Word had it that Orion was churning up the waters in the gulf, bringing in even bigger fish in unheard of numbers.
“Chances are up to fifty percent.” Alice filled his coffee mug, worry marking a v between her eyes.
She was nearing fifty, which showed in the wrinkles around her eyes and the gray in her short, dark brown hair. Tending toward the heavy side, she always wore a freshly ironed apron over jeans and a T-shirt, bringing with her the smell of laundry detergent and good food. She didn’t seem to mind standing on her feet for her entire shift and carrying armloads of plates laden with food. Alice had the energy of someone much younger and a pleasant attitude to boot.
He glanced at her before turning his gaze back out the window. “Looks the same.”
“Sort of like heartbreak. You can’t see it coming until it hits you.” Alice laughed, a sound incongruous with her statement. She’d been dating one of the oil rig workers but had recently found out he had one girl in Corpus Christi and another in Rockport, plus the time he spent with her. Though she laughed at herself for acting like a “lovesick pup”—her words, not his—Charlie had the feeling the betrayal had hurt her more than she was admitting.
“We’ll have plenty of warning if it does head this way.” Charlie sipped his coffee and nodded toward her order pad. “The usual is fine.”
“You got it.” She touched his shoulder before she walked away. Because she needed to drop the grandkids off at school, her shift at the diner didn’t start until eight. Charlie usually had coffee and a granola bar when he first got up. By the time he reached the diner at 8:30, he felt as if he were eating an early lunch.
As he savored the coffee, he listened to the conversations around him, most of which centered around the approaching storm. The men in the booth behind him discussed whether corporations would be pulling employees off the oil rigs. There were more than seven hundred active platforms in the gulf. British Petroleum alone employed more than two thousand men. The decision to shut them down and pull everyone in wouldn’t be made lightly. It also wouldn’t be made until the last possible moment.
As he was finishing his breakfast of eggs, bacon, and toast, Dirk Baker stopped by his table. “We’re headed out for some fishing. Interested in tagging along, Mr. Everman?”
Dirk had been one of Charlie’s students more than ten years ago. He was a man now, with a family and a job on the rigs. At six feet two inches, he was a hard worker, evidenced by the callouses across his palms when they shook hands and the fact that the years hadn’t added much weight to his lanky frame.
“Guess I’ll pass. How long are you on the island?”
“Another ten days, unless Orion hits.” A smile tugged at the corner of Dirk’s lips. “The boys and I have a pot started on if or when the storm will hit. Five dollars for a half hour slot.”
Charlie wasn’t surprised. Dirk had been suspended more than once for running similar betting brackets. The kid would gamble on anything, not bothering to limit himself to sports events. He’d once convinced more than fifty students to bet on when the health education teacher would deliver her baby.
“How would I collect my winnings if I choose the exact half hour when the hurricane hits?”
Dirk pulled down on his ball cap. “We’ll all be over at Corpus in that case. You can find me at the Rusty Hinge.”
The Rusty Hinge was one of the oldest and best burger joints on the mainland. The food was great, but the name spoke to the decor, which was in dire need of updating.
“And if I bet it’s going to miss us and it does miss us?”
“We’ll split the pot between all the naysayers.”
“Which is everyone,” one of his buddies called from the door.
“Think on it, Mr. Everman. You always were good with predicting stuff.”
Alice stopped to refill his coffee cup as the group trooped out to their trucks. “Those fellas make me nervous. You shouldn’t bet on tragedy.”
“Don’t worry about them. They’re still boys at heart, and sometimes it shows.”
Alice’s gaze traveled up and down the booths in the diner—most were either empty or held folks nursing a mug of coffee after consuming the typical egg-and-bacon fare. Alice glanced at the clock, and then she decided to take advantage of the usual lull before the mid-morning crowd arrived. With a sigh she scooted into the booth across from Charlie, dropping the rag she always carried onto the table top and setting the pot of coffee on it.
“I’ve never experienced a hurricane before. The mere thought of it terrifies me.”
“And yet you live on a barrier island.”
“Yes, and I realized when I moved here that hurricanes were a possibility. But you never believe it will happen.”
Charlie didn’t know what to say to that, so he sipped his coffee and studied his friend. She was worried about more than the storm or herself. He had no doubt that her grandchildren, C.J. and Shelley, were on her mind.
“The kids will be fine, Alice. If the hurricane does head this way, we’ll have them off the island before it gets close.”
“Yeah, but the thing is… they’ve finally settled down.” She turned the pot of coffee left and then right. “They’re both beginning to think of the island as home. Shelley doesn’t cry herself to sleep anymore with that old teddy bear—”
The little girl tugged at Charlie’s heart strings. At eight years old, her every emotion played across her face like a movie at a drive-in. She was young and vulnerable, and her life had been a bit rocky up to this point.
“And C.J.” Alice busied herself straightening the sugar packets. “He’s growing up faster than I can process.”
That was an understatement. C.J. was ten going on twenty-one. Somewhere along the way he had decided to step up and become the man of the family. If anything, it seemed to Charlie that the boy was a bit too serious. He needed to learn to play, to be a child, and to leave the heavy stuff of life to the adults.
“How are they doing at school?”
“Better. Shelley still chews on her nails something fierce, but her teacher told me that she’s started participating in class more.” Alice’s eyes sparkled when she bragged on her grandkids. “Mrs. Bradford says she shows a real aptitude for language arts.”
“And C.J.?”
“There haven’t been any fights this year. I guess word spread that if you were going to pick on Shelley, you were going to have to deal with her older brother.”
“So what are you worried about?”
“That the storm… ” She studied the clear blue sky outside the diner’s window. “That Orion will disrupt their lives so much that it will push them back to the way they were when Georgia first left.”
Charlie had offered his opinion of Georgia and her decisions more than once. He didn’t think Alice needed to hear from him on that point.
“You can’t control what happens in those kids’ lives, not totally. At some point you have to trust them to the Lord.”
“Yeah, I know. I’ve been reading the devotional book you gave me. But the thing is, Charlie, I’ve also been looking up past hurricanes on the Internet.”
“Normally I’d say knowledge is a good thing.”
“The pictures are terrible.”
“Sometimes you can learn too much.”
“There are even videos.”
“Alice, there’s no point in filling your mind with those images.”
“Eight major storms in the last hundred years, Charlie. Eight.”
“A hundred years is a long time.”
“That’s one every thirteen years. The last one was in 1980. We’re overdue! And each time there was massive devastation and folks were killed.”
“I was here for Celia—”
“That was in 1970.”
“And Allen.”
“Yeah, 1980.” Alice drummed her fingers against the table. “Which was worse, in your opinion? I know what the weather site says.”
“Allen was a bigger storm—a C
ategory 5, but we took a more direct hit from Celia, which was only a Cat 3.”
When Alice glanced again at him, her brown eyes flooded with fear. Charlie wanted to say something, say anything, to erase that look. “Things have changed, for the better actually, since those storms. We have stricter building codes and more accurate weather forecasting.”
Alice sighed and slid out of the booth as a group of fishermen came through the front door.
Charlie stood and tossed some money on the table—enough for the bill and a nice tip. “I can’t promise you that Orion won’t hit, Alice, but I can promise you that I’ll be there to help you and the kids. You won’t have to go through this alone.”
That seemed to be exactly what she needed to hear because she leaned forward, kissed his cheek, and picked up the pot of coffee. “You’re a peach, Charlie. A real peach.”
Coming from her, that was high praise indeed, and it was enough to put a smile on Charlie’s face and banish for a moment his own fears about the coming storm.
As he walked outside, it seemed to him that the air felt different—as if there was an expectancy, a zing almost. Certainly, barometric pressure did change with a hurricane, but that wasn’t what he was noticing. No, it was more the anticipation of folks walking past him.
People were keyed up. Danger was on their radar, and it was setting them on edge.
He’d go home and make a packing list for Alice. He’d also call some friends and find her a place to stay farther inland so she wouldn’t have to pay the hyped-up prices for a hotel room. And he’d pray. If Orion had its sight on Port A, Charlie would pray that all of the good people in their small community would find a way to safety well before the hurricane made land.
CHAPTER 5
Joshua worked beside his father in the field to the south of their house. They had harvested the corn the day before, a process that would have looked strange to any Old Order Amish. Joshua had grown up in Cody’s Creek, and they had been using tractors since he was a small child. Though his parents never spoke of any dissension among their community, he vaguely remembered quite a few of his classmates moving away when he had just begun school. No one ever explained why, but looking back he understood that it was because they didn’t agree with the changes.
In Joshua’s opinion, the tractors were a necessary tool. Early in the morning, they had hooked the corn picker behind the old Ford tractor. The stalks were pulled into the machine, which separated the ears from the stalk and husk. The ears then went through a shoot and were tossed into a wagon pulled behind the picker. They had nearly finished harvesting the field when the machine sputtered to a stop.
“More than one man has lost his fingers trying to clear these jams,” his father had muttered as he stared into the bowels of the machine.
In the end they had been able to clear the obstruction, but then the tractor had stalled and refused to start. So they had harnessed the corn picker up to the Percherons, who had finished the job with no mishap. The horses still came in handy for harvesting, though the soil held too much clay for them to be much help during planting. That was the reason their community had decided to allow tractors in the first place.
Over the years since, the community had continued to grow with like-minded individuals, and they were again numbering four districts, or nearly six hundred people. The people who had stayed had grown used to the tractors, though some, like Joshua’s father, insisted on keeping the horses—just in case.
Today the corn needed to be transported to the crib where it could air-dry.
Alton had helped the day before in spite of his hangover and lack of sleep. He was a hard worker when he set his mind to it. But at lunch Joshua had noticed him standing in the shadow of the back of the barn, smoking a cigarette and thumbing through texts on his smart phone.
“I can’t believe you waste money on that thing.”
“You have no idea what you’re missing, bruder.” Alton didn’t look up as he continued to stare at the small screen. Laughing at something he read, he held the phone at arm’s length, smiled at the thing, and a small flash of light went off.
“Taking pictures of yourself?” Joshua thought of the gizmo as a child’s toy, and he knew it was long past time his brother outgrew his fascination with such things. Most of the Amish he knew who indulged their rumspringa did so for less than a year. Alton was seventeen. Like all Amish, he’d left school after the eighth grade at the age of fourteen, but he had only begun to step outside the rules of their Ordnung during the last six months. Joshua hoped his flirtations with Englisch gadgets would be short lived.
Some days he worried that Alton’s attitude indicated a more serious underlying problem. Perhaps he was considering leaving their community and fully embracing the Englisch life. Joshua prayed it wasn’t so. While that road was understandable for some people, he fervently believed his brother was better off remaining with his friends, his family, and a simple faith.
“It’s called a selfie, and a cute girl in Clarita asked for it.” In response to Joshua’s grunt of disapproval, he added, “No worries. She’s Amish.”
Alton continued to help with the harvest the rest of the day, but the next morning when Joshua woke, he was gone. He’d slipped out sometime during the night. No doubt he’d taken the pickup, which he kept hidden on the far side of their property. How had he managed to purchase the rust trap? And where did he plan to go in it? Perhaps he’d gone to visit the girl in Clarita. It was nearly a three-hour drive between the two communities—in other words, another day wasted.
Joshua didn’t know how long his parents would put up with such foolishness. He did know he was tired of pulling his brother’s weight as well as his own.
He spent the day transferring the corn to the crib, while his father repaired the tractor. They needed to plant the east field with winter wheat, and they needed to do so while the good weather held. Joshua finished storing the corn, and then he went to the barn to care for the Percherons and both of their buggy horses.
Work on a farm was never completed. It repeated itself from day to day and season to season. Joshua enjoyed that rhythm, though he was grateful they no longer had cattle. The beasts constantly bumped into things, broke things, and generally caused extra work. Instead, his mother now kept chickens and traded eggs with their neighbor for fresh milk.
Alton still hadn’t returned by dinner, and his parents didn’t bring up the topic, probably because his four sisters were all ears when it came to any tidbits about their brother. Betsy, Janet, Karen, and Katherine were twelve, eleven, and ten-year-old twins, respectively. To Joshua they looked like ducks in a row—all slim, blond, and brown-eyed. When he stopped to think about it, there was a ten-year span between him and Alton, and then a five-year span between Alton and Betsy. No wonder their family only had six siblings when most families had ten or more. His mother, Abigail, had gone through two periods when she must have wondered if her childbearing years were over.
Mamm was short and round. She was perpetually busy and somewhat outspoken for an Amish woman. Her tongue had a sarcastic edge Joshua never wanted to be on the receiving end of, but for all of her hustle and bustle she loved her family dearly and would do anything for them. She brokered little nonsense and was often quick to share her opinion, which explained the sharp tone with which she broached the subject of Alton once the girls had been sent upstairs to bed.
“I don’t suppose your bruder bothered to tell you where he was going.”
Joshua was reading the Budget. Though many of the contributing letters were about family matters, quite a few of them mentioned weather and harvest results. He scanned each column for any indication of what people were planting in the coming year. He was always trying to get his father to consider a new crop, but Daniel Kline was not one to make a change without a very good reason.
His father had recently turned forty-six; in fact, his mother and father were the same age. Neither looked particularly old to Joshua. His mother looked as she
always had, though perhaps her hair had more streaks of gray in it. His father looked like most other Amish farmers—tall, with a slight build, calloused hands, and dark hair. His hair had receded over the years until it was a ring around the back of his head. His thick beard was steadily becoming more gray than black.
“Joshua, either tell me or tell me you don’t want to tell me.”
It took him a few moments to realize she was waiting for an answer about Alton.
“Nein, Mamm. He didn’t say anything to me.”
“Took that old truck I suppose. He thinks we don’t know about it, but this farm isn’t that big. We’re not so old we can’t hear an Englisch automobile that could use a new muffler.”
What did his mother know about mufflers? And how long had she known about the truck?
“You need to talk to that boy, Daniel.”
His father had been working on carving a design into a turkey call. He glanced up at his wife, shrugged, and returned his attention to the woodwork. The turkey calls sold at Bylers’ Dry Goods and brought in a nice bit of extra money. Joshua thought that his father did it more because he liked the intricate work than because he wished for the additional funds.
“Shrugging at me won’t make this problem go away.”
Joshua stood and stretched. He knew when his mother’s tone turned from sarcastic to cross it meant she was worried. Who could blame her? He was worried too. He walked into the kitchen and brought back the plate of cookies she had set back on the stove.
“Offering me sweets isn’t the answer either.”
“Would you like some coffee?”
“Milk would be good. Danki.”
Joshua was walking back into the kitchen when his father called out, “I’ll take coffee.”
He knew some men his age thought it was women’s work to carry in snacks and drinks, but his mother had raised him differently—it was the work of whoever had the time and ability. Joshua appreciated how hard his parents worked, and it never would have occurred to him to ask his mother to bring him a treat. The thought of such a thing caused him to laugh. It would probably be as painful as tussling with the barn cat, who had razor sharp claws.
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