Fiction: Dancing at the Driftwood Hotel (#14)

A novella with some real characters

By Roger Owens

Louise jerked awake, snorting, a sharp pain stabbing into her neck. Florencia and the other girls lay all around her on the floor of the ample Quonset hut where they’d been “billeted.” The Waves, the Navy women’s corps, had set them up with a few blankets and pillows, and they had grabbed four or five hours of sleep. Oddly enough, it had been good for her, with the rain hammering on the curved metal roof, and she felt rested and sharp. A woman not much older than herself noticed her standing and waved her over for a cup of coffee. The storm had blown over in the night. Louise’s heels on the concrete expanse of floor woke the other girls, and by the time the sun lit the high windows they were all up and ready to go.
    Jim and the other men had gone to their ships, including Horace, who by virtue of convincing the girls to stay at the base for the night had become the Atlantic Fleet’s odd hero. He had slept like a baby on the Sarsfield, in a regular seaman’s bunk, and awakened to the early bustle of a Navy ship. He headed for the Quonset, and when the time came for the girls to get on the bus and go home, he was the only man there. Thus, it was left to him to drive the bus. It came as no surprise to Louise when he reached under the dash and fiddled with the wires, and the engine started up with a pop and a growl. Horace looked back at her and shrugged, grinning. “I had a long conversation with McMillan last night, during the storm.”
    On the way they could see the effects of the hurricane. The east side of the island had been flooded, and many of the houses were damaged. Palm trees and power poles were down on many streets and they had to mostly retrace their route of the night before, because the Gulf-side waterfront and the first few blocks west of First Street were just about the only places on the island whose roads were open. Some of the girls called out in distress about their homes or family businesses, and about half a dozen got out at the corner of First and Roosevelt to walk home through the destruction. Florencia sat next to Louise, right behind Horace, and she saw the Cuban girl looking about in dismay.
    “What is it, Florencia? ¿Que es malo?” Deep brown eyes looked back at Louise with genuine fear in them. “Mi Padre,” Florencia said. “El es un pescador. Camarone. El pescar para camarone. En el Golfo. Ahora.” Her father was a shrimper, and he was in the Gulf of Mexico right now. Horace had heard, and he brought the bus to a halt in the middle of the road. He got up from the driver’s seat and pulled Florencia from the bench beside Louise and hugged her to him as hard as he could. She poured tears and broken words onto his shoulder while many of the other girls on the bus began to cry as well. Their fathers were shrimpers and fishermen too. The weather had been so good lately. The entire fleet was out, fishing and trawling the Gulf and the Atlantic for the bounty of the sea that paid for the lives of so many on the island. Louise felt a swirling fear for her own parents, her own house on the very southeast corner of Key West, and without another thought she shoved the handle that opened the doors and bolted down the street towards home.

We all pretty well figured we’d had it by the time Blackie said he was going down to talk to LC in the engine room. He left Miss Lottie to steer and she was good at it, holding the bow steady into the swells coming from the southeast. Now that the Cubans were gone, and we had no doubt the poor bastards had gone under within minutes of our parting, the Horny B. was handling much better. According to the gauges, and calculating how badly we were using diesel against the wind and waves, we would run out of fuel about twenty miles from Key West. It wasn’t long before I saw Blackie and Lester come up the gangway from the engine room and head down the next stairway towards the front of the boat, which led to the fuel tanks. They were in there for a while, and when they came back on deck LC went back down to the engines. When Blackie came back into the steering room, it was like he’d been given a reprieve from death, and I suppose it was. He wasn’t quite smiling, but there was a hopeful look in his eyes.
    “Seems we have a bit more fuel than we might have thought,” he said, and even Joe Hook threw a heavy breath of relief. He hadn’t said one damn word since we’d lost the Santa Inez. “We went down and used dipsticks, and it looks like the designers made sure the gauges read on the low side. We might just make land tonight. I can’t guarantee it,” he stated plainly, just before Miss Lottie jumped on his neck and literally pulled her feet from the deck in her enthusiasm.
    “Oh, I knew it,” she shouted joyfully. “We are going to get out of this! We are going to live, and you are going to marry me, and we are going to have lots and lots of children!”
    Well, I never saw Blackie with quite that look on his face, not even when he killed a man, but you know he got such a grin then I thought for sure he was eating shit. He looked over at Joe, and then at me, and he turned to Miss Lottie and his eyes glowed like lanterns on a summer night in Virginia.
    “You know,” he said, “I believe I will.” I gave a cheer. Joe Hook clapped his hands and gave a small grin too.
    After that, I guess God Himself must have been on our side because before long the wind began to turn more toward the north and then swept back from the west and actually began to help us. The waves were nearly behind our course now, and we began to make good time. It could not have been more than three hours later that we spotted the Key West Light. It stood out of the sea a mile or more from the western end of Key West, and to come within five hundred feet of it was to run aground, according to Blackie Wainwright. You skirted it to the west, rounded it to the south, and you would find yourself on the south side of the island and headed for the harbor. There was a far more sheltered approach from the north along the Gulf side but we all knew that was for charter boats and personal fishing craft, and far too shallow for the Honoria B.

Lester Clayton Tottenmann was frantic to get off the boat. As they rounded the south side of Key West in the dawning light, his agitation increased. Beachside bars and hotels were blown down or their windows broken out. Boats of every size and description littered the shore or stuck upwards, half-sunken in the shallows. Debris floated in the surf, roiled by each listless wash of the tide. The storm was over, and the waters of Key West had returned to their normal lethargy, but the true cost of the hurricane was yet to be calculated. Lester Clayton knew that everything had a price. The more it was worth, the more it cost. He was guilty of horrible crimes, and desperate to know how much he had to pay.

Louise Dedge found her home intact and her parents joyfully relieved at her safe return. Their house was full of Haitians from the tenements. Mama told her the water had come up through the wooden floors of the waterfront flats and the poor people had come to them for shelter. It would be only the first of three times their home would be flooded in the storms, until her parents finally moved up the coast to be near her and her family in Eau Gallie, Florida in 1967. Right then she knew nothing of this, she was just happy everyone was fine. Then she looked across the empty lot, thinking to go see Porcelain. Her breath stopped in her chest. It was like someone had punched her. The tenement house was gone. It wasn’t there. She ran through the tiny house, banging into her mother, who was frying fish and hush puppies for the thirteen Haitian refugees, and nearly making her spill the hot grease.
    “Mama! Have you seen Porcelain?” Lola could not answer before Louise tore out of the house and into the frightening dawn.
    She found Porcelain nearly on the beach. She was covered in the splintered wooden remains of the tenement house, and only the relentless tide had kept her from being bloodied. Louise screamed to the folks gathering in the morning light, and one of the many who responded was Horace Ball.
    “She’s alive, oh help her, she’s still alive!” Horace reached to the black girl’s neck and nodded. He had found a pulse. Black men tore at the broken boards that trapped her, and one was shaking his head.
    “We din’t know her, man, she wan’t Hatien. She live wit’ a white man, he go fishing. I sorry we forgot her, lef’ her behind.” As she was freed, Horace had several of the men lift her up and bring her to the Dedge’s house. They carried her, head lolling alarmingly, across the street to the far side of a stony lot filled with weeds and sporting a rusting fuel tank, now blown down from its perch on a rusty frame. The frame stuck off sideways like the legs of a dead cow. They took her into the house and put her on the couch in the front room, the white one with the fancy raised silver stitching. The water had stained it about two feet high.
    Lola began with hot towels and chicken broth, but it was soon clear that this beautiful black girl would not live. She was unconscious. Blood came from her nose and ears, her breathing was hard and fast, and she was developing a fever. There was a dent in her forehead the size of Louise’s little finger, and when she saw Horace looking at it, he shook his head. The telephone did not work, and the roads were closed. Louise sat on the flooded couch with Porcelain’s head in her lap. She was crying on her friend’s neck when she felt a kick from Porcelain’s belly.
    “Horace! The baby!”
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[Editor’s Note: The novella of which this installment is a part can be ordered from Amazon.]

Copyright © 2017 by Roger Owens