Marcia Talley - Without a Grave

She shook her head ‘no’ which I took to mean yes, so I sat down.

Her legs extended straight out in front of her, she held the bag on her lap.

‘I just couldn’t take it any more,’ she sobbed. She wrapped her arms tightly around the bag, and it was then that I noticed it wasn’t a bag. It was a pet carrier.

‘It’ll be over soon,’ I said, thinking she meant the storm.

She stared at me, tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘He said I couldn’t keep it. I asked him why, why, why?’ She started bawling. ‘He’s such a bastard!’

‘What are you talking about, Alice? The ring?’

She sucked in her lips and looked at me sideways through her long, wet lashes. Slowly, she opened the hatch of the carrier. I started when an exuberant puppy leapt out, a white and gray mop of fur that stood up on its hind legs and joyfully licked the tears from Alice’s face.

No, not a puppy. The dog was a full-grown, brindle Scottish Terrier.

‘Isn’t he darling?’ Alice giggled, her tears vanquished at last. ‘Jaime said I couldn’t bring him into the shelter, that dogs weren’t allowed. What a liar! Gator brought Justice in for heaven’s sake. I couldn’t leave my little sweetie all alone in our cottage. Poor thing was terrified!’

Dread clutched at my innards, but I managed to say, ‘Where did Jaime get the dog, Alice?’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’ She lifted the animal up like a doll, nuzzled his fur and said, ‘Mommy wuvs her widdle Beckums.’

‘Beckums?’

‘Beckham, as in David. I think he’s hot.’

She kissed the dog on the nose. ‘I couldn’t let Jaime take Beckums away, now could I?’

‘Why would Jaime want to take the dog away?’

She plopped Beckham in my lap, picked up my hand and placed it between the little dog’s shoulders. ‘Feel that tiny lump there? It’s a microchip. Jaime said it could be traced.’

I stared at Alice stupidly. Jaime had Frank and Sally’s boat. Jaime had Frank and Sally’s dog. And Jaime had probably given Alice Sally’s emerald ring. I wanted to call the police right away, but we were in the middle of a hurricane, so it would have to wait. I’d have to tell Gator instead.

Alice leaned her head against the bar and said dreamily, ‘If he’d throw a helpless little dog over a cliff, Hannah, can you imagine what he’d do with his own baby?’

The eye had passed, and Helen began to tear at us in earnest. She howled and shrieked like an enraged dragon, lashing the building with the flat of her tail.

My ears popped and my teeth ached as the eyewall swept over us and the air pressure changed. I grabbed Paul’s hand, my anchor. He’d keep me from blowing away.

‘I think Alice is pregnant,’ I said, holding on tight, my lips against his ear.

‘That’s good,’ he shouted over the storm. ‘Isn’t it?’

Before I could answer, Gabriele appeared. Across the room, she and Gator were up to something. ‘Anybody seen Jeremy?’ Gabriele screamed over the roar of the wind. ‘Hell-oh! I could use a little help over here!’

Gabriele helped Gator push the table he’d been sleeping under against the door, then she marched over to roust out the boaters. Six or seven of them began dismantling the pile of furniture, setting the chairs aside fire brigade-style, so they could get at the tables to make barricades.

Meanwhile, Helen sat on the roof like an F-15 fighter jet, all engines full throttle. I heard a shriek as nails lost their hold and the plywood that had been covering the picture window tore away. Pale light entered the room; the plexiglass began to flex with the force of the wind, growling and howling like feedback on the speakers at a Black Sabbath concert. And yet it held.

‘Away from the door!’ Gabriele yelled, her hair flying.

Helen wanted in. She thumped and rattled and knocked at the doors. I could see the door frame flexing under the pressure, the hinges straining. The doors banged and bowed and managed to hold on until with one last desperate crack, the hurricane bar splintered. Helen ripped the doors away and entered the building.

Suddenly I was on the floor, clawing at the carpet. Salt water mist filled the air and I struggled to breathe. ‘Paul!’ I shouted, but the wind tore the words away.

Eyes stinging, I looked around for Molly. She sprawled on the floor next to me, whimpering. I crawled over and covered her body with mine.

The room became a wind tunnel as Helen screamed through like a banshee, picking up books, bottles, cups, coolers, even our lounge chairs and hurling them aside in her fury.

‘Hannah!’ A table was inching toward us. At first I thought it was Helen’s doing, then I saw Paul underneath, pushing it along. He shoved the table against the wall, and I helped Molly crawl under the makeshift barricade where we huddled together for protection.

I didn’t think there could be any trees left, but Helen found them. Trunks crashed and thumped against the building. Raindrops drummed on the table over our head and I realized the roof was leaking. I tilted my head and looked up. The ceiling fans spun like windmills gone wild and light streamed through cracks in the rafters.

Across the room, Alice began to scream, ‘Stop it, stop it, stop it!’ I hoped Jaime was there to comfort her.

It felt like hours before the winds abated, but according to Paul’s watch, it was only forty minutes. When the wind died and we were sure Helen had gone, we crawled out from under the table, dirty, wet and disheveled, like survivors of a war-torn country after a ceasefire.

Paul and I stood up, took inventory of one another. Nothing cut or broken.

One of the boaters had been struck by an airborne chair, injuring his arm. After we made sure she’d suffered no injuries herself, we let Molly hustle off to nurse him.

I was about to check on Alice when Gabriele stumbled into the room out of the hallway, hair loose and wild, a flashlight in her hand. ‘Has anybody seen my brother?’

From a corner behind the bar, a small voice began singing: The eensy weensy spider went up the water spout; Down came the rain and washed the spider out…

CONDITIONS MODERATE RAPIDLY TODAY AS HELEN EXITS, WITH SOUTH WIND BELOW 50 KNOTS BY MID-DAY. CLEAN-UP EFFORTS CAN BEGIN STRAIGHTAWAY.Chris Parker, Wx Update , Bahamas, Sat 6, 10a

The sun came out, shining on a settlement I barely recognized.

With Justice in the lead, Paul and I straggled back to town behind Molly and Gator, weaving through piles of debris, stepping over logs, and sloshing through puddles up to our ankles. Everywhere residents were emerging, dazed and blinking from the shells of their ruined homes. Where walls remained, jagged holes stood as reminders of doors that had once welcomed visitors, or windows that had once been open to the tradewinds, flower boxes blooming, curtains gently swaying.

Golf carts, generators, and air conditioners had been picked up by the storm, whirled about and discarded, sometimes hundreds of yards from their original locations. Behind the hardware store, a delivery van had overturned; the driver’s-side door yawned open, the seat missing. Next to it lay, incredibly, one of Tamarind Tree’s tiki torches.

The Pink Store, I was relieved to see, had suffered little damage. The slats of the jalousie windows were twisted and bent, allowing water to blow into the store, but Winnie’s pharmaceutical shelf appeared to be the only casualty. The wind had toppled it, sending boxes of Tylenol, Dramamine and cold tablets tumbling, bottles of shampoo, Pepto-Bismol and Benjamin’s Balsam cough mixture, too. They lay in two inches of water on the floor, a soggy jumble.

Winnie was already at work, sweeping everything out.