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.
22
“There it is,” Daniel said, pointing to the “Willow Falls” sign on the side of the road. It was an old wooden sign and partially obscured by a fallen tree. Edward turned the Bronco onto a dirt road wide enough for a single vehicle. The ground to either side was rough with weeds and looked to be mostly sand and crushed shell, the kind of ground that reminded Daniel they weren’t far from the ocean. Edward piloted them down the lane, dodging a limb or two. Mailboxes highlighted the occasional driveway, but the neighborhood was even more heavily wooded than Daniel’s. The houses were set back far enough to be invisible from the road. To either side, though, Daniel could see the effects of the storm. Jagged spikes of timber stood up everywhere, the tops of the trees angling down
