Roddy Bane shakes his head as the weatherman

announces that a hurricane watch is in effect for the

islands. His wife Sheila-Anne is seated on a settee across

the room; his sixteen year old daughter, as beautiful as a

morning sun, is standing by the front door. Mr. Bane is

absentmindedly twirling a glass filled with rum.

“Can’t he find something proper to tell people?” he

mutters. “Good Lord, I’ve lived all my life here and no

hurricane ever…”

“Aw, won’t you hush up!” interrupts his wife who is

trying to make sense out of the weatherman’s

predictions.

“This is serious you know, they say this is a dangerous

storm,” she adds making a gesture with her hands to

silence him.

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“A dangerous storm…Bah” retorts Mr. Bane.

“Nothing but a little…”

“Well listen nuh,” chides Sheila-Anne, her eyes glued

to the TV set as the man on the television points out the

current coordinates.

“I wonder what’s it like to go through a hurricane,”

says Tarah, almost to herself, flicking a handful of her

dark-brown tresses over her right shoulder as she peers

out into the fading light.

“Not a very nice thing,” responds her mother, who

saunters towards the front door where Tarah is standing.

“I can remember my mother telling me that in 1935 a bad

hurricane hit Dominica and plenty people did get killed,”

she says nodding her head sagely.

“All this meteorological stuff……Bah!” interjects Mr.

Bane. “Never heard anyone talk about a hurricane in…”

he leans back into his favourite armchair frowning.

“Papa God, make this storm pass us,” utters Sheila-

Anne as she quickly makes the sign of the cross.

“All you not hearing,” ejaculates Roddy. “All you and

dat TV is two of a kind, I wish dat hurricane would come

for true and let me hear you talk bout storm coming.

“Roddy!” exclaims Mrs. Bane, her teeth clenched and

eyes glowering. “How can you say dat?” she spurts.

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Mr. Bane doesn’t reply, instead he leans forward

reaching for the centre table where the bottle of D-Special

rum, newly opened, is standing. He tops his glass with

some more of the stuff. Without much of a thought he

dumps the contents into his mouth, swirls it around, then

swallows with a gulp. The stinging beverage makes his

eyes twinkle with redness, as his face contorts with a

hideous grimace. He coughs.

Mr. Bane is a sawmill operator at a local lumber yard.

This afternoon he is home earlier than usual as the

company has let the workers off since midday, so that

they could look after their families in the anticipation of a

direct hit by the storm. He had passed by Port-of-Call for

a drink or two with a few of his colleagues, and by the

time he reaches home he was thoroughly intoxicated.

Tarah, who herself would normally have been out

with her friends about this time, has taken the

government’s warning seriously. She has decided to stay

indoors, keeping periodic checks on the storm’s progress

via the radio and television for updates.

Mrs. Bane peering out of the window observes in the

distance huge masses dark of clouds, she says, “Boy! The

sky so ugly, I’m glad you are here with me. I’m going to

check the kitchen to see if we might need anything.”

As the afternoon wears on the sky changes drastically;

an otherwise red and orange sunset is obscured by the

foreboding cheerless clouds.

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Mr. Bane is propped up in his favourite armchair,

dressed in the same blue jeans and denim long sleeved

shirt that he wore to work today. His head is cocked to

one side as Tarah tries to wake him pleading. “Daddy,

come on, help me to nail some plywood over some of the

windows,” she begs. “They say the hurricane will hit us

at midnight,” she adds shaking him. Roddy’s reply is

blurred and angry.

“Aw leave me alone,” he chides, “can’t you see…Can’t

you see no hurricane, Bah!”

Tarah gives him a disgusted glance.

Suddenly a dazzling streak illuminates the evening

sky, plunging the villa into a thick darkness, followed

several moments later by a deafening roar overhead as

thunder pounds the already humid atmosphere.

Tarah covers her ears giggling while her father is

startled. “What the !…what was dat?” he says springing

to his feet in a daze.

At that moment Mrs. Bane returns from the kitchen

holding a long white candle, its warm flame casting

dancing shadows. “Hello dear,” she says “the lightning

must have cut the light. We have a flashlight nuh?”

“Yes Mum,” answers Tarah, “I’ll go and get mine.”

The contours on Tarah’s feminine silhouette recede into

the darkness. Mrs. Bane sets the candle on a saucer,

placing it on a shelf below the portrait of Jesus Christ,

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then she turns, walks over to her husband who’s still

sitting in his armchair. She touches him lightly on his

knee and sighs. After a pause she says, “so look at you,

Mr. Bane. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

She turns and continues speaking . “Drunk like a fish

when you should be helping us get things under control.”

Another clap of thunder rumbles in the heavens and

slightly rocks the house, followed by a burst of heavy

raindrops large as golf balls that now beat upon the roof.

Tarah returns with the torch, training its beam from

window to window. She says, “I really wish we had

boarded up the other windows.”

“Let’s just take it easy,” advises her mother trying to

sound comforting. “Maybe…Things won’t be as bad as

all that.”

Tarah complains further that she is feeling chilly since

the evening temperature had dropped a few degrees as

the evening thickened over the island. When she went to

search for the flashlight she had donned a thick woolen

sweater and a pair of slacks to keep her warm. She also

brought a small transistor radio which she has on a local

radio station, its soft music mingling with the feeling of

apprehension in the living room.

Roddy is still clutching his empty glass, but now he’s

singing a refrain of a reggae number; “When the rain

falls,” he croaks, “it won’t fall on one man’s house top,”

he runs his hand over his unshaven face, then points in

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the direction of his wife and child and adds, “Remember

that.”

Time draws by slowly. The evening is uneventful.

Tarah is sitting by the front door on a low stool. She is

thinking over what her mother has said about the

hurricane of 1935; then she shudders at the thought of so

many people being killed.

Mr. Bane has other thoughts as he peeps between half

closed eyes. He silently concludes that his wife was naïve

enough to expect a hurricane of some silly tale told by her

mother, perhaps to keep her quiet like a little girl, or

discourage her from playing outdoors in the wind and

rain. As the midnight hours arrives, Mr. Bane breaks the

gloomy silence.

“As you see, midnight, no hurricane,” he laughs, a

deep-belly kind of ridiculous laugh.

Mrs. Bane retorts defensively “well it’s better to be

prepared than to be not ready and wind and rain come

smashing up everything and you don’t know what is

going on.”

“But I want to see the wind and rain, like how they

does show it in the learning channel,” Tarah says with a

smug smile on her face, making the dimples in her cheek

stand out like two holes on either side of her mouth.

“Anyway,” replies Sheila-Anne, “you and your father

does really get under my skin.” She begins to walk

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around the room checking to see of everything is in

order, then she sits on the sofa and sighs, “well my dear,

we might as well try to get some sleep.” She tries in vain

to stifle a yawn. “Perhaps your father is right, dem

weather people always predicting.” She nods in the

direction of her husband who is already asleep in his

armchair.

Dawn breaks under the ferocious winds, a low

atmospheric pressure has created ideal conditions for the

deadly vortex that has developed into a category four

hurricane—a very dangerous storm. Roddy, Sheila-

Anne and Tarah listen to the extremely high winds

accompanied by torrential rains that are now pouring as

if all the waterfalls in the world had been diverted over

the Bane’s residence.

Roddy, who seems to have slept off the effects of last

night’s carousing is houting above the screeching

scenario. “All you,” he bellows “get buckets, bath

tub…anything to put where dat leaking,” he advises.

“This really looking bad,” says his wife. Roddy nods in

agreement, his mind now sober, but rather confused not

knowing what to do in the present circumstances. Roddy

has never experienced anything like this before. He turns

his head abruptly to what sounds like someone trying to

yank off the entire roof. Roddy Bane is a well built man,

having gotten plenty of exercise from handling loads of

lumber at his work place. He considers himself fearless,

afraid of no one; but at the moment he feels a painful ache

in his chest at the mounting concern for his dear family.

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Up to eight inches of muddy rain water flows freely on

the floor. An earthy odor permeates the air. Outdoors the

gale continues to blow from every direction. Suddenly,

Mrs. Bane screams, “Oh my God.” Through the open

front door she recognizes Tarah’s girlish figure

crouching against the weather as she attempts to record

the scene on her camcorder. “Tarah!” shouts Mrs. Bane

with tears welling in her eyes, “get back inside.”

Her order passes in vain. Tarah’s fascination with the

phenomenon has her trapped within its magical grasp.

Meanwhile, Mr. Bane himself is at the entrance in a trice.

He too shouts to his daughter. “Tarah!” he yells, cupping

his thick hands around his mouth, “what do you think

you are doing?” “Come inside,” he commands her.

At that frightening moment, to his horror, he sees his

daughter being lifted clean from her feet and being

hauled several metres along a slippery lawn before she is

lodged in a low-cut hedge that acts as a fence along the

perimeter of the front lawn where she nows hold on to

prevent herself from being blown further, as well as for

the fear of the loss of her life, her camcorder now carried

aloft by the powerful currents tumbling and smashing

before her eyes. Roddy is almost dumbstruck, he gapes

unbelievably as Tarh is obscured from sight by the screen

of leaves, dirt and other debris hurled between them.

“What!” exclaims Sheila Anne, “do something” she

shrieks, tears now streaming down her face.

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“God helps me utters Roddy, as he bites hard into his

lips, “I’m going to get her,” he adds, his hands trembling.

“Hurry Roddy!” screams his wife again, the strong

wind blowing her hair into her face. They gaze for

moments as Tarah wedged among the branches of the

shrub some forty feet away, stares back at them with a

look of utter surprise and terror in her beautiful brown

eyes.

Roddy crawls on all fours, gripping the earth as one

would grip a blanket, inching his bulk forward, pushing

against what seems like the strength of twenty men. He

curses under his breath, wishing he could say the word

and all at once still the storm, but Roddy realizes there is

no way out. He now fears for both of their lives. As he

closes in to Tarah he calls out to her, “don’t move—

Daddy is coming to get you.” A few more feet and he has

reached the bushy branches of the schrub.

He orders Tarah to hold on to him while he firmly

grips the young lady around her waist.

Tarah instantly obeys her father. She feels more secure

as Mr. Bane’s towering form acts as a human shield, and

together they retrace their tracks back along the lawn,

pausing at times on all fours as the cruel winds wipes

around them. All the time Tarah is thinking about the

power of the wind as she witnessed first hand a number

of fruit trees completely uprooted. She also saw portions

of the roof of roofs of the neighbour’s home flying in the

storm like kites. At last they reach the house where Tarah

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sees her mother waiting anxiously, her hand holding her

jaws like one who has a terrible toothache.

It’s all right,” purrs Mrs. Bane looking over her

rescued daughter.

“Mother,” Tarah says. “I never know wind could be so

strong.” She gazes fearfully over her shoulder at the

dramatic view of a hurricane in full force.

“I never knew,” says her mother, glaring at Tarah,

“that you could be so irresponsible to try something like

that.”

“All I wanted was to record some action,” confesses

Tarah, “so we could watch it later.” Meanwhile the storm

is unrelenting like a monstrous octopus, its tentacles

lashing the villa with a barrage of powerful gusts.

Hardly a minute has passed since the child’s return to

safety, when Mr. Bane realizes the roof of the house will

not hold. “All you,” he says “lets go under there,”

pointing to an open space beneath the counter in the

kitchen, as the gusts outside seem to intensify.

“Quick!” he shouts. Sheila-Anne and Tarah huddle

beneath it clutching each other, followed by Mr. Bane as

what sounds like a huge wave envelopes the area

spewing large chunks of the stonewall, almost enclosing

the three of them in a dark tomb.

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For the next few hours the family is utterly quiet. Only

the horrifying screech of the wind can be heard, that

echoes in their very bones. Finally the wind subsides and

the sun shines with a brilliance as if nothing disastrous

had taken place. It’s brilliant midday rays revealing total

devastation.

Roddy Bane, meanwhile is pushing against a slab of

the stone wall that has enclosed him and his family under

the counter where they had weathered the storm.

Finally succeeding, he climbs out, then helps Tarah,

then Sheila-Anne. “Well,” he sighs, “I’ll never doubt

another weatherman again. They knew what they were

talking about this time.” Roddy took his wife in his arms,

kissing her gently on the cheek.

“Hey, you two,” says Tarah, “I want to experience

another. This is fun but just a little rough, don’t you

think,” she added rubbing her chin.

“You and your adventurous mind,” teased Mr. Bane.

“one of these days you will understand the real

adventure.”

“You mean I’ll be on televsion reporting live from

Dominica for CBS!”

Amid the ruins of their home they all break out in tears

of joy to be saved from the worst of the storm.

“I’m not sure about that,” replies Mr. Bane, “but you

127

nearly became a missing actor in a revised “Gone with

the Wind”.

“I guess that’s what they call riding the storm,” says

Sheila-Anne as she draws Roddy and Tarah towards her,

pressing them to her breast.