Chapter 6

Laura’s turn:

So it’s been an interesting few days, starting with the lead-up to meeting John. I’m in college, my own apartment in a college town. Well, it’s an apartment I share with a high school friend, Alyssa. And, it’s not JUST a college town, it’s also a seaport town and a petrochemical town and a lumber town and a farming town.

This is my first time on my own and the presentation of a hurricane for me to deal with, I looked at it as my first test of my stepping into adulthood.

Failed the pop quiz. That would be selecting suitable co-adventurers for the evacuation. I went with people I thought I knew. I might have known some things about them, but not enough things. Jacob, one of the people in the adjacent apartment, has an old Suburban, plenty big enough for six people and luggage.

They had reservations at some sort of Air BNB thing in central Texas, and we loaded up and left.

I was in the front seat with Jacob, whom I knew on a “Hi! How’s it going?” basis. In the middle seat was my friend Alyssa and her boyfriend Brandon. There was another couple in the back seat. I met them when I got in the car.

Things went downhill fast. We’d barely gotten onto the highway leading out of town when I found out that my longtime friend Alyssa was a bit less chaste than I was. She and Brandon were kissing all over each other, giggling, hands all over each other. Okay ... things got quieter. I glanced back and Alyssa was face-down in Brandon’s lap.

Strike One.

Strikes Two and Three came when Jacob reached over and put his hand rather high on my thigh.

Now I’m running through options. Then I met John Hebert at a little convenience store/gas station in East Texas. I won’t bore you with details of how a transaction involving a package of Oreos translated into my grasp of a straw associated with a decent-looking guy with an empty seat in his pickup truck.

He was evacuating, too, and I thought that aside from “We found the mutilated body of an unidentified female” report, the next worst scenario would be that I was dropped off in some little town and threw myself into a government run hurricane evacuee shelter.

Wasn’t too many miles down the road that we were telling our stories, then I had his laptop open, doing emails about a phone call he’d handled. I listened to him talk. He sounded knowledgeable, confident, and poised. I was thinking less and less about jumping ship as he offered the second bed in a nice hotel, with promise of meals.

I was wary, okay, but he assured me in that even, calm voice of his that this wasn’t a quid pro quo thing.

Two nights in College Station, Texas, a set of memorable meals, and we were on our way back to Louisiana, having seen news reports and videos of the hurricane’s destruction.

I won’t tell the whole story. The whole WHOLESOME story. Suffice to say, the first night in HIS house, when I stretched out on that stupid futon (which is also a sofa, you know what I’m talking about if you’ve been around many student apartments) I was already running inventory of what happened.

It’s like running through a cow pasture in the dark and only treading on daisies. I said a little prayer of thanksgiving that I just might’ve found myself in the company of a truly decent man.

We were up the next morning, showed up at his office. I met a lot of people, noted that the boss didn’t bat an eye when John asked off to go outside the hurricane zone to buy necessities. See, MY old apartment is caved in. I left town with three days’ worth of clothes and a few hundred dollars on my credit card. Yeah, I know, call Mom and Dad. I’m not without the safety net, but then I’d have failed my initial foray into self-sufficiency. Matters to me, even though my “income” right now is 100% from them.

We made a run to the general vicinity of Houston. I bought clothes, toiletries, laughed at John’s comments about “Guys. One bottle. Shampoo, body wash, mild disinfectant.”

Came back. The next morning, same parking lot. Got to work. Not paid work. Volunteers. People lost roofs or parts of roofs. I got to help with putting on the famous “hurricane blue” tarps on as temporary repairs.

I was a tarp jockey while the men attacked fallen trees with chainsaws until I was on the ground getting a bottle of water when one of the older guys put his chainsaw down, looked for a spot to sit, and headed off. I helped a high school kid pulling away branches, but I eyed that chainsaw.

I went over to Mister Terry, who was sitting on the tailgate of his truck. “Lemme borrow your helmet, Mister Terry.”

“You know about chainsaws?” he asked me.

“Took Chainsaw 101 with Dad,” I said.

I guess that in some circles girls with chainsaws are an event. Several eyes watched me crank it up, pop the throttle a couple of times to gauge its response, then off I went.

Raised on a farm. Know some things. Like chainsaws. And trees. And what happens to one part of a tree when you cut the other part off.

Showed ‘em how to make a couple of temporary wedges to keep a big trunk from shifting as we stripped it.

Got home that evening (well, I can call it ‘home’ for the time being) very dirty, very sweaty, and very tired, and found that I missed a feminine soap. That’s okay. A bar of the house soap worked fine.

I beat John to the kitchen and was laying out sandwich fixings. I instructed him to heat last night’s leftover soup.

After dinner, I checked my email. People are asking where I am and how I’m doing.

“How am I doing, John?”

“Impressing the hell out of everybody I know,” he said. “Especially the high school kid...”

“Yeah,” I countered. “He was hoping. He actually asked me out. I asked him where we’d go in this mess. He said that extends to when things get better.”

“This’ll end one day.”

“Not my type.”

“You got a type?”

“More like what ain’t my type. And somebody who casually mentions ‘hookin’ up’ in the first meeting...”

“Subtle. He did that?”

“Oh yeah. Kinda gets right past that socializing and compatibility crap, right down to the main event.”

“That’s not the main event,” John mused.

“For sure. I like the socializing and the living and the talking and well, I’ve never gotten further than that. Jacob hoped, though...”

“Poor Jacob,” John snorted. “His hopes dashed over that last package of Oreos.”

“Oreos are worth it.”

Little laugh as he produced a hair dryer for me. I suggested ‘old girlfriend’. He returned ‘dry boots’. He swears he’s never had a live-in girlfriend.

Next morning – sore all over. I’m fairly active, but apparently it’s not the roof-nailing, chainsawing, tree-hauling kind of active. I noted a similar care in movement from John.

Company caters breakfast. Food truck. Horrible breakfast, if you’re not starving. We decided we’d do a better breakfast at home and just show up a little later. Another day of trees and tarps and commiserating over damaged and destroyed homes.

The next day we did an excursion to check on Mom and Dad’s. We emptied out their refrigerator and put them on the list for a blue tarp. I reported the facts to Mom and Dad as we left, headed back to town.

“Chainsaw?” Mom asked.

“Yes, Mom. Dad taught me well.”

“Tried to keep you from being a tomboy, baby.”

“Serves very well right now. Whole lot more people need chainsaws than table arrangements.”

“That’s PURELY your dad talking.”

“That’s my girl,” Dad said over Mom.

We thought we’d finished out the list of people who needed our volunteer team, but found out there was one more.

We grabbed plates of food from one of the volunteer kitchens that were popping up all over, people trying to help in any way they could. A couple of Styrofoam clamshells of spaghetti and meat sauce worked wonderfully for us.

The next morning drove to yet another ‘beautifully shaded lot’. Big pines and oaks had succumbed to the storm. Looked like a big oak went first, falling and taking about a foot-thick pine with it, and both came down, the pine held in a cluster of oak branches.

There were six of us. John and I and one other who had spent the last couple of days with chainsaws, the high school pickup artist, and Larry, the home-owner and one other volunteer.

We, the chainsaw bunch, have sort of developed an understanding of how best to do this. We observe, measure, look at what-ifs, and proceed in an orderly fashion. If things change, we stop, re-assess, and go ahead as needed. You don’t just charge in and start cutting.

I was clearing away the small branches of the mess, getting down to where we could get a purchase on the crown of the oak tree. Got thirsty. Big ice chest in the back of the pickup has water and sports drinks, where ‘sport’ is doing ten hours of chainsaw lifts.

I was sitting on the tailgate, wiping the sweat and sawdust off my face, when I heard the crack, a crash, and then yelling.

Frist scan, I looked at the roof where John had been working. The trees had shifted majorly, and – no John. I took off running. I got there with the others. John lying in the middle of a hedge. I carefully cradled his head. Visual assessment. Right arms don’t bend like that.

His eyes opened. “Are you okay?” Tom asked.

“Oh, shit no ... arm. My back...”

“Shrubbery broke your fall, but your arm...”

“His arm’s broken. Somebody call 9-1-1.”

“Lay me out flat,” John hissed.

“Shouldn’t move you. Your back...” Tom stated.

“Either you move me or I move myself.” He hissed when he tried. “Laura, hold my arm. Hurts like hell!”

“It’s bent funny.” Great observation from my erstwhile suitor.