But this is a dream like no other. Little by little, my spinning starts to slowly settle, sort of like the end of a wild amusement ride, and when it stops, I’m flying still. The rain is gone, and the storm has calmed. Craziest thing of all, though—even crazier than me floating like a kite—is that all the color’s been drained from the world. Below me is a sketched version of the iron bridge, etched in perfect pencil. It’s like I’m alive in some 3-D version of my black-and-white drawings.
And I’m gliding now over the intercostal waters, shaded in dusty gray swirls, and the water tower at the edge of town. I drift away from town, and before I know it, I’m passing above the shingled roof of my home and the Chenier Sanctuary. None of this makes sense, but I have the strange feeling that I’m controlling my flight through power of will. Next I’m hovering high above the houses by the Chains and then, sure enough, Lucy. Like in my sketches, the lighthouse looks strong and certain. I feel the urge to go to it, and my body descends, smooth and gentle as if I were a heron easing down into a cypress tree.
Waiting on the crow’s nest is a single figure, one I know long before I can see her face. Celeste is etched in grays and blacks, standing at the rail, gazing over a calm ocean. My feet touch down softly behind her, and above us both a thousand stars dot the clear summer sky. Years of my prayers have been answered at last, and I’m back at the night of my greatest failure. I’ve been given a second chance.
“Stop!” I shout.
My sister turns to me. “You shouldn’t be here,” she says. “Go on home.”
These lines are pulled from the script in my mind, the one that draws right from my memory. We said these same things the last time I saw her. “We should go home together. I know you’re sad, Celeste, but I need you.”
“You don’t need me, kiddo. You, you’re great. You’ve got it all covered. Just quit worrying about everything so much.”
I want to tell her how things will change after this night if she does what she’s about to do, how sad Mom and Dad will get, how alone I’ll be in a world without her. But I’m not in control of my body at all. I’m trapped in the memory of what was, chained to the past. “I love you,” I say, just the same as I said before.
“I feel your love. And it’s all that’s kept me here for this long. Don’t you understand? You’re the brightest spot in my life, but I need more than that. You belong here, Eli. And me, I just don’t.” Her eyes are glassy and steady, sad but determined. She slides up onto the crow’s nest rail, legs dangling, facing me still. “Okay, then,” she says, and her hands come away from the railing. As she crosses her arms over her chest, I remember what she’s about to do. At the time, the realization struck like lightning. Maybe the shock of it froze me. But in my dreamy state, just like when it really happened, I do nothing. I don’t charge forward and grab her, tackle her. I don’t scream “no.” I stand there like a hunk of nothing, and I watch my sister lift her legs and tilt over backward, and then there’s just open space and the ocean where she’d been. I rush into the rail, and just like before, I see her tumbling in slow motion toward the rocks.
In moments, after I race down the lighthouse stairs, I’ll be at her side, and the blood will be awful, and her crooked limbs will be awful, and she’ll beg me to stay with her—Just stay, Eli! Don’t you leave me!—but leave her is exactly what I’ll do. I’ll run for help and try to drive her red pickup truck and crash into an oak tree a half mile up the road, and she will die and I’ll be alone, a useless screwup. And one day, I’ll end up back in that same lighthouse myself.
I can’t stand to relive those scenes again, and so, while my sister is still falling in the dream, I break free from the script of what was. I leap over the railing myself and sweep down after her, sleek as a hawk. I’ll catch up to her and stretch out my arms, latch on to her shoulders, and fly us both to safety. I’ll be the hero and save Celeste.
Only as I’m falling, suddenly I can’t control my flying. I find myself starting to tumble and spin, and before I know it, I’m twirling wild. I lose sight of my sister and the rocks below the lighthouse, and instead, all I can see is blackness mixed with flashing light. Raining hard as it is, it’s not easy to tell when the water stops and the air starts. Somehow, I splash into cold waves, and the impact shocks my eyes shut. My body gets tossed up and down as I struggle to stay above the surface. I catch a glimpse of metal webwork on a piece of land not far off. Gasping, I swim toward solid ground, kicking and stretching with my aching arms.
I don’t so much reach land as get heaved onto it by the waves, dumped into a bed of reedy grass, but I’m quick to stumble to my feet and stagger away from the water. In the mud and muck, I lean into one of the bridge’s support beams, dropping down so I’m sitting on the concrete base. I breathe and try to settle myself, taking stock of what just happened. I reach around to the back of my head, where something thwacked me in midair, and I find a good-sized goose egg. Was that black-and-white vision a weird dream, some sort of holy hallucination?
My confusion only gets worse when I finally lift my head to look around. The landscape’s all wrong, no houses or docks like there ought to be. And it’s then I realize that the hurricane didn’t blow me back to the island. It blew me to the mainland, on the far side of the bridge.
Like a jolt of electricity, all the weariness in my mind and aches in my body sizzle out. I high-step through the weedy grass, to where the water’s up almost to the road. I run to the drawbridge control booth where Dallas used to spend his hot summer days, but when I grab the knob and tug, nothing happens. It’s locked up tight. I can see the controls that’ll lower the bridge and let Max and Sabine get to safety. All that’s keeping me from them is a pane of glass, one of those with a metal net crisscrossed inside.
I scramble around in the pouring rain, looking for a brick or a rock, but there’s nothing along either side of the road, nor under the bridge. I return to the booth and pound on the reinforced glass, peel off one boot and beat on it, all just wasted effort.
Finally, I see the lowered crossing arm, the long board with a big stop sign nailed to the middle of it. It’s wobbling like mad in the wind. I run over and grab the free end. When I start walking it backward, the long board bends easily at first, curving like a bow. After a few feet, it begins to offer some resistance, and I need to bear down, dig in my feet, and really shove. I lean so hard I’m practically sideways, shouldering now into the board as I gain another foot. The board strains, and I imagine it springing straight, snapping back and launching me like an arrow. Instead, there’s a mighty splintering sound, and I collapse forward, right on top of a six-foot section.
I grab the wood with both hands, charge at the booth, and drive my battering ram into the glass. The wood slides in my grip, and the window is untouched. I back up and try it again, and this time a slim crack appears, forking like lightning. I take a batter’s stance and pound away, and only after I hear myself roaring into the storm do I realize I’m yelling. But even this doesn’t do much good. The metal net inside the window keeps it from shattering, so I end up with a battered and cracked barrier, but a barrier all the same. Frustrated, I drive my fist into the window, spiking pain into my knuckles. I shake my hand out and open it up. The palm is scratched with splinters from the board, and the skin’s all scraped up from climbing the bridge, gripping hard the rusty iron.
That thought sends me to the rail work, dragging my wooden board behind me. I lift it up again like a six-foot baseball bat, eyeing up the X shape of some of those crossed pistols. I swing that sucker and connect good, and lo and behold, for once my plan actually works. There on the wet ground is my prize. I drop the board and reach for the crossed pistols. The metal is cool and rough in my hand, and the edges are jagged blades.
Back at the booth, with my improvised weapon tight inside my fist, I punch the reinforced glass, driving some pieces right through that metal net. I punch again, ignoring the biting sting in my palm, and again, picturing Max and Sabine on the far side w
aiting. Must be I get lost in my thoughts, ’cause even after I break through, I keep swinging at the pieces around the edges, smashing all I can smash.
Huffing with effort, I drop the metal X and shove my hand inside, stretching for the doorknob’s lock. I catch some shards and shred up my wrist a bit, but it’s not enough to worry over now. I feel for the latch with my fingers and flip it, and when I grab the door, it swings open, and at last, I’m inside.
It’s just like I remembered, the two safety switches and the large lever, the key, even the old barstool where Dallas used to sit. But the safety switch isn’t glowing red like it’s supposed to be when the bridge is up. And it’s not green either. The light is dull and dead, and I realize now there’s nothing lit up on the control panel. Hoping maybe I don’t remember right, I reach for the key, pinch it, and turn. The dull buttons don’t ignite. The damn booth’s got no power.
I grab the lever with both hands and yank down, then shove it up and yank down again and again, pumping it to the point where I wouldn’t be surprised if it snapped clean off. The bridge doesn’t notice my rage. The raised section stays raised, and I slide down onto the floor with the broken glass, feeling pretty busted up myself.
I try to think clearly for a second, consider my options. On any normal day, the walk from where I am to Hackberry along Highway 27 would take about an hour. In these conditions, I think it’d be at least double that, probably more. The terrain is open and flat, nothing but a few fishing shacks off in the marsh. If I’m out there when the storm surge hits, the rushing floodwaters will sweep me away. That’s saying nothing about the winds, which soon enough will be on the wrong side of a hundred miles per hour. But if I’m wanting to live through this, it’s head up Highway 27 or try to climb back over that damn bridge. I couldn’t make it across the bridge when I had more of my strength and hadn’t been half drowned. I look at my right hand, bruised and busted up, pulsing with pain and slick with blood. Forming a loose fist makes me wince.
Sitting on the floor of that booth, though, I think again of Max and Sabine. I imagine them on the other side of the iron bridge, looking up at the raised section, waiting for it to lower and make clear their way. They need me. I picture myself walking north, alone and without purpose. Eli the Screwup—same as I ever was, same as I’ll ever be. The emptiness that drove me to the lighthouse this morning begins to expand in my gut.
Celeste’s ghost doesn’t appear, but in my head her voice echoes: Give it up. You can’t do anything right. Plenty of times, I’ve felt that way myself. And I know it’s how everybody thinks of me. But I don’t want to be that guy anymore. The climb back over is impossible, epic. The kind of thing that could only be made by a guy way better than me.
In the booth, I rise up off the floor and turn to the iron bridge.
MAX IS BACK IN JERSEY ON THE BEACH, DOWN AT AVON-BY-the-Sea where she and her dad fixed up a half-dozen seaside homes and helped restore a dilapidated merry-go-round. Even though the sun is hot, baking the sand, she’s carrying her flip-flops and walking along the water’s cool edge. Alongside her, away from the ocean, Angie strolls along, wearing an oversized sun hat and slick sunglasses. But on Max’s other side, there’s a toddler, a little girl unsteady on her feet in the squishy sand. Max needs to hold her hand to keep her upright. The tide slips up and rushes over their bare feet, and the child squeals with wonder and delight. Max thinks of all the things she could show her.
“You should wake up.”
Max opens her eyes. She’s on the second floor of the Sportsman’s Castle, and Sabine is leaning over her, pushing on her shoulder. “What were you smiling about?”
“Just a stupid dream. What’s wrong?”
“You have to wake up. Something’s downstairs.”
Max rubs her neck. She can’t tell if she was asleep for fifteen minutes or two hours. “Something like what?”
“Like I don’t know. A something. I heard it knocking around.”
Max regards the girl. The hurricane’s roaring creates a constant backdrop, a low-grade growl, loud enough that they have to raise their voices. So she’s not sure how the kid could hear anything downstairs. “It’s just your imagination,” she tells her.
Sabine looks hurt by this. She says, “You was dreaming about a baby girl. Your sister, I think.”
Max blushes. “How’d you know that?”
“Sometimes I go walking in other people’s dreams. Mother Evangeline, she taught me.”
“Yeah, right,” Max says, unsure how to respond.
The girl shrugs, holds on to her stuffed animal. “Jasper’s real afraid of what’s downstairs.”
Max reaches for the big flashlight. She says, “Well, I’m real afraid of what’s outside. But I sure wouldn’t want Jasper to be upset. You tell him I’m on the case.”
Just to placate the kid, Max crawls off the sleeping bag and clicks on the flashlight. Cautiously, she prowls through the taxidermist’s graveyard. At the second-floor railing, she shines the beam downstairs. Instantly, she can see things have gotten a lot worse. The floodwaters have risen up a couple feet, and the first floor has become a gently sloshing sea with merchandise floating and rocking on the surface. Boxes bump and tumble into each other, and this is surely the noise that bothered the kid. Max sees a corpse dressed all in camouflage, floating facedown, but then realizes she’s looking at a toppled mannequin. Even though she knows it’s not real, Max doesn’t want to settle on this image, as it makes her think of where the two of them might be in a few hours. Will their bodies even be found?
This thought makes her turn from the mannequin, and she aims the light away from the dummy. It lands by chance on a display that catches Max’s immediate interest. On a big sign, a cartoon hunter proclaims PICKS UP A WHISPER FIVE MILES AWAY! He’s holding some sort of walkie-talkie.
Max doubts that outside the Odenkirks’ there’s any living soul within five miles of her, let alone one who might be tuning in to obscure radio frequencies. But maybe the Coast Guard or emergency services are scanning the channels. As she moves toward the stairs, she thinks of that clichéd expression that seems to have defined her life lately: Nothing to lose.
As she reaches the bottom steps, she wades into the water without much worry, so used is she to being damp and wet. It rises halfway up her thighs, which stay dry in the tall fishermen’s boots. She plows past two aisles to the walkie-talkie display. The “Hunters’ Helper” is guaranteed to broadcast in any terrain, even where cell phone service isn’t available. It works on some sort of CB radio technology, and according to a red, white, and blue sticker, it’s “Made Right Here in the Heartland of the U.S. of A.!” Much more important, she finally locates the information she does need: It takes a single nine-volt battery.
With heavy strides, she shoves her way through the floating debris to the checkout lanes. She locates the batteries and loads up the walkie-talkie, not feeling guilty in the least about dropping the packaging into the water.
When she flips on the walkie-talkie, it crackles with static. Even that sound excites her. She turns a knob, and a red digital counter slips from 1 up to 19—channels, she assumes. Max extends the antennae, then goes back through the channels slowly, listening to the static coming from each. Here and there she imagines a voice breaking through the chattering crackle, someone saying, “You’re not alone.” On each setting, only after she’s sure she can’t hear anything, she thumbs the button on the side and cradles the receiver, yelling, “Hello! We’re here! My name is Max, and me and a little girl are stranded in the Sportsman’s Castle on Shackles Island. The water is getting higher. We’re trapped, and we need help now!”
“Jasper too!” Sabine hollers from where she’s watching above at the rail.
Max wonders what else a listener would need to hear. “This isn’t a joke or a prank. We’re in real trouble out here. Mayday! SOS! The Sportsman’s Castle on Shackles Island. Please help us!” At every channel, after sending her message, she again grips the walkie-talki
e and strains her hearing, tuning hard to the static, waiting for some voice to emerge, some slim hope of rescue.
On the last channel, she refuses to turn it off without an answer. She closes her eyes and concentrates until she’s convinced she hears the faint tinkle of piano music. But this can only be her dreaming.
Angry and scared, she heaves the walkie-talkie across the checkout lanes, where it plunks into the murky water. Right after it lands, though, it somehow burbles back to the surface. There’s some disturbance there in the gently sloshing waves. Max wades through the drifting junkyard of gum and candy bars and Hunter’s World! magazines to shine the flashlight in the area where the walkie-talkie landed. And then the light catches on two shiny black marbles about ten feet away, rising just above the waterline.
Above her, Sabine yells, “Ivory!”
Max sees Sabine standing at the railing on the second floor, horrified, pointing to where the eyes had been. When Max looks again, they’re gone.
Driven by instinct, she swings up onto a checkout counter, clearing her feet from the murk just as Ivory’s snapping jaws rise after her. The albino alligator chomps air, collapses back into the water, and lifts again instantly, clawing now at the metal sides of the checkout lane. Max backs away, her slick boots nearly slipping on the rubbery conveyor belt. Ivory thrashes in the water, churning it, trying to get high enough to climb onto the countertop. More than once, his massive head makes it up, but the weight of his body pulls him back down.
Into the Hurricane Page 11
