Joe Lansdale - The Best of Joe R. Lansdale

4:45 P.M.

The steamship Pensacola , outbound from Galveston, reached the Gulf, and a wind reached the Pensacola . Captain Slater felt his heart clinch. The sea came high and savage from the east, and the ship rose up and dived back down, and the waves, dark green and shadowed by the thick clouds overhead, reared up on either side of the steamship, hissed, plunged back down, and the Pensacola rode up.

Jake Bernard, the pilot commissioner, came onto the bridge looking green as the waves. He was Slater’s guest on this voyage, and now he wished he were back home. He couldn’t believe how ill he felt. Never, in all his years, had he encountered seas like this, and he had thought himself immune to seasickness.

“I don’t know about you, Slater,” Bernard said, “but I ain’t had this much fun since a bulldog gutted my daddy.”

Slater tried to smile, but couldn’t make it. He saw that Bernard, in spite of his joshing, didn’t look particularly jovial. Slater said, “Look at the glass.”

Bernard checked the barometer. It was falling fast.

“Never seen it that low,” Bernard said.

“Me either,” Slater said. He ordered his crew then. Told them to take in the awning, to batten the hatches, and to prepare for water.

Bernard, who had not left the barometer, said, “God. Look at this, man!”

Slater looked. The barometer read 28.55.

Bernard said, “Way I heard it, ever gets that low, you’re supposed to bend forward, kiss your root, and tell it good-bye.”

6:30 P.M.

The Coopers, Bill and Angelique and their eighteen-month-old baby, Teddy, were on their way to dinner at a restaurant by buggy, when their horse, Bess, a beautiful, chocolate-colored mare, made a run at the crashing sea.

It was the sea that frightened the horse, but in its moment of fear, it had tried to plunge headlong toward the source of its fright, assuring Bill that horses were, in fact, the most stupid animals in God’s creation.

Bill jerked the reins and cussed the horse. Bess wheeled, lurched the buggy so hard Bill thought they might tip, but the buggy bounced on line, and he maneuvered Bess back on track.

Angelique, dark-haired and pretty, said, “I think I soiled my bloomers… I smell it… No, that’s Teddy. Thank goodness.”

Bill stopped the buggy outside the restaurant, which was situated on high posts near the beach, and Angelique changed the baby’s diaper, put the soiled cloth in the back of the buggy.

When she was finished, they tied up the reins and went in for a steak dinner. They sat by a window where they could see the buggy. The horse bucked and reared and tugged so much, Bill feared she might break the reins and bolt. Above them, they could hear the rocks that covered the flat roof rolling and tumbling about like mice battling over morsels. Teddy sat in a high chair provided by the restaurant; whammed a spoon in a plate of applesauce.

“Had I known the weather was this bad,” Angelique said, “we’d have stayed home. I’m sorry, Bill.”

“We stay home too much,” Bill said, realizing the crash of the surf was causing him to raise his voice. “Building that upper deck on the house isn’t doing much for my nerves either. I’m beginning to realize I’m not much of a carpenter.”

Angelique widened her dark brown eyes. “No? You, not a carpenter?”

Bill smiled at her.

“I could have told you that, just by listening to all the cussing you were doing. How many times did you hit your thumb, dear?”

“Too many to count.”

Angelique grew serious. “Bill. Look.”

Many of the restaurant’s patrons had abandoned their meals and were standing at the large windows, watching the sea. The tide was high and it was washing up to the restaurant’s pilings, splashing against them hard, throwing spray against the glass.

“Goodness,” Bill said. “It wasn’t this bad just minutes ago.”

“Hurricane?” Angelique asked.

“Yeah. It’s a hurricane all right. The flags are up. I saw them.”

“Why so nervous? We’ve had hurricanes before.”

“I don’t know. This feels different, I guess… It’s all right. I’m just jittery is all.”

They ate quickly and drove the buggy home, Bess pulling briskly all the way. The sea crashed behind them and the clouds raced above them like apparitions.

8:00 P.M.

Captain Slater figured the wind was easily eighty knots. A hurricane. The Pensacola was jumping like a frog. Crockery was crashing below. A medicine chest so heavy two men couldn’t move it leaped up and struck the window of the bridge, went through onto the deck, slid across it, hit the railing, bounced high, and dropped into the boiling sea.

Slater and Bernard bumped heads so hard they nearly knocked each other out. When Slater got off the floor, he got a thick rope out from under a shelf and tossed it around a support post, made a couple of wraps, then used the loose ends to tie bowlines around his and Bernard’s waists. That way, he and Bernard could move about the bridge if they had to, but they wouldn’t end up following the path of the medicine chest.

Slater tried to think of something to do, but all he knew to do he had done. He’d had the crew drop anchor in the open Gulf; down to a hundred fathoms, and he’d instructed them to find the best shelter possible close to their posts, and to pray.

The Pensacola swung to the anchor, struggled like a bull on a leash. Slater could hear the bolts and plates that held the ship together screaming in agony. Those bolts broke, the plates cracked, he didn’t need Captain Ahab to tell him they’d go down to Davy Jones’s locker so fast they wouldn’t have time to take in a lungful of air.

Using the wall for support, Slater edged along to where the bridge glass had been broken by the flying chest. Sea spray slammed against him like needles shot from a cannon. He was concentrating on the foredeck, watching it dip, when he heard Bernard make a noise that was not quite a word, yet more expressive than a grunt.

Slater turned, saw Bernard clutching the latch on one of the bridge windows so tightly he thought he would surely twist it off. Then he saw what Bernard saw.

The sea had turned black as a Dutch oven, the sky the color of gangrene, and between sea and sky there appeared to be something rising out of the water, something huge and oddly shaped, and then Slater realized what it was. It was a great wall of water, many times taller than the ship, and it was moving directly toward and over them.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 3:30 A.M.

Bill Cooper opened his eyes. He had been overwhelmed by a feeling of dread. He rose carefully, so as not to wake Angelique, went into the bedroom across the hall and checked on Teddy. The boy slept soundly, his thumb in his mouth.

Bill smiled at the child, reached down, and gently touched him. The boy was sweaty, and Bill noted that the air in the room smelled foul. He opened a window, stuck his head out, and looked up. The sky had cleared and the moon was bright. Suddenly, he felt silly. Perhaps this storm business, the deck he was building on the upper floor of the house, had made him restless and worried. Certainly, it looked as if the storm had passed them by.

Then his feeling of satisfaction passed. For when he examined the yard, he saw it had turned to molten silver. And then he realized it was moonlight on water. The Gulf had crept all the way up to the house. A small rowboat, loose from its moorings, floated by.

8:06 A.M.

Issac Cline had driven his buggy down the beach, warning residents near the water to evacuate. Some had. Some had not. Most had weathered many storms and felt they could weather another.