Storm Track

stay the night out here at Mother’s. Just thought I’d check on y’all since it’s on my way.”

I walked out to the shadowy kitchen with him and we paused at the doorway. In low tones, I told him about the intruder at my house, about the missing envelope and who knew I had Clara Freeman’s purse, ending with my theory that that’s why my trunk was popped.

“Dr. Jeremy Potts was standing right there when I told Ralph Freeman I’d forgotten to bring the purse in with me. I meant into Dobbs. If it is Potts, he might’ve thought I meant in from the car.”

“Potts?” Dwight asked blankly. “What’s he got to do with the price of eggs?”

I gave him a quick rundown on the Potts divorce and how Lynn Bullock found the argument that let Jason vacuum the good doctor’s assets. “And Amy said he was downright gloating when he contributed to her memorial fund yesterday.”

“Millard King did say he thought there was a doctor out on the running track with him,” Dwight mused. “Maybe I’d better have a talk with Potts. And I’ll definitely send someone out tomorrow to dust your kitchen and that purse.”

He glanced over my shoulder to the cozy candlelit scene in the den.

Cyl and Stan were lounging at opposite ends of the opened couch with his battery-powered radio turned low to catch the latest storm updates. Reese sat on the floor nearby, absently strumming soft chords on my guitar. Maidie was crocheting almost by touch alone in one of the wooden rockers. Candles threw exaggerated shadows on the wall and Daddy and Cletus were amusing Lashanda by making shadow birds and animals with their hands. Some of their creations took all four hands and were quite complicated.

“Almost wish I was staying,” Dwight said wistfully as he opened the door and stepped onto the porch.

The door was on the leeward side of the wind, and I walked out onto the porch with him. Between candles and kerosene lanterns, the house was starting to get too warm and stuffy and I was so glad for the fresh air that I continued to stand there with rainwater cascading off the porch roof while Dwight dashed out to his cruiser and drove away.

And I was still standing there three minutes later when the cruiser returned.

“This should teach me to be careful what I ask for,” Dwight said wryly when he rejoined me on the porch. He dried his face on the shoulder of his wet sports shirt. “Two of Mr. Kezzie’s pecan trees are laying across the lane and I can’t get out. Use your phone?”

“If it’s still working.”

It was. First he called Miss Emily to say he wouldn’t be coming after all. Too late. She’d left a message for him on her answering machine that Rob and Kate had insisted she spend the night with them and that he should come, too. Rob is Dwight’s younger brother and lives just down the road from their mother in a big old farmhouse that Kate inherited from her first husband.

He dialed their number and had just explained about Daddy’s pecan trees when the phone went dead in his ear.

Which meant he had to struggle back out to his cruiser to radio the departmental dispatcher and let them know his location.

I had thought the rain was coming down as hard as it could possibly fall, but suddenly it was as if all the firehoses of heaven were pouring down on the backyard. Even in such utter darkness, the cruiser’s interior light was only a faint glow through the heavy sheets of water and Dwight was wetter than if he’d gone into the pond fully dressed.

“You people keep going in and out and Mr. Kezzie ain’t gonna have no clothes left,” Maidie grumbled as she fetched dry pants and shirt.

* * *

When I invited the Freeman kids to come to a hurricane party, I’d expected a mildly exciting storm. Fran would come ashore, I thought, and immediately collapse—lots of rain, a little wind, a brief power outage so we could have candles, maybe even a few dead twigs to clatter down across the old tin roof.

I did not expect the eye to come marching up I-40 straight through Colleton County, wreaking as much damage as Sherman’s march through Georgia. Yet, as Stan’s radio made clear, that was exactly what was happening.

The storm hit Wilmington around nine, packing winds of a hundred and five miles per hour, and barely faltered as it moved across land on a north-by-northwest heading. By midnight, rain seemed to be coming down horizontally. It kept us busy stuffing newspapers and towels around door and window sills on the northeast side of the house.

“Good thing your mama never wanted wall-to-wall carpet,” Daddy told me.

The house creaked like a ship at sea, then shuddered as a tree crashed onto the porch. We grabbed our flashlights, peered through the front windows and found the porch completely covered with the leaf-heavy top of an oak. At least two support posts had collapsed under the weight. Lashanda’s eyes were wide with apprehension and she attached herself firmly to Cyl’s side.

Dwight, Reese and Stan went up to the attic to check on the gable vents and Reese came back immediately for hammer, nails, and large plastic garbage bags.

“Rain’s coming in through that northeast vent like somebody’s standing outside with a hose aimed straight at it,” he said. “We’re going to try to plug it up.”

“How’s the roof?” asked Daddy.

“So far, it seems to be holding.”

There was no guitar or fiddle for us that night, though at one point, Reese did manage to distract Lashanda with train sounds on his harmonica.

Stranded at his microphone, WPTF’s Tom Kearney was tracking the storm the old-fashioned way as people along the route called in to the AM radio station with reports of trees down, possible tornadoes, wind and rain damage, and barometric pressure all the way down to 48.4 inches.