Tuesday, October 25, 2016

the coming storm

“Hey Sleeping Beauty, you gonna stay all day in that hammock?”

I must have dozed off, I blink my eyes open, the bubble of a dream is popped.
In the late afternoon, the sun has mellowed, still it’s late August, hot out here in the garden where bees lazily buzz in drooping dahlias.   

“What are you doing?”
Glen and Dougie the houseboy are unloading two by fours from the truck, they must have bought out the store.
“Didn’t you hear about the storm?” Dougie laughs.
“What Storm?”
“Just a hurricane spinning up the coast”, says Glen, “it’s headed right for us.”
“Maybe by tomorrow afternoon”, Dougie slings a stack of boards over his shoulder and heads to the front of the house.

I stretch and yawn. My journal falls, it lands in the tall weeds. I was writing before I drowsed, about the morning spent walking out, alone, along the dunes under a perfect, cloudless sky. On the sparse rocky spit of shore at Race Point I sprawled on a pink ratty towel, and watched the water, that was flat, like glass.  There was barely a breeze to break the stillness of the hour, so I sat in that lonely place with just the squawking gulls disturbing the quiet.

But the bittersweetness of the day, like my nap, is over.   There is already banging, a buzz saw squeals, the guys are hammering and moving ladders, boarding windows. I make my way slowly, to the back screen door.

Emily, in a slack floral housedress, hovers over something bubbling gently on the back burner.
“What smells so good?”
“Irish stew,” she says.  The tea kettle whistles, she hums as she sets two mismatched mugs on the counter. “You want a cup?”
I nod.
At the battered table, she pushes the sugar bowl, the blue creamer, and a cracked crockery jug toward the center along the oilcloth. She settles into her chair with a groan. “Salut!” she says.
There is still the taste of salt water on my lips. I sip the strong hot tea, sufficiently sweetened, and laced with an ample jigger of the dark brown booze, it warms and burns, I am heady in its unfolding fragrance.
“High octane”, I cough.
“Not a bad little vintage,” she agrees.

We sit a while, in a long stretch of warm sunlight, a gusting puff of wind riffs the lacey curtains, and there is that late summer smell of garden vegetation: over ripe tomatoes, damp earth, long green grass, mixed with the high note tang of the sea.

“Those two sure are making a racket,” she says, shaking her head.
“Glenn said it’s coming right for us.”
She shrugs. “My bones hurt, that’s all I know.”

When I put my empty mug down, she takes it up in her rough red hands.  She swirls the dregs carefully a few times. Through finger smudged glasses she peers into the bottom,
“It’s a hawk, “ Emily says, pronouncing the tea leaves.
“A hawk?”
She shushes me, and looks from another angle, gingerly so as not to disturb the pattern. “It could be a raven.”
“A raven?”
She shrugs. “It’s either a hawk or a raven, it’s all in the interpretation of the wings.”
“And?”
“Something’s coming, that’s for sure.” She puts the mug down for emphasis.
“That’s very illuminating.” I laugh.
“You’ll see,” she says. After a series of grunts she is again upright and at the stove.
“Thanks for the tea.” I put the things in the sink, where she nudges my arm.
“Supper’s at seven.”

Up the back stairs, I can hear the men lugging boards and swearing, grunting, slamming shutters shut. Maybe it’s the effects of the day dazzled by the sun, or the potent whiskey, or the shift in barometric pressure, but I am buoyant, and float, my hand glides along the shellacked smooth bend in the wood, I eye the faded rose bouquet wallpaper and listen as the pine floor boards sigh. Ghosts flit in shimmering dust motes, they whisper in the corners, as the old place seems to ready itself for the coming storm.

In the raftered attic eaves the sight of my little bed in its nook gives me the dreamy vision of a night, when moonlight might shine through the oblong glass panes, when you might again be waiting for me under the clean white cool coverlet, when we might laugh together, touch each other, when eyes might be bright in the darkness.

I open the window wide.

Out on Longpoint the lighthouse stands mute, stark against the clear blue expanse of sky. Miles away, a tempest approaches, but now the water is mirror smooth, and silvery glittering.
Still, something stirs underneath the placid surface, something palpable, a pulse of life, something that flutters in my chest like the wings of a raven, or a hawk, a hurricane is coming, something is coming,

I lean out. “Yes” I say softly, so the still air might carry the word across the bay, like a prayer, a wish, a flickering, glimmering hope:

“YES”.





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