Into the Hurricane Read online

  “Be a heck of a job. She’s in piss-poor shape.”

  “I worked with my dad on a special project one summer. A dilapidated carousel at the shore, worse off than this. When we were finished, it was good as new.”

  Fixing a broken thing provides a certain sense of satisfaction, but making something like it was before, like I did with the old Ducati, that’s something else altogether. She comes to the other side of the beacon’s foundation and inspects it, like she’s trying to figure something out. “They didn’t even have electricity when this was built, so how did they—”

  “Whale oil at first,” I tell her. “Later on, kerosene. The flame was amplified through mirrors and a lens, just like at Alexandria.”

  “Am I supposed to know where that is?” She asks this in a sort of fake aggressive way, so it comes out friendly.

  “The lighthouse at Alexandria,” I say. “It was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.”

  “Let me guess—sophomore-year school project?”

  I shake my head. “My sister loved history. She used to talk about the Seven Wonders, wanted to go back in time and visit them all.”

  “What do you mean, used to? She stopped talking about them?”

  I think of the different ways to answer. “She’s gone,” I eventually tell her. “There was an accident.”

  Max looks away. “Sorry, I didn’t know.”

  “That’s the past,” I say. “Ancient history.”

  We’re both quiet in the awkward space that follows. Finally, Max says, “Well then, I guess we should talk about the here and now. So how you want to figure out our little dilemma? Flip a coin? Rock, paper, scissors?”

  “There’s nothing to figure out. I was here first. Possession is nine-tenths of the law, or something like that.”

  At this, she bristles. “So it’s your clubhouse and I can’t play in it? That’s real mature. Look, how ’bout a bit of this southern hospitality? Take off for, like, ten minutes. Then I’ll be gone and you can have it back to do whatever you’re doing here. How about that?”

  For the first time, I hear a sadness in her voice, something desperate. This girl’s got a major problem. And I feel it spreading through my chest, the urge to help her fix it. “What are you running from?” I ask.

  She grits her teeth and steps into me. “Dude, I don’t know your deal, and I don’t need to. But don’t pretend you know a damn thing about me and don’t start playing junior shrink. You got me?”

  I don’t step back and don’t look away. I can’t quite tell if she’s about to take a swing at me or start crying. But I don’t get a chance to find out. A sound turns both our heads. Together we watch two ATVs turn coming in from the west on Infinity Road, turning onto the gravel path that leads to the parking lot.

  “Oh crap,” I say. “Come on.”

  As we take the steps two at a time, I aim the flashlight straight down. The ball of light floats and jumps. Right behind me, Max asks, “You know these guys?”

  “Odenkirks,” I tell her. “Scavengers. Real nasty. Don’t say nothing.”

  By the time we charge into the parking lot, a quartet of Odenkirks are waiting for us in the slanting rain. Charity, her long matted hair tied back, is wearing dirty overalls and work boots. A senior at our high school last year, she’s got the hood of the Jeep up and is peering inside. Closer to us, the two youngest—Perseverance and Obedience—turn our way and square off. Percy is my age, skinny with a thick head of wild black hair. Obedience is bald and thicker, but still just a mini version of Judgment, the eldest. Judge is sitting sidesaddle on my bike, casually appraising it. He’s on the far side of six feet and weighs at least twice what I do.

  Judge gawks at Max’s hair, glances toward her New Jersey license plate, and sucks his teeth. “And they says we’re backwards,” he tells his siblings. Then he peers at my face and asks Percy, “Ain’t this runt the one you tussled with back in the fall? He busted your lip good, right?”

  “Sucker-punched me,” Percy says.

  That’s a lie, of course. It was a fair enough fight that got out of hand, leading to one of the times Trouille hauled me in.

  Judge rises to his full height. “He’s all messed up in the head, yeah? Sees things ain’t there?”

  “So everybody says,” Obie answers, looping a single finger around the side of his head.

  Judge chucks his chin down toward my ride and says to me, “You rebuild this here Ducati?”

  “I did,” I tell him, surprised he could name it.

  “Mind if I take it for a spin?”

  I’m about to speak, when Max rushes toward Charity, who slams the hood and steps away from the Jeep. The long chain in her fist comes into view. I figure it to be the same one I cut from the fence before, and the sight of it freezes Max in her tracks. Charity rolls her wrist, and the dark, corroded links writhe like a serpent in her grasp. She grins and says, “You’re awful tall for a leprechaun.” She walks around to the back, casting an inspecting eye. At the rear bumper, she says to her brothers, “Same situation we got—no ball, no hitch. Could be useful, though. As for under the hood, we might could make use of the battery.”

  “That sound we heard before?” he asks.

  “Nothing but the exhaust. No concern of ours.”

  Judge turns to us with a mocking smile. “Here we was about to drive all the way into town looking for what we need, and from out of the wilderness came a sign, a great cry. We sought and lo! we did find. The Lord doth provide.”

  The younger brothers nod.

  “Listen,” Max says. “I don’t know what you guys think is going to happen here, but there’s no way that—”

  Charity swings that chain and bashes it onto the Jeep’s hood. The sound shocks Max to silence, and she looks at me for some kind of explanation. Charity pulls back the chain, revealing a nasty scar on the red paint, and says, “If you didn’t want for us to take it, why’d you go and leave behind the keys?”

  “Speaking of keys,” Judge says. Fifteen feet away, he holds out one upturned hand, filthy-fingered, and scrapes at the air.

  I turn to Perseverance. “Percy,” I say. “Me and you, we had us some misunderstandings. I’m sorry about all that. But you can’t just leave us out here, stranded. There’s a hurricane coming our way.”

  Obie rubs rain from his face. “That a fact? We hadn’t heard.”

  Judge starts limping away from the cycle, dragging his right leg. I heard he broke it when he was just a kid, but his mother refused medical attention, trusting in the power of prayer to mend his shattered bone. As he nears me, he says, “This is a time for reckoning. Celeste’s wrath will be terrible, it’s true. She bears down upon us with ferocious anger and a thirst for holy retribution. Mother Evangeline has known this for weeks, long before science could detect the storm’s approach. Such is the gift of vision she receives from the Lord.”

  I’ve heard stories about his mother’s prophetic powers. Time was when she made a few bucks off gullible tourists, telling their futures and communing with their dead. Now Judge stops five feet from us and fixes me with his eyes. “She tells us that this hurricane will wash away the inequities from this island, but the righteous and pure will remain unharmed.”

  “What exactly are you trying to say, Judge?” I ask.

  “I’m saying give me them goddamn keys or I’ll take them.” He reaches behind his back. When his hand comes around again, it’s holding a snub-nosed pistol. He sees my eyes lock on it and says, “Boys.”

  Percy and Obie start our way.

  “Hang on now,” Max says. “Look. I don’t know what kind of craziness I wandered into here, and I don’t care. But there’s something in my car that I absolutely need. I have to have it, you understand?”

  Between Max and the Jeep, Charity begins to spin that chain, whipping the rain and making a low whirring sound. “Maybe we absolutely need it too. Ever think of that, cupcake?”

  “You don’t understand,” Max says, almost ple
ading. “This thing, it’s really important.” She takes a half step toward Charity, hands up, and Charity stops spinning that chain. There’s a sudden softness in her face.

  This disappears when Judge fires that gun, aimed just over my head. “I’m fixing to stop being all polite and courteous,” he says. “This ain’t no negotiation. Time to give up what you got.”

  Percy and Obie advance, and Charity closes in too, her face hardened once more. Max retreats backward until she bumps into me. The four of them have us surrounded. “Okay, fine!” I shout. I reach into my pocket, grab the keys to the Ducati. I clutch them in my palm and hold my fist low at my side, as if preparing to toss them. “Catch.”

  Judge smiles, shoves his gun into his beltline, and extends both grubby hands. And I step forward, rear back my arm like a quarterback, and heave those tingling keys over his head, twenty feet beyond the bike. They drop with a plinky splash into the soggy scrub brush, submerged in the advancing ocean.

  Everybody turned to follow the flight of the keys, and then Judge brings his face back to me. “Guess what they say is true. That you’re a few eggs shy of a dozen.” He hobbles up and glares down at me. “But that may have been the craziest thing I ever seen a body do.”

  The other three Odenkirks inch forward, and Max and I find ourselves back to back inside a huddle of thugs. Percy eases his hunting knife from his boot and holds it up. Seeing it seems to give Judge an idea because he reaches out and takes it from his brother, turns the blade over in his hand. Then he spins and marches to my bike, and I know what’s coming. Bending over, he stabs the knife into the front tire, releasing a whoosh of air. He draws the blade sideways, carving a slit. Just for spite, he slashes the back tire too, then comes back to us. He hands the knife back to Percy, who is grinning wildly, and says to me, “I changed my mind about that test drive. I’ll have to come back on another day, if that’s all right with you.”

  When I offer only a blank stare for a comeback, Judge shrugs and says, “Guess we’re about done here.” Percy and Obie head for one of the ATVs, Charity for the other. Judge himself walks toward the Jeep.

  “No freaking way,” Max shouts, and she lurches forward, but I catch her by the wrist.

  Judge twists around, one hand sweeping past his hip and bringing up that gun.

  I tug her arm. “Don’t,” I say, shaking my head. “No point.”

  Judge tells her, “You best go ahead and listen good to your boyfriend, yeah?”

  Max yanks her hand free. She’s trying to fight back tears and only barely succeeds. She collapses to her knees as if in prayer. “Please,” she says. “I’ll give you anything.”

  Judge looks around, then back at her. “So far as I can tell, Greenie, I’m taking all you got that I want.”

  Before he can turn to the Jeep, I say, “What the hell are we supposed to do out here?”

  “I leave you here same as I found you,” he says. “At the mercy of the Lord.”

  Behind us, I hear the waves crashing over the beachhead rocks. The Jeep leaves first, followed by the ATVs, heading west. Max and I are left alone. The wind pitches higher, and a great sheet of rain washes over us. My drenched shirt is plastered to my body, and my skin chills. This must be from one of Celeste’s outer bands, the farthest evidence of her reach. “Come on,” I say to Max, who hasn’t risen from her knees. “Let’s get into the lighthouse and figure out a plan.”

  “A plan?” She looks up at me, eyes all wide. “What, like ‘let’s throw the keys away’? A plan like that?”

  “Calm down,” I tell her.

  She stands up, and her knees are muddy with crud. “If not for you, I’d have been long gone by now. This dumb backward island would be in my damn rearview mirror.”

  I feel the weight of this truth, and I wait for Celeste to appear and judge me. But for some reason she doesn’t, and it comes to me that while I failed my sister, maybe I can save Max. “Look now, we got to get our act together. It’s six, seven, miles back to the bridge. That’s the only way off the island, and it’s going up in a few hours. With any luck we’ll run into the sheriff or the folks shutting things down. Come on, let’s go.”

  “I’m not in the habit of being told what to do, all right?”

  I look up into her face. “I’m not telling you what to do. Just telling you how it is.”

  She turns her back to me, staring in the direction of the road. Without turning, she asks, “You know where those Odenkirks live?”

  The Odenkirk compound is deep in a marshy forest, up on the northern side of this half of the Shacks. But nobody goes back there, and for good reason. I say, “Sure I do. But that’s no place I’m heading.”

  “I didn’t ask you to,” she says. “Just tell me how to get there.” She starts marching, splashing through the puddles that have already formed.

  I run after her. “Hang on now. What exactly you think’s gonna happen next?”

  She stops. “It’s not a question of thinking. I’m like that Mother Whatshername. I’ve had a divine vision of my own. I know you’re going to go get that backpack of yours from the lighthouse. We’ll need whatever’s in it. I know you’re going to lead me to where I can find those nutjobs. And I know I’m going to get my Jeep back. That’s all there is to it.”

  Making our way to the Odenkirks’ will take a good while, but once I’ve helped this girl, I’ll still have time to double back to the lighthouse, finish what I started. But I’m not going to just give this girl something without getting something. “I might could do that,” I say.

  She nods.

  “But here’s the thing,” I say. “I’m not in the habit of being told what to do either. I’ll get you there, but if we do it, I lead and you follow. That’s the deal. And before we go anywhere, you got to tell me straight what’s going on.”

  “What do you mean?” Max asks, tilting into a gush of wind to keep upright.

  “What’d you come to this lighthouse for?” I demand. And when all she does is turn away from me and look the white tower up and down, I try, “What’s so important in that Jeep that you’d risk your life for it?”

  She spins around quick. Something in her face tells me she’s deciding whether to be truthful or tell me a lie. In her silence, I try to imagine what answer she might give, but when she finally speaks, it’s totally unexpected. “My father,” she tells me at last. “Eli, those punks have got my daddy.”

  THERE’S NO CARS ON INFINITY ROAD, AND ELI WALKS ALONG the center line, trudging silently through the rain. Ten feet behind him, Max follows with her hands stuffed in her pockets. “How much farther?” she asks.

  “Up ahead awhile,” Eli answers without turning.

  Max sighs. It’s not that she’s looking for conversation, she’s just having a hard time trusting this stranger. Back home in New Jersey, there was no one she felt she could truly count on anymore, nobody she was close to. But something about Eli tempts her to put a little faith in him. Maybe it’s the gentleness in his eyes, or the fact that he isn’t really trying to be all friendly. That was one of the things that always drove Max nuts about Angie, how she was always pretending like they were best friends.

  In the months after Angie officially became her stepmom a couple years ago, her efforts to bond with Max—shopping expeditions to the mall, a disastrous “spa day”—had only made clear the distance between them. Angie was just fifteen years older, but the two of them often fought like sisters. As time went by, her dad learned to stay clear of their arguments, which escalated from stony mealtime silences to stubborn refusal to do chores to complaining about attending church. Max didn’t think it could get worse. But six months ago at a diner, Max’s dad proved her wrong. That very night, she packed her bags.

  The twin Gonzalez sisters convinced their mom to let Max move into a spare room in their basement, where she slept next to the dryer’s hum. At first, they tried to treat her like a third sister, and Mrs. G was thrilled when Max installed a bright backsplash in the kitchen and put up
some new ceiling fans. But Max cut all ties with her father and Angie, pulling ever deeper into herself. Even the cheery Gonzalezes, always friendly and warm, grew quiet around her. Max wonders if the Gonzalezes went to her dad’s funeral, if they, like everyone else, arrived to a panicked Mr. Clayborne and chaos. Max pictures Angie weeping, one hand resting on her stomach, and she turns away from this image, back to the rainy road ahead.

  Eli cuts down a rocky path wide enough for cars, and Max looks up to a sign that reads FORT ABENIACAR. There are stone structures, mostly collapsed, but Eli navigates the ruins until they come to a spot where two tall walls intersect and a bit of roof remains, forming a sort of cave. He leans into the corner and folds his arms against the dampness, and she says, “What are we doing?”

  “Stopping. There’s no sense in us walking into that wind. All we’re doing is getting tired and going nowhere. This isn’t the hurricane yet, just an outer band, gusting squalls. They’ll come and go all day, getting stronger. I say we give it a chance to let up some and then we move on in the next break.”

  Max frowns and drops her shoulders. “I say we keep moving.” When Eli doesn’t react, she goes on, “I thought you said we didn’t have much time.”

  “We don’t. But burning up our energy being stupid won’t help. Sit.”

  Max hates being told what to do, but she complies. She locates a rock that had tumbled from the stony wall and makes it a bench. Eli offers her a granola bar from his backpack, but she shakes her head, despite her lingering hunger. She’s already in this kid’s debt enough. Eli unwraps the foil and takes a bite. At their feet, three inches of water slosh back and forth. “So this is the ocean?” she asks.

  He nods and swallows. “The gulf. It’s like a big bathtub, and as Celeste pushes this way, the water’ll get higher and higher. Just before landfall, they’ll be a storm surge, a big wall of ocean water—that’ll come on like a huge wave.”

  “Like a tsunami?” Max asks.

  “Sort of. Plenty high enough to drown us good.”