Where the River Ends - Charles Martin [78]
Undercurrents occur whenever too much water starts swirling between a river’s banks. The increased volume changes how she flows. When she is full and overflowing her banks, she sucks down the surface and rolls it along the bottom, only to resurface it a few feet later.
The parking lot at Scotts was filled with people milling around, comparing baits and telling fishing lies, but we needed water and some food so I tied off the canoe and told Abbie to hang tight.
Somewhere somebody was frying sausage and eggs. I walked into the store and was immediately “Howdied” by four guys at the counter. I waved and tried to disappear among the grocery aisles. The wall above the cash register was decorated with locals’ pics of their largest catch, first deer, biggest hog or senior prom date. Sort of a Wall of Fame. I was filling my arms with saltine crackers, a jar of peanut butter and a few bottles of Gatorade when the guy behind the counter raised his remote control and pointed it at the TV. “Hey, ya’ll, shut up.” He mashed the volume button several times. “Here it is.”
The blue background of the weather channel flashed onto the screen with the words SPECIAL REPORT—HURRICANE ANNIE. INCHING CLOSER.
A reporter wearing a yellow rain slicker and standing in sideways rain said, “Five days ago, Annie strengthened and measured the fourth-lowest pressure ever measured in an Atlantic hurricane, tying with Hurricane Camille of 1969. On May twenty-sixth, Annie recorded sustained winds of a hundred fifty-five knots or a hundred eighty miles per hour, spinning itself into a class five hurricane with winds gusting at over two hundred miles an hour. On May twenty-seventh, Annie moved west and then northwest with sustained winds exceeding a hundred and eighty, causing the governor to evacuate the Florida Keys, Miami and most everything south of Disneyworld.” The weatherman smiled and shrugged. “Given the pictures we have been broadcasting, along with the radar pictures, folks didn’t seem to need much convincing to evacuate.” He held up a map of the state. “The three main routes out of Florida, I-95, I-75 and I-10, are little more than parking lots, promting the governor to reverse southbound flow making all lanes northbound.” The woman behind the desk in Virginia asked a few questions to which the reporter nodded and said, “She’s acquiring energy and mass like the Tazmanian Devil. Through evaporation and sea spray, a hurricane in this stage sucks up more than two billion tons of water a day. Each whirling second, it circulates some two million metric tons of air in, up and out of itself. In doing so, it releases enough energy in one day to equal the energy of four hundred twenty-megaton hydrogen bombs. If scientists could convert all that energy into something they could shove down powerlines, it would supply the United States for six months.” Satisfied with his science lesson, he paused to answer another question. He said, “Most of South Florida is a ghost town and will be for days to come as folks try to return to their homes. Problem is, Annie isn’t finished with us yet. From midday on the twenty-seventh to early on the twenty-ninth, Annie hovered over Florida, tormenting Florida’s west coast and bringing a definite stop to any highway traffic. Flooding is rampant. More to come after this…”
The man behind the counter flipped the channel and waved off his four friends. “Ya’ll hush! Here it is. Four to one says the sucker killed her, dumped the body and is sitting on some beach in South America counting her money.”
I looked up but something inside me told me I didn’t really want to watch.
The commercial ended and the bottle-blond newswoman turned to the camera. “And in national news, former supermodel and Charleston designer Abbie Eliot is missing.” Abbie’s picture flashed upon the screen, followed by a running slide show of some of the images from her career. “Her husband and local Charleston portraitist, Doss Michaels, is being sought for questioning and is a suspect in what is described as