Stories (2011) (65 page)

Bill went around and opened all the windows to help take
away some of the force of the wind. Something he knew he should have done long
ago, but he was trying to spare the baby the howl of the wind, the dampness.

The wind charged through the open windows and the rain
charged with it. Bill could hardly stand before them, they were so powerful.

Fifteen minutes later, he heard the furniture below thumping
on the ceiling, floating against the floor on which he stood.

9:00 P.m.

My God, thought Jack, how many rounds this thing gonna go?
His head ached and his ribs ached worse and his insides felt as if he had
swallowed hot tacks and was trying to regurgitate them. His legs, though
strong, were beginning to feel the wear. He had thought this was a
fifteen-round affair, but realized now it was twenty, and if he wasn’t losing
by then, he might get word it would go twenty-five.

Jack slammed a glove against McBride’s left elbow, saw
McBride grimace, drop the arm. Jack followed with the uppercut, and this time
he not only hit McBride, he hit him solid. McBride took the shot so hard, he
farted. The sandwich he’d eaten between rounds probably didn’t seem like such a
good idea now.

Next time Jack threw the combination, he connected with the
uppercut again. McBride moved back, and Jack followed, hitting him on the arms,
slipping in the uppercut now and then, even starting to make contact with hooks
and straight rights.

Then every light in the building went out as the walls came
apart and the bleachers soared up on a great surge of water and dumped the
boxing patrons into the wet darkness. The ring itself began to move, to rise to
the ceiling, but before it tilted out from under Jack, McBride hit him a blow
so hard Jack thought he felt past lives cease to exist; ancestors fresh from
the slime rocked from that blow, and the reverberations of it rippled back to
the present and into the future, and back again. The ceiling went away on a
torrent of wind, Jack reached out and got hold of something and clung for dear
life.

“You stupid sonofabitch,” Uncle Cooter said, “you got me by
the goddamn head.”

9:05 P.m.

Captain Slater thought they would be at the bottom of the
Gulf by now, and was greatly surprised they were not. A great wave of water had
hit them so hard the night before it had snapped the anchor chain. The ship was
driven down, way down, and then all the water in the world washed over them and
there was total darkness and horror, and then, what seemed like hours later but
could only have been seconds, the water broke and the
Pensacola
flew
high up as if shot from a cannon, came down again, leaned starboard so far it
took water, then, miraculously, corrected itself. The sea had been choppy and
wild ever since.

Slater shook shit and seawater out of his pants legs and
followed the rope around his waist to the support post. He got hold of the
post, felt for the rest of the rope. In the darkness, he cried out, “Bernard.
You there?”

“I think so,” came Bernard’s voice from the darkness. And
then they heard a couple of bolts pop free, fire off like rifle blasts. Then:
“Oh, Jesus,” Bernard said. “Feel that swell? Here it comes again.”

Slater turned his head and looked out. There was nothing but
a great wall of blackness moving toward them. It made the first wave seem like
a mere rise; this one was bigger than the Great Wall of China.

10:00 P.m.

Bill and Angelique lay on the bed with Teddy. The water was
washing over the edges of the feather mattress, blowing wet, cold wind over
them. They had started the Edison and a gospel record had been playing, but the
wind and rain had finally gotten into the mechanism and killed it.

As it went dead, the far wall cracked and leaned in and a
ripple of cracking lumber went across the floor and the ceiling sagged and so
did the bed. Bess suddenly disappeared through a hole in the floor. One moment
she was there, the next she was gone, beneath the water.

Bill grabbed Angelique by the arm, pulled her to her feet in
the knee-deep water. She held Teddy close to her. He pulled them across the
room as the floor shifted, pulled them through the door that led onto the unfinished
deck, stumbled over a hammer that lay beneath the water, but managed to keep
his feet.

Bill couldn’t help but think of all the work he had put in
on this deck. Now it would never be finished. He hated to leave anything
unfinished. He hated worse that it was starting to lean.

There was one central post that seemed to stand well enough,
and they took position behind that. The post was one of several that the house
was built around; a support post to lift the house above the normal rise of
water. It connected bedroom to deck.

Bill tried to look through the driving rain. All he could
see was water. Galveston was covered by the sea. It had risen up and swallowed
the city and the island.

The house began to shake violently. They heard lumber
splintering, felt it shimmying. The deck swayed more dynamically.

“We’re not going to make it, are we, Bill?” Angelique said.

“No, darling. We aren’t.”

“I love you.”

“I love you.”

He held her and kissed her. She said, “It doesn’t matter,
you and I. But Teddy. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t understand. God, why Teddy?
He’s only a baby . . . How do I drown, darling?”

“One deep breath and it’s over. Just one deep pull of the
water, and don’t fight it.”

Angelique started to cry. Bill squatted, ran his hand under
the water and over the deck. He found the hammer. It was lodged in its spot
because it was caught in a gap in the unfinished deck. Bill brought the hammer
out. There was a big nail sticking out of the main support post. He had driven
it there the day before, to find it easily enough. It was his last big nail and
it was his intent to save it.

He used the claw of the hammer to pull it out. He looked at
Angelique. “We can give Teddy a chance.”

Angelique couldn’t see Bill well in the darkness, but she
somehow felt what his face was saying. “Oh, Bill.”

“It’s a chance.”

“But . . .”

“We can’t stand against this, but the support post—”

“Oh Lord, Bill,” and Angelique sagged, holding Teddy close
to her chest. Bill grabbed her shoulders, said, “Give me my son.”

Angelique sobbed, then the house slouched far to the
right—except for the support post. All the other supports were washing loose,
but so far, this one hadn’t budged.

Angelique gave Teddy to Bill. Bill kissed the child, lifted
him as high on the post as he could, pushed the child’s back against the wood,
and lifted its arm. Angelique was suddenly there, supporting the baby. Bill
kissed her. He took the hammer and the nail, and placing the nail squarely
against Teddy’s little wrist, drove it through the child’s flesh with one swift
blow.

Then the storm blew more furious and the deck turned to
gelatin. Bill clutched Angelique, and Angelique almost managed to say, “Teddy,”
then all the powers of nature took them and the flimsy house away.

High above it all, water lapping around the post, Teddy, wet
and cold, squalled with pain.

Bess surfaced among lumber and junk. She began to paddle her
legs furiously, snorting water. A nail on a board cut across her muzzle,
opening a deep gash. The horse nickered, thrashed her legs violently, lifted
her head, trying to stay afloat.

SundaY, SePtemBer 9, 4:00
a.m.

The mechanism that revolved the Bolivar lighthouse beam had
stopped working. The stairs that led up to the lighthouse had gradually filled
with people fleeing the storm, and as the water rose, so did the people. One
man with a young boy had come in last, and therefore was on the constantly
rising bottom rung. He kept saying, “Move up. Move up, lessen’ you want to see
a man and his boy drown.” And everyone would move up. And then the man would
soon repeat his refrain as the water rose.

The lighthouse was becoming congested. The lighthouse tower
had begun to sway. The lighthouse operator, Jim Marlin, and his wife,
Elizabeth, lit the kerosene lamp and placed it in the center of the circular,
magnifying lens, and tried to turn the beam by hand. They wanted someone to
know there was shelter here, even though it was overcrowded, and might soon
cease to exist. The best thing to do was to douse the light and hope they could
save those who were already there, and save themselves. But Jim and Elizabeth
couldn’t do that. Elizabeth said, “Way I see it, Jim. It’s all or nothing, and
the good Lord would want it that way. I want it that way.”

All night long they had heard screams and cries for help,
and once, when the lighthouse beam was operating, they had seen a young man
clinging to a timber. When the light swung back to where the young man had
been, he had vanished.

Now, as they tried to turn the light by hand, they found it
was too much of a chore. Finally, they let it shine in one direction, and there
in the light they saw a couple of bodies being dragged by a large patch of
canvas from which dangled ropes, like jellyfish tentacles. The ropes had
grouped and twisted around the pair, and the canvas seemed to operate with
design, folded and opened like a pair of great wings, as if it were an exotic
sea creature bearing them off to a secret lair where they could be eaten in
privacy.

Neither Jim nor Elizabeth Marlin knew the bloated men
tangled in the ropes together; had no idea they were named Ronald Beems and
Forrest Thomas.

5:00 a.m.

A crack of light. Dawn. Jim and Elizabeth had fallen asleep
leaning against the base of the great light, and at the first ray of sunshine,
they awoke, saw a ship’s bow at the lighthouse window, and standing at the bow,
looking in at them, was a bedraggled man in uniform, and he was crying
savagely.

Jim went to the window. The ship had been lifted up on great
piles of sand and lumber. Across the bow he could see the letters PENSACOLA.
The man was leaning against the glass. He wore a captain’s hat. He held out his
hand, palm first. Jim put his hand to the glass, trying to match the span of
the crying captain’s hand.

Behind the captain a number of wet men appeared. When they
saw the lighthouse they fell to their knees and lifted their heads to the
heavens in prayer, having forgotten that it was in fact the heavens that had
devastated them.

6:00 a.m.

The day broke above the shining water, and the water began
to go down, rapidly, and John McBride sat comfortably on the great hour hand of
what was left of the City Hall clock. He sat there with his arms wrapped around
debris that dangled from the clock. In the night, a huge spring mechanism had
jumped from the face of the clock and hit him a glancing blow in the head, and
for a moment, McBride had thought he was still battling the nigger. He wasn’t
sure which was worse to fight. The hurricane or the nigger. But through the
night, he had become grateful for the spring to hold on to.

Below him he saw much of what was left of the Sporting Club,
including the lockers where he had put his belongings. The whole damn place had
washed up beneath the clock tower.

McBride used his teeth to work off the binds of his boxing
gloves and slip his hands free. All through the night the gloves had been a burden.
He feared his lack of grip would cause him to fall. It felt good to have his
hands out of the tight, wet leather.

McBride ventured to take hold of the minute hand of the
clock, swing on it a little, and cause it to lower him onto a pile of rubble. He
climbed over lumber and junk and found a mass of bloated bodies, men, women,
and children, most of them sporting shingles that had cut into their heads and
bodies. He searched their pockets for money and found none, but one of the
women—he could tell it was a woman by her hair and dress only, her features
were lost in the fleshy swelling of her face—had a ring. He tried to pull it
off her finger, but it wouldn’t come off. The water had swollen her flesh all
around it.

He sloshed his way to the pile of lockers. He searched
through them until he found the one where he had put his clothes. They were so
filthy with mud, he left them. But he got the razor and the revolver. The
revolver was full of grit. He took out the shells and shook them and put them
back.

He stuck the gun in his soaked boxing trunks. He opened the
razor and shook out the silt and went over to the woman and used the razor to
cut off her finger. The blade cut easily through the flesh, and he whacked
through the bone. He pushed the ring on his little finger, closed the razor,
and slipped it into the waistband of his trunks, next to his revolver.

This was a hell of a thing to happen. He had hidden his
money back at the whorehouse, and he figured it and the plump madam were
probably far at sea, the madam possibly full of harpoon wounds.

And the shitasses who were to pay him were now all choked,
including the main one, the queer Beems. And if they weren’t, they were
certainly no longer men of means.

This had been one shitty trip. No clothes. No money. No
whipped nigger. And no more pussy. He’d come with more than he was leaving
with.

What the hell else could go wrong?

He decided to wade toward the whorehouse, see if it was
possibly standing, maybe find some bodies along the way to loot—something to
make up for his losses.

As he started in that direction, he saw a dog on top of a
doghouse float by. The dog was chained to the house and the chain had gotten
tangled around some floating rubble and it had pulled the dog flat against the
roof. It lifted its eyes and saw McBride, barked wearily for help. McBride
determined it was well within pistol shot.