Part 8 (1/2)

There was a sheen of tears in her eyes, and I knew she was thinking of Gladys, our missing family member. I gave her hand a squeeze, and she smiled damply at me.

Henry and Lewis and Simms stood up. Henry spoke. ”I talked to Charlie, and he said they're going to need us two or three straight days and nights,” he said. ”People are breaking legs and having heart attacks all over the place, trying to clean up this damage. I told him if we came in tonight we'd drop dead of fatigue, and he said to take the night off and begin early in the morning.”

”He's the one who's going to drop dead if he doesn't let up,” Camilla said. ”I haven't seen him since the night Hugo hit, and I know he isn't sleeping more than an hour or two at a time. His voice sounds awful, all breathless and faint. Send him home, hear?”

”We will. Now listen, y'all,” Lewis said. ”We're going over to the island and take a look at the damage. There's not going to be any other time for it. I think...we've got to know.”

”You what?” Fairlie squealed. ”How the h.e.l.l do you think you're going to get over there? The d.a.m.ned bridge is out. The National Guard is patrolling regularly. The very least they'd do is arrest you. I heard they have orders to shoot looters. Have you completely lost your minds? What are you going to do, swim?”

”No,” said Simms. ”Sail.”

Camilla and Lila and I simply stared at them. Then Lila said, ”Have we still got a boat?”

”We have the old one,” Simms said. ”I moved the Venus way back up the Ashley River, and she should be safe. But the Flea is still bobbing around the yacht club dock. G.o.d knows why the club didn't blow away, but it didn't. They did a good job of securing the boats.”

”The Flea...,” Lila said. ”But it's so tiny, Simms. And anyway, how do you think you can get onto the island without a patrol seeing you? I don't like this at all.”

”She'll hold the three of us,” he said. ”And if you remember, we painted her red when we gave her to the kids. Even got a red sail. At night it shows up black.”

”Well, y'all don't,” Fairlie snapped. ”What are you going to do, go in blackface?”

”Yes,” Henry said.

”But with no lights-”

”Fairlie,” Simms said, ”I've been sailing that stretch from the yacht club to the island all my life. I could do it blindfolded. And the moon is almost as bright as day. We're just going to ease up to Henry's dock and then walk over to the beach house, and come right back. But we need to know.”

My heart became a lump of dirty ice. No, Lewis, I said in my head. It doesn't matter. None of it matters but that you're safe.

But when he looked over at me and raised an inquiring red eyebrow, I smiled. It was what my brother would have called a chickens.h.i.+t smile.

”Boys' night out,” I said, and they laughed a little. Presently they went upstairs in the big house and came back down in dark pants and windbreakers. They wore dark deck shoes, too, and dark socks.

We stared. They looked like a Mafia hit group.

”Simms brought them over for us,” Henry said. ”I'm supplying the blackface.”

And he held out a tin of black shoe polish. Fairlie and Camilla and I began to laugh. Lila only stared.

”Well, go paint your faces, kemo sabes, and let us see our braves off,” Camilla said.

”We'll put it on down at the dock,” Henry growled, but she took the tin away from him and sat him down in front of her.

”Be still,” she said. ”I'm an expert at making up little boys for Halloween. You won't know yourself.” And she began to smear Henry's face with shoe polish.

She did the others after that. Everyone stood or sat silently, not knowing what to say. They were Peter Pan's lost boys, of course, but they were something else, too. Something beyond the husbands and fathers and doctors and businessmen we had known all our lives, something harder than friends. Something wilder. They had drawn away into themselves, into the feral ranks of men, far away from the company of women.

”Well,” said Henry. ”Let's do it.”

They turned to walk out of the garden and through the crippled streets toward the yacht club. We watched them go, pillars of darkness, moving silently. My scalp crawled. I did not know Lewis. I did not know these men.

”Henry, put something on your head,” Fairlie yelled after him. ”You can see that hair of yours a mile away.”

He gave her the V for victory signal. We all laughed, and the little cold spell was broken. Still, when they had pa.s.sed out of sight, we looked at one another silently, as if to try to read in each other's faces what we should do next.

We sat down to wait.

Dark fell in earnest, and the mosquitoes came in bloodsucking squadrons, but we did not move to go into the house. As long as we sat in the candlelit garden, we could preserve the illusion of just another outdoor summer supper. There was a lot of wine left, and we drank a good bit of it. The heat and the silence and the wine dulled the anxiety, but it was still there, under the layers of succor. At first we talked a little.

”Remind me to try and get in touch with my office first thing in the morning,” I said. I felt extremely guilty that I had hardly thought of the agency since we left for Mexico, two weeks and a hundred years ago.

”Oh,” Fairlie said, ”I forgot to tell you. Somebody called here from your office...would it be Marcy? And said that you've pretty much got no first floor, but the second floor and the files are okay.”

My little office, a former town house in a moribund development, sat across Calhoun Street from the Veterans Administration Hospital, overlooking the Ashley marina. I could just imagine what the storm surge had done to it. I closed my eyes in profound weariness. All that work, all those fund-raising drives, all the scrounging and sucking up for money...

”We'll take Charlie's Navigator and go check in the morning,” Camilla said. ”In fact, we'll go check on everybody's places. Maybe nothing's as bad as it seems.”

Later, I do not know how much, but the moon had begun to sink toward the South Battery, Lila said, ”You know what this reminds me of? That scene in Gone With the Wind, where Scarlett and Melanie and the other women were sitting around sewing, waiting to hear that their men had come back from the Klan raid safely. There were Yankees all over the place, just like the National Guard now. The women never mentioned any of it. They just chatted as if nothing was wrong. I always loved that scene.”

”Which of them would be Rhett and which one Ashley?” Fairlie said. Fatigue blurred her voice.

After that the talk died, and we simply sat.

I don't know how much longer it was when I heard the sound. I had been drifting in and out of sleep, and the candles were burned down, and the moon had set. It was almost totally dark.

In the profound silence we heard a jingle. And then the scrabble of claws. And then Gladys, sodden and filthy and ecstatic, slid and skittered onto the veranda, the whole back of her waggling.

Fairlie dropped to her knees and simply held the wriggling dog. I could tell, over the slurping of Gladys's tongue on her face, that Fairlie was crying.

The men suddenly materialized in the garden. Camilla lit a candle. We looked at them. They looked...exuberant. They practically gave off sparks.

G.o.ddammit, I thought. They were playing commandos, and we were sitting here simply dying. Sons of b.i.t.c.hes.

I knew where my anger came from, though.

”Well?” Camilla said. She sat up straight, with her hands folded in her lap.

”The beach house is standing,” Lewis said. ”I don't know how in the name of G.o.d it could be; there's literally nothing but rubble around it. But there it is. The s.p.a.ce under it took the storm surge; we saw the Ping-Pong table across the street down near Stella Maris, and I think the lawn mower is out on the point. But except for the porch screens and the stairs and walkway down to the beach, it looks pretty good. It didn't even lose any windows.”

I felt tears gather in my chest and sting in my nose.

”What about...our place? How is it?” Fairlie said.

”You mean where is it?” Henry said. ”There's literally nothing left but the dock. We went in there. I couldn't begin to guess where the house is.”

”Oh, Henry,” Camilla began, but he shook his head.

”We didn't use it much anymore. Even the grandchildren are beginning to have other things to do here in town. I'll find something to do with the insurance money, you can bet on that.”

”Gladys?” Fairlie said, still hugging the dog.