shutters for her, but I’ll bet she’s here. She sure doesn’t need to be. Ninety-one years old and still determined to ride out the hurricane. Ridiculous.”
I survey the place as we walk up the steps and knock on the door. “Ninety-one and she lives here? Alone?”
The reply is a frown of genuine concern. “One of my longtime customers. I don’t think she has any family. Haven’t ever heard her mention anyone for as
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