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.
Joyce
An hour or so later, Joyce watches the interview with Hurricane Frank on the Natural Disaster Channel in her living room in Savory, Mississippi. Her hair is black, her age 76. She hopes for news of Opel , Alabama , where the Tattersalls, her daughter Misty and son-in-law Bud, live. She had spoken to Misty on the phone right before she and Bud went into the basement. Her daughter sounded ok, a little perky, even, but Misty had never lived through anything like this before. Joyce hadn't either, but she watched enough television to know when to panic. As Hurricane Frank approached Opel, like a bowler creeping up on a warped, pocked alley, the television broadcast repeated updates about the storm's location, the death toll, the estimated dollars in damage (preliminary though they were).
When the Natural Disaster Channel shows aerial shots of the storm's devastation in Opel, Joyce doesn't recognize the exact part of town. Every scene is an identical map of water and garbage, a world re-engineered, where communities have been deconstructed and devastation is the norm. A few trees stand. A very few.
On screen, the storm has passed, and the land has awakened ugly but rapturous to be alive.
Suddenly, a nationwide link to a satellite goes down. When the transmission is abruptly cut off, Joyce bangs the top of the TV, yelling, “No interruptions!” She has to keep watching. It makes her feel connected to all the other people involved, those who have been hit by the storm, and those who, like her, have relatives tossed about by its wake. She wants to be a part of it; she wants to be a witness.
She wants to belong.