We having passed the rapids without injury, keeping our bow foremost, both boats being still lashed together.
WHAM WHAM WHAM.
Omar lay in his front yard and watched his house shake to pieces. The old double shotgun home was lightly built—no need for heavy construction in a place where there was no winter, no weather worse than a thunderstorm—and it was not built to stand up to tremors on this scale. All the work, he thought. All the work in this heat. And now it’s falling apart. The brick chimney had rumbled down before he, Wilona, and Micah Knox had realized what was happening, and had run—staggered, really—out onto the lawn. Once there, it proved difficult to keep on their feet, and so they lay down in an open area, away both from the house and the magnolia tree in front, where nothing would fall on them, nothing but a blizzard of tumbling blossoms from the tree. WHAM WHAM WHAM.
The earth quaked and shuddered and moaned.
Wilona gave a cry as the old shiplap house was shaken off its brick piers and came lurching to the ground. There were crashes from the interior as furniture tumbled or slid. The carport caved onto the car with a metal whine. Omar reached out and put an arm around Wilona’s shoulders.
“Don’t worry,” he called. “We’re insured.” And wondered, Are we? He didn’t have the slightest idea what the policy had to say about earthquakes.
Wilona just stared at the house, one hand to her throat as if to secure Great-Aunt Clover’s pearls, her one treasure. Her other hand clutched her white gloves, the only thing she’d snatched from the room on her way out.
Knox crouched on the quaking ground in a kind of three-point balance, like a football player waiting for a signal from the quarterback. His expression was a mixture of fear and excitement, like a kid on a roller coaster.
WHAM WHAM WHAM.
Shingles and chimney bricks tumbled off the roof. Paint flakes flew in little blizzards. Many of the clapboards shook right off the side of the building. Wilona’s lace curtains fluttered through empty windows. Omar could feel his teeth rattling together with every tremor.
And then the shaking faded away. In the silence they were aware of a baby’s shrieks, the frenzied barking of cur dogs, the blaring of a car horn. The quake was over.
But there was a rushing, and a coughing, and rubble burst from the yard of the neighbor across the street. It was like a mine going off, throwing debris arching into the air. Omar’s heart gave a leap. He threw himself over Wilona as stones and chunks of wood rained down. A gush of water came up, blasting from the fissure as if from a fireman’s hose. The neighbor’s trailer, which had tipped to one side with its metal wall tortured and bent, gave a tormented booming rattle as the geyser tried to tear the sides from the building.
Mist began raining down. Omar stood up, tried to shield Wilona. “Let’s move away from this,” he said. Knox stood, swayed. “What was that?” he asked.
“Earthquake, I guess.”
“You got earthquakes, too?” Knox was staring. “Hurricanes and swamps and niggers just down from the trees and earthquakes, too?”
“Every hunnerd years, I guess,” Omar said. He helped Wilona to stand, and she began to walk toward the house. He caught her arm. “Don’t go back in the house, hon,” he said. “It might not be safe.”
“I want to call my Davey!” Wilona’s glare was fierce. “I want to know my boy’s all right!” Omar blinked. Their son was attending LSU in Baton Rouge—could the earthquake have reached that far?
He drew her gently from the house. “Come to the car, hon,” he said. “We can make phone calls from the police radio.”
The mention of the radio reminded Omar that he was sheriff, that he was going to be needed here in this emergency, that people would be depending on him.
His mind swam. He had no idea what to do next. Numbly, while he tried to think, he began to steer Wilona toward the crumpled car port, away from the spouting water.
Knox danced in front of him. He seemed full of energy. His eyes glittered, and there was an intent grin on his face. “Hey, Omar,” he said. “Let’s get the carport off your car. You need to get to headquarters, establish a command post.”
The words seemed to enter Omar’s mind from a great distance. “Yeah,” he said. “Guess I’d better do that.”
“But what do I do?” Wilona asked.
Omar licked his lips. “Come along, I guess,” he said. “The courthouse is probably the safest place around.”
“Great!” Knox said. “You know—you should deputize me. You’re gonna need a lot of special deputies in a crisis like this.”
Omar wondered if this was something he could actually do.
“In fact,” Knox went on, “disaster on this scale, you’re gonna need a lot of paramilitaries.” He gave a glittering smile, bounced up on his steel-capped boots. “You’re gonna have trouble keeping order in this county—parish, I mean. You might just wanna call in the Klan. Everyone you can trust. Because sure as there is God in Heaven, nobody’s gonna be looking after the white people of this parish but you.” Charlie Johns belly-crawled from his house as it rocked beneath him. He crossed the portico, tumbled down the stairs, and lay on the hot front walk gasping for breath. The earth heaved under him. Megan’s car, in his driveway, was jumping up and down in place, as if it had suddenly been possessed by the spirit of a pogo stick. In fact, all the cars on the street were jumping up and down. Charlie’s head swam to the echo of thunder. There was a stench in the air. He closed his eyes and gasped for breath. He thought his head was going to explode.
The earth’s motion ceased, but it was some minutes before Charlie could move. He opened his eyes—the sky was full of murk—and he tried to sit up. His head spun and he had to close his eyes again until the spinning stopped.
He wondered if a bomb had gone off. Or a tractor-trailer rig filled with liquid natural gas. The bad smell made him think it must have been gas.
Charlie opened his eyes. His house was before him, strangely shrunken. Part of it seemed to have collapsed. The big oak tree in the front lawn had split in half, raw white wood showing, but it still stood. The garage had fallen on his car. The ornamental brick on the front of the house had peeled off and lay in little dusty piles. All the windows were broken and the yard was littered with cedar shakes fallen from the roof.
He couldn’t believe it. He had paid a lot for that house. It wasn’t supposed to just fall down. The sounds of shouts and screams came dimly to his ringing ears. He looked left and right, saw more ruin. All the houses on his quiet, expensive Germantown road were damaged. Windows gaped. Trees had fallen across hedges and rooftops. Chimneys sprawled across lawns. A three-story brick house, two doors down, had simply collapsed into a pile. Porches had fallen, and roofs leaned at strange angles. Stunned people lay stretched on lawns. Some people, some-where, were calling for help. Charlie stared dumbly at the carnage. It must have been a big bomb, he thought. Terrorists. No—probably the U.S. Air Force had dropped a bomb by accident. He would be able to sue for damages.
Megan’s BMW 328i, he saw, sat in his driveway with its hood and windscreen covered in cedar shakes from the fallen garage. She would be happy, he thought, the car hadn’t suffered much more than a few nicks.