Under A Dark Summer Sky Part 21

He sounded close by, but Henry could see nothing through the th.o.r.n.y cage of branches around him. "You okay, Jimmy?"

"Don't think so... Got something in my... G.o.d, Henry, it's gone right through me! Got to get it out-"

"No, don't pull it out, Jimmy! You got to leave it there!" A gust nearly ripped him from his perch. It took all his strength to hang on.

A scream from Jimmy's direction.

"Jimmy, you there?"

"Still here." His voice was weaker. "Don't think I can hang on much longer, Henry. It hurts real bad."

Henry could just make out the words over the wind. "Jimmy!" he called. "Your uncle Dwayne be mighty proud of you right now." He had to keep him talking, for his own sake as much as Jimmy's.

"You think"-Jimmy coughed-"you think he's still alive...down there?"

"Course he is!" said Henry with no basis at all for this. He had seen plenty of bigger corpses already that night. "Take a lot more than a little wind to knock him down."

"I guess so." A pause. "But he just treats me like a kid."

"I tell you somethin'," Henry said with great conviction. "You ain't a kid no more." He tried to ease himself off the thorns, but they just bit harder. "What you done since we been gone...well, it's more than many a grown man would do."

Another pause. "Ya think so?"

"Not only that, but I'll tell anyone who cares to listen, including your uncle Dwayne."

"a.s.suming he don't shoot you on sight, o' course."

"Yeah, good point." Henry thought Jimmy's voice sounded stronger.

"I tried," said Jimmy, coughing again. "I tried to grab her, the girl with the baby. The wind was too strong. It just took 'em both."

"I know, Jimmy," said Henry. "I know." It would stay with him always, his last view of Missy as she flew away. "And, Jimmy? That just what I'm talkin' about."

Another silence. Then Jimmy asked, "You hear that?"

Pitiful cries for help rose up from the blackness below, from people trapped beneath broken buildings and lumber, trees and cars. There was nothing he could do to help them, but the cries continued. He tried to cover his ears to block them out, but the sound seemed to be inside his head.

"Don't listen, Jimmy. You gonna be fine. We'll get down from here and get fixed up, you'll see."

And then, gradually, one by one, the cries stopped.

Henry started. Must have dozed off for a minute.

"Jimmy?"

There was no sound except the shhh of the wind through the branches.

"Jimmy, you okay?"

And then Henry knew he was alone, really alone. "Oh, Jimmy." He sighed. It felt like all hope left him on that breath.

He was so tired. His body was a collage of pain, some sharp, some dull. There wasn't a part of him that didn't hurt. It felt like he had been clinging to the tree for days, but it could only have been a few hours. Morning must come soon, he reasoned, although it would not have surprised him to find that the world had fallen into perpetual darkness, never to see the sun again.

He had fought so hard, for so long: fought to become an army officer, fought for respect from his comrades, fought the government when they got home, fought to improve the conditions in the camp. Fought to save the people he cared about-and failed. When was I last at peace? He had to go far, far back to find it.

He closed his eyes.

He is eight years old, on the beach with Selma and Grace. The midday sun beats down hot on his bare shoulders. Crawfish that he and Selma caught boil in a pot on the fire. Grace uses her machete to hack the tops off some coconuts. He and Selma sip the sweet liquor from the sh.e.l.ls.

He draws a map of the world in the sand for Selma and sets about filling in the continents with different types of seash.e.l.ls. He uses his favorite for North America, neat lines of coquinas, like stripy b.u.t.terfly wings in soft pink, green, and blue. There are spiked cat's paws for Europe, ridged white clamsh.e.l.ls for Asia, and speckled limpets for South America. Australia is one big conch, nearly as big as his head, because he likes the smooth, rosy inside. Selma isn't really interested in his map, and that's fine. Grace pa.s.ses him a plate of crawfish with one of her rare smiles. "Let it cool," she says, "or you burn your fingers." But he grabs the hot sh.e.l.lfish off the plate, cannot wait to taste the sweet meat. Grace laughs as he blows on his hands.

His stomach cramped. He was so hungry, but worse than that was the terrible thirst. The thought of the coconut water made his throat ache.

He finally allowed himself to think of Selma. Until that moment, he was sure she had to be all right. No other outcome was conceivable. She would not permit it, simple as that. It was more likely that the clouds would fall right to the ground or the water would run uphill.

And he always thought he would sense it when she pa.s.sed, that there would be some sign, some shift in the earth's rotation. But now he was not sure, not of anything. He felt nothing, nothing at all, and he realized: that was the sign. He was empty.

Take me then, if you want to so bad. I'm done fightin'.

He must have slept again, because he thought he heard Jimmy's voice say, "Henry, wake up!" But there was no sound except the wind, weaker than before, weak enough for him to relax his grip on the tree. Rain still pelted down, but on the horizon he saw it. A patch of lightness in the sky. And as he watched, it grew bigger and turned to peach and turquoise. In the quiet left by the wind, he noticed the complete absence of birds. No gulls, no pelicans, no herons, no egrets. Strangest of all, no buzzards, even with the carpet of death below him.

Now he could make out Jimmy, maybe two trees away. He seemed to be sleeping, held in a cradle of branches.

And as Henry looked around in the growing light of dawn, he saw the others. All around him, the trees were draped with bodies. Some had been left in poses that looked almost relaxed, hung gracefully over the branches. Others were twisted into postures of agony.

A child's shoe was snagged on a branch by his head. And on another, a woman's hat. He recognized it. Grayish blue with red flowers, now limp and dirty.

The rest of the branches were festooned with what looked like streamers, which fluttered in the wind. He plucked one, rubbed it between his fingers. It was a piece of cloth, ripped from a shirt. His eyes moved from one tree to the next. All carried the same: every tree left standing in the grove was covered in shreds of clothing.

The sun burned a hole through the clouds, which still poured with rain. It shone like a spotlight on an expanse of destruction so complete that even the soil was gone, stripped away to reveal the bare coral skeleton. Even the palm trees, those st.u.r.dy survivors, had been ripped up by the roots. As far as he could see, in every direction, there were only piles and piles of broken wood, like an explosion at a sawmill. There was no town, no veterans' camp, and no sign there ever had been one. Nothing moved except the sea in the distance, where angry gray waves, heavy with bodies and debris, pounded the sh.o.r.e.

The heat began to cook the corpses in the trees. The sour, meaty smell of putrefaction hit the back of his throat. It was a smell he knew well but had hoped never to encounter again. With the heat came the flies. He swatted them away from his face. Not yet. You cain't have me yet.

The low morning light revealed the damage done to him by the tree's thorns. He pulled them out, one by one, until he was free.

Figures appeared below and started to pick their way slowly across the wasteland. A few had retained some clothes, but most had not. They clutched at bleeding wounds, stronger ones supporting weaker ones. Cries of pain drifted on the wind, mixed with voices begging for help. He could make out a woman's head on the ground, her mouth open wide but making no sound at all. The rest of her body lay beneath the remains of a house wall. Three men were struggling to get it off her. One had begun to saw at the timbers that pinned her to the ground.

With one last look at the remains of Heron Key, he took the hat with the red flowers from the tree and started the slow, painful climb back down to earth.

Epilogue.

Two Years Later Dwayne brushed the sand from Roy's pants. He had only just managed to get him dressed and already he was dirty, chasing a lizard around the yard on his powerful little legs.

The boy looked up at him with wide eyes. Noreen's eyes. He seemed to sense the importance of the occasion, even if he did not understand it. Dwayne could see Noreen so clearly in the boy's face, in the arch of his brows and the shape of his mouth. More and more of her came to the surface as he grew.

"Your momma would be so proud of you."

He could not be sure if Roy remembered her. Sometimes he called out for her as he slept, when the nightmares came, but most of the time it seemed Dwayne was the only parent he had ever known. Of course, in a way, he belonged to the survivors of Heron Key too. So many children had been lost that those who made it through had become community property. Whenever they went to get groceries or mail a letter, it took forever because people wanted to fuss at Roy and give him treats. He had become plump and sleek on it, which was fine with Dwayne. He never wanted to see Roy as thin again as he was after the storm. His own paunch had not regained its former glory. For days and days, nothing got through until the Red Cross arrived. Were it not for the turtles that Zeke caught and the water tanker left on the tracks, it could have turned out very differently for them.

"Wanna play with Nathan."

Dwayne smoothed the boy's springy curls. He would forever be amazed at the resilience of children. They had finally found Nathan where the wind had dropped him, nearly forty miles away and still wrapped in Missy's arms. He was almost unrecognizable from the bruising, both legs broken and nearly dead from dehydration. His heart had stopped twice on the Coast Guard rescue plane. You'd never know it now from the way he sped around the place. The only lasting damage seemed to be his somewhat bowlegged gait, a scar that bisected his left eyebrow, and an abiding fear of water. He and Roy had become inseparable.

"Nathan will be there, I told you. You can go play later, but there's something we got to do first." It had taken two frustrating years, but the memorial was finally completed and ready to be unveiled, on the site where Jenson's store used to be.

They were ready. Dwayne swung Roy up onto his shoulders. The boy clutched handfuls of his hair and giggled with delight.

"Are you about ready?" Doc asked. "We're going to be late."

"How do I look?" asked Hilda. She was wearing a dress of sea-blue cotton that matched her eyes. After the months of living in donated Red Cross clothes, it was the first new thing she had bought. She pulled at it where it stretched over the bulge of her stomach. At four months along, she was starting to show. "This doesn't hang right anymore," she said. "I need to get it let out. I wish I could find another dressmaker as good as Nettie."

"You look beautiful," Doc said with a kiss on her forehead. "Just beautiful." She had tried to cover her scars with heavy foundation. The makeup seemed to draw attention to the hard lines and folds left by the sutures. But it made her feel better, and he decided that was more important. She was also self-conscious about the slight droop of her mouth, a reminder of her latest seizure.

"Now come on," he said. "It's time to go."

"I don't know." She fussed at her skirt. "I think I like the pink better..."

He winced as Nathan pulled at his hand. "Take it easy, Nathan," she said. "Daddy's back is bad today."

It was time to go to Miami for another operation, to remove yet more wooden fragments from his back. Some were inoperable, too close to the spine to be extracted. They would be with him always, painful souvenirs of that night. When the morning finally came after the storm, he could hear people searching the rubble, calling names of loved ones. He could make no sound, trapped beneath the weight of the collapsed roof. Doc knew that no one expected to find anyone still alive under the ma.s.sive pile of timber. The only reason he and Hilda did survive was that the debris stopped them from being swept away by the wave, which washed through with merciful speed. But he had been able to do nothing to attract attention, pinned across Hilda's body by the fallen beams. She had been unconscious for hours, but he had felt her slight, shallow breathing beneath him. Had Henry not found them when he did, delirious with pain and thirst...well, they would have joined their friends and neighbors on the huge cremation pyres that burned day and night.

He looked around at the home that had begun to take shape. There were still times when none of it seemed real. He sometimes feared they might just be ghosts, floating through other peoples' lives, tied forever to the place where they had died. But no, he thought, ghosts do not use hammers and nails; ghosts do not pour cement. Hilda had wanted the remains of the old Kincaid house demolished. So they had built a new one, of solid construction-with a concrete hurricane shelter. Even after two years, there was still a lot of work to do, but it was a start. He had figured she would want to leave Heron Key behind forever, move up north or out west-anywhere far away. But she would never feel confident among strangers, only among the others who, like her, had survived that night.

"It's okay, Nathan," he said. He thought he would never get tired of being called "Daddy." Nathan seemed to have accepted him, with no memory at all of Nelson. "Put Sam's leash on him."

Nathan clipped the leash to Sam's collar. The dog had been found by one of the rescue boats, afloat in a fruit packing crate, Cyril's claw still attached.

Hilda put some dainty gold sandals on her feet.

"Those are pretty," he said, "but not very practical-"

She placed a hand on his chest. "Yes," she said with a smile, blue eyes shining. "I know."

Henry splashed some water on his face and put on a clean shirt. The morning was already hot and promised a sweltering afternoon. He had been to the memorial site early, to make double sure that everything was in order. It had taken a mighty, concerted effort to get it approved, commissioned, and delivered-all made possible by the American Legion funds, after the state government declined to contribute.

From the other room came, "Can you give me a hand, Henry?"

He went in to find Missy sitting on the bed, struggling with the clasp of her necklace. It was a gold St. Christopher, a present from Hilda and Doc in grat.i.tude for what she had done for Nathan. He fixed the clasp and bent down to kiss her.

She looped her arms around his neck and he lifted her into the chair, her weight easy in his arms. It had taken him a while to get the hang of it-he had even dropped her once when he forgot to put on the brakes-but they now had a smooth routine. And the plans for the new Heron Key Colored School included all the necessary ramps and fittings to let her get around, even a special bathroom. Henry had made sure of that. He had also hara.s.sed the school board into donating a new set of Encyclopedia Britannica too. Amazing what could be achieved, he thought, with enough moral blackmail.

The first term would start in a few months. The building would not be ready, of course, and cla.s.ses would have to be held on the beach to begin with, but that was okay. It was nearly impossible to tear Missy away from her lesson plans, which were strewn across her desk under the window. The desk was one of the first things he had made for her, out of wood taken from Mama's old house.

There were times when his pride in her nearly overwhelmed him. This was one of those times. She looked so fine in her new green dress, another present from Hilda. He just wanted to stand and stare.

"You doing it again," she said fondly.

"I cain't help it." He still sometimes found it hard to believe she had been returned to him. The Coast Guardsmen who found her and Nathan still sent them Christmas cards. They had just been so delighted to find anyone at all still alive on that spit of sand, especially a woman and a baby. But because Nathan was in such peril on the flight back, no one had realized until they landed just how badly Missy was hurt. For the first few months in the hospital, Henry had just sat by her bed and kept watch, reading her stories, getting fresh food, until finally he brought her home, to the house he had made for them.

Sorrow shadowed her face. "She should be here," Missy said and cast her eyes to the window that overlooked the beach. The waves sparkled in the clear morning light. "It ain't right, without her."

"Yes," he said. There was nothing else to say, no words that they hadn't said over the previous two years.

Another long silence while they both stared at the sea that looked so calm and inviting on this hot day. Then she curled her hand inside his. "Come on, Mr. Roberts, let's go."

He released the brakes on her chair. "Yes, ma'am, Missus Roberts."

They gathered in the center of town, where Jenson's store had stood for so many years. The monument was a handsome obelisk of creamy yellow stone, inset with a stylized carving of windswept palm trees. Its contours were covered by a pale drape, the hem stirred by a slight breeze that did nothing to cool the air. The sun was directly overhead, the time of day when shadows disappeared.

Henry wiped the sweat from his face. He was pleased with the final result. He and Doc and Dwayne had wanted to include a list of names on the monument, but it wasn't possible. They would never be sure of all those who died, because so many bodies were taken by the wind and the sea. Many of those found were unidentifiable, once the intense heat and the huge swarms of flies did their work. But not the carrion birds. The flies feasted on their carca.s.ses too.

For days and days, Henry and the other survivors had collected the rotting corpses, whose flesh came away in their hands like soft cheese. He had prayed to find Missy-and also not to find her-as he looked into each face, swollen beyond recognition. The stench was overwhelming, not even dented by the disinfectant they washed in every few minutes. Some of the National Guardsmen wore gas masks, which put the final seal on it for Henry. He had thought there could be nothing worse than his time in the trenches, but this had been many, many times worse. The decomposing bodies had been robbed of their very ident.i.ties.

At first, they had tried to make coffins for each but quickly realized that the scale of death required faster measures. So they began to burn them all, without pause or ceremony, in huge pyres, blacks and whites, old people and children, townspeople and veterans. Some were mangled, unidentifiable lumps of meat, and others were completely intact. The sky had turned black with the smoke, the sea stained gray with ash.

And as the burning continued, he had searched for her, inside every ruined building, under every tangled heap of wood or metal, inside every crushed car. He had found only carnage or, rarely, folks like Doc and Hilda, still breathing. It was about five days after the storm that he collapsed, from lack of sleep, food, and water and the infection raging in his wounds. Waking up in the hospital, his only thought was to go back to the search, but he could not even get out of bed. When he could finally walk again, he had trudged up and down the corridors to build his strength, and it was on one of these excursions that he heard a nurse mention a familiar name.

It seemed incredible, standing there in the gentle breeze with the glint of sun on calm water and the soft swish of the palms, that this was the same place that had resembled the worst battlefield imaginable, that had reeked of death for weeks as the town staggered back to its feet. He looked around at the few others who, like him, had lived through that night and what followed and saw the experience engraved on their faces.

Violet and Franklin stood together, unconsciously leaving a s.p.a.ce for Abe. Even now, Violet still retained the hunched posture of grief, as if winded by a blow. Her boy had died of blood poisoning from the wound in his arm while waiting to be evacuated.

Zeke kept himself apart from the others. He looked tiny, very much diminished by Poncho's absence. It was the first time Henry had seen him wear a shirt.

The American Legion band arrived and began to unpack, their white uniforms and silver instruments flashing in the sun. Henry put a hand up to shade his eyes from the glare and spotted the Legion post commander, Leonard Goodchild. "Good to see you, Leonard," he said and shook his hand. "A mite different to last time."

"You could say that, Henry." Goodchild's men had been among the first relief workers to arrive after the storm. Some of them had never recovered from what they saw during those days.

Cars and buses pulled up, disgorging scores of people Henry had never seen before. There were a lot of Florida license plates but some from out of state too. And they just kept coming.

"Who are these people?" he asked Goodchild.

"Folks who want to pay their respects. This made the national news, Henry." He tilted his head to one side and shaded his eyes with a hand. "You look surprised."