FICTION: Stayed

This past Friday, I set a timer and gave myself an hour to write a story.  It was an experiment.  I did it, and I wasn't displeased with the results.  I did spend a couple of hours yesterday revising it, though, and ended up undoing most of the revisions.  So it's very much like it was when I finished it on Friday.  The 23rd anniversary of Hurricane Hugo just passed, hence the subject matter.


Stayed

THE FLASHLIGHT FLICKERED.  “No, no. God, please, not now.”  Tonya groaned.  The batteries were brand new, but the cheap plastic light was only working intermittently.  She shook it back to life, but for how long, she didn’t know.  Darkness had overtaken the little wooden house half an hour earlier when the electricity quit.  The wind had been whining since sundown, but now it howled through the cracks around the windows and doors.  Above, the small loft added just a year earlier made new cracks and thumps that the house had never made before.  It was a jackleg job, done with plywood by a cousin.  Tonya still couldn’t believe her grandfather had paid him over a thousand dollars.  It wasn’t much more than a rude attic space.

                “I told you we shoulda left, Grandaddy!”  she shouted.  Hard of hearing, her salt-haired grandfather only grimaced at her.  They’d been told by the people on television to go to the high school gym in the village.

                Earlier in the day, police officers had urged, “Seek shelter now.  When the wind starts, it will be too late.”

                Neighbors had implored, “Come with us, Louis.  This is a big storm.  It’s different.”

“Category five,” Tonya had nodded.

“Never left before.  Ain’t leaving now.” Grandaddy had barked with finality each time, and with a shotgun laid across his lap for punctuation.  All the well-meaning warning wielders made their way back down the oak-lined dirt road with heads shaking.  Grandaddy’s thin frame fit neatly in the rickety wooden chair with the rope seat.  Peeling red paint always stuck to his back when he stood up out of it.  But there he had waited, had stayed, all afternoon.  When the breeze kicked up late in the day, the five sagging porch steps creaked under Grandaddy’s weight as he retreated into the house.

Now drips and streams from the roof turned the oddly-shapen carpet remnant under their feet soggy.  Its cornflower hue looked black in the dark, soaked room.  Tonya raced to and fro with pots and bowls, trying to catch all the leaks until  it became futile.

Grandaddy waved his cane in the air.  “Cut that out and sit down!  It’ll dry out tomorrow,” he hollered.

But when Tonya turned to face him, what she saw through the window behind his head propelled her forward to clutch her grandfather’s arms with her slender, light brown hands.  “Get up!  Get up!  God, help me!  Get up, Gran-”  Even in the blackest night, the white froth on the wall of water rushing them glowed phosphorescent.  The old man moved in slow motion as he turned to look backward and then tried to push himself up.

Adrenals screaming, Tonya pulled her grandfather from his chair and dragged him up the steep, little stairs into the loft.  The surge slammed and rocked the house.  Black water filled the room beneath them as they scrambled all the way up.  The flashlight made one last flash from under the water, then died.

They inched to the wall to lean back.  They grasped each other’s hands, swaying gently with the house during the eye.  Grandaddy gave Tonya a pat on the arm.  Despite his stubbornness in staying, she still trusted his lifetime of knowledge.  At only nineteen, she hadn’t much choice.  A trace of starlight glowed from the windows downstairs.  She checked her grandfather's face for what might come.  His jaw had unclenched.  His eyelids were now halfway down, revealing exhaustion.  He looked at Tonya and answered her with a nod and a sigh.  But the sound of water gently lapping against the steps still gave Tonya a start every few seconds.  She would scramble over to peer down, fearful of the water’s further swelling.  It came no higher than the third step from the top. 

The back end would not be as bad as the first; that much she knew.  So when it began, she willed herself to relax.  The water began to recede downstairs, and she soon stopped looking.  The low roar of the wind lulled them both into a wakeful rest.

                In the first light, Tonya and her grandfather were awakened by distant shouts.  They heard their names and called back.  Then they began their careful descent into the muck-coated living room.