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.
I
On the day of the hurricane, in Brainard, Alabama , I'm eating a sandwich in the group house kitchen on the grounds of the H and H (Happy and Healthy) Natural Community. The H and H sits in Frank's path and everyone has been nervous for the past few days. But we'd all made it through the first part of the storm without any major damage. In one of those sudden moments, as precise as a rice grain, I wonder how my parents in Opel had fared.
I wipe some mayo from my chin, then step up to the big window to look out over Skin Pocket's Green, where the H and H members are holding a quick group meeting while the hurricane's eye passes through. It's a pretty stupid thing to do, but for some reason the nudists feel like nature is on their side, like they wouldn't be hurt by her fury. I don't quite buy this. And even though I'm the manager of the H and H and advised against it, they decided to hold the meeting anyway, to appreciate the beautiful, complete, dazzling calm that had spread over the land.
I can see a few of them through the big window. I wave, but they are intensely concentrating on the conversation. I see Beau and Pinky and Little Peanut, nice people who think that the only difference between themselves and their neighbor is a preference for nudity. They are talking about different types of grass, whether Pensacola Bahia or Buffalo grass is softer on the feet and behind. They are really passionate about grass.
This calm outside is smeary and unnatural, like a tender sigh in a courtroom right before the guilty verdict is read.
I return to the kitchen for another sandwich.
As I stand in the silence, my back against the cool fridge, my mouth full of tuna salad, there is an awful, awful sound in the direction of Skin Pocket's Green, then the very window I'd been looking through is blown in.
When I am finally able to crawl through the house, under the toppled furniture, and peer over the ledge, I am shocked by the sight of the green's blank expanse. The eyewall has hit, the ground was wiped clean. It is nudeless, not a thigh or heavy buttock among the shrubs. All the members of the H and H who had been gathered on the front green have disappeared, sucked straight up into the sky. The storm just picked them up, along with a doll collection they were washing during the meeting. A few of the doll's glass eyes roll maniacally without sockets. Smashed prickly pear shrugs from the flat land.
I stand amazed at how I was untouched, how I completely avoided the whole disaster. I imagine a xylophone tap each time I blink, like in the cartoons. I wonder, just for a moment, if anyone else has survived, or if I am the earth's last person.
This thought fills me with alternating waves of relief and guilt.