Low Country, J. Jones [top 10 best books of all time .TXT] 📗

If the X fell close to us, we’d be at home on a hurricane day, unless it was a category four or five, and even then it depended. Most locals don’t feel like following the blue hurricane evacuation signs out of town, and storms like Hugo and Hazel were once-a-generation-type storms. Besides, it was harder to return than it was to leave. When you’re desperate to know if your house is still standing, the National Guard blocking the highway back to the only home you’ve known is not a sight to imbue patience in a population prone to temper.

B for Bertha. I pretended to be asleep one morning about a month after Arthur, lying in my parents’ bed, Mom’s at that point, and listening to the Weather Channel. Mom slept with the TV on, when she slept at all, and I heard the hurricane watch issued for our county as I tried not to move. Meteorologists showed pictures of churning waters, and red warning flags flapped and seized against gray skies. They seemed excited. I was excited, too. I loved a good storm, and hurricanes were the best storms of all. As it was summer vacation, Bertha wouldn’t get us a day off school, but it was still something to look forward to. In a thunderstorm, you could feel the electricity in the air. The rumble of thunder. The crackle of lightning. Voluminous clouds that morphed and swirled messages from unknowable worlds, changing colors as fast as a mood ring. The power of it made my bones hum. I had never lost anything or anybody in a hurricane before, as generations past were so used to. Even families who had lost everything to wind and water—either loved ones or beloved home—remained stoic in the face of other storms. In a recent storm, a friend joked that he had left all his unwanted junk on the porch and the storm better blow it all away, ’cause he was so sick of looking at it.

Dad came home one day with sheets of plywood, masking tape, and coils of rope. We had a day before Bertha would come ashore, in Little River, projected the men on TV. Mom stayed in bed with Jared, following the weather reports and avoiding my dad. When I got up from the bed, she asked me to close the door. Downstairs, Dad had rounded up Justin and Jason and started giving them instructions. Tie the bicycles in the backyard to the back porch so they don’t blow away. Clear the yard of Jared’s toys so they don’t blow away. Pick up fallen branches and fishing poles or anything else that looked like it might blow away and throw them in the pond in the woods out back. I taped big Xs on all the windows of the house, so the glass wouldn’t shatter if it was hit by toys forgotten in the grass or tree limbs flying through the air. When the official warning came down the day of, Little River was just on the south edge of the danger zone, the last county shaded red on the map, as the eye had shifted toward Wilmington. The Gray Man rested unseen, so there was nothing to worry about anyway. Mom had gone to the store for candles, matches, water, batteries, and other things we had requested in case we were without power and cable television for several days. Junk food and an extra pack of cards. Dad went to fill up on gas. They did everything separately except fight, and I was the most nervous when they said nothing to each other. It was almost but not quite like the air of Nana’s house when Granddaddy was home. Everybody knows that a reprieve from the winds too soon means the worst of the storm can return at any moment. The eye of the storm was always as quiet as our blue house.

The day before Bertha was scheduled to come ashore, we all went to the beach. It is a tradition to go to the beach before a hurricane. We watched the waves grow fat and swollen and happy with what was to come. Surfers came to the beach before storms for this reason. The surf was normally too calm to ride, and a storm offshore meant better waves to catch. The feathery grass that covered the sand dunes twitched where it normally waved in slow sighs. Stores and restaurants had messages spray-painted on plywood covering their windows: GO HOME BIG BERTHA and BERTHA YOU COW. The winds were beginning to pick up, though just from looking at the sky, it looked like a perfect summer day. I remembered stories of bodies blown and washed into the branches of oak trees next to dangling and angry snakes, Medusa’s head come to life, though I may have read this in a book somewhere.

We went from the beach to Nana’s house, where she told, as she always would before a storm threatened, the story of her biggest hurricane loss. She told this story before every tease or thrill of tropical weather, returning to the days after Hurricane Hazel from her rocking recliner with the view of the patio and magnolia tree. “My mama went through a nervous breakdown when she went through menopause, according to the doctors, so her family sent her down to a hospital in Charleston. I don’t think they do the shock treatment anymore, do they?” she asked me every time, long before I knew what shock treatment or menopause was, and so I said nothing and listened, as Dad paced on the patio with a cigarette and one or more of his brothers. Mom and my brothers and cousins were out of sight.

“Well, her people were all from Florida originally, so when she got done in the hospital, she took the train from Florence to Florida. That was the night Hurricane Hazel hit. We didn’t know in advance in those days. My daddy was so upset. He