The Watery Part of the World - Michael Parker [84]
Sometimes, when Whaley sat listening to her sister tell her stories to the Tape Recorders, it occurred to her that there was more than one island. Three, actually—Woodrow’s island, Maggie’s, her own. The Tape Recorders never could get Sarah to talk to them, which Whaley secretly appreciated, for there was no telling what sort of fourth island might have emerged had Sarah got to tell her side of it. But the thought that there were three islands was not at all pleasing to Whaley. She tended not to recognize but the one, her own, for the others seemed to her soggy and vulnerable places, no more secure than driftwood tossed about by the waves.
The argument was not winnable or even decipherable after all, for it degenerated into a splinter argument about the way Maggie misbehaved thirty or so odd years ago. Even Whaley wasn’t sure she had the facts so straight any more, though she did not say that to Maggie. Twice Maggie, insulted, got up to go leave the room, but she realized she would be alone in an increasingly threatening storm, and besides, fighting made the time pass. They argued. The radio, packed with batteries, had long since given over to whistling, and even if it had been working it would have told them things they’d been knowing, as by the time word of any storm got on the air on the mainland stations it had already hit the island and was likely out to sea by then.
Around five in the morning Whaley went to the back door to check on things. She saw the water then.
What she should have done was come right back inside. But instead she stood there, hesitating, trying to decide was it too late to run down there and fetch Sarah. Her being gone so long’s what brought Maggie into it. Whaley heard her gasp when she saw the surge coming up past the clothesline, almost to the house.
“Good God Almighty,” she said. “We’ve got to get Sarah.”
“It’s too late, Mag. We got to get to the church.”
“If it’s up in the yard here it’s bad high down there in the bottom. We’ve got to get her.”
“You go down there now, you’ll get sucked right out in the sound.”
Maggie went inside. In a second here she came again, the slicker half on, an arm in, one out.
Whaley had to grab her. Maggie fought back, the two of them struggling out in the rain then. “You will die if you go down there,” Whaley said. “Sarah had her chance. Now you get your head on and come with me up to the church.”
Whaley held her sister until she went limp. Let Whaley grab her hand and lead her like Woodrow’s old mule, Pilothouse, back into the house where Whaley grabbed some food and then the portrait off the wall, which she wrapped in a blanket and carried with her right up the hill to the church, through the rising surge, alive with boards from buildings down island washed away already, the other crazy things a flood will float right by you: an ironing board, somebody’s bait buckets, a crutch. It was just light out. Water lapped the church steps. In ten minutes it had risen to float the purple pew cushions. They made their way from the pulpit through the cold water up to the balcony steps. It would have been plenty safe there, the water had never risen that high, but Whaley wanted to see what the storm had done so she kept climbing up the ladder to the belfry. There, in the cramped space aside the bell, she wedged herself up toward the window and saw Woodrow’s half-flattened house.
Not the water but the wind. That flimsy kitchen Woodrow had tacked on out of boards washed up on the beach, some rusty tin he traded the O’Malleys for—she’d told him from the start how it would not withstand even a moderate blow. Woodrow, stubborn Woodrow, well, no—he would not listen to any of that. Won’t nothing wrong with that kitchen, he claimed. Just because material wasn