“Humph, your hair looks like a stubblefield.”
“Children, stop it!” Grandma interrupted. “Ye can have yer druthers. Either ye go to bed or ye get to work.”
Paul weighed the choices, then reluctantly opened his science book. But at the very first page he let out a whistle. “Listen to this! ‘If the ancients had known what the earth is really like, they would have named it Oceanus, not Earth. Huge areas of water cover seventy per cent of its surface. It is indeed a watery planet.’”
“Now that’s right interesting,” Grandma said, putting a few sticks of wood into the stove.
“Yes,” Maureen pouted, “a lot more interesting than trying to figure how many times 97 goes into 10,241.”
Paul waxed to his lesson as a preacher to his sermon. “Listen! ‘People used to say the tides were the breathing of the earth. Now we know they are caused by the gra-vi—gra-vi-ta—gra-vi-ta-tion-al pull of the moon and sun.’”
“I do declare!” Grandma said. “It makes my skin run prickly jes’ thinkin’ about it.”
“Go on!” Maureen urged. “What’s next?”
Paul read half to himself, half aloud. “‘When the moon, sun, and earth are directly in line—as at new moon and full moon—the moon’s and the sun’s pulls are added together and we have unusually high tides called spring tides.’”
Grandma sat rocking and repeating, “I declare! I do declare!” until her head nodded. Suddenly she jerked up and looked at the clock. “Paul Beebe! Stop! It’s way past ten and, lessons or no, we all got to get to bed. This instant!”
Chapter 7
THE SEA TAKES OVER
ALL NIGHT long Paul heard the driving rain and the wind lashing the dead vine across his window. Even in his dreams he heard it. As gray daylight came, his sleepy voice kept mumbling, “They should’ve named it Oceanus . . . Oceanus . . . Oceanus.”
His own words brought him awake. Scarcely touching his toes to the cold floor, he leaped to the window and pulled the curtain aside. He stared awestruck.
The sea was everywhere, all around. The tide had not ebbed. It had risen, its waves dirtied and yellowed by sand and jetsam. They were licking now against the underpinning of the house. Suddenly Paul knew it was more than rain he had heard in his dreams. It was the sea on its march to the house.
All at once fear was sharp in him, like a pain. Misty had drowned! She had drowned because she was trapped in a stall. He himself had bolted and locked and trapped her. If only, long ago, he had sent her back to Assateague with the wild things where she belonged! Then she could have climbed the White Hills and been saved. If only . . . If . . . !
Angry at himself, almost blaming himself for the storm, he pulled on his blue jeans over his pajamas. And he yelled for Grandpa as he tore through the silent house to the back hall.
The old man was already there, struggling into his hip boots. “Shush! Shush!” he whispered. “You’ll wake yer Grandma and Maureen. Ain’t nothing they can do to help. Mebbe,” his voice was tight and bitter, “ain’t nothing anybody can do.”
Paul hoped Grandpa wouldn’t notice the tremble of his hands as he buttoned his jacket. But Grandpa was busy gathering up a pile of supplies—some old, worn bath towels, a thermos jug of hot water, a box of oatmeal, and a small brown paper sack. He stuffed the towels inside his slicker, picked up the jug, and gave the oatmeal and the sack to Paul.
“Mind you keep them dry,” he cautioned. “The sack’s got sugar inside . . . in case o’ emergency.”
He opened the door, and the old man and the boy stepped out into a terrifying seventy-five-mile-an-hour gale. The sudden pressure half-knocked Paul’s breath out. The rain blew into his eyes faster than he could blink it away. He felt Grandpa thrust a strong arm through his, and linked tight together they flung themselves against the wind, floundering ankle-deep in the choppy water. Paul’s heart hammered in his chest and he cried inside, “Please, God, take the sea back where it belongs. Please take it back.”
As they stumbled along, Grandma’s new-hatched chicks swept by them and out to sea on the tide. And they saw two squawking hens, their feet shackled by seaweed, struggling to reach their chicks. But they were already out of sight. Paul and Grandpa, too, were helpless to save them.
Numb and weary, they reached the shed, and to their relief it was a windbreak. They caught their breath in its shelter. At least, Paul thought, the wind won’t rush in when we open the door.
Grandpa set down his jug. Paul opened the door just a crack. Fearfully, uncertainly, they peered in. They stared unbelieving. Maureen, looking like a wet fish or a half-drowned mermaid, sat dozing on Misty’s back. Skipper was sleeping at her feet, curled up in a furry ball.
As the door creaked on its hinges, Misty shied and Maureen fell off in a surprised heap. She bounced up like a jack-in-the-box.
“Wal, I never!” Grandpa clucked as he and Paul went inside. “Seems like we’re intrudin’. Eh, Paul?”
Paul’s surprise turned to resentment. “Least you could’ve done, Maureen, was to wake me up.”
“And who usually goes off alone?”
“Who?”
“You! Remember when you sneaked Grandpa’s boat and went to Assateague all alone?”
“Oh, that! That was no place for a girl.”
“Stop it!” Grandpa shouted. He gave Maureen a gentle spank, then turned to Paul. “We’ve got all the makings here. You and Maureen fix a hot mash for Misty. I’ll wade over to the hay house and see to Watch Eyes and Billy Blaze and the mares. You two wait for me here.”
Later, at breakfast, Paul started to tell Grandma about her chicks, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. She was spooning up the porridge, trying to hide her fears with nervous chatter. “As you said, children, there’s a time to go to school and a time to stay home. Well, this-here is the time to stay home. I won’t have you going out again and catchin’ the bad pneumonia.”
“Guess ye’re right, Idy,” Grandpa agreed.
Paul and Maureen merely nodded. For once, a holiday from school did not seem attractive. They ate in silence.
“I’ve a good mind to feed you sawdust after this,” Grandma went on. “Not a one of ye would know the difference.”
Halfway through, Grandpa pushed his bowl of porridge aside. “It’s stickin’ in my gullet,” he said. He got up from the table and stood over the stove, flexing his fingers. “Any way ye look at it,” he sighed heavily, “we’re bad off. Our old scow tore loose in the night—it’s gone. And likely our ninety head up to Deep Hole are gone, too.” His body shivered. “But even so,” he added quietly, “we’re lucky.”
Maureen sat up very straight. “You have me and Paul,” she said solemnly.
“That’s ’zactly what I mean! We got us two stout-built grandchildren, and they’re not afeard to buckle down and pull alongside us.”
Paul stood up. He felt strong and proud, as if he could tackle anything. “I’m going with you, Grandpa.”
“How’d ye know I’m going anywheres? But I am! I got to get over to town. Human folk may need rescuin’.”
Grandma’s lips pressed into a thin line. “Ye can’t go! There’s no road! Water’d come clean up over your boots.”
“There, there, Idy. The wind’s let up some, and Billy Blaze and Watch Eyes is used to plowin’ through water. If they can’t walk, they kin swim. Boy, ye ready?”
Paul shot a look of triumph at Maureen and immediately felt ashamed.
“Clarence!” Grandma pleaded, trying to keep her menfolk at home. “I won’t have you going off and over-straining yourself. You, and me too,” she added quickly, “is getting agey. Besides, soon the telephone will come on, and the electric, and we can all set cozy-like and listen to the news on the radio.”
“If everyone was to stay home, Idy, a lot of folk might go floatin’ out to sea like yer baby chicks.” He clapped his hand over his mouth. He hadn’t meant to tell her. But now it was too late.
Grandma’s eyes filled. She covered
her face with her hands. “Pore little chickabiddies,” she whispered, “with their soft yellow fuzz and their beady birdy eyes.” She wiped her tears with her apron. “All right, go ’long,” she said. “I just hope your herd up to Tom’s pasture ain’t met the same fate.”
Grandpa put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “That’s another reason I got to go,” he said. “When I’m fightin’ the elements, I can’t be grievin’ about my herd. If they’ve weathered the night, they’ll last the day. And if they ain’t . . . ”
“I’ll keep watch on Misty,” Maureen offered. “And if there’s any trouble, Grandma knows all about birthing.”
Chapter 8
PAUL TO THE RESCUE
BY THE TIME Paul and Grandpa set out on Watch Eyes and Billy Blaze, the wind had dropped to fifty miles an hour. Yet the water from the ocean was stealthily creeping up and up as if to reclaim this mote of land and take it back to the sea. Spilling and foaming, the tide continued to rise—flooding chicken farms, schoolyards, stores, and houses—in its surge to join ocean and bay.
Watch Eyes and Billy Blaze were used to surf and boggy marsh, for they had been on many a wild pony roundup. Feeling ahead for footholds they pushed forward, step by step, not seeming to mind the water splashing up on their bellies.
Grandpa, on Blaze, cupped one hand about his mouth and yelled above the wind. “Turn off at Rattlesnake Ridge, Paul. We’ll stop at Barrett’s Grocery first and get the news.”
Paul nodded as though he had heard. He was staring, horror-struck, at the neighbors’ houses. Some had collapsed. And some had their front porches knocked off so they looked like faces with a row of teeth missing. And some were tilted at a crazy slant.
Anger boiled up in Paul—anger at the senseless brutality of the storm. He rode, shivering and talking to himself: “The big bully! Striking little frame houses that can’t stand up to it, drubbing them, whopping them, knocking their props out.”
A street sign veered by, narrowly missing the horses’ knees. 98th Street, it said. Grandpa turned around to make sure he had read it aright. “My soul and body!” he boomed. “It scun clean down from Ocean City! That’s thirty mile away!”
Without warning, Watch Eyes suddenly slipped and went floundering. Paul’s quick hand tightened on the reins, lifting his head. He felt Watch Eyes jolt, then stretch out swimming. “Go it! Go it!” he shouted, and he stood up in his stirrups, feeling a kind of wild excitement. This was like swimming the channel on Pony Penning Day. Only now the water was icier and it was spilling into his boots, soaking his blue jeans and the pajamas he still had on. Yet his body was sweating and he was panting when they reached the store.
In front of Barrett’s Grocery two red gas pumps were being used as mooring posts for skiffs and smacks and trawlers. A Coast Guard DUKW, called a “duck,” and looking like a cross between a jeep and a boat, came churning up alongside Grandpa and Paul. The driver called out: “Mr. Beebe! We need you both.” His voice was a command. “Tie up your horses in Barrett’s barn and come aboard.”
From under the tarpaulin a child’s voice cried excitedly, “Paul, how’s Misty?”
And another spoke up. “Has she had her baby yet?”
Paul shook his head.
Mr. Barrett’s barn had a stout ramp, and Watch Eyes and Billy Blaze trotted up and inside like homing pigeons. After Paul and Grandpa had loosened the ponies’ girths and slipped the bits under their chins, they waded out to the DUKW. The passengers squeezed together to make room. Then the DUKW turned and chugged toward the village.
“Sir!” Paul asked the driver. “Could you take us up to Deep Hole to see about Grandpa’s ponies?”
Grim-faced, the man replied, “Got to save people first.”
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 the
ir 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.”