Under a Dark Summer Sky (25 page)

His grip on the rail weakened. The pressure in his lungs could no longer be denied. The last of his strength left his hands, and he went to join his men.

The weight of water hit the train with such force that all the carriages tumbled off the tracks and down the embankment. The whole train went over like it was made of cardboard. Only the massive locomotive remained upright. Jeb heard shouts of surprise and pain from within the cars as they toppled over and the explosive shattering of all the windows at once.

Inside the train, a river raged through from one side to the other. Carriages swung around in crazy arcs, flipping onto their roofs. Ken clung to an empty window frame, his legs flailing in the current. “Help!” he cried. “Someone help me!”

Moses battled the flow to reach him, but it flung him back each time. With a final surge of effort, he leaped for the window and grabbed Ken's arm. He hung on there, head down against the torrent, and slowly pulled Ken back into the carriage.

Jeb tumbled over and over, slammed against the walls, the seats, curled into the smallest shape possible.
So
this
is
what
it
feels
like
to
die—in a washing machine.
Still the foamy water poured in, whipped up by the ferocious wind. He struggled to find some air in a world of black water, completely disoriented. There was no way to tell what was up and what was down. Again and again he was thrown against the walls, the roof, the floor.

Just as his will to fight ran out, so did the water. He found himself at the bottom of a panting, spluttering tangle of limbs. Only his face was above the water. “Hey!” he yelled. “Get off me!”

In a sudden rush, he was pulled free. He looked up into Lemuel's familiar face. “Thanks, man,” he gasped. The wind boomed around the carriage, making it hard even to hear himself. “Where's Sonny?”

Lemuel put his mouth right next to Jeb's ear. “Dunno. Last I saw, he was waiting to get on board. Jeb, what do we do now?”

Jeb tried to look out the window but rain sprayed right into his face. A coconut flew past his head. All was in darkness. It was impossible to tell where the wave had deposited them. They might be just a few feet from the embankment, or they might be in the sea. The wind wailed through the carriage like a demon.

“Cain't see a damned thing out there.” Jeb looked around. The men began to right themselves, check for injuries. It seemed completely miraculous that they were still alive, just badly bruised and half drowned. “We wait for the light,” he said. “Just wait for the light.”

“Amen to that,” said Lemuel.

Henry retched up a mouthful of seawater. Even before he opened his eyes, he knew something was very wrong. Every limb registered sharp, stabbing pain, yet he instinctively held on to the source of the pain with all his strength. It was the only solid thing in the world of the wind. Its rasping roar filled his ears. It scoured his naked body, tried to wrench him free, but he hung on. Even the rain fell sharp as needles on his flesh.

He opened his eyes slightly. Nothing but cloud above and darkness below. He became aware of a great void beneath him and looked down. Something moved there, a gentle rise and fall, vague outlines all he could make out. It was water, he realized, flowing back to its rightful home, taking with it a solid mat of undulating corpses, trees, cars, and broken timbers.

His hands found the source of the pain. Big, sharp thorns were embedded in his legs, his torso, his back. And then he realized: his support, which he clutched with the ardor of a lover, was a spiny Key lime tree. The wave had deposited him there, perhaps twenty feet off the ground.

A gust rocked the tree. He gripped it tighter, jaw clenched against the pain. “Is anyone there?” he yelled. No answer. Farther up the tree, he could just discern the unmoving bulk of another body. Impossible to tell if it was a man or woman. It made no sound in answer to his call.

All was blasted and dark. No signs of life.
Maybe
I'm dead too.
Maybe the pain was a mirage, an echo of his last moments alive, a memory somehow retained by his flesh. No, the pain was real. He could be certain of nothing else, but the pain was definitely real.

The wind pulled at his limbs, tried to tear him loose. It would be so easy to just let go, let the wind take him to join Missy. He wanted to be with her, wherever she was. She had been so close to the boxcar, just a few feet from safety. He was so sure she would make it. But then the wind had snatched her and Nathan up, her legs still pumping as it carried her away. A chasm of loss opened up inside him and beckoned him in with the voice of the wind.
Just
let
go
, it hissed.
Everything
you
care
about
is
gone.

It would be so easy.
Just
let
go.

A movement nearby. From the next tree came a soft moan. He called out, “Who's that? It's Henry here. Henry Roberts!” His voice broke with relief. He had started to wonder if he was the last living soul in the land of the dead.

“Henry?” It was Jimmy, weak but recognizable. “That you?”

He sounded close by, but Henry could see nothing through the thorny cage of branches around him. “You okay, Jimmy?”

“Don't think so… Got something in my… God, Henry, it's gone right through me! Got to get it out—”

“No, don't pull it out, Jimmy! You got to leave it there!” A gust nearly ripped him from his perch. It took all his strength to hang on.

A scream from Jimmy's direction.

“Jimmy, you there?”

“Still here.” His voice was weaker. “Don't think I can hang on much longer, Henry. It hurts real bad.”

Henry could just make out the words over the wind. “Jimmy!” he called. “Your uncle Dwayne be mighty proud of you right now.” He had to keep him talking, for his own sake as much as Jimmy's.

“You think”—Jimmy coughed—“you think he's still alive…down there?”

“Course he is!” said Henry with no basis at all for this. He had seen plenty of bigger corpses already that night. “Take a lot more than a little wind to knock him down.”

“I guess so.” A pause. “But he just treats me like a kid.”

“I tell you somethin',” Henry said with great conviction. “You ain't a kid no more.” He tried to ease himself off the thorns, but they just bit harder. “What you done since we been gone…well, it's more than many a grown man would do.”

Another pause. “Ya think so?”

“Not only that, but I'll tell anyone who cares to listen, including your uncle Dwayne.”

“Assuming he don't shoot you on sight, o' course.”

“Yeah, good point.” Henry thought Jimmy's voice sounded stronger.

“I tried,” said Jimmy, coughing again. “I tried to grab her, the girl with the baby. The wind was too strong. It just took 'em both.”

“I know, Jimmy,” said Henry. “I know.” It would stay with him always, his last view of Missy as she flew away. “And, Jimmy? That just what I'm talkin' about.”

Another silence. Then Jimmy asked, “You hear that?”

Pitiful cries for help rose up from the blackness below, from people trapped beneath broken buildings and lumber, trees and cars. There was nothing he could do to help them, but the cries continued. He tried to cover his ears to block them out, but the sound seemed to be inside his head.

“Don't listen, Jimmy. You gonna be fine. We'll get down from here and get fixed up, you'll see.”

And then, gradually, one by one, the cries stopped.

• • •

Henry started.
Must
have
dozed
off
for
a
minute.

“Jimmy?”

There was no sound except the
shhh
of the wind through the branches.

“Jimmy, you okay?”

And then Henry knew he was alone, really alone. “Oh, Jimmy.” He sighed. It felt like all hope left him on that breath.

He was so tired. His body was a collage of pain, some sharp, some dull. There wasn't a part of him that didn't hurt. It felt like he had been clinging to the tree for days, but it could only have been a few hours. Morning must come soon, he reasoned, although it would not have surprised him to find that the world had fallen into perpetual darkness, never to see the sun again.

He had fought so hard, for so long: fought to become an army officer, fought for respect from his comrades, fought the government when they got home, fought to improve the conditions in the camp. Fought to save the people he cared about—and failed.
When
was
I
last
at
peace?
He had to go far, far back to find it.

He closed his eyes.

He
is
eight
years
old, on the beach with Selma and Grace. The midday sun beats down hot on his bare shoulders. Crawfish that he and Selma caught boil in a pot on the fire. Grace uses her machete to hack the tops off some coconuts. He and Selma sip the sweet liquor from the shells.

He
draws
a
map
of
the
world
in
the
sand
for
Selma
and
sets
about
filling
in
the
continents
with
different
types
of
seashells. He uses his favorite for North America, neat lines of coquinas, like stripy butterfly wings in soft pink, green, and blue. There are spiked cat's paws for Europe, ridged white clamshells for Asia, and speckled limpets for South America. Australia is one big conch, nearly as big as his head, because he likes the smooth, rosy inside. Selma isn't really interested in his map, and that's fine. Grace passes him a plate of crawfish with one of her rare smiles. “Let it cool,” she says, “or you burn your fingers.” But he grabs the hot shellfish off the plate, cannot wait to taste the sweet meat. Grace laughs as he blows on his hands.

His stomach cramped. He was so hungry, but worse than that was the terrible thirst. The thought of the coconut water made his throat ache.

He finally allowed himself to think of Selma. Until that moment, he was sure she had to be all right. No other outcome was conceivable. She would not permit it, simple as that. It was more likely that the clouds would fall right to the ground or the water would run uphill.

And he always thought he would sense it when she passed, that there would be some sign, some shift in the earth's rotation. But now he was not sure, not of anything. He felt nothing, nothing at all, and he realized: that was the sign. He was empty.

Take
me
then, if you want to so bad. I'm done fightin'.

He must have slept again, because he thought he heard Jimmy's voice say, “Henry, wake up!” But there was no sound except the wind, weaker than before, weak enough for him to relax his grip on the tree. Rain still pelted down, but on the horizon he saw it. A patch of lightness in the sky. And as he watched, it grew bigger and turned to peach and turquoise. In the quiet left by the wind, he noticed the complete absence of birds. No gulls, no pelicans, no herons, no egrets. Strangest of all, no buzzards, even with the carpet of death below him.

Now he could make out Jimmy, maybe two trees away. He seemed to be sleeping, held in a cradle of branches.

And as Henry looked around in the growing light of dawn, he saw the others. All around him, the trees were draped with bodies. Some had been left in poses that looked almost relaxed, hung gracefully over the branches. Others were twisted into postures of agony.

A child's shoe was snagged on a branch by his head. And on another, a woman's hat. He recognized it. Grayish blue with red flowers, now limp and dirty.

The rest of the branches were festooned with what looked like streamers, which fluttered in the wind. He plucked one, rubbed it between his fingers. It was a piece of cloth, ripped from a shirt. His eyes moved from one tree to the next. All carried the same: every tree left standing in the grove was covered in shreds of clothing.

The sun burned a hole through the clouds, which still poured with rain. It shone like a spotlight on an expanse of destruction so complete that even the soil was gone, stripped away to reveal the bare coral skeleton. Even the palm trees, those sturdy survivors, had been ripped up by the roots. As far as he could see, in every direction, there were only piles and piles of broken wood, like an explosion at a sawmill. There was no town, no veterans' camp, and no sign there ever had been one. Nothing moved except the sea in the distance, where angry gray waves, heavy with bodies and debris, pounded the shore.

The heat began to cook the corpses in the trees. The sour, meaty smell of putrefaction hit the back of his throat. It was a smell he knew well but had hoped never to encounter again. With the heat came the flies. He swatted them away from his face.
Not
yet. You cain't have me yet.

The low morning light revealed the damage done to him by the tree's thorns. He pulled them out, one by one, until he was free.

Figures appeared below and started to pick their way slowly across the wasteland. A few had retained some clothes, but most had not. They clutched at bleeding wounds, stronger ones supporting weaker ones. Cries of pain drifted on the wind, mixed with voices begging for help. He could make out a woman's head on the ground, her mouth open wide but making no sound at all. The rest of her body lay beneath the remains of a house wall. Three men were struggling to get it off her. One had begun to saw at the timbers that pinned her to the ground.

With one last look at the remains of Heron Key, he took the hat with the red flowers from the tree and started the slow, painful climb back down to earth.