Chapter 15

Gee’s turn:

I am now officially a hurricane survivor, and not one of those ‘We evacuated to Podunk, Arkansas’ variety. I was right here. The eye went right by us. I can also tell you that if you try a stunt like this, be aware that you may have a partner like mine. Apparently one of us has a storm fetish.

It was a dark and stormy night. Really! It was. Every half-hour or so, Josh went out and checked out our mooring lines. He took his powerful searchlight and pointed it up at the treetops to check wind direction and condition. Down at water level we got roils and eddies and swirls, never the straight-line gusts that are so damaging from a hurricane. That was our salvation. That and being positioned forty-something miles inland from the coast, so that the wind started to die down when the hurricane started dragging parts of itself across the land. Its energy comes from warm waters. Take away the warm waters, it starts flaking out. We benefit.

It was an odd looking daybreak, but we saw it. We survived. The evidence of the storm was all around us. The trees took a lot of damage. The water was filled, covered, with leaves and little branches that had been ripped from trees.

The wind gone, we caught a needed nap before starting back towards the home marina.

I had the camera out, shooting like crazy when I wasn’t helping Josh. Like he says, digital camera. Film is cheap.

Vigilance, though, is needed. There’s a lot of stuff in the water. The current is kind of crazy, too. Water was pushed upstream by the storm surge, now it’s going back out. We’re throttled back to a couple of knots of water speed, just barely enough to steer, but the GPS says we’re doing twice that, going with the current. Whole trees are down from the high parts of the bank, lying out into the channel. Fortunately the river’s pretty wide here, so we’re not blocked.

One thing missing was the wildlife. Usually when we’re moving on the river early in the morning, we see a lot of fauna on the banks – raccoons, herons, opossums, otters and mink (rarely). Today, nothing. I imagine they’re still getting over the catastrophe that came to their world.

Ours is messed up too. Even from the river I can see homes damaged, mostly because trees fell onto them. I got pictures going for those, too.

The whole trip was slow, Josh and I both surveying the waters ahead. When we got to our marina it was a mess. Josh’s car ... The storm surge got high enough to float it away from where he’d parked it. Three boats sunk. A couple halfway on the bank. Piers all messed up. We picked our way into the marina and moored directly onto the bank and unloaded our scooters.

Our house checked out okay. There were trees down in the wooded lot, but none fell in the cleared yard around the house. I can see a lot of work clearing those downed trees. I’m hoping Josh will defer that work until cooler months.

We managed to get to Mom and Dad’s house. Again, no damage.

We had some interesting interactions with emergency services people, mostly law enforcement, but two people on Honda scooters do not fit the stereotype for looters.

When we got back to the marina, Josh and I salvaged what was worth saving from his sodden SUV. Pictures. We took lots of pictures. Insurance claim, you know. We had pictures of everything.

The heat was cloying with the humidity, and while it was quiet – the only sounds being nature waking back up and the sounds of distant emergency vehicles and generators, it was also beginning to have a definite alien smell, probably the result of all the downed vegetation in the early stages of decomposition.

“Back to the boat, baby,” I said. “Nothing else we can do onshore.”

We ended up anchored in the next lake down the chain of lakes ending in the Gulf of Mexico. The silence was eerie. We’ve been on the boat when it was this quiet, just not here.

Anchored out, the humidity making the air almost saturated, not having to worry about the prying eyes of others, my clothes came off. So did Josh’s, at least for a while, while a mixture of flour, water, salt and yeast rose. Dinner was flatbread and peanut butter and marmalade, quick, filling. Afterward, showers on the back deck, then still naked, we lounged a bit and read.

There’s a certain amount of selected activities that really prepare Gee and Josh for sleep. We did those. It’s good. Happy. Ecstatic. If I am to believe my husband, and honestly, why would I not? he thinks I’m the be-all and end-all of sexual satisfaction. I understand. Unlike previous experiences, I have never been in the middle of the festivities wishing it was over so I could go shopping or read or see what’s on TV.

That’s also why, when I go to sleep, I sleep well. And if I wake up and am of a mind, there’s this guy laying next to me that doesn’t appear to get disturbed if I take liberties with him in the wee hours of the morning.

That’s what was going on when we went to sleep in the middle of the lake the first night, post-hurricane.

In the wee hours of the morning a chime from Josh’s iPad woke me up. I nudged Josh. “Baby, I think the world is reconnecting with us.”

He was in a fog when he replied, “I heard. It can wait.”

“No it can’t,” I said. “I need to get word to Mom and Dad. You kept their precious daughter in the middle of a hurricane.”

Groggily he agreed. “Yeah, okay. You’re right.”

I fired up the laptop and hotspotted it to my phone. A couple of clicks later I’m in my personal email account.

Josh commented about data rates. “I bet those guys are working their butts off to get the cellular networks up again. Emergency services need it bad these days.”

“Yeah, I imagine. We get the benefit,” I said. “I’m gonna give it a workout.”

“Better send a text-only message first. Pictures’re gonna eat up the bandwidth at both ends. And then in the morning, we can try sending them some pictures.”

I was busy composing a sequel to War & Peace, describing my experiences to Mom & Dad, while Josh checked his own email queue.

“I got us a job, baby,” he announced.

“A job?”

“Yeah, one of the magazines I’ve sold a few little articles to, they want to know if we can do something showing wildlife in the wetlands after the hurricane.”

“Wetlands, like the swamp, or the the marsh?”

“I dunno.”

“Well, I got a bunch of pictures during and after the storm on the trip back down here. That’s the swamp pix. I think we head south instead, set up where we can get into the marshes.”

“Yeah. Our flat-bottom boat. Cameras out the kazoo.” He thought for a second. “I’m gonna email the guy, tell him to email me something that might pass as press credentials. We can boat our way around the marsh, then hit the bank and scooter and walk ... We’ll need SOMETHING. Law enforcement and emergency services will be all over the place.”

I giggled. “Just tell ‘em looters don’t’ ride scooters. You wannna leave now?”

“I’ve run the channel in the dark many times, but I’m thinking we won’t try tonight. We have no idea what sort of debris may be just barely floating out there. I think we should wait until morning.”

My husband is NOT stupid and we don’t take unnecessary risks. (Says the girl about the guy who sat in the middle of a hurricane’s path) “If you put me in that bed over there and love me gently, we’ll get up and go in the morning. You drive and I’ll cook.”

We went back to sleep. He has a way of touching me, making me feel ever so relaxed and loved. Every erotic touch doesn’t have to end in penetration. We made each other feel loved as we slipped back to sleep. Last thing I remember – I had his dick in my hand. It feels just so right.

You don’t need an alarm clock when the sun rises on a houseboat in the middle of a lake. The sun got us. We got dressed.

Josh went about the task of starting the engine, weighing anchor. First time I said ‘weigh anchor’, he said ‘the big one’s twenty-four pounds.’

We’re underway. I’m making bacon and egg sandwiches because the store-bought bread is going to go stale in a day or two, so we just as well use it. Besides, he can eat a sandwich with one hand while he steers and I’m up there with him, camera on a tripod, catching things that look interesting, thanking God that I took that throw-away photography class in college.

We end up in the middle of the next lake, the last wide spot before the ship channel hits the Gulf of Mexico. Josh says that the lake level is starting to be near normal, so where we’re anchored, we’re good. We’re close enough to some of the sloughs that lead back into the marshes so we won’t have a long trek across open water in the little boat.

We get that thing in the water along with a couple of batteries for the very quiet electric motor as well as the gas tank and the regular motor. The big motor will get us over the distance pretty fast. The electric trolling motor will allow us to slip up into the marshes quietly. Heaven knows, whatever wildlife is still there has had a rough week already without a bunch of noise disturbing them.

Into the marshes we went, very gingerly, because the whole thing of a huge, wet sea of grasses was changed. The grasses were beaten down by wave and storm and the green sea of grass and water was now punctuated with debris from the communities south of us, communities that probably no longer existed except as concrete slabs and a few hard sticks or skeletons of steel.

We spent the daylight hours exploring the marshes, Josh navigating, me snapping and shooting.

Evenings we spent sorting through pictures, attaching them and text to a draft article. We also found that the cellular system was coming back, even down here in the middle of nowhere. I talked with Mom and Dad about plans for them to return. Josh called his home phone number time after time.

“Why?” I asked. “Nobody home.”