Isaac's Storm - Erik Larson [86]
At intervals the moon emerged. How the moon could shine amid such wind and rain he did not know, but there it was, visible through a thin layer of cloud. A full moon, no less. It gave him light; it also gave him fear, for it showed him how vast the plane of devastation truly was. Spiky dunes of wreckage blocked his path. From the top of each, he saw that only a few homes still stood. To the south was a strange black shadow two and three stories high that stretched for miles like a mountain range freshly jabbed through the earth’s crust.
At three o’clock Sunday morning he came to his mother’s neighborhood. Only her house looked whole. Everything else had been destroyed, upended, or transported toward the bay. Relief poured into his heart. He burst into the house but found only his mother.
“Where are Louisa and the children? I don’t see them.”
The question surprised his mother. “August, I don’t know,” she said. “They are not here.” When she realized that August expected them to be there, she too became afraid. “When did they go,” she asked, “and how?”
He told her about the buggy he had sent at one o’clock and the instructions he had given the driver.
“Nobody could come here at one o’clock,” his mother said. August started toward the door. “Wait,” she pleaded. “Wait until daylight.”
August made his way to his sister’s house. He saw corpses. The short journey—only half a dozen blocks—took an hour. The sight made him half-crazy with dread. The house stood at a forty-five degree angle. Where Julia’s kitchen had been, there was now only a jagged black hole. Every shutter had been splintered, every window broken.
But there seemed to be a light within. He pounded on the front door. The door opened. He saw Julia and her husband. He saw Louisa. He saw Helen, August, and little Lanta. “Thank God,” he said.
And fainted on the stairs.
25TH AND Q
Isaac’s Voyage
HE WAS ALONE in the water. His family was gone. He flailed his arms and reached deep underwater and kicked his legs to feel for soft things, clothing, someone alive. He felt only square shapes, planks, serrated edges. He had been inside the house; now he was outside in darkness, in wind so fast it planed the water smooth. There was lightning. He saw debris everywhere, jutting from the sea. He saw a child. He shimmied free of the timbers and swam hard. The rain stung; he could hold his eyes open only a few seconds at a time. He came to her and felt his arm grow from the water and circle her and knew immediately the child was his Esther, his six-year-old. His baby. He spoke into her ear. She cried and grabbed him hard and put him under, but he was delighted. She asked for her mother. He had no answer. The house began to break up. He swam her away.
He was elated; he was distraught. He had found one daughter but lost everyone else. His memory of them would be tinted the yellow of lamplight. He tried to place them in the room, and by doing so, to place them in the sea. His wife had been with him in the center of the room with Esther. His two eldest daughters had been near the window, beside Joseph. Why had they not surfaced too?
Isaac and his baby drifted. There was more lightning. He coughed water through his nose and mouth. In the next flare, he saw three figures hanging tight to floating wreckage. Isaac swam Esther toward them against the wind.
He heard a shout.
Joseph Cline said: “My heart suddenly leaped with uncontrollable joy. In two figures that clung to the drift about one hundred feet to leeward, I discovered my brother and his youngest child.”
Isaac: “We placed the children in front of us, turned our backs to the winds and held planks, taken from the floating wreckage,