Here is the first part of the story of Hurricane Frank, which grows and shrinks and becomes more and less done the more I pick at it.
Want to read more? There's plenty. Let me know.
Everything on these pages is drummey born and raised.
Brandi
Brandi is at her sister Cammy's house in Eupora , Georgia , watching live coverage by the roving robocams on the Natural Disaster Channel, when Hurricane Frank hits Opel.
“Look at that little house, it's fixed up so nice with pinwheels and now BLAM!” Cammy says. Brandi wants the bowl of chips that sit by her sister. She tries to give Cammy a mental prod. Cammy does not respond, but instead says:
“Look, there's a guy running. For sure he's going to get away! Hey, who is that?”
“He's the fastest damn person I've seen in a long time. That's who.”
“Look, he's grabbing right on to that house!” Cammy points at the screen, where a robocam focuses on a chubby man being lifted off the ground by an invisible wrestler: the man's fingers seem to stretch with each heave. He is certainly the strongest man Brandi had ever seen. She thinks hard, as Rebecca Rotman had taught her at the Psychic Academy , “Here are my good thoughts. I throw them to you and they land in the water that flows between us. They are floating, and the ducks think they are bread, but no! They are petals, it is my energy and strength that I am sending to you. See? They are coming your way. Hold on, just hold on.”
“Come on!” Cammy yells at the TV as though she is cheering a team. This chubby man the sisters watch on the NDC is named Rudy Imenez. He lives in Opel , Alabama , down the street from Misty and Bud Tattersall. He is determined not to let go of his little house, and he is holding on to the post on his front porch while wearing a pair of GripTite gloves he had made that very afternoon at the factory. They really were good gloves, and Rudy was a fine glovesman. Their superior construction, and Rudy's incredible determination, would save his life.
The sisters would watch the devastation late into the night, and later fall into frantic, flailing dreams, inspired by this disaster-heavy diet. They, like many Americans, were addicted to the survival and death that the NDC broadcast, often unedited.
Many viewers found it hard to believe that the scenes of destruction that the NDC's cams captured were real. They were mucky and muddy. Sometimes the camera lens had to be cleaned off by the robocam's automatic washers, and this took a little while and tended to ruin the dramatic tension. By the time the lens was clear, a whole new scene had evolved, the stars of the last one perhaps swept away, perhaps saved by a swaying tether line, perhaps sucked up into the air as through a pneumatic tube.