Stranded in Paradise Page 11

  But for some reason he’d gone. Life had gotten so unbearable, he knew his next step would’ve been suicide. That weekend he’d ended his restless search. He’d found what every man, woman, and child wanted: significance, security, and acceptance.

  Could he share his faith with Tess? How would she react? Would she think he was a religious fanatic—a kook?

  He suspected she already did by the looks she gave him when he prayed or picked up his Bible.

  Am I not still God? a voice whispered.

  Resting his head on the chair back, he closed his eyes and communed with the still, small voice, ever present.

  When he opened his eyes, wind still battered the shutters and tore at the canvas awnings as though they were made of paper. Even with the storm upgrade, Stella had made it clear that she would not leave her home. The beach was the worst place they could sit it out, but Carter didn’t intend to leave the old woman alone. He consoled himself that if the house had withstood a category five hurricane then surely it would hold tight in this storm.

  The door suddenly flew open and a frenetic Tess appeared in the front hallway. Carter bolted, feet flying upward. Muddy water pooled on her tennis shoes. Her hair was plastered in wet, noodlelike strings to her head. Slamming his hand to his heart, he asked above the thrashing jackhammer of the wind. “What happened to you?”

  “I was out on the lanai—this thing is getting worse.” She pointed to the sheets of water running down the window glass. “We’ve got to do something.”

  Closing his Bible, Carter laid it on the table. “Stella isn’t going to leave, and I’m not leaving her here alone.”

  “Six-foot breakers are battering the shoreline. It won’t be long until the roads are impassible.” She brushed past him to approach the window. “I’m scared, Carter. Honestly scared. We could be killed in this thing.”

  “We could get killed crossing the street.” Taking her by the arm, he gently drew her away from the frightening sight. “Is Stella awake?”

  “I don’t know—I don’t think so.”

  Stella walked into the room, blinking sleep from her eyes. “My, it’s nasty out there, isn’t it?” she said with her gaze toward the window.

  The former movie star was wearing Henry. The cat snoozed, perfectly at ease with Nature’s show of fury.

  Carter frowned. “Stella, the storm has been upgraded to an F-2 hurricane. We need to do what we can to save the house, and then get to a public shelter.”

  “No,” Stella contended. “I told you I won’t leave my house.” She smiled. “It’s like an old friend; I need to be here to protect it.”

  Carter wheeled Stella’s old ’72 Chevy pickup around the barricade and headed back on 36. “Stella has plenty of plywood and nails for the windows—if it isn’t too windy to put them up now. Thank heavens her house is only one story,” he said. “There’s an old generator too, but I don’t know if it works—it looked awfully old. We’ll pick up fresh flashlights and radio batteries and buy an emergency kit—canned goods, that kind of thing. Then we need to find out where we need to go when this thing really hits.”

  Tess looked out the windshield at the slanting rain. “If we can go anywhere.”

  He grimaced. “You’re right. There’s nowhere to run but into the ocean.”

  She swallowed back her rising panic as the truck plowed through sheets of standing water.

  Wal-Mart was teeming with frantic islanders preparing for destruction. They ran toward the entrance with their hoods and purses held over their heads as if that would keep the pummeling rain from reaching them. Carter parked the Chevy on the last row adjacent to the blue-and-white building and they made a run for the front door.

  Once inside, Tess headed for batteries while Carter wandered off in the direction of the snack bar. Tess hurriedly gathered a handful of C, AA, and D batteries then proceeded to a long line where she waited for over half an hour to make the purchase. Her feet hurt, and her hair looked like a wet dog’s fur. She’d give a king’s ransom for dry underwear.

  She heard snatches of anxious inquiries.

  “Is the storm still moving in our direction?”

  “Has it picked up speed or strength?”

  She gazed along the rows of shoppers and saw Carter rolling a cart loaded with a small portable generator and black, heavy plastic sheets. Among the storm paraphernalia, he’d set a tuberose lei. He held two cups of steaming coffee in his hands. Handing one to Tess, he then draped the floral offering around her neck with a smile. “I thought you could use a pick-me-up.”

  Touched by his simple act of kindness, she nodded her head and gratefully accepted the hot coffee—how he’d managed to roll a cart and carry two steaming cups without losing the contents confounded her.

  Men.

  Carter was pounding on the defroster when she climbed back in the truck cab. He’d thoughtfully pulled to the front entrance so she wouldn’t get wetter. “It’s not blowing right,” he explained before starting off again. Wheeling back onto the highway, Carter eased to the edge of the seat and mopped up moisture coating the inside of the windshield. The old heater clanked and chugged, and worn wipers tried in vain to keep up with the steady downpour.

  “I read an Oprah book once about a woman whose boyfriend dumped her off at Wal-Mart and never came back.” She held the dashboard with a white-fingered grip as the rain slanted in its heavy beat. Sweat beaded on her forehead.

  “Really?” Carter reached over her to mop the passenger side of the windshield.

  “The woman lived there for a few days without anyone noticing.”

  “Lived in Wal-Mart?” Carter said as if it were a sunny day and they weren’t driving through foot-deep flooded streets.

  “Yes—and she was expecting the moron’s baby. Had the child on the pots and pan aisle—or somewhere like that, if I’m remembering correctly. The employees found her the next morning. That must have been pretty shocking.” She lifted one hand to wipe her forehead and ran her fingers through her hair. Five or six hairs came loose in her hand. She looked out the window.

  “You can see the road okay?” She asked, wondering if she would be able to find the pavement in these blasts of wind and rain.

  “We’re fine.” He put a hand consolingly on her arm. “You can calm down.”

  Sheathed in the cab’s rain-tinged air, she started to relax. She edged closer to him, hanging on to his sleeve. He turned to look at her and grinned. Shame washed over her. He had to deal not only with a hurricane, but with a hysterical woman. She’d bet his challenges at O’Hare paled in comparison to this. Yet she’d never heard him complain.

  She eased closer to his warmth and ignored the curious look he gave her. Their closeness allotted a sense of security—as if he had a direct pipeline to … well, somewhere … or someone that she didn’t. She supposed some men would consider the move a come-on but Tess wasn’t thinking about propriety. She just wanted to feel safe. Sitting near like this, breathing in his cologne mingled with the tuberose of her lei …

  Well, a woman had to admit that his thoughtful gifts were special—nothing like the obligatory red roses or Godiva chocolates that made a woman shun the scales for weeks afterward.

  Carter McConnell was a nice guy—and the only thing solid she had to hold onto right now.

  “I admire your composure,” she admitted as Carter drove the pickup through the streets.

  He chuckled—a nice, manly baritone timbre that gave her tingles. Tingles. Whoa, Tess.

  “On the inside, I’m just as scared as you are. Maybe even more,” he admitted. “I have yours and Stella’s safety to consider.”

  A man willing to admit weaknesses.

  “But you don’t show it—you seem so … calm.”

  “If I am, the credit belongs to the Lord, not to me.”

  She averted her gaze to stare out the window.

  They fell silent as he wiped the windshield clear again.

  “You think I’m terrible, don’t you?”r />
  He crammed the rag in his side pocket. “No. Why would I think you’re terrible?”

  “Because I don’t believe.”

  “Faith is an act of the will; you have to desire to know the truth, and you haven’t desired it yet.”

  “And what is that supposed to mean?” Even as the words left her lips, she realized she sounded defensive.

  “If I tell, you will think I’m a religious fanatic,” he said.

  “Too late; I already do.” She grinned, then sobered. She’d seen him pray before every meal, read his Bible, saw him live as if his faith were something alive and real. Hardly the stuffy religion she’d heard about from Mona.

  “Okay,” Carter said. “You asked.”

  “I asked.”

  His eyes softened and he spoke calmly without censure. What she heard in his voice was concern for her, love. “No one can believe without the Spirit’s help.”

  “Then you’re saying God picks and chooses who will know Him? That hardly seems fair.”

  “God opens the doors, invites us to come to Him—He loves everyone, Tess, including you. But He’s like us; He doesn’t stay where He isn’t wanted.” Carter glanced over to meet her eyes.

  Why, he was a religious nut, trying to frighten her into believing! She looked away. “Sorry. I can’t understand the concept of a loving God. Sometimes I think He’s downright mean.”

  “He is a God of justice and a God of mercy.”

  “Mercy. Now there’s a crock. Where was God on September 11, 2001? Where was God when my friend Jennifer’s husband died of brain cancer and left her with two young daughters to raise?” she asked.

  Where was God the day Mona Nelson gave birth to her? She glanced at Carter as tears glistened in her eyes.

  Carter reached over and rested his hand on top of hers. “I can’t explain the bad things that happen in the world; I don’t even try. But I do know that without the Holy Spirit a person is incapable of grasping God’s words, and without God, life is meaningless. Acceptance is an option. But for me God’s love was so compelling I couldn’t resist it. It’s the only thing that gives me hope in this world.”

  She turned her head to gaze at the pouring rain as his words had resonated strongly within her. Right now, hope was what she desperately needed.

  13

  “Hurricane. From the Taino word meaning ‘evil spirit.’ In the Caribbean the storms are called the ‘God of All Evil,’” Stella said as she sipped hot cocoa.

  Carter had gone out to the garage to get the plywood to begin boarding the windows.

  Tess divided her attention between the kindly old woman and another television weather bulletin. She turned her head to scrutinize the strengthening storm out Stella’s front windows. The monster was getting down to business. Palm trees bent their heads to the bully, deferring to its greatness.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” The featherlike touch of Stella’s hand on her shoulder drew Tess from her reverie. Breakers lashed against the fawn-colored sand, churning it to dark chocolate, kicking up heavy spray. An a lae keokeo—Hawaiian coot—drifted with drafts, his shrill cries echoing through the stormy late afternoon.

  “Even in her fury, Nature is an awesome sight.” Stella spoke in a soothing, confident tone—one Tess knew should have calmed her. Her thoughts kept returning to Carter’s words on the way home from Wal-Mart: It’s the only thing that gives me hope. The thought had begun to take root in her heart and now it seemed to echo over and over, answering her heart’s plea.

  “I never cease to be amazed at His power,” Stella’s voice interrupted her reverie.

  “God’s power?” Tess tasted the name on her tongue, foreign—neither sweet nor sour.

  “God’s power. If you’ll excuse me.” Stella tuned and left her alone in the living room. Rain lashed the window.

  Tess closed her eyes and drank in the scent of the rain. Her thoughts drifted. What kind of man was Carter McConnell? Certainly the first man she’d ever met who openly spoke of his faith, of commitment to God. She wasn’t sure what to think about that. Her grandmother’s faith was born of the need to avoid hellfire rather than the alive kind of faith that Carter claimed.

  She had always felt that Christians made awkward, bumbling attempts to express why they were so happy, why they existed in a perpetual state of spiritual euphoria. Carter had experienced no such hesitancy. He truly believed what he practiced.

  She turned from the window as Stella breezed back through the doorway, carrying a large tray filled with a teapot and two cups. A plate of lemon cookies sat beside the cream and sugar.

  “Thought you might enjoy something warm. I wonder how Carter is managing that plywood.”

  Tess turned on the threadbare sofa, and leaned forward to accept her tea. “I should go help him… .” Her thoughts returned to their current dilemma. The storm’s intensity grew minute by minute. Outside, torrential rain hammered the storm-tossed sea, scattering sea foam like dried orchid petals. She felt a sudden urgency to go help Carter even though he’d told her he wanted her to stay with Stella.

  “It should have been done earlier,” Stella confessed. “Fredrick’s talked about it for days, but you never know about these storms. Often they blow themselves out before they hit land. Who would have thought that with the normal threats behind us a rebel cyclone would decide to rear its ugly head in January?” She lifted the cookie plate to offer one to Tess before placing it back on the coffee table. “Would you do the honors, dear?”

  Shutters banged against the stucco exterior.

  Stella frowned. “I do worry about Carter out there. I wonder if he’d like some tea. It’s chamomile.”

  Stella glanced over and her tone softened, “He’ll be fine, Dear. If he needs your help he’ll tell you.”

  Startled that her thoughts had been so easily read, Tess changed the subject. “You said your husband was a movie director?” She noticed with a frown that the spoon was tarnished yellow. She wondered if Stella would mind her polishing the silver; she was still itchy to help in some way—any way.

  “Yes—but I doubt you’d know any of his films.” Stella proceeded to name half a dozen films that Tess had indeed seen on the Nostalgia Channel. After telling her so, Tess grinned and spooned sugar into her cup. “I’m honored to be in the company of a famous Hollywood celebrity.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t be.” Stella laughed ruefully. “Scandalous would be a better word choice.”

  “Oh?” Her smile faded.

  “My husband was called to appear before the Army-McCarthy hearings.”

  Tess slowly lowered the cup back to the saucer. McCarthy hearings. Didn’t that have something to do with a Hollywood blacklist back in the fifties? “I’ve heard of the hearings; I’m not sure what they were about.”

  “They were nothing but a witch hunt,” Stella snapped. The old woman visibly bristled, her eyes turning as chilly as the howling wind. “The hearings were convened to investigate a series of charges leveled by Senator Joseph McCarthy.”

  “By the Army? How did your husband get involved?”

  The old woman’s eyes hardened. “It’s a complicated story, one much too involved to tell.”

  “No.” Tess scooted to the edge of the sofa. “Please. I’m interested.”

  For a moment it looked as through Stella wouldn’t comply—that the memory was still an open wound. Then, slowly, she set her cup back on the tray. The thin china rattled. “It was Edgar’s destruction.”

  Stella studied her cup for a moment, and then continued, “McCarthy had a consultant on his staff named David Schine who was drafted into the army in 1953. Roy Cohn, McCarthy’s chief counsel, began a personal campaign to pressure military officials into releasing Schine from service, though he’d been drafted, so he could return to Washington. Early in 1954—March, I think—the army retaliated by documenting what they called Cohn’s ‘improper intrusions’ into Schine’s military career. McCarthy responded by claiming the army was holding Schine ‘h
ostage’ to keep his committee from exposing communists within the military.

  “Well, it rolled on from there. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation, of which McCarthy was chairman, voted to investigate. They also decided to allow live TV coverage of the inquiry.” Stella glanced up.

  “You weren’t born yet, of course. For four years, beginning in 1947, McCarthy had been accusing people of being communists, destroying the lives and careers of ordinary people, and a number of people in the motion picture industry, but no concrete evidence had ever been shown that linked any of the accused to the Communist Party. But that didn’t stop him.

  “Several hundred performers whose only ‘crime’ was belonging to or supporting organizations or causes that McCarthy named as ‘subversive’ were blacklisted. No one would hire them.”

  “Couldn’t someone do something?” Tess asked. “I mean—”

  “The Screen Actors Guild, the Screen Writer’s Guild, the Screen Directors Guild made no effort to stop this … this evil. On the contrary, they cooperated. If they tried to protect their members, they knew that the American public would think the guilds themselves were subversive, which would mean the public would stop going to movies, which would lead to a massive loss of jobs.

  “One accusation was that the communists were placing subversive messages into Hollywood films and were in a position to put negative images of the United States in films that would have an international distribution.”

  Tess leaned back to digest the information. “And your husband was involved?”

  “Yes, Edgar was involved. In 1946 the Screen Actors Guild was listed as a union with communist influences. So, some so-called friendly witnesses were called before the Un-American Activities Committee to be interviewed. Robert Taylor, Richard Arlen, Adolphe Menjou. Jack Warner, head of Warner Brothers Studio, named people on the studio’s payroll that he suspected of harboring left-wing sympathies, including my husband.”

  “Was he involved?” she asked.

  Stella drew a deep shuddering breath, and Tess could see that simply talking about that time in her life disturbed her. “I’m sorry. This is too sad for you.”