As they turned onto Main Street, which runs along the very shore of
the bay, Paul was stunned. Yesterday the wide street with its white
houses and stores and oyster-shucking sheds had been neat and prim,
like a Grandma Moses picture. Today boats were on the loose, bashing
into houses. A forty-footer had rammed right through one house, its bow
sticking out the back door, its stern out the front.
Nothing was sacred to the sea. It swept into the cemetery, lifted up
coffins, cast them into people's front yards.
Up ahead, a helicopter was letting down a basket to three people on a
rooftop. Grandpa gaped at the noisy machine in admiration. "I itch to
be up there," he shouted, "lifting off the old and the sick."
Paul too wanted to do big rescue work.
As if reading his mind, the driver turned to him. "Son," he said, "do
you feel strong enough to save a life?"
"Yes, sir!"
"Good. You know Mr. Terry--the man who has to live in a rocking bed?"
Paul nodded. "It rocks by electric, but he's got a gasoline generator
now. Mrs. Terry was telling Grandpa last night."
"Yes, but along about midnight the gas ran low. It took the firemen an
hour to get through this surf to deliver more gas to keep the generator
running. He's still alive...."
"Then what can I do?" Paul asked.
"Plenty, son. The whole island's running out of gas, and until
helicopters can bring some in, that respirator's got to be worked by
hand."
"Oh. 'Course I'll help."
The driver now turned to Grandpa. "These folks," he said, indicating
his passengers, "are flooded out. We'll take them to the second story
of the Fire House for shelter. Then we got to chug up to Bear Scratch
section and rescue a family with six children. Whoa! Here we are at the
Terrys'."
The DUKW skewered to a stop in front of a two-story white house.
"Good luck, Paul. When the gas arrives, grab any DUKW going by, and
we'll meet you back at Barrett's Store along about noon."
Paul got out and plowed up to the house. The door opened as he stumbled
up the flooded steps, and Mrs. Terry greeted him. Her face was pale,
and there were deep circles under her eyes, but she smiled. "You've
come to man the generator?"
"Yes, sir--I mean, yes, ma'am," Paul stammered. "I'm Paul Beebe."
"Oh," she smiled again. "So you're the Beebe boy. You're the one who
rescued Misty when she was a baby and nearly drowned."
"Yes, ma'am."
"And to think that now she's going to have a baby of her own."
"Yes, ma'am. Any minute."
All the while she watched Paul pulling off his boots and jacket Mrs.
Terry talked to him, but her head was cocked, ears alert, listening to
the steady hum of the generator in the next room.
"We've so little gas left," she said. "The doctor says I'm to save it
in case relief-men get worn out." She led the way down the hall to Mr.
Terry's bedroom.
Paul blanched. Hospitals and sick rooms gave him a cold clutch of fear.
But the moment he saw Mr. Terry smiling there in his rocking bed he
was all eagerness to help. Maybe he could do a better job than an old
machine. Maybe he could pump stronger and faster, so Mr. Terry'd get a
lot more air in his lungs and his face wouldn't look so white.
Mrs. Terry showed Paul how to work the controls. "He's used to just
twenty-eight rocks a minute," she explained. "No faster."
"Hi, son." The voice from the bed was weak but cheerful. "It's good of
you to help."
Paul bent to his work, pushing up and down in steady rhythm,
twenty-eight strokes to the minute. Maybe, he thought as the minutes
went by, now I can qualify for a volunteer fireman. He was glad he
was used to pumping water for the ponies. And that set him thinking
of Misty, and the bittersweet worry rushed over him again so that he
barely heard Mrs. Terry.
"How wonderful people are, Paul," she was saying. "With their property
wrecked and their own lives endangered, they are so concerned about us.
And we aren't even Chincoteaguers. We just came here to retire."
Paul heard the words far off. He was thinking: Sometimes newborn colts
don't breathe right away and horse doctors have to pump air into their
lungs with their hands--like this, like this, like this. Down, up,
down, up, down, up. Would it be twenty-eight times a minute for a
little foal? Or more? Or less? How would he know? Why hadn't he asked
Dr. Finney, the veterinarian from Pocomoke?
Runnels and rivulets of sweat were trickling down his back; his face
and hair were dripping as if he were still out in the rain.
"Paul!" Mrs. Terry was saying, "Look! A whole beautiful tank of gas has
come. And the DUKW man is waiting to give you a ride back. High time,
too. You're all tuckered out, poor lamb!"
Mr. Terry smiled and shook hands with Paul. "In my book, you are a
hero," he said.
In Barrett's store the smell of fresh-ground coffee and cheese and
chewing tobacco was mixed with the stench of wet boots and dead fish.
Paul stepped inside and closed the door.
Groups of men were standing, knee deep in water, gabbling to each
other like long-legged shore birds. Paul waited by the door until Tom
Reed beckoned him over.
"Yes, sir-r-r!" a man with a cranelike neck was saying, "I figure two,
three pressure areas come together and made a kind of funnel."
Mr. Barrett was waiting on customers and listening at the same time. He
leaned over the counter. "To my notion," he said, "this storm made a
figure eight and come back again afore the tide ever ebbed."
Paul tugged at Tom's sleeve. "Mr. Reed," he whispered, "what about
Grandpa's ponies up to your place?"
"Don't know, Paul. And we won't 'til we can get back into the woods.
Water's too deep to walk in, and the DUKWs are too busy rescuin'
people."
The storekeeper leaned across the counter, nosing in between Paul and
Tom Reed. "Who's next, gentlemen?"
Paul felt in his pocket, counting his money. "I have thirty-nine
cents," he said. "I can buy two cans of beans."
"If only we'd of got some notice of this storm," Mr. Barrett was saying
as he spilled the coins into the drawer. "With a hurricane you know
ahead, and when it's over, it's over."
"Yup," the men agreed. "A hurricane blows crazy, then it's gone. But a
tidal storm sneaks up on you and stays."
Wyle Maddox, the leader of the roundup men, had been listening as he
crunched on an apple. He came over now to Tom Reed. "Tom," he said,
"you're blest with mother-wit. You're the one knows most about sea and
sky. How do _you_ figure it?"
The small, spare man blushed. "Pshaw, Wyle, I'm no authority, but as
I see it, the storm looped and come back, and kept a-pressin' and
a-pressin' the water into the bay instead of letting it go out at ebb
time."
"But why is the water so high on the bay side nearer the mainland?"
"'Cause usually it's a nor'west wind that helps the tide flow back
out of the bay, but this time, wind blew nor'east and the water jes'
swelled up into a bulge at the narrows, and it had to go somewheres."
The door suddenly opened, letting in the sound and cold of the wind,
and with it came Grandpa Beebe, looking hale and ruddy alongside the
lean fisherfolk.
"What's the news?" Mr. Barrett called out.
Grandpa looked from face to face. "Bad," he said. "Government's
declared Chincoteague a disaster area."