Isaac's Storm - Erik Larson [62]
She looked at him, heartbroken. But she would not leave him. If he stayed, they would all stay.
LOUISA ROLLFING SHARED Mae Palmer’s fear, but had the same trouble convincing her husband of the danger.
The elder August had left home at about 7:30 Saturday morning, his usual time. He walked downtown where his crew was finishing work on the Trust Building.
Louisa had not yet grown concerned about the storm. Like her children, she at first found the storm exciting, and she reveled in the coolness of the morning. Everyone seemed to be out enjoying the breeze and watching the water that flowed between the high curbs of the street. “For a while even ladies were wading in the water, thinking it was fun,” she said. “The children had a grand time, picking up driftwood and other things that floated down the street.”
After breakfast, the two oldest Rollfing children, Helen and August, went to the beach for a closer look. They returned with stories of how the surf had grown so immense it was now breaking apart the big bathhouses.
A chill moved through Louisa. She had been to the bathhouses many times. She had walked their wooden decks high above the Gulf. These were immense structures on big thick timbers. They had been there forever. No one would have dared build such things into the North Sea off the island of her childhood. But the Gulf was far more peaceful. More like a very big lake, really, than a mighty ocean.
Her children were joking. It was just the kind of big story their father would tell until his face broke in that wonderful smile.
But Helen and little August insisted it was all true. They had seen everything—big boards flying through the air, pieces of the bathhouses simply falling into the sea.
Now Louisa believed them. “Then it wasn’t fun anymore.”
She sent her son downtown by trolley to the Trust Building with orders to find his father and bring him home. The water, she saw, was rising quickly and soon would reach the front door. She wanted to move to the center of the city, but she wanted her husband home. She was afraid now. She wanted all the family together.
August found his father. “Mama says to come home,” he said. “She wants to move.”
His father laughed, and gave the boy a message.
Young August returned home. His mother watched him wade up the front walk, alone.
Louisa glared.
The boy cleared his throat, maybe scuffed his heel against the floor. “Papa says you must be crazy, he will come home for dinner.”
The water continued to rise. Louisa saw neighbors begin to leave their homes.
At last her husband did arrive—“And was surprised there wasn’t any dinner.”
She did not kill him, but it is likely the thought crossed her mind. Dinner. She had not even thought about cooking.
She was furious.
He was furious.
She was being such a woman. What was there to be afraid of? This was nothing special. Some wind, some water. So what? He shouted that she should go upstairs with the children, that he was going back to town to pay his men, and would then—and only then—return to the house.
“That was more than I could stand,” Louisa said. “I stamped my foot and said some terrible thing: I told him, if he didn’t go immediately and get a carriage to take us away, and we in the meantime drowned, it would be his fault and he would never have any peace.”
Which made him angrier.
August went back downtown.
RITTER’S CAFÉ
“You Can’t Frighten Me”
RABBI HENRY COHEN said his last good-byes to the members of his congregation and headed for home, on foot. Most days he rode his bicycle—a new “Cleveland” model—but never on the Sabbath. When he turned the corner onto Broadway, he stopped, startled by what he saw, half expecting to hear the sound of distant cannon.
Rabbi Cohen, his wife, Mollie, and their children lived about a mile from the Gulf in a comfortable gray house raised twelve feet off the ground. It had plaster walls and a long central hall, or “hog run,” that cut the house in half. On the left were the bedrooms and bath, on the right