Stranger's Gift (13 page)

“Head straight to Lakeview Elementary, Herr Miller,” Hester called. “It's the shelter where we reserved spaces for everyone.” Hester shoved the last of Nelly's things into the car and got behind the wheel. “We'll be there. We're going to pick up Lizzie first,” she added.

“We'll do all right,” Ivan assured her with a wave. But his voice quavered with uncertainty, and she saw him look around as if he couldn't quite believe what was happening.

“Follow me,” she called.

Ivan Miller hesitated briefly, and Hester could see his wife pleading with him from inside the car. Just then Margery Barker came running down the lane, and not three steps behind her was John Steiner.

“Where do you need us?” Margery huffed, leaning against the car as she tried to catch her breath.

“Here,” Hester instructed as she got out of the car and held the door open for Margery. “Take our car and go get Lizzie and then drive her and Gramma to the Lakeview School while I make sure the others follow. You'll also want to pick up anyone trying to go on foot.”

Margery had the motor running and the car backed out of the driveway before Hester got the car door closed. When she took a step back to avoid getting run over by Ivan Miller, who was driving inches away from Margery's rear bumper, she nearly tripped over John.

“I can't take you to your place today,” she said, her defenses on instant alert and her mind already assuming the reason he'd come. “Not now. The creek is overflowing its banks….”

“I can see that, Hester,” he said irritably. He stood watching as she directed the line of cars and bicycles that formed a surreal parade headed away from the creek for a moment, then muttered, “How can I help?”

It annoyed her that he made it sound like something he was loath to do. She had to bite her lip to refrain from telling him he should go back to her father's house and try getting up on the sunnier side of the bed. Of course their house would also soon be flooded, although it was farther from the creek. And then it started to rain in earnest. Not a drizzle or a gentle summer shower. This time they were deluged as if the clouds had grown weary of their burden and simply burst open.

Anxiously Hester looked down the road and saw Lizzie Gingrich climb into Nelly's car. A moment later the red rear lights of the caravan of cars inched forward. But to reach the school, they would have turned the other way. Margery must have decided that the water was rising too fast to head in that direction and decided on an alternate route. “I should go,” she said, but as she looked around for some vehicle to speed her on her way, she understood that with the water already creeping across the road, obliterating its boundaries, the only conveyance that could help was a boat or canoe.

“Come on,” John shouted over the lashing rain as he took hold of her arm and started slogging through the mounting water. “Now,” he commanded when she hesitated.

Together they splashed their way toward the main road, dodging floating debris and trying hard to maintain their balance as they moved with the swift current. By the time they crossed Bahia Vista, the water was ankle-deep and rising fast. All Hester could think about was that drowning because of inland flooding was the primary cause of death after a hurricane. How could she not have made sure everyone was moved last night? If it hadn't been for John Steiner's stubborn refusal to move to a shelter …

“The church?” John shouted, pointing to a large modern structure as the rain formed rivulets down his hair and face.

“Yes,” Hester called back as she realized that Margery must have turned in this direction so that she could lead everyone to the church rather than try to make the longer trek to the school. She squeezed her eyes closed against the sting of the downpour as they made their way to the impressive campus of the community's more liberal Mennonite church. It sat on higher ground and had been built with a specially designed drainage system to handle just such emergencies as these. Hester could only hope it would be enough to hold back the floodwaters.

The downpour in combination with the wind made visibility impossible, and Hester had almost bumped into one of the cars from Margery's procession before she grasped the fact that they had stalled out less than fifty feet from the church parking lot after trying to drive through deeper water. Most of the people were still sitting in their cars looking frightened and bewildered. Margery was up ahead, trying to force the door of Nelly's car open against the water that was swirling around her feet and legs.

Before Hester could form the words, John yelled for her to stay put, and then on his way to Nelly's car, he pulled open the doors of the four other cars stalled behind. “Give us a hand here,” he shouted to some unseen person he'd spotted. Seconds later Hester had to smile as Zeke Shepherd emerged from behind one of the cars carrying Lizzie Gingrich, with Ivan and Jane Miller on either side of him. They hung on to each other and the dangling ends of Zeke's rope belt. She had never been so glad to see him.

“This way,” she shouted and motioned toward the church. Her voice sounded like a whisper thrown against the pounding of the rain. Zeke staggered past her while volunteers from the church ran toward them. They took Lizzie and assisted the Millers, freeing Zeke to go back to help Olive and Agnes Crowder. Hester was relieved to see that with each step Zeke took closer to the church, the water was shallower. “John!” she shouted when she had assured herself that everyone was accounted for except her grandmother and Margery.

“Right here,” he huffed from no more than a foot away. He was carrying Nelly, his sling dangling uselessly from his neck.

“Where's Margery?” She tried not to let her panic seep through.

John jerked his head in the direction of the car. “She went back for your grandmother's stuff.”

“Go,” Hester ordered even as she fought her way against the rushing current to where she could just make out the flashing hazard lights of her grandmother's car. Margery was on her knees in the backseat, bundling Nelly's things into the already-soaked quilt. “Leave those and come on,” Hester shouted as Margery emerged from the car and was almost swept away by the rushing water.

“Got everything,” the fisherwoman shouted back with a smile of triumph lighting her face as she clung to the open car door. Finally she regained her footing, but then the car started to float and drift.

“The car! Let go, Margery,” Hester shouted, swiping at her hair that had come free and was covering her eyes. She wrapped one arm around a lamppost and reached out toward Margery, catching one end of the quilt. Slowly she pulled the fisherwoman toward her until she was able to grab the lamppost as well.

“We can make it,” Margery yelled. “Come on.” Swinging the quilt and its cargo like a cradle between them, the two women struck out through murky water, carefully measuring the depth before taking each step until the water became shallower.

“Will you look at that?” Margery shouted, her tone filled with surprise as water ran off the pavement of the parking lot back toward the street-turned-canal that they'd just escaped. “Never would have imagined it could drain like that. Just wait ‘til those government engineers have a look at this! Might teach them a thing or two.” She was out of breath and clearly exhausted, but Hester knew that Margery's running commentary on the world around her was what got her through the day.

“You okay?” Hester asked as she relieved Margery of her half of their burden and slung the sodden quilt with its precious contents over her shoulder. The older woman was out of breath and holding her side.

“I'm fine,” Margery protested, but she sat down on the first of several concrete benches lining the covered courtyard of the church and fanned herself with her hat. “You go on and check on Nelly and the others. I'll be okay. Just need a minute to catch my breath.”

Hester signaled to a teenage girl who was passing out oversized beach towels that had been among the donated goods to bring one to Margery. “I'll be back soon,” she promised as she scanned the throngs of refugees for any sign of her grandmother. When she heard her father's distinct full-throttle laughter, she followed the sound, knowing he would be attending his beloved mother. She took a quick tally to make sure everyone was accounted for and thanked God that they were all safe, soaked to the bone but safe.

For a man who prized his solitude, the mass of people huddled under the eaves and cypress arbor that covered the church courtyard was John Steiner's worst nightmare. He'd spent so much of the last two years living alone that finding himself in the midst of so many people who were all talking excitedly made him feel as if he might be physically ill if he could not find a way out. There was a lot of milling about as plans for making it the rest of the way to the shelter were suggested and rejected. Everyone was trying to come up with the best alternative for getting people settled until it was safe to move on to a shelter. Chaos reigned in a world where John craved only peace and quiet and order. “At least the rain's let up,” he muttered to himself.

“Not for long,” a male voice to his left replied.

He glanced over to see the man he'd called to for help in rescuing the stranded senior citizens from their cars. He had straight black shoulder-length hair that hung in wet clumps, and he was dressed in a long-sleeved cotton shirt and cotton work pants—both a couple of sizes too small for his lanky frame. He was sitting with his back against a wall of the courtyard, his knees bent and his chin resting on his crossed hands as he watched the crowd.

“Still, the letup is a relief after what we went through back there,” John replied. He was in no mood to be debating the matter or to hear more bad news.

The man shrugged. “God just must have decided to press the P
AUSE
button. Give us time to get those old folks to a safer place.”

Whatever
, John thought and turned his attention to his arm, throbbing now from having cast off his sling in order to transport Hester's grandmother to higher ground.

“You get that broke in the hurricane?” the man next to him asked, nodding toward the cast.

“Yeah.” John didn't want to be rude, but he couldn't help glancing around, searching for any means of escape.

“Wanna get outta here?” the man asked as if reading John's mind.

“Yeah,” John admitted.

“Follow me.” And the man stood and moved like a cat along the fringes of the crowd until he reached a small opening between two steel columns that supported the covering of the church atrium. “This way,” he instructed as he sloshed through water that covered his shoes and started out toward an overgrown vacant lot. “Get us some water,” he added with a nod toward a box loaded with bottles of water.

John hesitated. But then he spotted Hester. She was headed his way. He grabbed two bottles and took off after the stranger before she could spot him.

“Name's Zeke,” the long-haired man said after they had plodded their way across a field and finally climbed onto a loading dock at an abandoned warehouse. Zeke settled in with his back against the concrete wall under a torn awning that would protect them if the rain started up again. After he'd screwed the top off his water, he drank half of it in one gulp and then wiped his mouth with the back of one hand. “And you are?”

“John Steiner.”

To his astonishment Zeke grinned. “And a legend in your own time, my friend.” He patted the place beside him. “No joke. Among folks like me you are the man. Setting yourself up in the old Tucker place with nobody bothering you or telling you where to be and when to be there.” He shook his head in amazement. “How'd you manage it?”

“I bought the property,” John said.

“Well, I
know
that,” Zeke replied, clearly offended.

Something clicked with John. “Zeke? You're a friend of Jeannie Messner's?”

“Ah, little Jeannie with the flaming red hair,” Zeke said, and the softening of his features said more than words about the special place the young woman held in his life. “Like my little sister,” he added.

“She was worried about you,” John told him.

Zeke grinned. “Jeannie's a people person. Doesn't understand folks like you and me.”

John was more than a little uncomfortable with the assumption of some kind of bond. He wasn't homeless after all. Well, he was for the time being, but that would change for him once he got back to his place. The night before at the Detlef house, he'd fallen asleep planning what he would do first, where he could stay while he rebuilt, how he would revive the citrus groves and garden.

“I could help you get back there if you like,” Zeke said. “You wait around for permission, and you'll be sitting here for a couple of weeks.”

John was tempted to laugh. Surely the man was joking. Zeke didn't appear to have any means of transportation beyond his two feet, which at the moment were clad in combat boots with soles that needed replacing. Still, the man deserved some respect.