God, Fate, Chaos Intervene via a Star

FROM THE NORFOLK LEDGER-STAR

October 1971

OUTER BANKS REEL FROM SECOND STORM IN LITTLE MORE THAN A MONTH

HATTERAS, N.C. — Residents of the Outer Banks began the familiar work of clearing roads, pumping water and accounting for neighbors this week after a second major storm struck the coast in little more than a month.

For families on Hatteras Island, the latest flooding came before repairs from the previous storm had been completed.

Telephone service was interrupted in several communities, roads disappeared beneath water, and reports of missing and displaced residents traveled slowly between villages. Boats were used where automobiles could no longer pass. In some areas, authorities acknowledged that complete information concerning evacuations and rescues might not be available for several days.

Coast Guard crews worked throughout the emergency, joined by fishermen, local residents and private volunteers arriving from communities along the Carolina and Virginia coasts.

Some came carrying food and blankets.

Others brought boats.

Church groups organized collections and temporary shelter, while volunteers traveled into flooded areas looking for residents who had been unable or unwilling to leave before the storm.

One Hatteras resident described the response simply.

"Everybody was looking for somebody."

The full accounting of property lost may take weeks.

The accounting of people, officials hope, will come sooner.

——————————————

The South Carolina fishmonger handed the mullet across the counter wrapped in yesterday's newspaper.

"Fine one," he told the minister's wife.

She smiled stiffly and wrinkled her nose.

Indeed.

She missed catfish.

She thanked him and carried the purchase back through the heat.

Her husband was seeing to the taking down of the revival tent. There were chairs to fold, ropes to pull, canvas to dry before it was rolled, and a dozen other things that apparently required one man's supervision and several other men's labor.

They had been given the use of a little house while they were there.

House was generous.

It had two rooms, a porch that leaned toward the road, and an outhouse that seemed much farther away at night than it did during the day.

But it was clean enough, and people had been kind.

People were usually kind to Reverend Elijah and his wife.

They traveled up and down the coast spreading the Word to anyone willing to hear it.

Sometimes to people who weren't particularly willing.

They had preached beneath canvas, in churchyards, on beaches, from the backs of trucks, and once from the deck of a borrowed boat in a harbor where the congregation remained in their own boats, tied together and drifting gently while Reverend Elijah preached salvation across the water.

That had been something.

What they did not have was children.

Perhaps the Lord had intended them to give themselves more completely to His work.

Miriam believed that.

Most days.

Today Miriam was tired.

Very tired.

Tired of fish.

Or at least this kind of fish.

She quietly and selfishly missed seafood étouffée and the blackened, spicy dishes of Louisiana. She missed the little cakes and pastries.

She missed pretty dresses.

But she had sinned so much to have those things.

What had once seemed almost an adventure—a rescue, even—had grown tiresome.

She was tired of seaside towns.

Tired of the heat and humidity.

Tired of the packing and unpacking and putting up and taking down.

And this wasn't even their revival.

The Reverend had asked to be part of it and then enthusiastically helped himself.

She was tired of sleeping in beds belonging to strangers.

Sometimes on cornhusk mattresses.

Tired of women asking whether she had been blessed with children and then making the little sympathetic face when she said she had not.

What a question!

To ask a woman.

What if she had miscarried?

Didn't they understand what it was like to be a woman in the world of men made by God?

Sometimes she imagined resting her head in the lap of Jesus.

Sometimes His mother, Mary.

She was even tired of her husband's Hellfire voice when he got onto one of his tangents and began speaking as though the Almighty Himself had temporarily loaned Elijah His lungs.

She carried the mullet into the little kitchen and laid it on the table.

Its eye looked at her.

Miriam looked back.

The eye was much too alive.

The mouth turned downward at the corners, and for one foolish moment she imagined the fish was sad about what had happened to it.

That was a sin.

Animals did not possess human thoughts. The Lord had given man dominion over the creatures of the earth. Feeling sorry for one's supper was foolishness at best and perhaps something worse.

She chopped off its head.

The head went into the bin.

She opened the belly, pulled out the guts, and prepared the fish for supper.

There was nothing animal in what she did.

There was no connection between her and the thing she was going to consume.

It was a gift from God, that was all.

Smelly gift.

Bony gift.

Mullet.

There would be plantains and turnip greens with it. Someone had given her a lemon, which was a luxury, and Miriam sliced it thinly. She put two slices into their drinking water and arranged the others over the fish.

She stood back and admired it.

For just a moment she felt like a lady in a fine house.

Even if the fine house had two rooms and an outhouse.

Pride.

Another sin.

Oh, how she could count them up.

Sometimes she thought perhaps that was why God had given her no children.

She struck the thought immediately from her mind.

Another sin.

A woman presuming to understand the will and mind of God.

Sometimes she wished she couldn't think at all.

Having a brain didn't serve her.

Forgive me.

She closed her eyes.

Forgive me, Lord. You know my heart.

Then she finished setting the table.

The fish was ready.

The greens were ready.

The plantains were ready.

Elijah was not.

Miriam sat.

She waited.

The food cooled.

She waited longer.

Finally she rose and began cleaning the kitchen because waiting became less irritating if one's hands were occupied.

She gathered the mullet head and entrails and folded the newspaper around them. There was a burning pile behind the house where their hosts disposed of what couldn't be used.

She was nearly out the door when a word caught her eye.

HATTERAS.

Miriam stopped.

She unfolded the paper.

There was blood on one corner and something slick from the fish along the fold. She wiped her fingers on her apron and read.

For families on Hatteras Island, the latest flooding came before repairs from the previous storm had been completed.

She read on.

Telephone service was interrupted in several communities, roads disappeared beneath water, and reports ofmissing and displaced residentstraveled slowly between villages.

Miriam's eyes stopped there.

Missing.

Displaced.

She continued.

Boats were used where automobiles could no longer pass.

Boats.

She read the word again.

Boats.

They had a boat.

Not a grand one, but a good one.

Elijah had insisted upon it after the harbor revival. There were souls inaccessible from land, he had said.

Miriam kept reading.

Coast Guard crews worked throughout the emergency, joined by fishermen, local residents andprivate volunteersarriving from communities along the Carolina and Virginia coasts.

Private volunteers.

Boats.

Missing and displaced residents.

Families on Hatteras Island.

Miriam slowly lowered herself into the chair.

The fish guts remained bundled beside her.

She had gone to buy their supper.

The fishmonger had chosen the fish.

He had chosen the newspaper.

He had folded it.

He had placed it into her hands.

Miriam had not asked for this newspaper.

She had not been looking for Hatteras.

Yet here it was.

She carefully tore away the soiled portion and folded the article along its crease.

She would save it for Elijah.

For Reverend Elijah.

She still did that sometimes.

Jasper.

His name had been Jasper when she met him.

Jasper had been a grifter and a petty thief and a womanizer with beautiful hands and a talent for discovering what people wanted to hear.

But Jasper was dead.

Now he was the born-again Reverend Elijah.

Elijah had explained that he had not chosen the name himself.

The Lord had placed it upon his heart.

Miriam had never asked why the Lord had chosen the name of one of His greatest prophets for a man who spoke so frequently of his own humility.

She had thought it once.

Only once.

Then repented.

Just as Lucy was dead.

Lucy had done things Miriam no longer permitted herself to remember in detail.

Lucy had survived however she could until Jasper found her.

Then Jasper found the Lord.

Reverend Elijah had baptized Lucy beneath the water and raised Miriam in her place.

He had saved her.

She cleaned his house.

Made his bed.

Lay with him frequently to purge his carnal urges.

She was saving him just as he had saved her.

He told her this, and she believed him, no matter what he asked her to do or perform.

Sometimes she woke in the night and he was already praying for forgiveness.

She kept hoping for a child.

God had saved them both with this arrangement.

God was decidedly strange in His arrangements.

Sometimes she didn't feel loved.

She felt used.

But that was her own selfish pride.

Her imagination.

Her troublesome female brain.

Her uterus had infected her thinking.

That was why she needed Jasper.

He could think for her.

She meant the Reverend.

Miriam lowered her eyes.

Reverend.

Reverend.

Reverend.

She repeated it twelve times under her breath.

Jasper was dead.

Jasper was also wanted in a few localities.

And now God had placed this into her hands.

Miriam looked again at the words.

Families on Hatteras Island.

Missing.

Displaced.

Boats.

Private volunteers.

A cry for help.

Their next mission awaited.

She folded the newspaper carefully and started to place it beside Elijah's plate.

Then stopped.

No.

That was too obvious.

He had to find it.

Miriam carried the newspaper to the counter and left it there.

Carelessly.

Like the messy housewife she was.

She missed it.

She left it.

He would see it.

He would read it.

And God would speak to him.

Miriam sat in the little two-room house with the leaning porch and the distant outhouse and waited expectantly for her husband to come home.

Between them sat the message God had sent.

Beside it, the fish grew cold.

____________

Jasper came into the kitchen the next morning with his first black coffee in his hand.

The newspaper was in the bin by then.

Miriam had given up.

He looked down.

Stopped.

Reached into the bin and pulled it out.

His eyes widened.

"This is a message from God!"

Oh, Lord, Miriam thought.

Lucy was not all dead.

She knew the look in his eyes. She knew the tone in his voice.

They were going to Hatteras.

Of course they were.

They would depart on a high note, Reverend Elijah at the helm, bound for Hatteras Island to save the lost souls.

What no one knew then, and what perhaps no one would ever know—especially Jasper and Lucy—was that Jasper was still a grifter.

He was an alcoholic. He could be grandiose and wildly certain of things that existed nowhere except inside his own mind. He talked endlessly of God, quoted the Bible, and repeated sermons with astonishing skill. He was an excellent and intelligent mimic. He could hear another preacher deliver a sermon and later reproduce not only the words but the pauses, the rising voice, the sudden whisper, the hand placed solemnly over the heart.

Sometimes he improved upon it.

Jasper could deceive people.

The more dangerous thing was that Jasper could deceive Jasper.

By the time he became Reverend Elijah, the grifter and the believer had become so thoroughly entangled that even he could no longer have said where one ended and the other began.

And Lucy, despite all his efforts, had been born with a brain.

She had even learned to read and do arithmetic while living in the house of ill intentions.

She was quiet.

Sensitive.

Nice.

She had provided services to men who told themselves they could no longer enjoy their wives and required certain bodily comforts elsewhere.

Lucy didn't know this was wrong.

How would she?

It was simply what happened in the house.

Men arrived.

Money changed hands.

Women provided what the men had purchased.

By the time Jasper appeared, Lucy had begun growing bored.

Bored with the house.

Bored with the other girls.

Bored with the customers.

She did not understand that some part of her mind was starving.

She thought she was full of sin.

Then Jasper came along and explained everything.

Jasper was very good at explaining everything.

Especially after a few sips from whatever he kept tucked inside his coat.

He envisioned a life without sin.

A life governed by God's will.

A life in which the past could be washed away and a person could be born again.

Most enticing of all, he described the grand adventure of it.

Lucy was fourteen.

Jasper was twenty-two.

Tall.

Handsome.

Certain.

A knight in shining armor who had appeared at the door of the house of ill repute and offered to rescue her.

So Lucy went with him.

Years later, she would call that salvation.

Years later still, sitting beside a cold fish and a newspaper from Hatteras Island, Miriam had almost forgotten there had ever been another way to tell the story.

………………….

The Island Had Other Ideas

They arrived by boat. Jasper. Lucy. Or rather REVERAND ELIJAH and Miriam.

Reverend Elijah stood near the bow as Hatteras came into view, looking upon the battered island with the solemn satisfaction of a man who had been personally summoned to a catastrophe.

Miriam stood behind him.

The storm had done damage.

Roofs were torn.

Trees were down.

Pieces of people's lives had been carried into places they did not belong.

It was terrible.

It was simply not quite terrible enough for Reverend Elijah.

He had envisioned reaching into the waters and pulling the Hatteras people from them like a baptism.

Desperate people, perhaps.

People standing along the shore awaiting deliverance.

People who would look upon him and understand immediately that God had sent assistance.

Instead, people were busy rebuilding, and a man on the dock looked at him and said,

“Grab that end.”

The Reverend did not grab that end.

Miriam did.

The island had its own people.

This was the first problem.

It had men who knew the water.

Women who knew what needed doing.

A preacher who had apparently already been there before Reverend Elijah arrived. Ha! Born there!

The nerve. Didn’t they understand he had come to them? Didn’t they understand he had been sent to them?

The island had fishermen, families, neighbors and a lawman.

Everyone seemed very busy.

Nobody seemed particularly interested in being saved.

They were annoyingly self sufficient and self reliant.

One wondered if God worried about these people at all!

Miriam found this refreshing.

The Reverend began explaining himself.

He explained that he had been called.

He explained that Providence had directed him here.

He explained the newspaper.

He explained the storm.

He explained God.

He testified.

This usually did it for him inland and in other coastal towns. They’d gotten invited to church to dinner and more.

The islanders listened when politeness required it only, which wasn’t much.

They honestly were pausing politely and wanted to get back to work.

God helps those that help themselves.

Was that even in the bible! NO! How dare they embrace it as if it were scripture!

This did not improve for him.

The weather did not improve either.

The wind came back.

Not another great storm.

Just another class of fronts to make everyone who knew the island begin looking toward the water and the sky.

Boats were secured. Some had left for safer harbors.

Loose boards were gathered.

Windows were checked.

Children were called home.

The Reverend looked at the sky.

“This is no accident,” he said.

“No,” said one of the fishermen. “It's weather.”

The water rose.

Then it rose some more.

Rivers of seawater replaced streets. People waded through like it was normal. They boated.

The island moved quickly.

Miriam moved with it.

Someone handed her blankets.

Someone else told her where to take them.

A woman put a basket into her arms.

Nobody asked whose wife she was.

Nobody asked what God wanted from her.

Nobody asked her to explain herself.

For several hours, Miriam was simply a person carrying things from one place to another.

She liked it very much.

Reverend Elijah did not. She was his wife under his dominion. These people were upending things for him. He’d had enough just about.

By evening, his calling had become considerably louder.

So had he.

There had been drinking. Not a lot. For him.

There had been an argument.

Then another argument.

Then there was some confusion concerning a boat, the rising water, the will of God and whether Reverend Elijah possessed the authority to tell men who had lived on Hatteras their entire lives what they ought to do during a storm.

He did not.

This was explained to him.

He disagreed.

Eventually he disagreed with his fists.

The local law took an interest.

Reverend Elijah took offense at the local law taking an interest.

Things developed naturally from there.

By nightfall, Reverend Elijah was locked up.

The storm continued without him.

The lawman's wife came to collect Miriam.

She had been watching her.

Miriam had not noticed.

Miriam had become accustomed to being watched by men.

She had not yet learned the particular way an older woman might watch a girl and slowly become furious.

“How old are you?” the woman asked.

“Fourteen.”

The woman stared at her.

Miriam waited.

“And that's your husband?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

The woman looked toward the little building where Reverend Elijah was presently discovering the limits of his ministry.

Then she looked back at Miriam.

“No,” she said.

Miriam wasn't sure which part she meant.

The lawman's wife spoke privately with her husband.

Miriam did not hear all of it.

She heard maybe fourteen.

She heard decidedly a drunk.

She heard girl.

She heard Jasper's voice from somewhere beyond them, insisting upon something.

Then she heard the woman say,

“You keep him right where he is. When things improve, take him to Manteo to see the judge. They can treat girls like wives, but that doesn’t make them women.”

Apparently this carried some authority. The lawman’s wife was not a woman to trifle with. She believed in women’s rights, the vote for women, sufferage, education, and more. She did nnot believe females were beasts of burden to absorb endlessly the moods or the labor of men and their households. She was a school teacher and a nurse. She had been in the great war.

The lawman, a very tall man with a straight spine and broad shoulders, who was very proud of his wife and her service in the Great War, kept the man right where he was.

The next morning, the woman brought Miriam clothes.

Not women's clothes.

Children's clothes.

A dress belonging to one of the girls.

Stockings.

Shoes.

Miriam looked at them for a long time.

“You don't have to wear all that anymore,” the woman told her.

Miriam looked down at herself.

She hadn't known she was wearing anything unusual.

Not anymore.

They brushed her hair.

They changed the way it was tied.

They removed the woman Jasper had made.

Or believed they did.

When they finished, the lawman's wife stood back and looked at her with relief.

There.

A girl.

A young girl with her hair braided down her back with bow.

That was what she saw.

A girl who had somehow fallen into the hands of a bad man.

A girl who could be removed from him.

Washed.

Dressed properly.

Fed.

Put back where girls belonged.

Miriam understood.

She had been rescued before.

She recognized the procedure.

This time she was being rescued from Jasper.

That was different.

She decided not to interfere.

They put her with the children.

There was a schoolhouse.

There were desks.

Slates.

Books.

Girls with braids.

Boys with dirty knees.

Children who complained about lessons and whispered when they weren't supposed to and became distracted by things outside the window.

Miriam sat among them in her borrowed dress.

Everyone seemed satisfied.

She looked like one of them.

Perhaps that was enough.

For now.

But Miriam knew something they did not.

She was not a child.

Not really.

She had already been a wife.

She had already carried a child.

She had already lost one.

She had already learned what happened when men decided God had plans for you.

She had already been Lucy.

She had already become Miriam.

Fourteen years were one thing.

Living was another.

And Miriam had lived too much to be anything but a woman now.

Still.

She looked down at the slate placed in front of her.

Then at the children sitting beside her.

It was all right.

She could be a girl again for a little while.

She could play along.

This rescue, at least, seemed worth accepting.

—————————

Everybody Was Looking for Somebody

Miriam looked younger than fourteen.

This surprised everyone except Miriam.

She had been made to look older before.

At the house, Lucy had been dressed to look like a woman men would pay for.

Later, Reverend Elijah had dressed Miriam as the respectable wife of a man of God.

Now the lawman's wife dressed her as a girl.

Apparently clothes could do almost anything.

Miriam wondered why people put so much faith in them.

She wore the dress.

She wore the ribbons.

She went to school.

There was one problem.

Miriam already knew the lessons.

She could read.

She could write.

She could do arithmetic faster than some of the older children.

The teacher moved her forward.

Then forward again.

Finally there wasn't much point.

So when they weren't helping put the island back together, Miriam became something between pupil and teacher.

She heard the younger children read.

She helped them with their sums.

She tied shoes.

She settled arguments.

She knew when someone was frightened without making them say so.

She was especially good with the little ones.

Children made sense to Miriam.

Perhaps because she was one.

Perhaps because she wasn't.

The island began putting itself back where it belonged.

Boards returned to houses.

Boats returned to water.

Furniture was dragged into the sun.

Mud was swept out.

People appeared from other villages and other islands and from the mainland.

Some came with supplies.

Some came looking for people.

Some came because somebody had heard somebody needed somebody.

Everybody was looking for somebody.

Among them was a man working with one of the rescue crews.

The checkerboard crew, people had taken to calling them.

His name mattered very much to Sybbie.

It did not yet matter to Miriam.

He was Sybbie's husband.

And while he was out helping search for somebody else's family, Sybbie was left with their daughter.

Hattie.

Hattie was little.

Miriam liked her immediately.

Hattie liked Miriam immediately.

This seemed sufficient.

Miriam played with her.

Not as a mother.

Nobody had asked her to be Hattie's mother.

She thought of Hattie more like a little sister.

A little sister was something Miriam understood entirely through imagination, which meant she could make it anything she wanted.

They could have secrets.

They could whisper at night.

She could teach Hattie to read.

Perhaps someday Hattie could teach her something.

This seemed like a very good arrangement.

Then the weather changed again.

It did that.

The wind shifted.

People looked toward the Sound.

Someone shouted.

Someone else began running.

A waterspout had been seen.

A boat was in trouble.

Men who had only recently finished rescuing people began preparing to rescue people again.

The island scattered toward whatever needed doing.

Jasper saw it through the bars.

He saw the water.

He saw the sky.

He saw men running.

And Jasper saw his place in it.

God had not brought him here to sit behind bars while unbelievers attempted to command the sea.

He shouted when he saw Miriam passing.

“Miriam!”

She stopped.

He began telling her what was happening.

What it meant.

What God required.

Miriam listened.

Then someone called for her.

There was work to do.

Things needed securing.

Children needed moving.

Miriam walked quickly away.

Jasper watched her go.

Something in the confusion provided Jasper an opportunity.

Perhaps a door had not been secured.

Perhaps the man responsible for securing it had gone to help with the boat.

Perhaps Jasper was simply Jasper and had spent much of his life noticing doors other people believed were locked.

Whatever happened, Reverend Elijah ceased being incarcerated.

Miriam was with Hattie when he found her.

Hattie was in her arms.

Jasper stopped.

He looked at the child.

Then at Miriam.

And something settled into place.

Of course.

There she was.

The child they had prayed for.

The child Miriam had been denied.

The child God had placed directly into her arms.

These people did not fear God.

They did not rely upon God.

They did not listen to men of God.

They locked men of God in jail like criminals.

And now, while they ran around attempting to save themselves, God had shown Jasper what he was supposed to save.

The child.

Miriam listened.

Lucy listened too.

Lucy had grown tired of playing schoolgirl.

It had been pleasant.

She liked the ribbons.

She liked the children.

She liked helping the teacher.

She especially liked Hattie.

But she had been playing along.

That was all.

She had played woman before.

She had played wife.

She had played Miriam.

She could play wife again.

Especially if Hattie came too.

That improved the game considerably.

“We'll take her,” Jasper said.

Miriam looked at Hattie.

Hattie had her arms around Miriam's neck.

Take her.

Yes.

Of course.

Why wouldn't they?

Children belonged with people who loved them.

Miriam loved Hattie.

She was almost certain of it.

Hattie loved her.

That seemed equally obvious.

Jasper would be there.

Miriam would be there.

Hattie would be there.

Three people leaving together.

For one bright moment Lucy did not imagine them as a minister, his wife and their daughter.

She imagined something much better.

Three orphans.

Running away.

Together.

Sybbie was somewhere else.

Her husband was somewhere else.

Nearly everyone who might have stopped anything was somewhere else.

Someone was in trouble on the water.

The island had turned its attention toward saving them.

And while everybody was looking for somebody, nobody was looking at Lucy.

The boat pulled away.

Hattie sat in Lucy's arms.

Jasper took them back toward the coast.

The island grew smaller behind them.

Lucy held Hattie tightly.

She felt wonderfully light.

She had been rescued again.

Perhaps Hattie had been rescued too.

Perhaps they had rescued each other.

She kissed the top of Hattie's head.

By the time Sybbie understood that her daughter was gone, the water had already rewritten the story.

People searched.

They shouted Hattie's name.

They searched buildings.

They searched the shoreline.

They searched debris.

Someone remembered seeing Hattie with the young girl.

Someone else remembered the girl going toward the water.

Neither could be found.

The Reverend was gone too.

His boat was gone.

But in the confusion of storm and rescue and rising water, facts became rumors before anyone could assemble them properly.

Sybbie called for her daughter.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Nothing came back.

Out beyond them, Hattie was alive.

She was wrapped in Lucy's arms aboard a small boat making its way down the coast.

Lucy did not know that somewhere behind her a mother was screaming Hattie's name.

She did not know what she had done.

Not really.

She was fourteen years old.

She had been dressed as a woman.

Dressed as a wife.

Dressed as a child.

She had been Lucy.

She had been Miriam.

She had been rescued and saved and baptized and renamed and told what every transformation meant.

Now she held a little girl and imagined they were sisters.

Jasper imagined something else entirely.

And Hattie was too young to imagine much beyond the arms holding her.

Behind them, Sybbie grieved a child she believed the water had taken.

Ahead of them was the coast.

The world had been churned and upended, and all of them had been scattered.

Half by their own will.

Half by fate.

God may have twiddled His fingers a little.

No one really knows.

And that is the end of this chapter. Now you know how Sybbie and Hattie were separated.

Hattie being wisked down to Florida.

Sybbie devastated, returning to her parents house in Norfolk, VA and brother, Babe.

‍ ‍