by Jean Flowers
Thus had begun a short back-and-forth on hurricane damage versus earthquake damage and finally we agreed that whatever the detailed statistics, when it came to natural disasters, it was lose-lose for humans.
Now, with the supplies checked, and the shuttering of the front doors complete, Ben and I packed up our things and went our separate ways to take care of our own homes. All we had to do first was wade through the enormous pond that was the parking lot to our cars.
2
After what seemed like a swim through a regulation swimming pool, I shook myself out of my soaking wet rain jacket, threw it in the backseat of my car, and wrung out my newly styled hair. I thought how much worse the repair work would be if my curls were still past my shoulders as they had been a couple of weeks ago. I started my car and watched my windshield wipers struggle to keep up with the deluge. The wipers were losing.
The heavy rain made for poor visibility on my way home, even in the middle of the day. Wings of water flew up on both sides of my car as I drove through puddles that were more like tiny lakes creeping up to the level of the curbs. The gutters were no more successful than my windshield wipers against the downpour. I swerved more than once to avoid small branches and other debris—no fewer than four umbrellas, for example—that had lost the battle with the gusting wind.
I kept my car radio tuned to a station with weather every ten minutes on normal days, but was dedicated to storm announcements full-time today. The banter between radio news personalities matched that between television anchors, as two newscasters debated which did the most damage—wind or rain? Hadn’t I studied that issue when I was exposed to the ancient Greek philosophers in college? Apparently, the issue hadn’t been settled.
“It’s six of one, half dozen of the other,” a female newsperson said, with all seriousness.
“A good point, Bonnie,” her male counterpart answered, equally serious, as if he’d been considering the answer for a while, perhaps consulting his old Western culture textbooks, and Bonnie had just offered the words of wisdom he’d been waiting for.
“We’re lucky in Massachusetts, Jeff,” the radiowoman noted. “We’re in the enviable position of receiving all three hurricane threats.”
“That’s right, Bonnie. Depending on the track of the storm, we’re subject to coastal inundation, inland river flooding, and widespread wind damage even far inland.”
I figured it took a lot of training to give bad news while maintaining an upbeat cadence to his voice.
Now Bonnie and Jeff were resorting to weather history, reminding us that it had been a good year, without a backbreaking winter storm—lots of snow through January and February but nothing that brought major outages.
“We should have known there’d be August to pay,” Bonnie said, before Jeff issued warnings for all in the commonwealth to take precautions.
I switched to another station, where a nameless female lifted our spirits with human interest stories, like the one about a young boy who braved the wind and a flooded backyard to rescue his neighbor’s wayward puppy. A South Ashcot woman had made an enormous pot of soup and delivered portions to residents of a block that had lost power, and our own Main Street Hardware man, Pete Clarkson, had offered to deliver emergency repair supplies to anyone in the city limits of North Ashcot.
My drive was slow, probably also thanks to the many other workers who’d decided to leave their posts and wait out the storm at home. Most of the shops—the convenience market, bank, nail salon, and bakery—had already closed, or perhaps the owners had taken the forecast seriously and never opened this morning. There were no signs of life, either, in any of the offices above the shops. The lights were on only in Daisy’s Fabrics, on the south side of Main Street, in reality a shop stocked half with bolts of material and half with gift items, and where I’d spent some time lately. I saw the petite Daisy, draped in a yellow anorak, exit the shop, presumably to pull in the container of decorative banners displayed under her canopy. I waved, but apparently she didn’t see me.
I recalled my first trip into the back room of Daisy Harmon’s shop. I’d almost walked into an ironing board, set up near the doorway, a semicircle of chairs behind it. I hadn’t ironed since my days as a Girl Scout, thanks to permanent-press fabrics and a modest budget for dry cleaning. The modern wrinkles-are-stylish trend didn’t hurt, either.
Daisy had grabbed my arm as I was turning to leave. “It’s okay, Cassie. Newbies get issued already pressed fabric.” I wondered if she had more than one ironing board, the way most quilters had more than one sewing machine.
Daisy, about a foot shorter and a few years older than me, with twice my energy, was a born teacher, delighting over small achievements, like when I finally produced a true quarter-inch seam of straight line stitches. Two classes into the course, I’d stopped wishing I’d tried the knitting class instead; I was hooked. I loved working with different textures and so many colors and patterns. For the last several months I’d been laboring steadily on a red, white, and blue block quilt. (Not only was I a postal employee, but I was also a pushover for all patriotic designs.)
“Who’s the quilt for?” members of the circle had asked me.
“It depends on how it turns out,” I said.
“We hear you” was the comforting response.
I thought of stopping now to see if Daisy needed help shutting down but figured her husband would be on hand, since Cliff worked as a security guard in the elementary school across the street. I continued on. At least it was summer and he wouldn’t have classrooms full of students to worry about today.
On the same side of Main Street as Daisy’s was the darkened Café Mahican I also knew well; the card shop run by Liv Patterson, another quilter (so grumpy today); and Mike’s Bike Shop on the corner of Main and Second. Stopped at a light, I noticed a row of bicycles that were still on the sidewalk in front of Mike’s Shop. Strange, I thought at first, but then figured today’s new materials probably rendered bikes indestructible in the face of wind and rain. The shop looked dark, but with my rain-streaked windows I couldn’t be sure.
My final acknowledgment was to the police station on the next corner, where my friend Chief Sunni Smargon would not be free to leave her post. I gave a mental wave to her and most likely all four of her officers on duty today, and after a few more blocks of stunt driving through debris and overflowing gutters, I pulled into my rock-strewn driveway.
* * *
Aunt Tess had willed her home to me, and teased that she might not have, if I weren’t the only living relative she had left. And one who looked like her, tall, dark-haired, and thin, to boot. I’d spent my late teenage years in her loving care after my parents died, and was happy to come back and make her last weeks as comfortable as possible. It was still hard to think of her without tearing up.
I’d recently had the exterior of the house repainted in the same pale yellow Aunt Tess loved, and with Quinn’s help, I’d updated the interior with some of his own handcrafted pieces.
When I opened my car door in the driveway, it was pulled from my hands by a gust of wind. I exited hunched over, the hood of my jacket over my head, and used two hands to shut the door. I climbed the front steps with my head down, unlocked my door, and practically fell into my living room.
My landline was ringing, a good sign—North Ashcot wasn’t disconnected yet. I dumped my purse and briefcase on the carpet, threw off my dripping jacket, and checked the caller ID display. Linda Daniels from her 617 area code in the heart of Boston, checking in again.
“I didn’t think I’d get through,” she said. “Your storm is all over the news, not a half hour after I thought you said you were clear. Are you okay?”
I gave her a quick rundown, kicking off my soaking wet shoes while I talked. “So far, no big problems,” I assured her. “What’s it like there?”
“All we have is some fairly heavy rain. They’re saying the ey
e is going to turn south.” She laughed. “Or north.”
I walked the phone over to my front windows, where torrents pelted against the glass. “I wish you could hear this.”
“You said you didn’t want anyone to make a fuss over your first anniversary in North Ashcot, but I guess Mother Nature is overruling you. She must know how much you love the sounds of storms.”
“I do, but I’m hoping it will be calm by next weekend for the parade,” I said, immediately regretting my reference to our upcoming celebration. “For your trip, that is,” I added.
Too late. Big-city Linda chuckled as she always did at the idea of a small-town event. I remembered a time when I couldn’t imagine it, either—settling back into a town with a population of three thousand. Some days I missed the urban environment I’d lived in with Linda, my coworker at Boston’s main postal facility. Every evening we had a choice of entertainment—passive, like watching a play at one of the many theaters; or active, like dancing the night away at a club. As for restaurants, name an ethnic group and its cuisine was showcased somewhere among the tall buildings.
I knew Linda’s sarcastic tone came partly from wishing I’d return to Boston, where our daily contact was a highlight of our busy lives.
“Oh, right, the big parade is next weekend, isn’t it?” Linda asked, as I feared she would. “Of course. It’s in honor of the famous Henry . . . who was he again?”
“Henry Knox, as you know very well. As if Boston doesn’t have its share of Revolutionary War monuments and heroes.”
“You want to compare Paul Revere with Henry Knox? The statue at the Old North Church to the little plaque in the park on Main Street?”
“Never mind.” It was useless to try to convince Linda that just because Paul Revere’s midnight ride was more famous than Henry Knox’s journey across the state to deliver needed artillery to the battlefields, that didn’t make him more important in the war for independence. “Did you know that Henry Knox was the first secretary of war?” I asked, unable to quit defending my small town and its heroes.
“I did not know that.”
“You mean, ‘Who cares?’ right?”
“It’s nice that you have Quinn, your California native, now,” Linda said, backing off, but only a bit. “He probably knows nothing about the Revolutionary War and will listen raptly.”
It was true that Quinn had let me go on and on about the legendary General Knox, my current favorite commemorative stamp honoree. He inserted a “Wow” at appropriate times in my simple version of the tale: twenty-five-year-old Knox on an ox sled, dragging fifty cannons from Fort Ticonderoga in New York, across ice and snow, to deliver them to General George Washington, waiting in Boston to win the war. It was enough to set a patriotic heart thumping.
“Hey, do I hear a John Philip Sousa march?” Quinn had asked a few times. In turn, I let him teach me about the many missionaries who’d shaped California history. I was still struggling to pass his test, naming the twenty-one missions.
I hadn’t anticipated all these treks through history on my phone call. It took a minute to get my mind back to Linda in the present.
“I think the parade is the last thing on the minds of the government here right now,” I said to Linda. “It’s all about storm damage control. But I’m still planning to put up the display of Knox stamps as soon as they arrive.”
“I thought they were out of print.”
“They are. But I have my sources.”
I refrained from mentioning that I’d also hoped to have my patriotic quilt finished in time for the display in the community room on the day of the parade. I’d greatly underestimated the time it would take to finish even a relatively small quilt. Linda had been less than enthusiastic when I told her of my new hobby. Finally, she’d reminded me that there were quilting bees in Boston, too, whenever I was ready to return.
“As if you would know” was my retort, just before we called a halt to the my-town-is-better-than-yours banter.
We wrapped up with a mutual hope that the weather would allow her to visit next weekend.
After I clicked off, I made a tour of my house, checking windows and doors, making sure my flashlights were all in working condition, my candles and matches in strategic locations—all while toweling my hair. A look in my cabinets had me wishing I’d made a stop for groceries. With Quinn, my favorite cook, on his business trip, there was little in the way of leftovers. Peanut butter and homemade (not by me) lemon marmalade would have to do for lunch. Dinner was many hours and many inches of rain away. Maybe it would be clear enough by then to venture out again.
* * *
I carried my PB sandwich and a mug of coffee to the living room and turned on the television. Nothing but talk shows until the top of the hour. For distraction, I left the set tuned to the roundtable talk of five celebrity women, as they were billed. Never mind that their only celebrity as far as I knew was this talk show. I fell asleep halfway through my sandwich and a discussion of how DNA testing was going a long way toward settling problems of paternity in Hollywood. Glad that’s off my mind.
The sound of an ambulance blaring past my front lawn jolted me awake. Sirens followed close behind—a North Ashcot Police Department patrol car, I knew by now.
I looked out the living room windows, through sheets of rain, in time to catch sight of a fire engine and a second police cruiser joining the convoy traveling west—in the direction of the post office. And an entire downtown of shops, I reminded myself, wondering if I should check on my building.
I tried again for television news, lucky this time. Our local anchor team, Rick and Erin, took turns reading from notes to update viewers on the state of the storm. Erin was in the middle of a boilerplate paragraph urging the citizens of North Ashcot and vicinity to err on the side of safety and stay indoors.
“And please, folks, refrain from heavy power usage, even though this storm may turn out to be a dud, and not one for the books. Also, we want you to know—”
“I’m afraid there’s some unfortunate news,” Rick said, interrupting. He held up a sheet of paper that had been handed to him. Erin looked genuinely surprised and eager to hear the tidbit. Rick continued. “As tireless as our city workers have been, on alert for the safety of all”—he turned to address Erin—“I’m sorry to say that we have our first casualty, Erin.”
Erin’s face took on a somber look and I noticed a discreet gulp and a soft clearing of her throat. “What do we know for sure, Rick?”
Probably nothing, ever, I thought, but a negative outlook was the last thing we needed today.
“Emergency workers arrived on the scene in downtown North Ashcot just moments ago, and have confirmed that the storm has claimed one life in that town,” Rick said.
Erin took over, facing the camera. “This might be a good time for a break while we seek out the details. We’ll be back shortly with more news on this devastating storm.”
In a minute, the storm had gone from “dud” to “devastating.” And my attention went from a dull interest to full alert.
One life lost will do that.
* * *
I kept myself busy with paperwork I’d brought home from my PO desk and sat facing the muted television set, ready to tune in again when Rick and Erin or their counterparts returned with news. My mind kept drifting to the question: Who was the casualty of the storm?
I couldn’t put a number to how many of the three thousand townsfolk I knew. Certainly the dozens of my high school classmates who had never moved away. Now I handled their mail and knew a lot more about their lives than I did twenty years ago. I knew who had relatives out of town (in important jobs, unemployed, in prison), where and how often they took vacations, which catalogue companies they bought from, which magazines they read, what kinds of puzzles they were hooked on. Such was the life of a postal worker in any city, but especially so in a small town.
> When Terry Thornton, another quilter, walked up to my counter last week with a stack of “Save the Date” postcards, I became one of the first to know that she and Justin had set a wedding date. I made a private bet with myself that Terry would begin subscribing to a brides’ magazine, and, sure enough, I’d been right, though I would never have revealed her pseudoprivate business. I also knew the length and birth weight of former resident Mabel Foster’s new granddaughter. The more than two dozen postcard announcements, addressed to select people on her mailing list, passed through my hands and into the homes or PO boxes of her chosen recipients.
Day after day, I learned things about North Ashcot citizens that perhaps only their closest friends were aware of—late payments, a high- or low-end shopping spree, a returned item, a prescription drug.
Now one of those citizens was dead as a result of the wind and rain outside my door. Did I know the person, more than as his or her mail handler? Was he or she an old friend? A new friend? A customer? Selfishly, I hoped not. I wanted it to be a stranger, a drifter perhaps, realizing full well that any “stranger” to me would still have family and friends who would grieve. But I’d been back only a year and had already experienced the loss of my aunt and a friend from high school. That should have been enough for a while.
Rick and Erin never showed up again. Eventually, two beefy men took over the screen and treated us to a sports roundup—not even a storm could stop the tide of sports information. Impatient for more local details, I called Ben.
“Wouldn’t your friend know who was killed?” he asked. “Isn’t she the chief of police?” Ben wisecracked.
“I thought she might be a little busy right now,” I said.
“And I’m not?”
“No, you’re not.”
“Dang right,” he said, chuckling. “I heard it was branches.”
“Excuse me?”
“Branches of a big old maple got lopped off by the wind and hit someone. Don’t know who.”
