AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The motor wouldn’t start.
CHAPTER NINETEEN: Bo
Running around my property, I gathered everything of value that wasn’t tied down and threw it under the fish shack, hoping the structure would protect the growing pile. The coming storm had been carefully predicted and as always the meteorologists knew their shit. They’d said it’d be bad and this was worse than bad.
The fifty to sixty feet high Sweet Gums, Post Oaks, and Red Maple trees surrounding my cabin bent over in the strong winds howling north up the river. The wind that had been calming and breezy became a foreboding rumble, growing louder and more threatening. Leaves were whipping through the air, soon to be followed by the branches themselves. This storm was wreaking havoc along the shores of the Low Country.
I ran for my small boat as fast as I could. Waves I’ve never seen on the river battered the aluminum watercraft against the dock. After untying the boat I attempted to drag it toward dry land. I’d pulled the vessel onto land in the past but it hadn’t had the outboard motor attached. I managed to pull the front three quarters of it onto shore but the outboard was too heavy to bring out of the water. Remembering the winch I’d tossed under the shack, I grabbed rope and ran for the winch.
Securing the rope and winching to a tall oak in the protective tree line around my home, I hurried back to the boat and tied the other end of the rope to it. The wind blew the rain in sideways sheets. Once back to the tree I cranked as hard and as fast as I could, dragging the boat fully from the water. I knew I needed to protect the boat further by securing it as far into the brush and trees as possible. The watercraft was my lifeline, my job, and everything I needed to maintain living on the island I loved.
Immediately, my mind went to the crab and lobster pots I’d neglected to bring back to shore, hoping the storm would pass us by. There was no way to tell if the traps and the buoys attached to them would survive the surges of water bearing down on the coastline.
I grabbed fishing poles and two tackle boxes from inside the boat and threw them on the deck so I could secure them inside once I’d managed to gather as many items as I could. My T-shirt was soaked, rain pelted my face while I scrambled to remember what else was exposed. I imagined the generator was too heavy to blow away so I left it in place knowing I’d be using it when the electricity most likely failed. This wasn’t my first rodeo so I knew what could come and did everything I could think of to save what little I had.
Standing on the front deck I watched as waves crashed onto my waterfront bulkhead, splashing over it. The floating dock rippled like a snake as it mirrored the waves beneath it.Please stay attached. Thank goodness I’d replaced the old corrugated galvanized-metal sheets on the shack’s roof six months earlier with standard shingles. The contractor secured the roof structure to the weaker shack with tie downs and aluminum straps that bound the roof to the building below. I hadn’t imagined the roof would be tested so soon.
I noticed a flash of sparks in the distance near Beaufort followed by a loud boom reverberating across the water. The lights went dark immediately after the boom. The storm was officially on.Now was the time for the final piece of the boarded-up puzzle, my front door. Once inside, I secured the screen and main doors, then I placed the last piece of plywood over the entry from inside the cabin. The hammer and nails had been placed strategically nearby in the event I was forced to trap myself within the thin walls.
It was dark in the shack and my clothes were soaked and frigid against my skin. The candles I’d purchased in town were on the kitchen counter so I lit several of them and placed them around the room. Their tiny flames swayed back and forth when the wind squeezed through small cracks in my walls, casting shadows of light throughout the small space. I was alone and enclosed in a death trap if these walls didn’t hold.
I thought of Memaw and her God she often prayed to in times of need. I’d doubted my grandmother’s views and questioned her faith but now found myself whispering prayers to her and her God to shield me from the destruction raging all around me. I found it ironic now that she was gone how often I’d sought the protection of God. Had I used Memaw’s faith to protectively blanket me in times of trouble when she was living because I thought she had God on her side? What about now? I felt guilty asking for help and found no comfort in my decision when I reached out again.
“If you’re listening, Memaw, I’m back again and needing another favor,” I whispered, hiding under blankets and shivering in the dark. “Last one,” I lied. I lay still in the darkness expecting confirmation of a request that never came. I felt my eyes getting heavier as the adrenaline gave way to exhaustion, sleep overtook me despite the howling wind and onslaught of rain battering my shack.
Memaw sat on the edge of the bed wiping my forehead with a cool cloth. She rubbed menthol on my chest and hummed sweet melodies trying to get me to fall asleep.
“Hush, Bobo,” she soothed, dipping the wash cloth in a bowl of ice water. “God will protect my baby.”
I was barely awake but I asked her, “Why didn’t he protect Daddy?” I noticed her eyes filling as she prepared her answer.
“He needs some of us early, youngin’, and sometimes He brings us to heaven because He needs our help.”
“I don’t want you to go to heaven though,” I wept. “I’ll be alone if you go.”
Memaw smiled and kissed my forehead, lingering to feel for my temperature. “I’ll always be here for you, Bobo. Don’t you ever worry your sweet little face about that. Now give Memaw a smile, baby.”
My eyes popped open. I was disoriented at first when I remembered having that awful fever when I was seven. I don’t remember falling asleep. Had it been for five minutes or five hours? Daylight beamed through the cracks in the walls. A quietness filled the dim room and it took me a moment to realize why the shack was so dark.
The storm!
I jumped out of bed and ran to the sheet of plywood over the front door. The barriers had held on every opening where I’d nailed plywood for protection. I grabbed the hammer and pried the sheet of wood from the door frame then stepped onto the deck. I wasn’t sure what I’d find since I’d slept through the violence of the previous night .
Branches and plant debris covered most of the land in front of the cabin. I could see my boat was plastered with limbs and twigs but appeared to have been saved. The old outhouse which sat a fair distance away had lost its roof, and was crumpled and broken in half. It didn’t escape me that the outhouse had had the same old corrugated roof as the one I just replaced on the shack. There was a plastic lawn chair that didn’t belong to me stuck about forty feet up in a tree. I was reminded of a story my great uncle Arnie told me about when hurricane Hugo hit our state in 1989. I wasn’t around then but he spoke of waking up after the record-setting storm and looking out his back door at an entire house sitting in his peanut field. As it turned out, the house was not from any neighborhood within a mile of his. That is the strength of a category five hurricane. Certainly the unnamed storm from last night was nothing like Hugo, but I still had a hell of a mess to clean up.
Overall, my home and the surrounding open land was in decent shape. I walked across the front yard and carefully stepped over branches. The trees themselves managed to stay upright, but many lost substantially sized limbs. Cleanup would take days, and would probably require a bonfire.
Once clear of the mess I moved closer to the dock, wondering how it withstood the waves. The dock had three eight-foot floating sections and the end of the dock had folded over the one tethered to it closer to shore. Other than that I had an intact dock. My eyes scanned the shore, taking stock of all the debris the river had deposited on my land when I spotted a bright yellow piece of trash. Or maybe it was a hunk of yellow plastic off a car’s bumper. I shielded my eyes and stared at the oddly shaped lump as I moved closer because it had caught my attention.
When I was almost to the yellow object I noticed a piece of clothing. I had to step over branches and trash that had been blown past the bulkhead. Practically jumping out of my skin, I realized the yellow vest was secured around a half-naked person lying face down on shore, their feet still in the water. My heart raced from fright and I wasn’t sure what to do. I jumped backward and raced toward the shack before stopping and looking back. Were they dead?
CHAPTER TWENTY: Hayes
The Night Before
The reality of my newfound situation snapped me out of my panic attack. Maybe I’d made a poor decision by jumping off the safety of the larger vessel. The overwhelming need to run from my life coupled with the news that Phillip had likely cheated on me sent me over the edge. I couldn’t breathe on that boat and knew facing the guests after being hit upside the head with his news would have been nearly impossible. I had to get away and because of my panicked state of mind, had apparently made a disastrous decision.
The yacht was a speck in the distance now, barely visible with no sun, and I couldn’t tell if I was heading out to sea or toward shore. Between being swallowed by the waves and getting sprayed by ocean water, I was wet, cold, and definitely not dressed properly. Khaki shorts and a tank top were not appropriate attire for being battered by the sea. No matter how hard I tried to start the outboard motor on the dinghy, it wouldn’t fire and the pair of us were doomed to either be swamped by water or capsized because of the growing swells.
