“Don’t forget Hazel,” said Isabel.
As if.
Hazel slammed through here in the mid-fifties before Reid and I were born, but we’ve been hearing about it every hurricane season since we were old enough to know what a hurricane was. Each year, I have to listen to tales of porches torn off houses, doing without electricity for several days, and about the millions of dollars’ worth of damage it did. Down in the woods, there are still huge trees that blew over then but didn’t die. Now, all along the leaning trunks, limbs have grown up vertically to form trees on their own.
“Hazel knocked that ’un down,” a brother will tell me as he launches into stream-of-consciousness memories of that storm.
“It hit here in the middle of the day while we was still in school,” said Haywood, warming to his tale like the Ancient Mariner.
“Back then, they didn’t close school for every little raindrop nor snowflake neither,” said Isabel, singing backup.
“They should’ve that day though. Remember how the sky got black and the wind come up?”
“And little children were crying?”
“Blew past in a hurry, but even the principal was worried and he called the county superintendent and they turned us out soon as it was past.”
“Trees and light poles down across the road,” said Isabel. “Our school bus had to go way outten the way to get us all home and we younguns had to walk in from the hardtop almost half a mile on that muddy road.”
“Daddy and Mama Sue—”
Haywood was interrupted by a sharp rap on the restaurant’s front door.
We looked over to see a tall dark figure standing in the rain.
Steve signalled that he was closed, but the man rapped again.
The glass was fogged up too much to see exactly who it was. I was nearest the door and as much to end Haywood’s remembrances of Hazel as anything else, I went and opened it to find Ralph Freeman.
He was soaking wet and obviously worried, although he managed one of those bone-warming smiles the instant he recognized me.
“Come on in,” I said. “Steve, Haywood, Reid—y’all know Reverend Freeman, don’t you? Preaches at Balm of Gilead?”
They made welcoming sounds, but Ralph didn’t advance past the entryway.
“Sorry to bother you,” he said, dripping on the welcome mat, “but it’s my wife. She was out this way today, visiting Mrs. Grace Thomas, and I was wondering if any of y’all saw her? White Honda Civic? Sister Thomas says my wife left her house a little after twelve and nobody’s seen her since.”
“Grace Thomas,” said Haywood. “She live on that road off Old Forty-eight, right before Jones Chapel?”
“That’s right,” Ralph said, turning to him eagerly. “Did you see her?”
Haywood shook his head. “Naw. Sorry.”
The others were shaking their heads, too.
“I just don’t know where she could be,” said Ralph. “I thought maybe she’d had a flat tire. Or with all this rain, these deep puddles, she might’ve drowned out the engine. But I’ve been up and down almost every road between here and Cotton Grove.”
“I’ll call around,” said Haywood, heading for the phone. “See if any of the family’s seen her car.”
“Did you call the sheriff’s department?” I asked.
“They said she’s not been gone long enough for them to do anything official, but they did say they’d keep an eye out for the car.”
“Highway patrol?” Reid suggested.
“Same thing,” he answered dispiritedly. “And I’ve called all the hospitals.”
“Now don’t you go thinking the worst,” Isabel comforted. “She could’ve slid into a ditch and she’s either waiting for someone to find her or she’s holed up in somebody’s house that doesn’t have a telephone.”
Ralph looked dubious. “I doubt that. She doesn’t know anybody else out this way and she wouldn’t walk up to a stranger’s house.”
A tactful way to put it. Knowing that Mrs. Freeman disliked whites almost as much as certain whites dislike blacks, I figured he was right. She probably wouldn’t want to chance it with any of us.
Nor was Ralph much comforted by Isabel’s suggestion that she could be waiting out the rain in the car somewhere. Not when we were due for a whole lot more if Fran kicked in as weathermen were predicting.
Haywood came back from the telephone shaking his head. “Everybody’s sticking close to home and ain’t seen no cars in the ditch or nothing. Sorry, Preacher. But we’ll surely keep our eyes peeled going home. Which ought to be about now, don’t you reckon, Bel?” he asked.
She nodded and came heavily to her feet. She’s only about half Haywood’s size, but since he’s just over six feet tall and just under three hundred pounds, that still makes her a hefty woman by anybody’s standards.
“Such a shame we couldn’t do any picking and singing tonight,” she lamented, reaching for her banjo case. “Maybe next week we’ll have more folks to come. You know, we might need to start us a phone tree to turn us out better.” As she passed Ralph, she said, “I sure hope Miz Freeman makes it home safe. This is real bad weather to get stuck off somewhere.”
