Daniel's mom took the news of his lunch plans in stride, her face showing more shock and bemus.e.m.e.nt than any pain of abandonment. Daniel used the excuse that he had to go back for their phones and his Zune, anyway. After stripping off his sweat-soaked clothes and sponging off with some soap in the upstairs tub-a bucket of downstairs tub water at his feet-he toweled off, pulled on a fresh pair of shorts and a new shirt, grabbed his backpack, and sped out the front door. The smells of heating tomato sauce faded behind. Outside, as he strolled through his neighborhood, a different smell greeted him: it was the smell of campfires, of burning wood. More than one rising column of gray smoke beyond the trees of his neighborhood signified the beginning of the great fires it would take to remove the debris. It was funny. Daniel had imagined someone would be coming along to scoop up the limbs and leaves. He never considered they might be having bonfires up and down his neighborhood, sending the ash up to chase away the clouds that had felled them.

He turned down the now familiar driveway. The address on the mailbox was 2238. Daniel memorized this, filing it away with brown hair and green eyes. All he needed was Anna's last name and date of birth, and he could practically picture her driver's license. He wondered if she were the sort of person to donate her organs once she was through with them. Seeing a neighbor at the charging station, retrieving a freshly charged device, made him think she probably was.

Daniel waved to the gentleman standing by the solar panel, his phone powering on and giving him reason to frown. He started holding it up to the sky, searching for a signal, while Daniel bounded up the front steps.

He knocked on the screen door, and a man inside yelled, "Come in."

Daniel pulled the screen door open and slipped inside. He wiped his feet, made sure the door didn't slam on the jamb, then followed the sound of cabinets opening and closing toward the kitchen. Anna stuck her head around the corner and smiled at him, then disappeared again. Daniel walked back to the kitchen to find the two of them chopping vegetables on either side of a sink, the open windows letting in what little breeze stirred outside.

"Smells good in here," he said, meaning it.

"We picked a lot of stuff out of the garden before the storm hit," Edward said. "Good thing, too, because the garden flooded."

"You want to snap peas?" Anna asked.

"Sure," Daniel said. He went to the sink to wash his hands, then realized the habitual gesture was futile.

"The tap's right there," Anna said. She pointed to a garden hose snaking through the window and tied down to aim at the sink. Daniel put one hand under the nozzle and squeezed the large, plastic trigger. A thick stream of warm water gurgled out. He rubbed some soap on his hands then rinsed them one at a time.

"How much water do you have?" he asked. He leaned close to the window and tried to trace the hose as it disappeared up and out of sight.

"Oh, we've got tons," Anna said. "I'll show you later. You'll love it."

Daniel smiled at her and thought about how shallow the word "love" was when used in such a way. To suggest that he loved ice-cream was now tantamount to heresy. It was a word reserved for a specific function, and none else.

I'm being an idiot, he thought, in a sudden bout of rationality.

"How bad was the storm for you guys?" Daniel asked. He started snapping the tips off the peas and placing the unused bits in a large bowl of vegetable sc.r.a.ps.

"The house held up okay," Edward said. "We lost some shingles, and our fruit trees out back aren't gonna make it, but I'd say we were very lucky. Especially since no one got hurt." He finished slicing a tomato and held out a piece to Daniel.

"Thanks." Daniel popped the thick, meaty hunk of dripping redness in his mouth and nearly fainted. "d.a.m.n, that's good," he said. "Pardon my language," he added, and the other two laughed at him.

"There's nothing like a fresh tomato," Anna said. She nodded out the window toward the large garden with its vine-covered trellises and tomatoes growing up large wire cones. Daniel saw peas on webs made of string and what looked to be corn stalks bent over from the wind. Some of them had been propped back up. "Unfortunately, we lost a lot of good stuff that we didn't pick 'cause they weren't quite ripe."

"Didn't think the storm would be that bad," Edward said. He swung the knife in Daniel's direction and bounced it once or twice. "I saw the tree that caught your house. Nasty wound, that."

Daniel popped peas two at a time and set them in a pile with the rest. "Yeah," he said. "There's no telling when we'll get that thing off or get the roof fixed. It went right through my sister's bed. Felt like an earthquake."

"How old's your sister?" Anna asked.

"Fourteen. She's a freshman. My brother Hunter is two years older." He watched as Anna sliced small mushrooms into perfect cross-sectional bits with a tiny razor-sharp knife. "What about you? Just the two of you live here?"

Anna tucked some hair behind her ear, a tic Daniel was madly fond of. She nodded. "I have a younger brother, but he lives with my mom in Pennsylvania." She finished the last mushroom and sc.r.a.ped the slices into a ma.s.sive bowl already full of lettuce, some other greens Daniel didn't recognize, green peppers, onion, and other buried layers of goodness.

"Is that where you guys are from? How long have you lived here?" He added the peas to the mix. The tomatoes were kept separate. Anna's father grabbed two large spoons and began tossing the salad while Daniel followed Anna's lead in setting the table.

"We're all from Atlanta, actually," she said. She looked to her father, then back to Daniel. "And my parents are still married. She just got a good offer from Penn State, and my dad works here, so it's just temporary."

"And then you guys'll move to Pennsylvania?" Daniel tried to choke back the raw dread in his voice.

Anna lifted her shoulders. "Or they'll move back down here if she finds something closer."

"Or we'll all end up somewhere else," Edward said with a laugh. He scooped the mix of veggies and let them fall back in place, a waterfall of bright and healthy colors.

"What about you?" Anna asked. "Have you always lived a few doors down?" She straightened one of the forks and smiled up at Daniel. He couldn't tell if she was playing with him, or if she liked him.

"I was born in Beaufort. We moved into this house when I was eight, so it's all I really remember. My dad pretty much built the entire thing by hand. He was a carpenter. Then my parents divorced a few years ago."

Anna's smile faded.

"It's okay though," Daniel said quickly. "Sometimes I think it's better than staying together and making everyone else miserable with the fighting."

Anna nodded. Edward turned and placed the ma.s.sive bowl of salad in the center of the table.

"Do you see your dad much?" Anna asked.

Daniel laughed, but obviously with more than humor in his voice. Anna held her palms up and shook her head. "I'm sorry to pry," she said. "You probably think I'm nosy."

The others sat down, and Daniel did the same. He draped a cloth napkin over his lap.

"No, it's okay," he said. "I actually hadn't seen him in over a year until yesterday."

"Yesterday?" Anna screwed her face up in confusion. Edward craned out a large scoop of salad and dangled it ponderously in Daniel's direction. Daniel s.n.a.t.c.hed up his plate and held it under the bushy load. Edward released it, and the plate blossomed with leafiness.

"Yeah," he said to Anna. "A guy from the power company dropped him off on our doorstep. He's living in our toolshed."

Daniel grinned at her and basked in her look of disbelief.

"You're not serious."

"As a heart attack," Daniel said.

Edward laughed at that. He got up, grabbed the tomatoes, and added them to the table. Anna poured water from a pitcher into each of the three cups. Daniel looked through the selection of warm dressings for the one with the most fat.

"So, mister . . ." Daniel looked to Edward to fill in the blank. He still didn't know Anna's last name.

"It's Redding," he said, "but I prefer Edward."

"Okay." Daniel swallowed. Even with permission, it felt unnatural to call him by his first name. "What do you do?"

"I'm a chemical engineer," he said. "I work for a plant outside of town. It's terribly boring stuff, I'm afraid."

"It's actually not," Anna told Daniel, stabbing a hunk of tomato. "He breeds and grows micro-organisms that turn regular stuff into useful compounds, kinda like how England once turned chestnuts into acetone."

"Oh, yeah," Daniel said. "Solid reference. Now I know exactly what you're talking about."

Edward laughed. "You kids dig in." He jabbed his salad with an audible crunch.

Daniel took a bite and was pleasantly surprised. The three of them ate amid a chorus of pleasant munching sounds. He forked a tomato and added it to his plate.

After a minute of contented silence, Daniel asked, "Any word on when we'll get power or phones back?"

Edward held up a finger; his mouth was full of a large bite of salad.

"It's just that my brother was away when the storm hit," Daniel said. "He had my mom's car, and my stepdad's is in the shop, so we can't get word to him."

Edward wiped his beard with his napkin, then returned it to his lap.

"Power might be out for weeks," he said. He nodded toward Anna. "We tried to go out yesterday morning to see what the damage was around town, but couldn't even get out of the neighborhood."

"There was a huge tree down across the entrance," Anna said. "Most of those chainsaws you heard yesterday were probably from the guys working on it."

"We were gonna try and get out this afternoon," Edward said. "I've got a chain and my old Bronco has four wheel drive. I was thinking we could help clear some roads." He lifted his shoulders like he wanted to do more, but clearing roads with a chain was all he could think to contribute. Daniel thought about the charging station outside and wished he was more like these people.

"I could come and help," he said. He lifted his fork with another bite. "And we've got a chainsaw."

Edward nodded. He looked to Anna.

"That'd be awesome," she said.

Daniel thought he noted a bit of a blush on her cheeks as she looked away from him and toward her plate. But it could've been the light reflected off the large hunk of juicy tomato she was steering toward her mouth.

22.

After thanking Edward and Anna for the incredible meal and helping sc.r.a.pe the dishes into their compost bucket, Daniel gathered his newly charged devices and headed home. He felt a bounce in his step, even as he powered on the Zune and listened to radio chatter about the worst hurricane since Katrina. They were still talking about the landfall being "near Charleston," which Daniel supposed gave the outside world the best geographical context. He was guilty of doing the same when he was out of town and people asked him where he was from. "Near Charleston," he would say. And that was precisely where hurricane Anna had struck.

He turned up his driveway and looked toward the sound of the buzzing chainsaw, expecting to find Carlton wielding it, but it was his dad. Daniel steered his direction and pulled his ear buds out. He stepped over yet another tree that awaited trans.m.u.tation into firewood.

His dad cut partway through a log, rolled it over with his shoe, then sliced through the rest. As the stubby cylinder rolled away from the tree, he killed the saw, which came to a rattling stop.

"Back already?" His father set the chainsaw down and pulled a rag from his back pocket. He wiped the sweat from his face and the back of his neck, a gesture that yanked Daniel through the years to a long ago past. He pictured his dad with his shirt off, a tool belt slung low over one hip, a rectangular pencil tucked behind an ear, a ten-penny nail held between pursed and concentrating lips, a hammer wielded like a dexterous extension of his flesh- Daniel had no idea if his dad had been sober back then, but in his mind he had been capable of anything. He looked past his father to the house he had built with a few friends, a ma.s.sive tree crashed right through the roof. One dormer was crushed, the other standing. Before, the house had appeared to be winking, now it looked more like it had suffered a blow, like it had a black eye. It had gone from something happy to something that needed st.i.tches.

"Your mom put together some fine sandwiches if you're still hungry," his dad said.

"I filled up on salad, if you can believe that." Daniel patted his stomach. "Is everyone still eating?"

"I think they're working on your sister's room and the living room." He waved his hand at the yard. "This feels productive out here, but it ain't really that necessary. It's just busy work to keep from thinking on all else we can't do."

"Well, the Reddings down the street are gonna take their four by four to see if the roads are clear. I was wondering if we could borrow the chainsaw. They've got a chain and some other stuff to help move trees."

His dad knelt by the chainsaw and opened a black cap. He leaned the machine to the side. "Let me top up the bar oil for you. You should take the gas can as well. Fill 'er up if anyone out there is pumping."

He went to the tall pile of neatly stacked logs and grabbed a green container from the top. A thick, mola.s.ses-like oil dripped from it and into the chainsaw. "You know how to crank and use this thing?"

"I'm hoping Edwa-that mister Redding does," Daniel said. "I'm mostly going along 'cause they said we could see if the roads were clear all the way to Hunter's girlfriend's house. I'm thinking they must be blocked in for him not to have come home yet, especially since he knows he has the only car."

His dad put the cap back on the oil canister and tightened the plug on the chainsaw. He stood up and pulled his handkerchief from his back pocket again, wiping his hands on it. "Maybe I should come with you," he said.

Daniel waved his hands. "No. That's okay. I don't want to impose on them-"

"Impose? I'll be coming along to help."

"That's okay, Dad."

"Let's go ask your mom." He picked up the chainsaw and turned toward the house.

"Dad, I really don't want you coming along."

His father threw a hurt look back at him. Daniel immediately felt bad for how it had come out.

"It's just that there's a girl going along, and I really don't want you embarra.s.sing me."

His father smiled. "It's my chainsaw. I traded what was left of my boat for it and a ride. So if it's going, I'm going." He winked and marched toward the front door.

"Wait," Daniel said. "You traded your boat for that saw?"

His dad stopped. "What was left of it," he said.

"And how much was left of it?"

He shrugged. "Not enough to float, probably."

"For a chainsaw," Daniel said.

His dad turned around to face him. "These things are worth their weight in gold after a storm. You've seen that for yourself."

"So you knew mom would let you stay."

"I knew you guys would be in need of one." He looked up at the tree leaning against their house. "h.e.l.l, I betcha I could whittle away at that thing if I was roped in and had some help."

"And now you're using it to come along and see Hunter."

His father smiled. "Let's not pose it to your mom quite like that," he said.

With that, he turned and bounded up the steps toward the screen door, while Daniel remained rooted to the sidewalk, the deviousness of his father competing in his brain with the man's generosity. He had a hard time sorting out which motivation had swept him back into their lives. The awful truth was that he preferred to think it was the former, so he could stay comfortable hating his dad. Once a person got used to the feeling, it wasn't so bad. It was all the back and forth that proved exhausting.

aaaa Daniel remained silent while his father introduced himself to Anna and Edward. A heavy chain was lifted from the garage floor and rattled into a coil in the back of a beat up Ford Bronco. Daniel's father placed the chainsaw beside it, and Daniel added the small red canister, sloshing a quarter-full with fuel. They loaded up, Anna and Daniel sliding into the back seat, the adults up front. Edward pulled out of the garage. An elderly couple crouching by the recharging station turned and waved as they pulled down the driveway. Edward coaxed a friendly beep out of the Bronco's horn.

"Just to warn you guys, it might be a short drive." Edward turned to Daniel's father. "We couldn't even get out of the neighborhood yesterday."