WILMINGTON — One guy was seen mowing the lawn half an hour before the storm hit. He commented to his wife that he'd noted hundreds of tiny, white butterflies bursting forth from the grass like a mass birthing.
He was somewhat spooked by the bizarre exodus, yet it also excited him: Mother Nature at her tricks. The Native American Medicine Cards deem the butterfly a symbol of transformation, the couple read later, when they looked it up.
Fragile wings fluttering, the fairy-like insects flew about chaotically. He wondered where they would all end up in this small New England town.
In the end, it was the yarn that held the town together, quite literally.
The yarn reminded him of Halloween, when the kids go wild with toilet paper, the ribbons hanging from the trees from one yard to the next, but in this case it was multicolored yarn from the yarn store downtown, wrapped around the houses, round and round, only the colors changing: the deep reds and subtle blues, tangled in great gobs from the trees, even in the propane-reeking river, wadded up in yellow and purple clumps, from limb to limb of broken tree.
It felt like some sort of miracle, a reminder that we were all in this together: one couldn't walk five steps without walking on the yarn, feeling the strands grab at the shoes, the mothers telling the children, “No, no, leave that, now,” with their concerns about contamination.
* * *
The storm had been well forecast, with all those weather channels blasting from the television sets day and night, telling of Irene's imminent path up the coast and then inland to Vermont.
Folks stood on the street corners discussing the storm of 1938, pointing to the building where some fellow had marked the height of the water high up on the side of the fading wall.
There was speculation. Would this one come as far or only drop a few buckets of rain and then move on up through Montreal? People could easily recall the Ice Storm of 08: that one had been for real, the ice glued thick on the tree branches, snapping not only whole trees in half, but also telephone poles, leaving most of the state without electricity for a week or more, in some cases upwards of a month.
But Saturday was full of sun - in fact, the warmest day in weeks - so it had been hard to believe that Sunday would bring winds between 43 and 76 miles per hour. (It never did. It arrived as rain.)
Most locals contemplated swimming, maybe a barbecue. At the support group held just one night before at St. Mary's Episcopal, it was such an uplifting meeting they all left with smiles on their ageless faces. They were proud that some notorious townies, long ago moved to Connecticut and South Carolina, were visiting for the big wedding and had spoken, bringing up warm memories at the meeting, sometimes with humor, occasionally with a tear for the losses they had perpetuated upon themselves and their families over the years.
* * *
Some took the whole thing seriously, though, freezing little bags of water, buying flashlights and extra batteries and cans of Spaghetti-Os and ravioli as the governor advised.
One fellow drove to the bigger town 18 miles down the road to visit his best friend, who had been hospitalized due to the seriousness of his ulcers. Being a true friend, he worried that he might not get down there should a real storm hit, and what would his buddy think of him then?
In the middle of his visit, two other good friends showed up. They sat in stiff chairs in the visitors' room, cracking jokes while reminding the fellow that they'd prefer he took better care of himself in the future, that because he was one of their favorites, they didn't want to lose him prematurely. There had been enough loss over the years in their small town up the road.
As they drove home, they noted the clouds moving in. One guy's wife was near hysterics when he returned. Watching way too much TV, she had become seriously frightened, her mind filled with drownings and overturned cars.
It didn't end up to be quite that bad, but her husband regretted laughing at her worry. “I'm really a jerk,“ he thought several days later, as he hugged her, full of apology.
The town had been quite destroyed while some slept that Saturday night. He'd left his window wide open with a towel on the sill, just because he wanted to feel the storm if it came.
And come it did, the winds blowing a sheet of water all over his bed, waking him as it splattered his face in the dark. He could hear the town trucks as they dug big ditches to let the water flow downward to the bigger river, an area so large next door it looked like preparation for a swimming pool.
* * *
It rained and rained that night, flooding the entire downtown area, ruining everything, from the artist's life's work the guy and his wife had just viewed in the gallery days before to the coffee shop that sold buttery scones chock full of raisins and cranberries.
The fancy clothing shop was filled with mud halfway to the ceiling; the paint and frame shop, simply ruined. Even the propane tanks had been blown into the river, floating like oversized Good & Plenty (the white ones). The wires busted mid-bridge where the electrical lines had snapped, the telephone poles tangled and broken, piled in a heap.
They were surprised that the electric was only out some places for a day or two, but the town reservoir had flooded so badly they couldn't use the water. Bits of air puffed from the faucets. The place was deemed the worst hit area in the state, and the National Guard was called in.
In the high school, the largest of the eight shelters set up, droves of displaced and homeless people lined up each evening for dinner. Some even went just for the company, so lonely they were, so sad at the destruction of their town.
Soon the stores emptied of food, at least the best food, and all the frozen stuff melted.
Some sat in groups on the porches up on the hill that had been mostly spared and talked together quietly. Some played cards in the lamp light, almost giddy, laughing loudly at the oddest things. They shared bagged chips and M&Ms they had hidden before the storm hit.
One lady cried as she begged the police to cross the precarious bridge to retrieve her pets. The officer was filled with regret; it shone in his eyes as if it were his own beloved kitty, but he couldn't let her through.
“It's orders. Bridge could go, live lines. I'm sorry, but I can't.”
She looked at him seriously as she tried to pass by.
“I'll put you in jail. I'm not kidding. I will. You can't go! I'm sorry,” he said, his face nearly as sad as hers. She turned, finally, and went off the other way.
In the end, her cats tore into some food she had in the corner of the kitchen and survived. But the cow floating, swollen belly down, didn't make it, and there was speculation about a Morgan horse, but no news ever came.
One teen was swept away, while walking with friends in the dark. Another teen went missing. There are people who still hope he ran away to California like teens have done in the past. No one wanted to think about their families. Some things are just too painful. But they clasped their shaking hands, in spite of their own grief; they hold it together inside themselves like the yarn gripping at the flowerpots and street lamps.
* * *
After the rain stopped, the sun came out thick and full. The rainbow crossed the whole sky. Natives walked the streets dumbstruck, stopping to talk to people they would have never associated with under different circumstances, asking how the others had fared.
Some drove golf carts through town and handed out fresh water. Gorgeous summer vegetables overflowed the table down by the food pantry. Groups gathered to pull the ruined, sopping furniture from houses over the next few days, dragging the cars from the river up to the road again.
They all gazed at the school's basketball hoops, where the water had risen to the tops of the orange circles, the dugouts from the ball field tossed into the river, the heavy fence torn into pieces like a children's building set after rough play.
Handshakes, introductions, and yarn everywhere, wrapped full around houses, strung through the whole town it seemed, and then a shelf where stacks of the untouched yarn sat, wet, the colors bleeding.
No one stole it, or anything else. One guy grabbed some filthy yarn from the ground, as a keepsake. It reminded him of his town, he said. Of the connection between everyone. How it had survived, in spite of the devastation and loss.
“This town sticks together. I love this town,” he said. “The yarn, it's like the town, pulling us all together.” And as we looked around at all the neighbors working in small groups to clean up where Hurricane Irene had done her dance, we saw that his statement was true.
This town was no ordinary town. That yarn tied us together just as sure as we tied ourselves together.
* * *
I was new, here, three months at most, but not one person mentioned that fact while grabbing my hand warmly, or helping me fill my water jugs. They seemed to say 'If I was here, then I was one of them.'
I put my dogs in the house and went to find a broom: my cane got caught in some strands of yarn as I walked. I pulled it off, careful not to break the connection.
The hues seemed unusual on the damp ground. I wondered if there were people, somewhere, in one of these ruined buildings crying over their precious yarn, each skein so carefully chosen for color and quality.
I hoped they knew how their yarn was holding us all together.