We spent Friday evening in front of the tv watching Ike approach like Vespasian’s (?) Roman army marching on Jerusalem in 68 CE (AD) announcing, ‘gonna take you down and there ain’t a damn thing you can do about it’; he chose his own pace out there, gathering his forces, arranging them however he wanted, knowing there was nothing anyone could do to stop him. When the power went off sometime after midnight I went out front to feel it and caught the tail end of all the transformers popping off, their boom boom booming echoing the similar sounds of mortar attacks in Vietnam.
 
I have always loved storms, especially thunderstorms (well, and the Northern Lights, as rarely as I’ve seen ‘em). I’ve hiked in ‘em and camped in ‘em and sailed in ‘em (not fun) and flown in ‘em (even less fun) and, driven in ‘em (and been forced over by them; once had a tornado jump me in west Texas), and, oh yes, have stood in ‘em with the rest of the band in Vietnam ankle deep in mud playing the “Stars and Stripes Forever” for the morale of those starving peasants of whatever hamlet we’d climbed out from the belly of the chopper to find ourselves in (‘be kind to you web-footed friends, for a duck may be somebody’s mother’, as one set of lyrics had it). I have always loved storms, though they have also spoiled my plans and made me miserable (and sometimes sick), and have on more than any number of occasions scared me shitless with the real threat of death, as for example, the first time our family spent a night at anchor on our little sailboat at Red Fish Island and watched a massive black cloud spend the afternoon gathering and then descend on us after dark for a terrifying, say, two hours of 60-knot winds. But the beauty of the thing transcends that–the colors of the sky, the magnificent designs of the lightning storms (though, granted, while driving through one with strikes to the right and to the left it’s a little hard to see the forest for the trees, as it were). And part of the beauty is the sheer freedom of the thing–it cannot be controlled by us; it will not bend to our control. It demands our humility, ala “Run!” You got no say in the matter; you’re gonna play by its rules. And if you survive, you know that you have experienced mercy, and are thankful.
 
So when the power went out I got all excited, and decided to stay awake all night to see the storm with the anticipation of a kid on Christmas Eve, to watch the destruction as it took place. There is above our bed a four-foot picture window into the back yard which, the darling and I agreed, would make an effective guillotine, so she tottered off to the guest room, where the windows are more protected (and smaller). I went into the family room, opened the doors to the patio so I could see and feel the thing develop, and kicked back on the couch, listening for Santa to come.
 
Right. I slept through the whole damn thing. Unbelievable. When I woke up it had come and gone and was now dancing its way north along I-45; the winds were down to a measly–whatever- 40 – 50–and dying. She who must often think she lives alone looked at me with wonder: ‘How could you sleep through all that?’ ‘Well, why didn’t you wake me? I missed the whole show,’ like some dumbfounded Jesus caught asleep in the stern. The rain eventually let up enough that it was damage survey time. There was, thankfully (and mercifully) no damage to the house nor even the fabric-covered deck (which I had thought for sure was a goner). But the back yard especially looked like Santa had indeed flown over at just that moment when his sack of leaves and sticks and limbs and shit for the whole world split open and spilled down. ‘Damn. That’s gonna be a bitch to clean up.’ Then went back to laying around in that lethargy brought about by a stifling heat and crushing gray humidity and probably low barometric pressure (?) and the post storm adrenaline rush letdown, radio broadcasts about things playing in the background.
 
There comes a time after the fury and ferocity of the storm has subsided when all becomes peaceful and still and silent as a prayer in homage to the storm’s holiness; a time of quiet calm to feel the storm’s release. There comes such a time, unless, that is, your neighbor happens to be Rodger Dodger the suburban self-reliant, who, as he’s been doing for twenty-five years fires up that rickety old gas generator that sounds like a lawn mower idling at high speed just outside our bedroom window on his driveway. He runs that noisy bastard 24/7–duh, gotta have tv in the daytime, and air conditioning at night, and oh yeah, save the meat–and no amount of dropped hints or polite suggestions (do you really need to run it ever hour of the day?) from any of the neighbors over the years has made one whit of difference. I’ve thought about sneaking over there at night and dumping, say, a half cup of sugar into his gas tank, ’cause I know what that’ll do to an engine. But I decided it wasn’t the neighborly thing to do. On the other hand, if I did, and it became public, I’d probably be a hero to the six or eight families who have to endure it. But I suppose it isn’t right to be nasty to people without a clue (PWACS); specially when you gotta live next door to them.
 
Sunday brought its mercies both human and divine. On the human side, astoundingly, New Momma Deb and hubby One L Wil, who live about a mile and a half from us, had their electricity restored about mid-afternoon (2.5 million homes without power, and they’re in the first 225,000 to get it back). Soccer Saul and his lady Cheryl, the new homeowners, also were repowered about then. Boner Joel and Rayna the Red were treated to a tree falling on the garage of their rental house, taking the electrical wires from the pole to house with it; they’re still camping. As were we. But in the divine mercy of the day, the dry “cold” front arrived earlier than expected, and became pleasant enough that I cleaned up the deck and hauled the bigger branches into a pile, and the darling I think did the front yard, which was more lightly decimated.
 
Monday was a beautiful cleanup day begun by hauling all the big branches from the back yard to the curb, then going to work with a lawn rake in the muck of it all (our yard having become the retention pond for the neighborhood). The most odious aspect of it being the discovery of three drowned rats (hidden in different places, natch, just for the holy surprise of it), scooping them by shovel into the leaf bag, confronted by an incredulous wife opening the bag for the third deposit and catching a whiff of a breeze and a sight of them, ‘I can’t believe you just put ‘em right on top.’ ‘You want ‘em gift-wrapped or something?’ My son-in-law One L Wil, with whom I am becoming well-pleased, called a friend of his who owns a dump truck, who agreed to haul our shit off for a price way below what I demanded he take. When he came driving up to do this favor for 1L Wil, the neighbors came scurrying like he was from FEMA or something, and then started jabbering about hauling their shit off, too. The poor kid–for that’s what he was, a very polite 22-year-old trying to make a living with a dump truck–didn’t have a clue about charging anybody, because he was there to do a favor, and there was quite a kafuffle (love the term) around that, the darling and I earning boos from the neighbors for insisting that $40 is the very minimum of justice. The kafuffle (tee-hee) continued yesterday with a woman trying to justify her behavior earning the famous Keene tact, ‘I’m appalled by how niggardly you people are. You got a kid trying to make a decent living and do the right thing by helping out, and you guys try to take advantage of him, whine about paying him fairly, and treat him–and my son-in-law who’s getting nothing, nada, just trying to be kind–like some faceless hirelings.’
 
I’m pretty sure our social status in the neighborhood hasn’t improved.
 
We kicked back on the deck that night with wonderfully aching muscles in cool and gentle breezes, marveling at a homestead completely restored, save for that section of my other neighbor’s fence that came down. The leaves, branches, and rats were all gathered and gone; the grinding of chain saws was fading in the dusk; still without power we had a meal on the deck, and sat in the darkness and talked and also were silent in the contentment of having finished the job, restoring our home. We slid into bed tired and happy; we held hands under our open window, letting the cool, refreshing, indeed, exotic breezes bathe over aching bodies; we closed our eyes and sighed into our pillows, and listened to that fucking generator rape the silence.
 
Our power came back on yesterday afternoon, though air-conditioning has not been necessary. Life for us has returned to normal. The fucking generator has been put away. The darling and I can get back to the political blogs to which we are addicted. We can give thanks for a life quickly restored. But how many thousands, indeed, tens of thousands still linger in limbo, or have had their homes destroyed, their lives ruined, their futures a life in a strange and foreign land? How many invitations to host Jesus?
 
For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.