The Hurricane

“There you are. Whatcha working on?”

Daniel walked down the driveway as she repeated her explanation of the gizmo. Somehow, the fact that she’d done the project without telling her father added to the allure. As Daniel walked slowly toward the next house, he glanced continuously over his shoulder at the two of them, bent down over the solar panel sticking out from the bushes. Instead of continuing his planned walk to the end of the neighborhood and out to the main road, he circled around Anna’s house, noting the damage to the shingles, the fruit tree toppled in the back yard, the tall radio tower tangled with limbs. As he wandered back toward his own house, walking slowly by hers, he saw a ladder up against the gutters, Anna and her father scrambling up the roof on a different ladder hooked over the peak, a blue tarp unfolding between them.

Who in the world was this Anna girl that lived four houses down from him?

17

Daniel returned home to find the cleanup around his house already underway. His mom and Carlton were dragging a massive limb down the driveway as he rounded the mailbox. There was already a small pile along their edge of the cul-de-sac.

“There’s some oatmeal left,” his mom said. “Probably still warm.”

Daniel nodded. “I’ll be right out to help.”

He waved to his sister, who waved back, a too-large leather glove flopping on her hand. She bit her lip and went back to wrestling a small limb, trying to extricate it from a labyrinthine tangle of a dozen mangled trees.

“I’ll be right back,” he called to her. As he considered the amount of work ahead of him, he couldn’t help but feel a tinge of anger toward Hunter. His older brother always seemed to weasel out of laborious tasks. Daniel imagined him sleeping late with his girlfriend, her parents actually out of town, their power miraculously working, a hot tub bubbling under its insulated cover as it waited patiently for long days of lounging, soaking, and doing nothing.

Daniel glanced up at the enormous tree that had stove in the roof. As he bounded up the front steps, he marveled at how normal and everyday that tree and its destruction were becoming. He pictured them getting completely used to it, leaving it where it was, his sister’s bedroom becoming a modified treehouse that she shared with the squirrels. He laughed to himself as he raced up the stairs and to his bedroom.

When he opened the door, he found piles of his sister’s stuff arranged along one wall in his bedroom. Daniel groaned. He went to his closet and dug around in a drawer of electronics and miscellaneous wires until he found his camera charger. He pocketed that, went to his bedside table, and unplugged his cell phone and Zune chargers from the wall outlet behind it.

Daniel wrapped the thin cords around each of the chargers and hurried downstairs. He retrieved his book bag from his mom’s room and stuffed the chargers inside, along with his camera and his Zune. The cell phone he kept in his pocket. Satisfied, he went to the kitchen, hung his backpack from the back of a stool, and helped himself to cold and congealed oatmeal. He gave the microwave wistful glances as he ate for pure sustenance.

Back outside—his stomach growling from the tease of a minimal breakfast—he joined the others in doing what little they could to undo the damage from the storm. Carlton had found some tools in the shed that might help: limb clippers, a wood saw, a hacksaw. Daniel looked at the larger trees lying like a lost game of Jenga all across the yard and realized how arbitrary and useless their efforts were going to be. Chainsaws buzzed in the distance like insects. Daniel knew they’d have to lure one or two of them over to get anything done on their yard.

“How’s the rest of the neighborhood?” Carlton asked as the two of them worked to pull a limb from the tangle.

“Lots of trees down,” he said. “One against the house next door, but not as bad as ours. Shingles off everywhere.” He started to say something about the girl and the charger, but refrained for some reason. He didn’t want to mention her even though he couldn’t stop thinking about her.

“Did you see any cars moving about? Any work trucks or utility trucks?”

“No. There were people out surveying the damage, though. And I did see one of the power lines down. A tree came down right across it.”

“When’s Hunter coming home?” Zola asked, voicing what Daniel had been thinking.

“I’m sure he’ll get here as soon as he can. They’re probably working to clear the roads as we speak.” Carlton glanced over at their mom, who had turned away and removed her gloves to get something out of her eye. “We might want to prepare ourselves that it’ll be tomorrow before he gets home.”

“Maybe Zola can stay in his room until he does?”

Carlton frowned and gave Daniel a look. Daniel bit his lip and dropped the discussion.

They worked and chatted until noon, the late summer sun creeping overhead and drawing the sweat out of them. They drank nothing but water, leaving their supply of canned sodas and cartons of juices for later. The Tupperware containers and pitchers Daniel had helped fill were emptied first, poured into glasses with the last bit of ice from the freezer. They enjoyed the clinking luxury and refreshing coldness before the lack of power melted such things away.

Midway through the afternoon, as the pile of debris along the cul-de-sac grew wider and taller, Daniel started thinking about all the things he took for granted and would have to go without, possibly for days. The internet and cell phones were the most obvious. He was dying to get in touch with Roby, to call or e-mail him about the girl with the soldering iron and unfortunate name. As used as he was to not hearing from his friend over the summers, being suddenly cut off from him right as school resumed felt unnatural. It was also crazy that they couldn’t get in touch with Hunter. The entire concept was bizarre. His brother was probably no more than fifteen or twenty miles away, but it might as well have been thousands. Daniel knew, in the back of his mind where logic slumbered, that twenty miles wasn’t too far to walk and that some people even chose to run or bike such distances for pleasure, but it felt like an endless, impossible trek to him. He would drive around a parking lot looking for the closest spot, investing more time in the irrational pursuit than the time it would take to cover the extra distance by foot. He never pointed out this inherent silliness when his family left one shop in a strip mall, got in the car, then drove through the parking lot to visit a store just seven or eight doors down. All that seemed normal and natural. Walking fifteen or twenty miles as a means of locomotion seemed absurd. The prior hundred million years of four-legged scampering and eventual bipedalism couldn’t compete with the last hundred of flexing an ankle and steering. Not yet, anyway.

“That was the corner with the DirecTV dish on it.”

Daniel snapped out of his ponderings and looked to Carlton. He was peering up at the tree resting snugly against the house. “I think it got crushed,” he said. He wiped his brow and went back to work sawing a too-big branch in half with a handsaw.

“How are we gonna take showers tonight?” Daniel asked.

Carlton stopped sawing. “Hadn’t thought about that.” He pinched the hem of his shirt and used it to wipe the sweat dripping from his chin. “I reckon we’ll be sponging off from buckets out here.”

“Outside?” Zola asked, listening in to their conversation.

“The upstairs tub is empty,” Daniel offered. “We could take buckets up there and rinse off.”

“We’ll have to conserve the water,” their mother said. “We need to assume it’ll be a week without power. It could be even longer.”

“There’ll be places we can go if it gets to be that long,” Carlton said. “After Hugo, they had generators running at the YMCA and we stood in lines for hot showers. But still, we’ll have to be careful with how much we use of everything.”

Daniel absorbed those words and thought about how surreal their lives had become, and in an instant. He could actually picture what the end of the world might be like. He felt he was getting a hazy glimpse of Armageddon.

“It’ll get better once we get a car back,” their mother said. “Once Hunter shows up, we’ll go try and find some supplies, see if we can borrow a chainsaw, find someone who can get that tree off and patch the roof, even if temporarily.”

“Can we get your car out of the shop?” Daniel asked Carlton.