Acts of God (4 page)

AT FOUR THE
next morning the tent full of first responders began to wake up and trudge to the restrooms and brush their teeth and put on their clothes and boots and collect their gear and march out to the staging area and collect into groups and head for their helicopters. By six a.m., they were over New Orleans. By six fifteen they had sent the first basket down to the first roof and brought up the first victim, a ten-year-old girl with legs as long as a zebra's legs and a smile as wide as the sky and Carly's heart lifted and she thought maybe she had lived her whole life to get to be the person that pulled that little girl up into the cockpit and undid her straps and handed her a package of Ritz Crackers with peanut butter and a bottle of Mountain Valley Water from Hot Springs, Arkansas. “You aren't allergic to peanuts, are you?” she remembered to ask.

“No, ma'am. I'm not allergic to anything. They going to get my momma and my grandmother?”

“We sure are, Honey. We'll have them in a few minutes. We have to circle back around. Was that all that were there? The three of you?”

“Yes, ma'am. Is this water green?” She was examining the green glass bottle.

“Honey, that's the best water in the world. When Bill Clinton was president of the United States they had that water in the White House in Washington, D.C. You want me to get the top off?”

“I can get it. I sure am glad you came to get us. We been scared to death up there.”

“Eat those crackers. Drink the water. It's going to be all right.” Carly reached over and patted the child's arm. She opened the package of crackers and held one out. I'm just like Aunt Roberta, she decided. This is like what she does. When I get back to school I'll make a poem out of that. I bet Starr will like it. I hope they don't kick me out of the class because I'm gone. Well, they won't.

CARLY WAS WRITING
an e-mail to her son, Daniel. He had sent her one saying his history teacher wanted her to come talk to the class when she got back. “His name's Mr. Beebe and he's from down there where you are. He was in a hurricane named Betsy when he was a child and he remembers all about it. He wants to meet you, Momma. He isn't married.”

“Dear Daniel,” Carly wrote back. “Are you trying to fix me up with your history teacher? I'm glad to think you are thinking of me. It's unbelievable down here. I shouldn't tell this, I guess, but I have helped save a lot of lives. The first person we saved was a ten-year-old girl with long skinny legs and the best smile. We have to put the people we get off their roofs on an overpass over the drowned city, or else we put them out at the municipal airport. We are all trying not to watch television but just read things in the local newspaper which is printed as e-mail. We have some electricity at our camp. Our camp is a tent city. We have meals three times a day if we are here, and the rest of the time we eat the same meals they give troops in Iraq. Saturday night some people are going to barbecue for us. You can't believe how much it means to see people on their roofs and to be able to take them to a safer place. I think I will never forget this.

“I'll come talk to your class if you want me to. How are Grandmomma and Granddaddy? Give them a kiss for me and don't be any trouble but I know you won't be.

“Love, Momma”

AT THE SATURDAY-NIGHT
barbecue all the rescue crews put on whatever regular clothes they had with them and tried to act like it was a normal party. They had tables set out on the deserted beach and the moon was full and the Gulf of Mexico looked like a normal place to have a picnic but everyone was so tired they mostly just ate the barbecue and mashed potatoes and went back to their tents and went to bed. Several days before, they had been issued mosquito netting and Carly was using hers religiously. She had used up all her bug spray in three days, and, although they had been promised new supplies by the Walmart reps, none had been delivered and Carly was starting to think she was going to be eaten alive.

What next, she decided. Well, hell, don't start thinking like a prima donna. This is the job and you are going to do it.

Her computer was beeping in its case underneath her cot. She pushed away the netting and rolled over and pulled it out from under the cot. She sat up and opened the case. The red light meaning “new messages had arrived” was on and she was curious to see who they were from. She had talked to Charlie briefly two days before, but Charlie never e-mailed her so it wouldn't be him. If there was trouble with Daniel her mother would have called her cell phone.

What the hell, she decided. Just open it and see.

It was from her old friend, Cynthia Jeans. “Dear Carly, We are all so proud of you here. I'm watching it all on television every morning and every night. Don't get in that water. That water is toxic. If you get in it, wash it off immediately.

“Here's the bad part. Charlie was down at Jose's the other night with this girl named Starr. I think she's in the writing program. She's from New York and wears see-thru blouses. Tacky, tacky, tacky. Then he was with her last night at George's and if it was me I'd want to know. I never have thought he was good enough for you anyway. He has gone out with every accomplished woman I know in this town and it never lasts. He's been in school for ten years. When is he going to graduate? He didn't like seeing me at George's and didn't introduce me. I found out from a man I know that's in the language department in Kimpel Hall who the girl is.

“I love you. I had to tell you this. I couldn't get you on your cell phone. What's wrong with it? Do you have electricity? Come home soon. Love, Cynthia.”

CARLY FOUND HER
last e-mail from Daniel and read it. Then she typed him a reply. “This is an amazing adventure. When I get home we are going down the Buffalo River, if we get any rain, or we are going down to see the Hogs play Ole Miss or something good. Start deciding what you want to do to celebrate—this work is so hard but so rewarding and I am going to deserve to go somewhere with you and have some real, even expensive, fun. Good luck with the team. Are you going to get the position you want? If not I'll yell at the coach when I get back. Just kidding, love, Momma.”

THEN SHE SHUT
off her computer, put it back under the bed, took one of the sleeping pills they'd given her, and lay back on her cot and put her arms beside her body, but that felt like a corpse so she put them folded over her flat, tight stomach, but that felt more like a corpse, and then she got tickled thinking about how relieved she would be not to have to talk to Charlie Ames anymore, ever.

THEY WERE UP
at five the next morning, ate breakfast in the mess, where a new cook was making some really killer biscuits. It turned out he was a chef from the famous restaurant Commander's Palace who had refugeed to Gulfport and signed on as a cook to help the relief workers. He was the talk of the tent city after that first morning with the biscuits. He said he'd tried to copy the ones they make at Kentucky Fried Chicken, having figured out they were half butter. He told people he'd been sneaking out to eat those biscuits for twenty years. Carly ate two biscuits and scrambled eggs and grits, then climbed into the Big Huey that had arrived the day before from California, and flew off over the early morning mists to New Orleans to finish bringing out the people. There were small boats all over the flooded areas now. People with boats had come from all over to help save the stranded. “Sean Penn is down there. He's been here two days, going out,” a woman in the cockpit said. “He used to be a lifeguard in California. They said on television he was working like a madman.”

“Maybe we'll see him,” Carly said. “He'll probably want our autographs.”

There was gunfire going off near a house they were trying to fly to and the pilot turned and went out over the Gulf and called in to see what they should do.

“Abort and go to section seven,” the dispatcher said. “Don't go near gunfire. Report it and the police will bring police boats.”

“There are four people on the roof. None of them had guns.”

“Abort it. Go to section seven. They have four houses to empty there.”

They were using Carly constantly to go down in the basket to get children because she was so light that sometimes she could bring up two at a time. The first time she went down on this day she brought up a young girl with a baby. The second time she brought up a boy Daniel's age. She had tried to think about Charlie going out with her writing teacher, but it made her so mad she couldn't concentrate. Then it stopped making her mad. Then it made her furious, and finally, after she went down for the boy, it just made her feel superior. What a bunch of losers, she decided. Maybe I'll take Daniel and go live in Bentonville where they have people who are doing something for a living. Fayetteville has too many people who are just hanging out.

That night she had an e-mail from her boss at the business school telling her what he was doing with her classes and telling her she had been given a raise of 2.5 percent and the department had filled out the papers and put her up for tenure track. “We're all proud of you, Carly,” the e-mail ended. “I hope you'll have lunch with me when you get back and give me a report. We're pulling for you. Don't get hurt.”

“I DIDN'T GET
quarterback,” Daniel wrote to her. “John Tucker got it again, but I'm going to be a running back and catch his passes. I'm glad. It's because I'm tall, coach said. When are you coming home? Our first game is Thursday night, against Springdale. Love Daniel.”

She thought about all the years she had put him out to play in the sand below the broad jump pit while she ran laps around the university track. After a while he always got bored and ran with her. So he's a running back, she decided. Even without a father, thanks a lot, Dan, for running into a tree without a helmet. You stupid fool. I take it back. Thanks for the genes.

AT THE END
of their second week in the tents, their commanding officer told them they were leaving on Sunday night so to get packed up. “Turn in all your hours, in flight, and on the ground. You'll be paid within the month. Checks sent to your regular addresses. Make out forms if addresses have changed.”

CARLY SAT ON
the edge of her cot and thought that she was going to miss the tent and the cot and not having to think about anything but getting in the chopper and going to work and coming home and taking showers in the outdoor shower stalls and treating her bug bites with cortisone and taking sleeping pills if she had the least bit of trouble sleeping. Well, I'll get the real world lined up now, she decided. She called a friend who worked in registration at the university and canceled her enrollment in the writing class and signed up for a beginning class in conversational Spanish instead. As a professor she could take a class for free every semester.

She got the e-mail address of the Spanish teacher and e-mailed her and told her the situation. “I had two years of Spanish when I was an undergraduate,” she explained. “I won't be any trouble. I'll just audit if you like. I'm good at speaking it. I just want to get better. I'll come by your office as soon as I get home and introduce myself. I hope you'll let me in the class this late.”

Then she called Charlie and left him a message saying it was over. “I'm through,” she said. “Please don't call me. I'll get someone to bring your canoe and anything else you left at my place to you. I mean it, don't call me. You don't want to hear what I have to say.”

GOOD-BYES ON SUNDAY
were emotional. Carly exchanged numbers with a dozen people she might never see again. Then she climbed into the big Huey and flew in it all the way to Springdale, Arkansas, as it was going to have to be ferried back to California by their unit.

She was met at the Springdale airport by her son and her father. “He's teaching me to drive,” Daniel reported. “We've been going out to an old road near the lake. I can drive real good, Momma.”

“Really well,” she said. “So, Dad, is all that true?”

“He's a natural, Baby. Wait till you see him. He's careful.”

Daniel picked up her duffel bag and threw it into the trunk of the car and she climbed into the backseat to let the men be in the front.

“When's the next game?” she asked.

“Thursday, at home. But you can come and see a practice if you want. My coach wants to meet you. Everyone knows what you've been doing, Mom.” He turned around in the seat and smiled at her and Carly decided she might just be the luckiest person in the world and maybe she was going to keep on being lucky.

“A chef from one of the best restaurants in New Orleans was cooking for us the last week we were there,” she said. “He said he's going to come up to Fayetteville and live until the mess down there gets cleaned up. He used to come up here to visit in the seventies. I'll take you out to eat if he gets the job he wants at the Thirty-Six Club. Wait until you taste his biscuits.”

THEY DROVE INTO
Fayetteville down the old Highway 71 that people still called College Avenue from a time when it had been a lovely street lined with huge maple and oak trees that led from the farms outside of town to the university. Now it was a strip of fast-food restaurants and car dealerships and beauty supply shops and chain drugstores.

“I'll be so glad to get home,” Carly said. “I want to sleep in a bed. I feel like I've been to war. I really do. Every bone in my body hurts. The main thing I want to do is put on my shoes and run on some hills. I've been running on a torn-up highway beside a beach. I want to see some places where people aren't depressed and homeless.”

“Well, here you are,” her daddy said and turned off the highway and headed up Maple Street toward their neighborhoods. “If the global warming people are right, we may have a beach right here in Northwest Arkansas in a few thousand years.”