by Anna Schmidt
“I can’t help it if I’ve been given a good deal of responsibility,” she replied defensively.
“And if God saw fit to relieve you of that leadership role, to have you simply follow, do you believe in your heart that you could do that?”
“Of course,” she replied. But as she drifted off to sleep, she had to admit that a good part of her annoyance with John Steiner had been that he was keeping her from her responsibilities as director of MCC’s efforts back in Pinecraft. “I’ll work on that,” she promised herself—and God.
“How soon can we get started?” Hester asked Grady early the following morning as she dashed across a parking lot, dodging puddles and hoping the light drizzle falling was the last of the rain. Grady was making his rounds, checking in person with the various relief groups around the county, all of them anxious to get to work.
“We’ve got some serious damage,” Grady told her. “Turtle Beach is basically gone, and the entire coastline of Siesta has been devastated. There’s probably not a home or business over there that hasn’t suffered irreparable damage at least in the short term.”
Hester knew what this meant. People were going to need food, water, shelter, and a comforting presence to assure them that everything was going to be all right. This time of year most of the condominiums and homes on Siesta were vacant. A big part of Grady’s job would be to work with owners to get the properties repaired in time for the onslaught of snowbirds—the parttime winter residents. Those folks would begin arriving around Thanksgiving, and that meant there was less than three months to get ready. The annual return of the snowbirds was a mainstay of the economy in the area. If they decided to go elsewhere, that could be catastrophic on a whole different level.
“Unfortunately, Siesta Key is not the entire story, although they certainly took the hardest hit.”
Hester thought of the sugar-white beaches that were Siesta Key’s trademark and wondered what they might look like now. News reports she’d heard left no doubt, though, that all up and down the Gulf Coast, scores of homes and businesses had been totally wiped out by the storm. Those who had waited too long to leave and couldn’t make it to a hotel or friend’s safe haven were now crowded into shelters, including the ones set up in two schools and a large church just on the outskirts of Pinecraft. She tried not to think about what might have happened to John Steiner’s place, or the man himself. “So, back to my question—when can we get started?”
“I should be hearing from the local search-and-rescue teams soon,” Grady said, shielding her from the drizzle with a large golf umbrella decorated with comic strip characters. “Crews from gas and power have been out since before dawn. But there is some positive news—a few minor injuries, but no fatalities that we know of.”
Hester nodded. “That’s better than we might have expected given the power of the storm.” She knew the drill. The representatives from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, had arrived on the scene, but they would wait for the local authorities to take the lead. County and state rescue teams would be the first out checking those places that they knew had not been evacuated. Soon the gas and power crews would be roaming the barrier islands as well as the mainland looking for downed wires and other telltale signs of problems, repairing them so that the real process of cleaning up and securing property affected by the storm could begin in earnest.
Grady removed a battered, sweat-streaked baseball cap and mopped his forehead with his forearm. He was wearing a worn T-shirt that looked as if it had seen dozens of trips to the washing machine, faded jeans, and running shoes. The thing Hester liked most about Grady was that he was not the typical government employee. He dressed in shorts or jeans instead of the more formal business attire that FEMA contacts arriving from Washington seemed to prefer. And he always looked like he was ready to get his hands dirty and get the work done. Those qualities above anything he might say gave people confidence. Since Katrina and the oil spill, folks in the Gulf area had had their fill of politicians flying down from Washington, looking around and shaking their heads, and then heading back to their plush homes and offices, leaving people like Grady to take the brunt of people’s frustrations and anger.
“Still, this is a biggie, Hester.” Grady shook his head. “It’s beyond bad. We’ve got power outages from Fort Myers all the way to Tampa and no word on when power—not to mention water—might be restored. With this heat …” He swiped his forearm over his brow.
“Well, we’re ready with meals and water for the workers, and we’ve got generators at the shelters and in other strategic locations to keep the air-conditioning and refrigeration up and running.”
Pinecraft had suffered only minor wind and water damage. The streets were a mess, but already volunteers were out, moving branches and cutting downed trees so that the main roads were open. That morning a truck loaded with clothing, food, and other supplies had arrived from MCC’s national headquarters in Pennsylvania. In calmer times most donations that Hester received in Pinecraft were shipped north, where there were warehouses set up to sort, store, and distribute the goods wherever they might be needed around the world. This time the donations would be distributed right here in Sarasota—not just to the residents of Pinecraft, but to anyone who might need their help. Hester already had a team of women working to sort through the goods and get them distributed to the shelters.
In fact, the entire Mennonite and Amish communities of Pinecraft had come out to offer their help. She glanced across the street to the assembly line of women in plain cotton dresses and head coverings that ranged from pioneer sunbonnets to small black lace headpieces to the starched mesh caps so familiar to outsiders. They stood shoulder to shoulder filling empty produce boxes with canned goods and other nonperishables, while men in their brown, navy, or black trousers, collarless shirts, and trademark straw hats were handling the work of clearing the debris. Of course, it wasn’t just the residents of Pinecraft who had stepped up to meet the challenge. Hester knew that a similar scene was being repeated at churches all over the city.
She also knew that her father had called out the community’s full complement of MDS team leaders, who in turn each had six to twelve volunteers they could call upon when needed. Every available crew had gotten the word, and now they were just waiting for the signal that they could get to work. They would begin the weeks of cleanup and ultimately months of rebuilding homes and businesses for those without insurance who had been hardest hit by the hurricane.
“I did a fly-by this morning, past Tucker’s Point,” Grady said quietly.
Hester knew that Grady had been disappointed when she handed him the signed note and told him that John Steiner had refused to evacuate.
“And?” she asked, curious in spite of her annoyance at the man for wasting time and valuable resources by his stubborn refusal to follow protocol.
Grady shook his head. “I saw no signs of anyone, and the road into the place is even more blocked with downed trees and power lines. The only way in is by boat, and that’s tricky as well.”
Hester was still wondering how anyone could be so arrogant as to believe that a mere mortal could withstand nature’s fury and simply walk away unscathed. “Do you think he survived?”
Grady actually shuddered in spite of the oppressive August heat. “From what I could see on the fly-over, everything on his place is pretty much kindling except for the packinghouse—one wall down and the roof gone but otherwise standing. The main house might be okay, hard to say. The upper branches of a large banyan tree had fallen onto it and hidden most of it from view.”
Hester bowed her head. She hadn’t done enough. She had allowed her irritation at John Steiner’s arrogance to color her actions. She should have insisted, but the more Margery had talked about the man on the quick bumpy boat ride from her marina to Tucker’s Point, the more upset Hester had become. By the time she had knocked on the man’s front door, she had been seething with righteous indignation.
Now John Steiner
might be dead. A casualty of the hurricane that carried her name.
“I am so sorry,” she murmured and swallowed back tears of shame and regret. “I should have …”
“Hey, easy there,” Grady said, patting her shoulder. “We don’t know what happened. Maybe the guy thought better of his decision and moved out. Maybe he was able to ride out the storm—like I said, the house didn’t seem to be a total loss. A good part of it was still standing.”
“You said ‘kindling,’ ” Hester reminded him.
“I embellish. You know that.”
“Well, I hope you’re right and he made it.”
Grady tapped his pen on the clipboard in a drumbeat. “One way to find out,” he muttered, not looking at her.
“You can’t seriously be thinking of going out there with everything else you have to do,” Hester said.
“Not me. I asked your father if he might go. Maybe take Samuel Brubaker along in case there’s any heavy lifting to be done.”
Her father had been up and out before Hester was dressed that morning. “And he said?”
“He’d go as long as you came along as front porch sitter.”
“You want me to …” Hester could barely get the words out. A “front porch sitter” was usually one of her Dad’s volunteers who was designated to sit with the home owner in those first moments after the crew arrived. That was the time when the home owner was likely to be most emotional and not thinking clearly. The sitter would listen and offer comfort until the home owner calmed down enough to give written permission for the MDS team to start clearing away the worst of the debris. Presumably in this case, her job was to get the guy to let them escort him off the property, assuming he was alive.
“You’re joking, right?”
“Not so much,” Grady replied. “Look, his aunt doesn’t want any publicity about this. She’s called in some favors, I take it. Arlen’s agreed to go, but he says he’ll make the time only if you agree to take the hand-holding part of this.”
Hester saw the situation for what it was. This was exactly what she and her father had been talking about the night before. This was what she had prayed about.
“If the guy’s alive but injured,” Grady pressed, “we need to get him out of there, Hester. You’re a trained nurse.” He waited a beat. “Please?”
Hester closed her eyes, reminding herself that God had given her the mission to serve Him by helping others. Whether she was leading or following was hardly the issue. And even though this man had defied logic to ride out a hurricane, he was a human being in need. It wasn’t the first time she’d heard of such stubbornness. Plus, if she helped Grady with this, then Grady would be free to help those who had played by the rules and still lost everything. “I’ll take care of it.” She took the map from him and folded it up. “How’s Amy doing?”
Grady grinned. His wife was eight months pregnant with their first child, and he was already a very proud father. “She’s ticked off because this hurricane wasn’t a male name. She was all set to name the baby after the storm. I do not even begin to understand why we would wish that on a kid.”
“It’s a boy, then?”
“Yep. You know what she told me this morning? She said there’s still a month before the baby is supposed to come, and even if the little guy is late, hurricane season goes through October.” He shook his head, but his smile told the real story of his abiding love for his wife. Hester couldn’t help feeling a twinge of envy. Over the years she’d pretty much given up on the idea that she would ever know the kind of deep commitment and love that bound Grady to Amy. The two had so much in common, and in many ways it was hard to imagine one without the other.
Hester had always thought that she had more in common with males like her brothers and the boys she’d gone to school with than she did with the girls she’d known. Guys all seemed to like her, like having her around. But when it came to one of them considering her as spouse material, things changed—fast. She was thirty-three years old now, well past the age when most women of her faith had settled down to the business of making a home and raising a family. Many people thought she had missed her chance at marital happiness when she had insisted on going to college and getting her nursing degree. Others thought that it was her devotion to caring for her sick mother that had made her miss out on the opportunity to meet a suitable young man.
There had been one young man, a farmer from Indiana she’d met after she’d completed her nurse’s training and had returned to Pinecraft. He had even proposed. But just a week before their wedding, he had made it clear that while he had found her unorthodox behavior appealing when they first met, it simply would not do to continue along that path once she became his wife and the mother of his children. Hester had called off the wedding, once again setting tongues to wagging throughout the little community. But shortly after that, her mother’s battle with Lou Gehrig’s disease had begun its downward spiral, and the tide of sympathy had turned in Hester’s favor. Many had seen it as part of God’s plan that Hester should be free to care for her beloved mother.
“I’d go myself,” Grady was saying. “But there are still dozens of people unaccounted for, and …”
“It’s your job to account for them.”
Grady puffed out his cheeks and then blew out a breath of frustration. “Yeah. I have to admit that at times like these I sometimes question my career choice, but this is the path I chose.”
And I chose my path, Hester reminded herself sternly. Just as staying put in a hurricane was the choice of John Steiner. Judge not, Hester Detlef.
“Okay. Tell Dad I’ll meet him at the shop. I need to let Emma know she needs to take full charge of things here for a while.”
“Be careful out there, okay?” Grady said. “The area is still unstable with all those downed trees, and, of course, there’s no power or water. Don’t go poking around. Just see if you see any sign of Steiner. If you find him, do what you can to get him stabilized, and then call in the evacuation chopper.”
“Unless he’s okay,” Hester corrected.
“Either way,” Grady said, “call the chopper and get him to a hospital. I’m not taking any chances.”
“Got it,” she said. “Do you have any further information about him? Anything else that might help in case he’s—you know—confused or delirious?”
“Not really. Word has it that his mother—the congresswoman’s sister—was some sort of hippie who abandoned the high-society life for a simpler style. She married this Amish farmer and moved out to his place in Indiana.”
“So John Steiner’s father is Amish?”
“And so was Steiner until a few years ago. I think he was shunned or whatever they call it when he’s gotten himself kicked out of the community.”
“Banned,” Hester corrected quietly. “If he cannot go back, then he has been banned or ex-communicated.”
“Whatever. He left, came here, and bought the old Tucker place.” Grady let out a sigh. Both of them knew that he might very well be the first fatality of the storm. “Do your best, okay. Just be careful. I warn you, Hester, from the air the place looked pretty unstable.”
“We’ve probably seen worse,” Hester assured him.
But an hour later as she and her father and her father’s newly hired cabinetmaker, Samuel Brubaker, beached the sturdy fishing boat they’d borrowed from Margery and worked their way over uprooted trees and dunes of wet sand that had not existed the day before, Hester was not so sure.
“How could anyone survive this?” she murmured. In spite of her annoyance that John Steiner was somehow entitled to special attention, her heart went out to the guy. If he was still alive, he had lost everything.
Chapter 4
It had taken John most of the morning to claw his way out from under the rubble that had once been his bedroom above the kitchen and the heavy cypress beam that had proved his salvation. Oblivious to the pain that racked his body, he’d just broken through the last barrier into the gray and omi
nous aftermath of the hurricane when he got his first look at the fury and devastation the storm had wrought. It looked like Hurricane Hester had roared straight through his property on her way to who-knew-where. His once-pristine cluster of faded candy-colored outbuildings that tourists liked to associate with “old” Florida looked more like an oversized game of pick-up sticks.
The chicken coop was flattened. He hated to think of what he might find beneath the rubble. The cage he’d left behind when the roof blew off the coop was now embedded in the trunk of a palm tree like a spike. The concrete walls of his toolshed had collapsed in on each other, and the corrugated metal roof was missing. He turned toward the old packinghouse and saw that one section of its tin roof now balanced precariously in the branches of the large banyan tree that dominated the yard; one half of that tree was leaning against the house. The second floor of the main house was gone with the exception of the door frame that once had led to his bedroom. On the first floor all of the doors and windows were missing, and one of the four walls had fallen as well. The only recognizable furnishings were the kitchen table, mired in at least a foot of sludge, the stove, and half of the fireplace chimney. He was able to identify his kitchen cabinets and countertops only by the splintered pieces of wood that littered the landscape.
