Part 7 (1/2)

”Shall we?” Lewis said, pulling me over him.

”Yip-yip-yip!” I cried.

Before dawn of the day we were to leave, Dr. Mendoza wrung our hands and p.r.o.nounced himself ready for any kind of medical emergency, and capered away into his hospital. Carmella came to hug us good-bye.

”I will let you know about this outreach,” she said.

Henry and Lewis and I walked to the Land Rover with our arms around one another's shoulders.

”What was all that about?” Henry said.

”Blackmail,” I said serenely.

When we roared out of the square, there was nothing left behind but a cloud of dust and Carmella, faintly visible through it, waving.

We slept most of the way from Chihuahua to Mexico City, and then to Atlanta. When we came into the Atlanta terminal, everything seemed too bright and too big and too loud, a sensory a.s.sault. I felt thickheaded, stupid. It was like coming up from underwater.

Henry handed the ticket agent our tickets to Charleston, and the man looked at us strangely.

”You're kidding, right?”

”No, why?” Henry said.

”Where have you all been? Charleston's closed down tight. Hurricane Hugo went through two nights ago and just flattened it. Part of it's under martial law.”

It was September 23, 1989, and all our lives had changed.

4.

LATER, PEOPLE CAME to call Hugo the most destructive hurricane of that century. Despite the fact that Andrew, which ground up and spat out the Miami area a few years later, was technically a more destructive and expensive storm, Low Country people knew in their hearts that Hugo, in an odd way their own hurricane, changed more than lives, it changed a way of life.

Oh, Charleston and the islands did eventually clean up and rebuild and paint and fix up, so that the casual visitor saw only what historians had always said about us: the most beautiful historic district in the country. The horse-drawn tour wagons rolled again, and the tour buses clotted the narrow downtown streets, and flocks of drifting visitors blocked driveways and streets, led by straw-hatted long-skirted mother hens of approved local guides.

But to this day, Charlestonians speak of ”before Hugo” and ”after Hugo.” From the morning of September 22, 1989, vulnerability walked with us on our narrow, beautiful streets as it never had before. Beauty and gentility no longer protected us. No one forgot what Hugo had done. We knew another frivolously named monster could come unbidden to us out of the waters off Cape Verde, where the great Atlantic hurricanes are born. Everywhere, in those first days, people walked with the uneasy need to keep looking over their shoulders.

That day in Atlanta, at the Delta counter, we all stared at the reservations clerk blankly, as you do at one who has demonstrated some patent insanity. Then we began babbling at him.

”What's left?” ”How do you get there if you can't fly?” ”Are there many fatalities? Many hurt?” ”What's the worst damage? What is it: wind? water?” He lifted his hands wearily. He had obviously answered this question before.

”That's all I know,” he said. ”That you can't fly in there. The rest is hearsay. About the National Guard and the looting and all. There's a newsstand over there. I'm sure some of the papers will have something about it.”

We looked at each other out of white, empty-eyed faces. Then Lewis and Henry dashed for the bank of telephones across the concourse and I headed for the newsstand. As I ran, I muttered over and over to myself, a witless mantra, ”Let the beach house be all right. Let the beach house be all right.” And then, guiltily, ”Let our families and our houses be all right. Please let us get through this.”

Lewis came back and we sat in the waiting area devouring the Atlanta Journal-Const.i.tution. It had little detail and much sensationalism. Devastation. No power perhaps for weeks. Gas leaks, downed live wires, severe flooding from a seventeen-foot storm surge that occurred with the high tides. Everywhere, trees down, windows out, roofs torn off, whole houses demolished. Looting in the downtown business area. Utilities workers from eight states pouring into the city. Food and water situations desperate. President Bush declares disaster area. Boats tossed onto highways and jammed among houses.

Whole beachfront sections obliterated.

I began to cry. Lewis put his arms around me and rested his chin on the top of my head.

”Wait,” he said. ”Wait till we know. Henry got the last free phone. Downtown has stood for three hundred years. We can clean up a few tree limbs and s.h.i.+ngles. Just wait and see if Henry can get through.”

Soon we saw Henry's tall figure, incongruously still clad in scrub pants and a wrinkled Hawaiian s.h.i.+rt and sandals, loping across the waiting area. People turned to stare at him. One or two drew back from him. My sobs turned to hiccups of insane laughter.

”He looks like Ichabod Crane,” I choked.

”Got through,” he said. ”Apparently a good bit of south of Broad still has phone service. I think we're in the same grid as the hospitals, and their phones are up. I called Fairlie first, and then Charlie at the hospital. It could be worse, I guess.”

We looked at him, breaths held.

”Bedon's Alley is pretty much okay. Fairlie didn't leave, but she said it was the most horrifying night she'd ever spent. Camilla stayed with her while Charlie was at the hospital. Tradd Street has some trees down, but their house kept its roof and the storm surge just missed it. Lila and Simms weren't quite so lucky. The Battery took a direct hit. But the house stood, even though there was about a foot of water in their downstairs, and they lost their windows. Lewis, I think you've got a mess on the Battery. Two live oaks through the roof, and the portico and veranda gone. I don't know any more than that.”

”It's the historical society's problem now, not mine,” Lewis said wearily. ”What do you hear about Bull Street?”

”n.o.body Charlie knows has gotten over that way yet, but the College of Charleston is pretty much okay, and you're right there. They got the storm surge on the ground floors, but your house is set pretty far up. A few trees down. That's all I know...”

”The storm surge...,” I said. I had never thought of that. I had always a.s.sumed that the great teeth of a hurricane would be wind.

”It went clear across the peninsula,” Henry said. ”Boats from the city marina are sitting on Lockwood Avenue. Low-lying streets are underwater. When it receded, the mud and debris left behind were unbelievable. I don't think any of us got that. But Lewis...Charlie thinks that maybe that bas.e.m.e.nt operating suite of yours flooded. Everything along Rutledge did.”

I looked at Lewis. He looked off into the middle distance and then sighed.

”There go my insurance rates,” he said. ”Well, that's what it's for, I guess. What about Edisto? And Wadmalaw?”

”I don't know. Charlie said he's heard that the people over on the river side were safe, but the beach got blasted. You and Simms might be okay.”

Finally, because no one else would say it, I did.

”What about the beach house?”

Henry looked down.

”I don't know. n.o.body does. The Ben Sawyer bridge is completely out and the National Guard is not letting anybody onto the islands. But Charlie said there were some aerial photos in the Post and Courier, and it looked...like there had never been houses there. Just gone. Bare beach, with the dunes flattened out. But he said he heard that there were a few houses that were completely untouched. There must have been some mini-tornadoes, to flatten one house and not the one next to it. People are getting over to the Isle of Palms on a ferry, but Sullivan's Island isn't letting anybody on yet.”

He paused, and then said, ”Fairlie said that Leroy came walking up to the house the next morning in tears, and said that the police made him leave our place at the last minute, but that he hadn't been able to find Gladys, and they wouldn't let him look. That's not so good. The place lies low.”

”Oh, Henry,” I said, the tears flooding back. Beautiful, foolish, loving Gladys. The best dove dog in the Low Country.

Lewis said, ”I'm sorry, Henry. She could be fine, though.”

”Sure she could,” Henry said, and turned away from us. ”If the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds would just let us go over there and check. I'm going when we get back. What are they going to do? Shoot me?”

”I'll go with you,” Lewis said, in a roughened voice.

We went out of the waiting room then, and went down to rent a car and go home to Charleston.

We said little on the five-hour drive. There seemed to be nothing to say. The vivid, surreal past two weeks had no place where we were headed. And the place we were headed had no reality. What you are unable to imagine you cannot easily speak of.