Storm Warning
Three weeks ago I bought a round trip ticket to New Orleans for a week of kid-free vacation. I imagined eating beignets at Café du Monde and watching sultry southern women flash breasts for beads in the French Quarter. I will rent a car, I thought, and drive through those muggy cotton fields and swamplands I knew well to Pensacola Beach. I reserved a tiny hotel room on water, and made a countdown calendar, with just two months of wait until my November departure. Now I need to make other plans, and my heart aches for Pensacola.
And all these memories erupt from my gut when I look at the news photographs of destroyed bridges and houses blown inside out by hurricane force winds, when I read about the twelve-foot alligator on the loose, when I hear citizens of Pensacola Beach cry over lost homes and pets and belongings. It's so damn sad.
Years ago I lived in Atlanta and took long weekends in Pensacola with my husband and young children. We stayed at the Best Western with its cement rooms and simple two-level architecture and slept to the sound of waves against the old fashioned pier and the sonic boom of military planes. We ate crab cakes and grouper sandwiches and french fries with loads of ketchup and played in that good clear bathwater at the beach. We collected flat sand dollars and whelk shells, held them to our ear, listened to the rattle of ocean rocks. We wore tacky t-shirts with sayings like Beach Bum and pictures of tanning flamencos lying under the famous Pensacola Beach Ball tower.
One late spring weekend my husband and I took a weekend alone, the only weekend we ever took during our short marriage, and drove through Alabama, past boiled peanut lean-tos and bar-be-que made of old palettes and took the I-85 exit called Fort Deposit because it made us laugh. We made love under a secluded canopy of pines and Spanish moss until a good ol' boy policeman with a gold nametag stopped by and gave us each a public indecency ticket.
"What in the heck are you doin' out here, Officer Tilley? It's a forest, we're not hurtin' anyone," I droned in my Southern accent, wrapping myself in the Indian blanket we spread on the moss-covered ground. I flashed him my left hand, let the ring catch the glinting lazy sun, sparkle in his eyes, such young eyes. I felt a river of sweat run between my breasts, down my back. My husband jumped on one leg, shoving a long leg into twisted boxers, silent and pink with May sunshine embarrassment.
"I'm enforcin' the law, ma'am." Office Tilley turned his back, stood pine tall.
We dressed, folded out blanket, jumped in our car, slammed doors, waved goodbye to Office Tilley. He smirked, fading away behind us as we flew past cotton, more cotton, tall reeds along the highway. When we reached the beach that night, warm shallow moonlit waters never felt so good.
7:32:23 PM 
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