Brown Eyes in the Storm

And I loved every moment we spent sitting on that couch. Her under my arm. Us looking into each other's eyes. Listening to the radio. Each doing the best to keep fear at bay by showing the other we were not afraid. When we were of course both terrified.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

Near midnight we had to move to the hallway.

Sitting on the floor next to the garage door, the small radio and the battery lantern beside us, ready to flee into the "questionable" safety of that part of the house. All the windows were screaming now. The chilling sound was deafening near any of them. Then the roof began to groan overhead and we came here to huddle together. Hoping this--the strong center of the house--would be safest. The garage was, possibly, better build but it had that huge door that was vibrating against the back bumper of her car as if it was seconds away from buckling.

The radio was turned up to its max volume simply for us to be able to hear it. They were telling of the approach of Ivan's eye wall. Sustained winds of a hundred, with gusts that were pealing the roof off over our heads. There was water dripping from several corners.

My back was against the wall behind me, my shoulder touching the frame of the garage door. My eyes were heavy. This night had been years long already. I had talked a reluctant Wendy into laying her head in my lap and trying to get some sleep. She was there, but if she was sleeping it would have surprised me. Who could sleep with all the hounds of hell howling outside? I was absently caressing her hair, thinking back to when I first met her. Years and years ago. I smiled realizing that while to me it was half a lifetime, to her it was a decade or so back.

The difference in our ages really didn't matter to me. I mean I've always thought older women were sexier than girls my own age. My fingers teased a small cluster of gray hairs near her ear. I softly smoothed a wrinkle by her eye. And Wendy more so than most. I had always thought her beautiful. From the very first, her smile the way it seemed to start at her eyes and travel to her lips was pure beauty. Yeah, that smile was certainly part of what I loved about her. Her humor seemed to consume her whole face. As if the clouds had broken and the whole of lighted creation bathed the world because she smiled.

I smiled myself at the romantic images in my head. Face facts, John. You're in love with this woman. And no matter how much time there was between her birth and yours that one simple fact wasn't going to change. That her son was nearly your own age wasn't going to change either. Oh, Jason is so going to have a shit fit when this gets out.

With the back of my fingers I caressed her cheek. Then I turned my hand and softly brushed her hair with my palm. Feeling those silky curls, the warmth of them.

Looking up, I listened to the roof joists groaning in the attic above. I took a deep breathe. The whole top of this house could leave us at any moment, or at any time between now and the next hour when the eye wall passed through here. Or any time for the next four hours after that. That I realized was the true horror of a hurricane like Ivan. It wasn't here, devastating and then gone. It lasted forever! This one night alone had lengthened into centuries of worry and fear. At times I wanted to grab a hammer and go up in the attic and start breaking boards, that way the storm could take the damn roof and I would be able to stop worrying that it was going to happen any second now. Any second now ... for hours and hours.

My hand continued to smooth Wendy's hair for the next half hour, as I sat there my mind going in circles. Round and round, fear and worry. Worry and fear. That simple act, touching the woman I love, hopefully offering some comfort when I could do nothing more to keep her safe. Closing my eyes, I leaned my head back against the drywall, but even that was no escape. Not when I could feel the vibration of the storm driven winds against the house through the wall. Like a huge shiatsu back massager, the whole wall was shaking against my spine.

Oh damn, this can't go on much longer. The house has got to go. The roof will tear off; the walls will be pushed over. The ... the ... the... and on and on in an endless loop that lasted for eternity it seemed. That was my mind as I sat there in the hallway, with the woman I loved, wondering if I was going to die. And, as second became minute, and minute became hours I had to often ask myself do I care? I reached a point, moments before Ivan crossed through West Pensacola, when the eternal purgatory of this began to become too much.

But then, at that lowest moment in my life, Wendy sat up. Looked at me and smiled. She leaned in and placed a soft kiss on my lips and then snuggled her head in against my chest. Listening no doubt, to the pounding of my fear driven heart. I put my arm around her ... and found my calm center at last. My anchor in this storm. Wendy, and my love for her, was the rock that I would cling tight to, and not even the winds of Ivan would tear her from my grasp.

But, they could certainly tear a large glass sliding door out of its wooden frame!

With a huge nose, a howl that all the wolves of the earth combined would envy, Ivan huffed and puffed and found his way in at last.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

"John."

My eyes popped open and I looked around till I found Wendy there next to me in the howling dark. The mattresses from both the bedrooms, one under us, one on the wall next to us and both box springs above us--propped against a shelving unit as a makeshift lean-to--had damped the wind sounds enough that I had finally fallen to sleep.

No .... No, it was quiet. A quiet so still it was loud in its own odd way.

"I think the eye is over us," she said pulled me closer to her then. Shaking in fear. "I've wanted the winds to stop but this is almost worse. How long will it take to pass over?"

"Maybe twenty, thirty minutes. That's a guess though." I went to sit up but she pulled me back down.

"No, John. I know what you're thinking but don't go outside. We can see what everything looks like tomorrow. Stay. Stay here with me. Please?"

"Sure."

Curling back up with her, we looked into each other's eyes listening, in that terrible silence, to the water dripping in the corner of the garage where it attached to the house. It was a given by now that the house had suffered some pretty severe roof damage. But Wendy was right, tomorrow was soon enough to see how badly. Besides, there was nothing we could do to fix it before the storm would be back upon us anyway.

"So we're half way through it?" she asked. What time is it?"

"Pretty much. Ah, let's see." I pulled out my phone "It's just after two." I took a deep breath as the wind began to sound again outside. My ears had almost missed that growl till it started to double and then triple by the second. Then it was the silence I wanted back, for all the good my wanting was going to do anything. Then there was a terrible sound from above us and the full force of Ivan was back. The door to the hallway rattled in its frame as if to shake the wooden jams loose.

Wendy huddled into my chest shaking in fear. I went back to my calming habit of caressing her hair. Whether it was calming her or me I'm not sure. For that matter I'm not sure it was doing any good at all for both of us. She flinched in my arms as we heard something hit the roof above us, a heavy thump. Then the sound repeated against the side of the garage, away from the house side between her house and her neighbors.

Part of me wanted to get up from this ridiculous shelter of mattresses and go see what was making that sound. Then I heard glass breaking somewhere and there were even more powerful winds hammering at the door to the hallway. That little part of me decided ... here was good. I simply held onto the woman I loved and wished this would end, or that I could fall asleep, I was so tired by this point, and not have to be aware of that wind. That horrible screaming wind.

I noticed Wendy softly humming a Cindy Lauper song, Time after time that made me smile. Possibly the first smile had had felt move my face in hours. It didn't last long.

One hour. Then two, passing there together, huddled together, so tired only adrenaline driven fear was keeping us awake. And after what seemed an eternity the worst of it began to drift north of us. Not that the winds slacked off, no, but the worst now seemed to be in gusts not continuous hour-long screaming blasts. It was that lessoning, exhaustion and the draining hours of fear that caused the two of us to finally drop into an edgy half-sleep. Holding each other, not carrying that by now we both were soaked damp with humidity driven sweat.

And at some point before the dawn I gave up the watch, let the barbarians in the gate, I was done. My eyes closed and I did not wake till after the sun was up.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

That there were palm fronds against the inside of the hallway door was not a good sign. Nor was the bright light or the sound of the wind.

Opening the door into the house took effort, pushing against piled up debris but I managed it by putting my shoulder into it. The garage door had stubbornly refused to budge despite my full effort. Stepping into the hall, the floor was littered with a mixture of trash blown in and Wendy's things that had been tossed around. She followed me.

"Well, it's going to need a new coat of paint and a shit load of screen doors," she said behind me.

Hearing one of Jason's favorite saying from his mom was startling. I turned to see her looking up through the ceiling rafters at the drizzly, gray-blue sky over head. She had a frown and was looking at everything with a resigned look that told of hopeless feeling of loss.

"So much destruction. I had no idea it would be like this." She hugged herself; one hand on her ribs the other cupping that arms elbow. She flinched when the wind roared up into a hard gust again. Then took a deep breath and looked at me. "Come on, John, let's see the rest of it. Get the shocks over with." I nodded and led the way, trying to pick my way through the tumbled furniture. Broken tree limbs, and a piece of sheet metal roofing, that was embedded into the wall by the kitchen door, were harder to avoid.

"That's from one of my neighbors sheds," she said, as I moved the corrugated metal out the way "He always parked his lawnmower under it. Not anymore, I guess." She moved past me into her kitchen, as I wrestled the crumpled, wet metal into the living room and out the hallway. When I finished with that and followed her into the kitchen she was standing in the middle of it. Her once immaculately organized kitchen was destroyed. Her hand covered her mouth and Wendy looked on the edge of tears or hysterical laughter. Maybe even a mixture of both.

In the distance I heard a chain saw crank up.

"I'm going to take a look outside." I told her stepping around her. "See how bad it is up and down the street."

She simply nodded. "Be careful."

The glass French doors were simply gone; nothing remained of them but the frame I stepped through. In the backyard her garden had been tossed as if it was salad in a bowl, with broken pieces of other people's houses tossed in for croutons. I absently wiped rain water out my hair, as I stepped around what had been her swing, the one she and I had liked to sit on and talk, back when I was here in April. Making my way carefully around towards the front of the house, I saw her power lines were torn out the side of the house by a large tree, fallen from her neighbor's house across her front lawn. I knew they were not live but treated them as if they were as I made my way to the street.

I saw that a limb, from that same tree that took the power lines, was against the garage door pinning it in place, hence why I had not been able to get the door to move. Looking down the street, I saw a few other people moving around. Some seemed to be trying to clear trees and stuff from their driveways, as if they wanted to get their car out and go for a Thursday morning trip down to Tom Thumbs for some bad coffee.

Wind gusts passed by then, making me lean as I walked down and across the street to where I saw a man with a chainsaw cutting. He nodded when I crossed his yard and then he finished the last limb while I watched, then shut off the saw.

"Morning," I said simply, offering my hand.

"Morning back, young fella. We're alive so I guess it's a good one." He shook my hand "What can I help you with? Ya'll came through it alright I hope?"

"Well, the house is a mess, but we're alright ..." He interrupted me.

"That's all you can thank the good Lord for, after something like that."

I nodded agreement. "Yeah, Look I was hoping that when you get done I could borrow that for a few minutes." I pointed at his saw. "I have a branch trapping the garage door shut."

"Sure. Heck, I'll walk over there and cut 'er loose." He picked up his saw. "No reason for more than one person to get covered in saw dust and gas fumes. Might be a few days between baths here till they get things back up and running. I've got my swimming pool I'm going to take my nightly soaks in, well once I get the trash out of it."

We walked back across the street. I saw Wendy in her garden looking around. She saw us and came around to join us.

"Morning, Miss Wendy. Your boy here done fetched you some help." He gave me a grin. "I'll get'er done in two shakes."

I moved over to Wendy.

"He thinks you're my son," She told me coming to lean against my chest. "I told him, back when I moved in, I had a son in his twenties." She hugged me. "Everything is a mess inside. The ceiling is opened up to the sky in half the house. The garage, living room and that spare bedroom are the only ones the roof isn't gone from above."

"I saw." I held her to me. I could tell that there were tears in her yet to be shed but the shock, at this moment, was too great. "Don't worry about it too much. That's what insurance is for right? We'll get that taken care of."

"We?"

"We!" behind me the chainsaw stopped cutting wood and shut off. Looking back, I saw he had the branch cut into four manageable pieces. "Thank you for that."

"Not a problem." He brushed wood chips and saw dust off his pants legs.

"Thank you, Calvin," Wendy said not turning my side loose. "Tell Martha I was worried about her last night."

The older man shook his head. "I sent her to her mother's in Birmingham. She's fine other than worrying herself sick about me. I talked to her before it hit and we lost power. They're probably getting it up there at the moment. Martha said last night it was flooding streets up there even then." He shook his head. "Ivan's knocking Alabama's dick in the dirt, pardon my French, now that it's done with us."

Wendy chuckled at the older man's language. "Calvin, this is John by the way. He's a friend of my sons."

"Hell, Miss Wendy I thought he was your son." He looked at her tucked snug under my arm, frowned for a half-second, and then shrugged it off. "Well, I've got two more tree down I need to get to cutting up. I ought to go into the firewood business, what I should do, would make a killing after this. I think half of Escambia County has trees down."

"Thanks again, Calvin." Wendy told him as he walked away. He waved a hand. She looked up at me. "I think he got uncomfortable with seeing me holding you like this."

"Well, he's going to have to learn to deal with seeing it." I smiled down at her. "I like seeing you there. Come on, let's get out the rain and see if we can start salvaging what can be saved."

She sighed. "Won't be much."

Unable to respond to the utter dejection in her words, I simply held her tighter to my side and gave what comfort that could give. Even though I secretly had to agree with her. What wasn't water damaged was simply the things that water couldn't damage. And some of that was broken.

Over the next two hours we did what we could, which really amounted to little or nothing. Wendy and I moved a lot of things from the damaged areas to the living room. I pushed the furniture to the sides and we piled things into the spaces between.

Then the rain began again. And the winds grew. Nothing even close to what they had been, but the memories of last night was still so raw, that we fled back into the garage. Stripping off my wet shirt I left it to dry on a metal storage rack and then stripped off my wet bike leathers. That I was standing naked in front of her, for the second time in two days, even for the time it took to put on the borrowed sweat pants, didn't really hit me till I was almost reclothed.

When I looked back and saw her looking at me, I shrugged. "My modesty got blown out the window."

"You weren't modest before the storm got here," she answered, with a smirk. "Honestly, I can't say I mind. If I was twenty years younger, I might take advantage of what I just saw to distract me from my troubles." She picked up a copy of a magazine she had been reading through and began to fan her face. "And if it wasn't so blessed hot."

"Yeah." I tugged at the t-shirt. "I'm going to open the garage door a little, see if we can get a breeze in here."

That worked, but the sound of the wind became more prevalent and was jarring to the nerves to both of us. By the time it settled, and the sound of rain began to be the more dominant, we were both ready to close the door, heat or no heat.

"John, I ... thank you."

"For what?" I looked over at her. We had both lain back down in our mattress lean-to simply out of need for a place to sit.

"Staying." She reached a hand over to lay it on my arm. "I'm not sure I could have made it through last night, here by myself. I've always considered myself the one to handle things when the world throws you curveballs. But last night--if I had been here alone --and the roof started vanishing, I think I would have gone mad from fear."

Turning onto my side, I reached over and brushed a lock of hair from her eyes. Gone were the tight hair-sprayed-down curls. Her hair was humidity damped, and hanging lank. Her face looked tired. Her brown eyes showed the strain of last night still, a half wild look as of a creature that had been stalked and only just gotten away. She also had an air of continual worry. I knew that her life had been so badly shattered in the past few years, with the divorce and the move down here, that this was a blow she wouldn't just bounce back from.

And it was way too soon to judge that anyway.

Even here, with the roof all but gone from her house, she was still a strong woman, but even the strongest things can break. Taking her hand in mine, I curled my fingers in hers and gave her a soft smile.

"You're very welcome. But, I would be nowhere else. If you decide to ever ride out another one of these things, I'll be right beside you for that one too."

She shook her head. "Oh, hell no! They even whisper hurricane and I will be in Canada." Her fingers tightened in mine. "Never in my life have I been as scared, and never in my life will I ever do anything this stupid again. If I had known what was coming at me I would have hitchhiked my way north. Hell, I would have gotten on that thing and rode out of here behind you if I had known. I just ... I just ..."

I slid over to her and pulled her to me as she began to cry. I ignored the combined body heat that was sweltering, I ignored the dregs of the storm that wanted to kick back up again outside, I ignored everything but the woman in my arms. I held Wendy to me for as long as she needed me to. Then lay next to her, my hand on her hip when she drifted into an uneasy nap. The trials of last night had taken a lot out of us both, but seeing her home destroyed had hit her harder than even the fear of death last night.