Forgot what it meant by Sean Jackson They were an older couple and they were looking for a hotel room. They had left their home near the coast because of the hurricane. Now it was the two of them and their Chihuahua, Mimi, scouring for Vacancy signs in Greenville. “I’m not staying in a motel room,” Nolan snapped at Prudence. There are 132 hotels and motels in Greenville and the Lopps (and dear Mimi) were getting shut out at every turn. They should take in pets considering everything, Prudence argued. The storm, Matilda, was going to breach close, and she wielded a history of ruin. “My little baby won’t make no fuss,” Prudence huffed as Nolan peered through the streaked windshield, pulling right up to the lobby of an Econo Lodge. She knew right off he didn’t want to stay there. He was in no shape to drive on, either to Kinston or Rocky Mount. His nerves were shot. Prudence darted out of the minivan, clasping her heirloom raincoat to her bosom. The heat surprised her every time. It was near midnight but the rain and wind had done nothing to dull the stifle from a searing August day. Her mother’s birthday was a day away, the 23rd. The lord rest her soul, Prudence was thinking as she stood at a counter and waited for the concierge to check the computer for cancellations. CNN was scrawling about the storm’s hours-away landfall: the tidal surge, the rainfall amounts, threat of tornadoes, and why people should evacuate now if they haven’t already. She watched the yellow words stream through a black background and listened to canned music coming from somewhere overhead. Sarah Vaughan singing “Lush Life.” “Two double beds OK?” the concierge said through enormously bucked teeth. Prudence said it was, but said nothing this time about Mimi. She was tired of playing around with these people. If they didn’t get a room soon Nolan was going to blow. Her husband lay on the bed, rubbing one old knee, as she scooted in with the last bags and Mimi. The dog was nestled in a duffle bag Prudence had bought online just that spring. It was too small for Mimi to sleep in, but Mimi was going to sleep on the spare bed. “C’mere, sugar,” Nolan drawled. “We’re going to be alright.” Prudence knew that was so. They’d be fine as long as the roof didn’t blow off the Econo Lodge and the Tar River didn’t flood like Revelations. What concerned her was the house they’d left behind, what they’d all long called “the barn.” She hadn’t had time to do anything to protect the antiques. They hadn’t even boarded up any windows, which meant there were at least two pricey and irreplaceable buffets that could catch a soaking if the windows burst out. “Watch out, baby,” she told Mimi as the dog hopped off the bed to follow Prudence to the bathroom mirror. Prudence looked at the fading makeup and wished she hadn’t even put any on. None of the riffraff working at these hotels could have cared if she’d had walked in with a Kabuki face on. Her mother had always told Prudence that most folks don’t care what your face looks like, as long as it don’t look angry. A kindly smile goes a long way. A pretty face might get you in the door, mother’d said, but the smile keeps you inside. Prudence cut on the TV and sat at Nolan’s feet, stroking Mimi in her lap. The local news was showing where Matilda was, and the storm looked like it was actually rearing back an arm, like an octopus arm, and was going to smack the coast with it. “God help us,” Nolan moaned. “We might be here for days.” “There might not be anything to go back to,” Prudence said, smiling as best she could down at the dog, then puckering her lips. “We might lose everything,” Prudence announced, close to tears. “Everything my family’s ever had is back there, Nolan. And it could get smashed like a dollhouse, just ripped to pieces, before this is all over with.” Nolan thought about that for a second. After all his years with the IRS he still tended to see material things in the form of dollars. It was all taxable value, and he’d already told her this. Them making it out safe was the important thing. “It’s all insured very nicely,” he said, still trying to rub the pain from his knee. “I have the papers with us, Prudence.” She nodded, but she was crying a little already. “Anything could happen to it,” she sniffled. “Somebody could break in and steal it, for all we know.” Nolan didn’t think thieves would be out during a hurricane, and he told Prudence so. Besides, he said, the Barn was six feet off the ground, so if the creek flooded it wouldn’t come in the house. And all the pecans were far enough away from the house to cause any worry. “I don’t know,” Prudence countered, getting up to put away their clothes. The first thing she noticed was that the handles on the knee-high dressers were greasy. Normally this would have driven her up the walls. Now she just tucked their things into separate drawers without saying a word. She even put the two thin, little sweaters of Mimi’s into its own drawer. Her parents’ antique armoire was causing Prudence distress. It was 18th Century French as worth thousands. Prudence used to hide in it when she was little and playing with her sisters. Of course she’d mashed her fingers in its doors once, but it had always been a beloved piece. “You know I ain’t one for being superstitious,” she said to Nolan, evenly, with precision, “but my grandmother always said to cover old furniture with clean sheets when you left home for more than one night.” Nolan yelped softly as Mimi hopped onto him, nuzzling his chest with a damp nose. They were all suddenly started by a thump on the ceiling, but it didn’t repeat itself. Within a few seconds the muffled beats of rap music oozed into the room from above. “Figures,” Nolan groused. “We’ll have to turn the TV up. This is why I didn’t want to stay in a cheap motel. This is exactly why.” ….. Prudence picked up the phone but didn’t know who to call. At 3 a.m. nobody she knew would be up. Well, she knew there were some people at home who couldn’t sleep. But all the lines were down there. Even the cell phones were out. She wondered what Evelyn Askew was doing. Evelyn lived alone, people-wise at least. She had three dogs, including Mimi’s momma and daddy (old June Carter and Johnny Cash). Evelyn would be in a fit, and Prudence knew it. The weatherman in the nice rainslicker was grabbing his hat and digging his chin against his chest, and you could only hear every other sentence. He was shouting something about the Outer Banks taking the brunt of Matilda, just north of Hatteras. She watched as a computer map drew a line across the Pamlico Sound, right up into Creswell. “They’ll get hit hard tomorrow … early afternoon,” the weatherman choked out, lunging partly off the screen. He was in Hatteras Village. He was expecting the eyewall to push in within a few hours. “I’m over now …,” he hollered, spitting out rain. Then there was the lady with the fancy hair, comfortably seated in the Atlanta studio. She was saying how it was lucky Matilda wasn’t going to hit an urban area. Prudence made a face. “I’ll be damned,” she hissed softly, careful not to wake Nolan or Mimi. “I’d like to see you come up here and take a look for yourself. You wouldn’t last a minute out there.” The phone rang upstairs and Prudence automatically leaned toward the nightstand, fingers hovering briefly over the handset. A man’s muffled voice burst out laughing above. Then another one joined in. Drunks, she knew them all too well. Nolan had never been a drinker, but just about every man she’d ever known otherwise (her brother, Nolan’s father and brothers, most all of Nolan’s work buddies at the IRS) had been a boozer. She turned up the TV and changed the channels around, stopping on public television. Darned if it wasn’t an “Antiques Roadshow” episode! She felt the warmth of relaxation creep over her for the first time in days. A lady, somebody’s niece, had brought in some ancient earthenware. Colonial Williamsburg! Prudence hadn’t seen this one in ages. But she remembered that the earthenware had a top-dollar value. Just by themselves, the gravy boat and stand were almost a thousand. And this girl had it coming out of her petticoat. Nolan had boxed up all of Prudence’s earthenware, some of it from the early 1800s, and stacked it in the cellar. That stuff won’t rot if the cellar floods, he’d said. Sure won’t, Prudence had told him, but it’ll be even safer in the minivan. That was just one issue the Lopps had quarreled over. Nolan’s view was that life and limb were the chief things to spare from damage, followed closely by the fireproof safe filled with “important documents.” Prudence had argued that the register of deeds had all their marriage licenses and birth certificates in duplicate, and that all the bonds were insured. There ain’t but one copy of the antiques, she’d said. And the little ones could be stacked in back, right along with Mimi and all their clothes. Not being a man of wasteful expression, Nolan fired back with unbeatable logic: They could lug the safe into wherever they stayed at night, but the same could not be said for boxes of earthenware, pewter candlesticks, fading portrait paintings, and linen-and-lace doilies. “To travel light is to travel safe,” he quoted from a catalogue of his sayings back when he travelled for his job. In the end, Prudence gave in without contest. There was just too much to do in those final hours, with gathering Mimi’s things taking much longer than expected. “Ohmygod!” the young lady gasped when told her collection would rake in enough to buy a nice condo on any waterfront. “I had no idea!” Shoot! She knows better’n that, Prudence scolded. She knew darned well she was sitting on a fortune of stuff left by the old folks. Which brought Prudence to a point that Nolan always harped on: They didn’t have any kids between them. So, who would inherit the antiques? Prudence shuddered to think. Her good mood was diving. She changed channels. What she wanted to do was give all her things to the local historic society, which would then establish a foundation to raise funds to make “The Barn” a historic site. People’d visit more than you imagine, is what she told Nolan, always. “Like whom?” he’d ask calmly. “Nobody gave this place any thought for years, until we moved in. It’s just going back to the weeds when we’re gone, Prudence. It’s like you’re addicted to it all.” Prudence could spend an entire day in indecision about whether to nudge a dresser this way or that. And that was after a week of haggling with herself over which window it should “group with.” During several quiet evenings recently he’d suggested she found too much happiness “in those things.” He’d corrected himself each time, saying he meant only to say he wished she’d find more comfort in the people in her life (including him), and the values she’d long cherished. What he meant with the last bit, and she knew it, was that Prudence had stopped going to church after quarreling with the women about the asking price (that she ended up paying) for a walnut piano stool. “Am I that bad?” she asked the handsome TV couple seated on the couch talking excitedly about the vitamin routine they’d just discovered. ….. The phone was ringing and Mimi was yelping, dashing from one end of the room to the other. Prudence woke up to this nightmare cursing in her fashion. A couple of damns and lots of hells. She knocked the phone accidentally onto the other bed and it stopped ringing. “Hello?” a woman’s muffled voice rasped. Mimi let out a short, piercing bark and ran to the door and jumped at it, falling backwards comically. “Hello?” “Hold it!” Prudence commanded, pushing off of Nolan to sit up. “Yes.” Evelyn Askew was off and running. Prudence couldn’t believe Evelyn had gotten through. Evelyn couldn’t, either. She was surprised she even remembered how to dial her cell phone. It sounds like trains are all over the place. Avalanches and the wrath of God himself. Then Evelyn cried out. Continue › Forgot_what_it_meant_4.htmlshapeimage_1_link_0