“Actually, the one thing I need right now is another drink.”
He stood up and walked around the bar and into the kitchen, found the icebox. He took a bottle of beer out, then hesitated and withdrew two more.
When he came back, he set a bottle down in front of Paul, then in front of Rebecca Cady. Both of them looked at him like he was crazy, and he shrugged. The wind shrieked around the house, and Paul reached out tentatively and touched his beer, then moved his hand away when Rebecca Cady shifted her eyes to him.
“Go on,” Arlen said, “just one ain’t going to bite you. It’s a hurricane, son. If that isn’t a special occasion, what is?”
It wasn’t strong stuff, but it was enough to settle Arlen’s stomach and ease his headache. Paul let the bottle sit untouched in front of him for a few minutes and then lifted it and took a small swallow.
About ten minutes went by, and then there came a crash and a tearing from the back porch. Arlen and Paul got to their feet and went to the small exposed portion of glass to look out. One of the porch railings had ripped free and blown into the back wall, and the corresponding roof support had buckled. The porch roof was still standing, but on just three legs now.
“That porch is almost finished,” Paul whispered. “I wonder what’s happening to that dock and the boathouse up in the inlet.”
Before Arlen could answer, there was another crash, this one far louder and on the southern side of the house, out of sight at their angle. The entire building trembled with impact, and then the lights went out. There wasn’t so much as a flicker; they simply snapped off. The electric fan whirled down to a crawl and then a stop, and now there were no sounds but the storm.
Arlen led the way back, picking past chairs and tables that existed as shadows. Rebecca Cady was where they’d left her, and though she hadn’t said a word, she was moving in the darkness. It took Arlen a minute to realize that she’d begun to drink the beer.
13
IT WENT ON THROUGH the afternoon and into the evening—wind and rain and the sounds of the house threatening to break up around them. One of the back windows splintered from the squeezing and shifting of the frame, then fell to the floor in shards when another gust shook the house. Paul and Arlen set to work cleaning up the glass and waiting on the rest of the windows to go, but they never did. The storm surge covered the beach and reached the porch and sloshed under the house. They could hear it moving beneath the floor, and Rebecca Cady kept her eyes downcast for at least an hour, looking for signs of it, expecting the water to begin seeping through. It didn’t rise high enough, though. Now and then a particularly inspired wave would splash up onto the edge of the porch, but it never made the door.
The three of them went out onto the front porch once, with the building offering shelter between them and the wind, and took in the yard. Everything was awash with water, the sea moving all around them, as if they stood aboard a ship rather than a porch. The heavy Cypress House sign banged on its iron chains. Up the hill, the trees bent almost to the earth and the undergrowth had been picked clean by the wind. The air was thick with spray and sand, peppering the trees.
“You ever seen one like this before?” Paul shouted in Rebecca Cady’s ear, his hand cupped to the side of her face. She shook her head.
It didn’t begin to lessen until evening, and then it was subtle—the wind shriek losing its voice just a bit, as if its lungs were worn from the day’s ravings. An hour later it was noticeably calmer, and the rain had faded to an ordinary, steady summer shower as the ocean mustered a slow retreat, as if displeased with the results of its reconnaissance mission on land. Maybe it would invade sometime, but it wouldn’t be now and wouldn’t be here.
As the storm eased away, real darkness settled in, and Rebecca lit more oil lamps. She had two lanterns, and around nine that evening, when the wind dangers seemed past, she lit them both and handed one to Paul and kept the other herself, and they all went outside.
The yard was littered with pieces of siding and porch rails and shingles. The back porch was in shambles, but the roof had held; the widow’s walk deck hadn’t fared so well.
Rebecca Cady looked everything over without comment and then said she wanted to go to the boathouse. She led the way, holding the lantern out in front of her body, picking over branches and planks and other debris. There was a narrow path that led north from the house and into the palms. It curved away from the Gulf, then opened up on an inlet that appeared to wind back into ever deeper undergrowth. The boathouse stood before them, little more than a tall shed built out onto the dock. Most of its roof was gone. Rebecca walked to the edge of the dock and lifted the lantern high. A third of the floor planks were missing, but the pilings that supported them were intact.