Come Landfall: A Novel

Twenty: From the Sea

twenty From the Sea She heard them out the window, low and throaty, their notes like the lowest register of Cam’s piano. She imagined them in the lingering pools of August rainwater, their plump bodies sensing every shift in barometric pressure. The CNN and Weather Channel newscasters were stationed up and down the coast—from the roiling surf of Pensacola to the gyrating magnolias of New Orleans—but their hurricane updates were not as telling as this muddy bass. “Listen,” Frank had told her, “for the frogs.” The gulls told the story with their swooping and hurtling bodies, the pelicans in how they folded into themselves against the suggestion of a tumultuous blow, the frogs with their anxious bleat. Her own species showed off storm worries in a different way, but no less obvious: fathers bending to their children, hurrying them on to get in the car, mothers going over hasty packing lists to make sure all was ready for evacuation. They turned to their houses one last time before revving up their engines and zooming away. What pictures did they fix in their minds before leaving places that might be blown away? What picture had Mama fixed in hers, alone in her car before crossing the intersection that horrible day? Had she been blithe, singing, looking for the first ray of sun to pop out, or delighted to see a shabby gull alight on a fence post like Noah’s dove? What had Frank seen riding in the Humvee before the storm exploded in his head? The dance of sand and wind as if it were a dervish whirling for his delight? The digital clock moved from 7 a.m. to 8 then 9. The Sound was come l andfall 259 ruffled; Back Bay was rising. The news said landfall by nightfall. Hurricanes , like bawling babies, seemed to come in darkness. She waited for Cam’s call saying it was time for their baby to come home. The bassinet stood in the corner beneath a tape-covered window . Cam phoned; it would be closer to noon. Paperwork. They would be home just long enough to join the exodus. The phone rang again: Big Frank. Little Frank was picking him up to carry him on to Marks, he said. Did Angela and Nana need help? No, she told him, they had made arrangements and would be fine. Angela went to her room and played Frank’s tape again, turning up the volume, letting his slow, easy voice wrap around her through the humming of the wind, the first whippings of rain, the revving of car engines and pulsing of frogs. Hearing his story, she felt her emotions turn and twist, pressure rising, pressure falling. She opened her closet, ran her hands over Frank’s blue jeans, his USAF sweatshirt. She slipped on the sweatshirt. Too hot. She took it off and slung it over her shoulders; the sleeves hung down the length of her arms. Frank’s arms. She glanced through the crisscrossed window and remembered Mama next to her, showing her how to lay down the masking tape. “If the wind knocks out the windows,” she had told Angela, “or sends a branch through it, it won’t shatter.” She went to Nana’s room and put her ear to the door; all quiet. It was odd for her to nap at this hour of the morning. Nana had been up earlier , standing at the window, up on her tiptoes as if trying to glimpse somebody, then putting her hand against her chest, reeling a moment, then saying she was going to lie down. Angela tapped lightly. Silence. She went into the kitchen and got down a plastic jug and filled it with water. The storm, she knew, could still bank left or right, but if the electricity were knocked out, it could affect the reservoir pumps. She filled two glass jars. The rhythms of storm preparation calmed her. TV news said the National Weather Service had issued an evacua- 260 Roy Hoffman tion order for all residents of low-lying coastal areas by 2 p.m. As of 3 o’clock the main north-south corridor would become one-way—heading north. Angela noted the clock—after 10 a.m. already. They could be in Jackson by dinnertime, Memphis by bedtime. Photographs, a suitcase of clothes, her laptop with Frank’s voice forever animating it...