Spark (The Hometown Heroes Series) by Nicole Blanchard

Author:Nicole Blanchard [Blanchard, Nicole]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-08-25T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

Avery

True to his word, a generator magically appears on my porch the following day. The only note with it are instructions on how to set it up safely. Apparently several people have already been killed by having the exhaust blow into their homes and causing them to slowly asphyxiate. The generator also runs on gas so there were an additional five cans of gas lined up like neat little soldiers.

I didn’t plan to run the generator constantly, mostly through the hottest part of the afternoon because there was no telling how long the electricity would be down. From what reports I’d heard over the police scanner and the spotty connections I’d made on my phone I’d gleaned power lines were down from Mexico Beach to Tallahassee. It would take months of repairs and thousands of linemen from all over the country to repair the catastrophic damage.

You know your shit has gone sideways when the aftermath of a hurricane is easier to deal with than the wreck of your personal life.

In the long days that follow, I spend most of my time trying to get the front yard in some semblance of order. I learn through the patchwork communication grapevine that there will be debris pickups on certain days of the week if the community puts the debris on the side of the road. When I’m not taking care of Grandma Rosie or tending to the baby, I’m hauling limbs and logs to the ever-growing pile by the road. I borrow a spare chainsaw from Tom and after a quick lesson, get to work cutting down some of the more manageable felled limbs. There are a few monsters I don’t know what I’ll do with, probably pay someone to remove at some point, but that’ll have to be put off until later.

It’s a lot of work, but it keeps my mind off of Walker and gives me something to do since most roads are still closed unless you’re getting food from the various distribution locations or getting gas for your generator. There’s even a curfew for our town to discourage looters. Someone had tried to open our front door a few days after the storm, but our automatic porch flood lights scared them away. It’s the only time I’ve ever wished I had a gun in the house, but thankfully I haven’t had to resort to that.

All in all, it could be so much worse. The only tree that fell on the house was an immature magnolia and it didn’t cause any structural damage. I was able to get it cut down for the most part. There’s still the base of it sticking out at an angle across the yard, but at least it’s not on the roof. The others that were blown down were in the back yard and out of the way. Most of the damage to the house was the window that was broken and some of the tin that was pulled up by the wind. Truthfully, we got lucky.

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