A word beforehand: Categorization seems to be primarily important to many Literotica readers. "A World Without Men," contains an element of magical realism. It also contains lesbian sex, hetero sex, interracial sex, and a whole lot of weather and landscape. To my mind, my stories don't fit neatly into categories. Their pedigree is as muttly as their author.
Also, a note about format. Literotica formatting collapses the spacing between sections in my stories, leaving the reader without a marker that signals a narrative jump. Alternating trios of slashes (///) and back-slashes (\\\) now serve as the marker.
Thank you for stopping by and giving the story a little of your time. Salud.
A World Without Men
The ferry rode high on full throttle across the sound. The pilot cut the engines back at the first channel marker and the bow settled as we turned toward the point. Even at this distance we could see the devastation along the island. Com tower down. Wind turbs and solar gone. Trees, copses of old sycamores, shorn of their limbs. All this on the leeward shore. My little house in the Mounds, facing the sea, had taken the storm full brunt. I felt anxious for the Sisters.
Plastic flotsam jammed the cove. Nine boats were sunk at their moorings. Four others were listing and near awash.
This is the state of the world now, I thought. There is no refuge. This is my life.
We couldn't dock, due to wreckage. The ferry idled and the crew brought us ashore on the big life raft, supplies to follow.
Our approach to the landing took us under the shadow of a pair of wood masts, looming from the water at a list. They were the only things in all the area that looked pristine.
/ / /
We secured the raft and disembarked. My first priority was to see the house. Pending my divorce from Kevin, it was to become my permanent home.
My initial supplies would be stacked for me and I could deal with them later. I grabbed my pack and walked the 500 feet from the landing to the village center. Storefronts were boarded up, windows shuttered and taped. Torn vegetation littered the square. It looked Third World.
My seasonal neighbors stood in clusters, scratching their heads in commiseration, still disbelieving the scale of the storm. A few of them waved in greeting and called.
"Some mess, huh?"
All I could offer was a nod in agreement.
Some mess, yeah. Like marriage. Like being alive.
"Hey, you saw the tower's down? No cellular."
Please, please, please, dear god, let my little house be intact.
"It'll make you sick to see the dunes."
It was a mistake to pause. John Dobbs crossed the square with a drink in his hand. He's the island's Sgt. Nosey.
Eyeing my legs.
I'm 32, he must be 70. Tall and jowly, with a gin blossom nose, florid and pitted with pores. Usually inebriated enough to think he's charming.
"Macy," he said, "your place didn't do too bad, I hear." He winked at me with his rheumy eyes. "Keep your optimism high, sailor."
"At ease, John. I'm long out of active duty."
His eyes scanned the street behind me for my husband. I heard the question even before he asked.
No, Kevin is not coming, not again, ever.
"No kidding, you came out alone? Really?"
Really, you creep.
Nothing wrong stateside, is there?
We're divorcing, thank you.
Oh ... so, why're you the one to rescue the house?
It'll be mine soon, mine alone.,
When will you be ... available?
To you? Absolutely never.
"... Bill Shirley?"
The name woke me up. I'd stopped listening to him. To cover the lapse I said, "I know, Bill's hard to get hold of. You've been out to the dunes?"
"Oh, they didn't do too bad either. They'll come back."
"How much survived?"
He shrugged. "Thirty, forty percent?"
"Less than
half
is not too bad?"
"Well, yes and no. Forty's better than zero."
"They'll take a decade to recover," I said.
"Maybe not."
I said, "I have to go, John," and took off.
"You need anything, Macy, you let me know," he said.
Sure, John. Count on it.
"Get ahold of Bill as soon as you can."
\ \ \
Under normal conditions the Mounds stood a brisk twenty minute walk from the landing.
The path ran through a pine wood, the Flats, one of the largest remaining on the island. The storm had left it puddle-swamped, obstructed by fallen trees. Every few hundred feet or so, staggered on the left and right of the path, were sites where pines lay on the ground like the spokes of a wheel, flattened by microbursts, winds that sheer down like a colossal foot stomp, storms within storms.
Not too bad, Sgt. Nosey said. Would forty percent of the house beat zero?
I reached the walkway that marked the beginning of the Mounds and climbed the wood stairs. Ahead lay that simplifying reality — assess, repair, rebuild. Meet the immediate needs for sanity and survival. Restore myself in stages.
Call upon self-reliance. Rid myself of magical thinking.
Whatever awaited, I meant to meet it.
/ / /
The lee of the property came in sight. The backyard had been turned into a pond that isolated the shed. The privacy fence had been flattened, all except the gate, as if foot-stomped like the pines. Patio furniture, which had been stacked and covered, lay tumbled across the shallow flood.
Weathered shingles too, dozens. Torn from the windward side of the roof. I thought of a thousand decks of wet cards.
The back of the house, shuttered whenever we were away, looked intact.
From the side path came a view of the ocean, listless and gray. Before the path turned the corner, the seaward reach of the property came into view. I dropped to my knees.
\ \ \
The landscape had been warped. There was too much sky. It registered first as
They're dead.
The Sisters, all three, on the ground.
I couldn't reconcile myself to the reality. These beautiful old trees. Sister cypresses. Guardians, seers. Companions. Killed? Toppled landward by the storm. Trees that had aged together, so old their branches reached into each others space, outstretched limbs entwining. In the dark they could look like one entity, a single tree standing with three peaks and three trunks.
They had fallen as one.
I picked my way into their midst, ducking, bending, stepping over, pushing through, finding space, snagged and scratched, enveloped by the smokey, sweet smell of the wood and brushed by their evergreen leaves that grew in fans and retained enough moisture to dampen me good.
I emerged from the tangle, and walked close to one of the trunks, running a hand along its papery bark. Ahead stood a strange wall, something out of a fairytale. The Sisters' roots were fanned in the air, so heavily intertwined between trunks that the sod had come up intact. They had entwined above and below.
It would take a crane to set them upright, if that would do any good. Heavy equipment on the island would have other priorities for weeks to come. You couldn't get a crane here, anyway.
Somewhere within me was a refusal to believe that nothing could be done, but,
Oh, my Sisters.
Their lives were already slowly, slowly ebbing away.
\ \ \
I stood with them a long while, scanning the shore. The storm surge had taken enormous bites from the dunes. Up the coast, all the distance to where it disappeared into a haze, ramps of sand ran to the surf. In its few hours of rage the storm had reshaped the coast.
Resigned to loss, I turned and took my first full look at the front of the house, and was, in the opposite way, stunned. The lack of significant damage seemed implausible.
Half of the roof stripped of shingles and paper. The facade muddied. Shutters all intact. No glass. Wood filagree trashed. Gutters and drains, eh. The trellises in the surrounding gardens all flattened, but what could be easier to replace?
My real fear was interior damage, leakage, sagging ceilings and water stains that resembled clamshells, spreading from the upper corners of walls. Warped floors. Salted wires. A breeding paradise for toxic molds.
Before going in, I circled the house, unlatching the shutters, thinking if I had had the choice to save either, the house or the trees, as much as I loved, and needed, the house, I would've saved the Sisters.
/ / /
I hadn't factored the loneliness waiting inside. Out of blind habit I flicked the wall switch. Nothing of course, no surprise, and yet the lack of response — well, that says it, the lack of response. That had become Kevin and me.
After opening the windows, I stood quietly near the couch. A melancholy light divided the walls at long angles and, despite the background of low surf, the house rang with stillness.
The Sisters were dying a prolonged death. I was alone in the world. Boo-hoo me.
I sat at the table and felt that I could let myself have a good cry, a swollen-eyed, tear streaming, snot flowing cry — and nearly did, only the full blow of emotion waned before its peak, and very few tears came. Self-pity is an ugly thing.
/ / /
The sun broke through and brightened the water. Upstairs I saw no bordered stains, no buckling paint, no drooping ceilings. If the roof had leaked, the insulation might have absorbed whatever water had come through. I checked and double checked. No smell of mold. All the house seemed to need was air.
I went outside and began to pick up debris. The breeze blew cool and sweet off the water, and I applied myself as if on active duty again, diligently, with focus. Most of the damage in the front required only simple tools to clear, a hammer, a pry bar and a saw. I tore out what remained of the trellises and stacked the wood. The fence required extensive dismantling and salvage, a multi-day job, something for later. After a few very productive hours, my spirits rose with a sense of self-rescue. Rescue my house = rescue my life. A little diligence, a little patience, a little fortitude, a little sacrifice, that's really all it would take, a lot of littles adding up.
The breeze grew stronger as the afternoon wore on. The low, dark line of clouds on the horizon suggested that night would come early. It renewed the urgency to take care of my roof.
After washing up and changing into jeans and a loose sweater, I headed back to town to find Bill Shirley and make arrangements to have my house, my life, my soul, made whole again.
\ \ \
Bill was an island man of old school, a caretaker of many properties throughout the year. He was short and round, with bulging eyes, and his shoulders shook when he laughed. He could look thuggish when he was peeved. Kevin had gotten a kick out of him.
He never locked the side door to his shop. I made my way to his crammed little office and uncrumpled some paper to write a note.
Hey, busy Bill, half my roof's gone. See me, please! With love, Macy.
