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Debris they call it.  Sounds too fancy for what most people have piled up in their yards though.

Mrs. Jameson has someone's living room in her pool. Mr. Scott's prized 19th century ebony pool table is all that is holding up the north wall of the Boyles' detached garage.  There's a car in the Kramers' Florida room.  Serves them right, having a Florida room in Florida.  They are stupid people.

They nailed boards all kinds of ways but right over their windows soon as they heard a hurricane was coming.  Mr. Kramer packed up the wife and the three brats and left town before most people were sure the storm was coming our way.

You know where he took them?  Disney World.  They took a damned vacation.  Soon as they get back they'll be glad they left, but not glad they came home with not much left of a home to come home to.  Hell of a thing to see the front of your house standing like it always has except without windows or a front door to hide the parts that are missing.  Lots of houses here now that look like those facades they use in movies.  Another fancy word that, just like debris.

No facades here though.

Mimi stayed in their SUV with the kids while her husband picked his path to their front door.

She saw their mailbox in the middle of the road a few houses down.  She wasn't quite sure, but thought that maybe that was her brand new purple couch in the Cassidys' driveway under Mrs. Jameson's dog house.

"Be careful," she yelled out the window as if the en pointe routine he was doing around and through the variety of chairs, clothes, limbs, garbage, dead fish, and assorted household items was reckless.

"It stinks."

"Roll up the window, Mom."

"Ewww, gross."

Mimi had her hand over her nose, dainty, like maybe the coats of lacquer on her nails would block the smell.

Roger, that's her husband, jumped back, tripped and went down behind a small metal canoe.

If you can believe it, Mimi hurled herself from the SUV screaming her husband's name.  What she was thinking happened only she knows, but you'd think she'd seen the reaper take him right there when all he did was step into a dead cat.

Mimi hurtled the canoe; she's a petite woman, not much weight to lift off the ground.  She didn't quite make it though and slid off the side of the canoe right onto another waterlogged kitty.  Roger laughed at her expression; Mimi threw up in her lap.

Sure the smell was bad, all the dead cats in their yard from Mr. Franzetti's next door.  He couldn't evacuate the island with them and the animal rescue didn't get there in time.  All ten of those cats ended up in the Kramer's former perfectly landscaped Japanese rock garden.

 The kids were pressed up to the SUV windows looking for mom and dad, who had both disappeared behind the metal canoe.  The Mickey ear hats they wore were a little out of place over their stunned faces.  They had left the happiest place on earth for the land of destruction.  They could see the roof of their house, and it looked fine to them.  They couldn't see yet that's all there really was left to the house.  They couldn't see where the roof fell in over the nothing that was left of the back of their home or the sand filled interior of the nothing that was left.

All three of them screamed when the cop knocked on the passenger window of the SUV.

 "Where are your parents?"  He had to yell this through the window because they wouldn't roll it down.

 The oldest, a twelve year old girl who normally had the world by the tail, pointed her shaky finger at her yard.  She said, "Canoe," but the cop couldn't hear her.

 They watched him move to the edge of their yard, heard him call for their parents.

 "Are you alright in there?" He yelled.

 Roger's arm came up over the canoe and he waved at the cop.  "We're fine."

 Roger and Mimi stood up and leaned against the canoe.  "Everything is fine here, officer," Roger said.

 "How'd you get on the island, sir?  You shouldn't be here."

 "This is my house," Mimi said.

 "It isn't safe to be out here.  No civilians allowed on the island, ma'am."

 "This is our home," Mimi said.  "We aren't leaving.  We'll be fine here."

They were having this conversation across the yard, yelling back and forth.  The cop could still hear the bitch in Mimi's voice though.  She was telling him what they were going to do, and he was just supposed to accept it.  Stupid man, who does he think he is, is what the cop heard in her voice, and that's probably what she was thinking.  So what he said next wasn't totally out of line. She deserved it.

 "Ma'am.  You don't have a house left to be fine in.  There's nothing behind that wall.

 "There are dead cats all over my yard," she said like it made perfect sense for her to say it.  She was stating the facts.  There were dead cats all over her yard.

The cop countered with another fact.  "There's bay mud and sand piled up to the ceiling in the only room left in your house."

 Mimi and the cop exchanged a few more facts, while Roger watched.  He wasn't thinking about anything, couldn't process what he was seeing anyway.  His mind just wouldn't accept it.  The house across the street was gone, completely gone.  There was a truck in the driveway, but there was a boat where the house used to be.  There were some pipes sticking up out of the ground where the house had been and there was half of a shattered piling that used to hold the house up.  There was no road.  He'd used the four wheel drive in his SUV for the first time getting to the house.

There was no road anywhere.  He'd followed what he thought was the road, drove through a yard and over what was left of someone's detached garage.  He'd weaved in and out of shattered boats, mattresses, refrigerators, a grand piano, cars, couches, wood, and assorted unidentifiable masses as if it was the way he always drove home, scenery unchanged.  He was a seriously silly man anyway.

 "You have to leave, sir," the cop had changed tactics and directed his orders at Roger, the man of the family.

 "We just got here.  The kids are tired.  They don't want to ride anymore."

 Mimi screamed.  She had decided to see her house for herself.  She stood on the front door where it lay wedged against her front steps and a motorcycle.  In the doorway of her home was a wall of sand, some dead fish and crabs, and the worst smell in the world.  Decay under an unchecked, close sun.

*

It's easy for me to know what all of these people were thinking because I've lived across the street from them for five years.  The house with the truck, but no house is my little patch of swept away paradise.  The boat where my house was isn't mine though.  My little 16 footer is lodged in the hull of a 30 foot charter moored on top of the dock of the strangely intact marina across the cove.

I watched the cop and the Kramer's argue from the bed of the pickup, not mine, in my driveway.

The cop finally forced them into their SUV and escorted them out of the neighborhood and off the island, lights flashing just in case there might be someone to see I guess.  Maybe it was just habit.  I don't want to be too harsh.  The guy probably lost a lot himself and is stuck working because there are self-absorbed, drama queens like the Kramers who will just have to see that their house isn't really the only one left standing like they have assured themselves it will be.  If it weren't for them, maybe he could be recovering the debris of his own hurricane ravaged life.

 I, on the other hand, am just a sight seer.  I've been through this before.  It's been a long time and I was younger then.  Had a family, too.  We didn't go on vacation.  We went to a shelter, followed the rules, salvaged what we could and started over on the bay side of the island in the house that is now gone.

*

Officer Fleming gulped from his bottle of Evian. A couple of the other cops had salvaged cases of it from where the road used run east along the island.  They knew which resort condo it had come from because they'd helped the delivery driver off load it the evening before the storm.  There was a mandatory evacuation order and this yahoo came on island to deliver cases of water to an empty condo.
 
Mimi was perched on the hood of her husband's maroon SUV, legs crossed, sipping at a bottle of the Evian like she was in a damned commercial.

Roger leaned against the side of the SUV trying to contain his emotions.  Not good to cry in front of the kids.  He kept looking at them sitting in the cop car while the cop who'd forced them away from their home tried to reason with him.
All of it was some adventure to these kids.  They had no clue what was at stake.  Roger knew this.

 I couldn't read his eyes too clearly.  Kids to cop.  Kids to cop kids to cop.  Back and forth, back and forth.  I hung around as long as I could waiting for him to snap and smack the smug out of his kids or the vapid out of his wife, but I got tired of waiting.

Apparently, so did Officer Fleming.  He's the big dog at the substation.  I don't know what his title is, chief or head detective.  Whatever he's called, he gets all the respect because he's huge.  Muscles barely contained by the buttons on his uniform like some cartoon character.

He dropped a hand on the shoulder of the cop trying to reason with Roger.  The cop backed away.

"Look, sir," said Fleming.  "There's nowhere on the island for you all to stay.  Your neighbors are all gone.  Their homes are gone.  Your home is full of sand and mud and dead things.  It's dangerous out here.  Go to a shelter inalnd."

"I'm not staying in a shelter," Mimi huffed from the hood of the SUV.  She was laid across the hood not.  "I'm tired.  I can't sleep in a shelter with all those people.  On a cot."

"I doubt they'll even have one of those for you ma'am, but unless you have friends or relatives you can reach inland that are willing to take you, it's a shelter where you will end up."

"Shut up, Mimi.

Here it comes.  The breakdown.

"What?"  That sat her smart ass up didn't it.  He's talking back, now.

"I said shut up.  What are we going to do pitch a tent?"

"A tent?"

"Sleep in the truck?"

 "No."

Roger turned to her, hands flat on the hood of the Denali he'd just bought three months ago because the Envoy was no longer class enough for his wife.

I couldn't see his expression.  He certainly had one brow raised, twitching. He was sweating and his lips were clenched over his teeth.  Had to be because right after she said, "Let's go to the Hilton downtown" he pushed her off the hood.

*

The police substation is running already on generators.  A couple of the cops had rode out the storm inside the squat, drab brown concrete block building.  They were at home now.  They had homes because they lived inland well away from the water.  That's how they drew hurricane duty, I guess.  It's always the smart ones that get stuck with the jobs no one else is brave enough to do.  Us islanders aren't all that smart when it comes to hurricanes.  Most of us always rebuild.

Those who move off island always find a way to stay though.  If you dug into the history of those two cops who stayed for the storm, I bet you'd find they lived on the island at some point.  Even the tourists can't run us off.

Roger went into custody and was hauled off island in the back of a cruiser.  Mimi's driving ankle was twisted and swelling fast, so Officer Fleming drove the SUV full of kids and a sedated Mimi.

I don't know where they went, but it's a safe bet that's the last family trip they'll ever take.  Hope they enjoyed they enjoyed twirling madly in their teacups while their house blew away.  I'll try not to act surprised when Officer Fleming's summer struts along the boardwalk are accompanied by a be-thonged Mimi.

If there is a boardwalk for him to strut on. 

*

From the skiff I found in the bay behind Mrs. Jameson's house I checked on my boat.  Damage beyond.  I'll get another one.  I rowed under the toll bridge into the sound and surveyed that side of the island.  It was getting dark.

I slept under what was left of Hooter's at the end of the boardwalk in a salvaged tent.  There was a hole in the side, but I wasn't sleeping in the sand so it was fine.  I was sure no one would find me there.  Too much debris piled up along this end of the boardwalk.  No one would think that it was accesible underneath.

But I cleared a path and closed it behind me.  I tipped the skiff on its side and hoped it would be there in the morning.  I was hungry, but I'd deal with that in the morning.  I hadn't counted on crabs though.  And sand fleas.  And dead bodies.

I don't know what made it fall, but it fell.  Maybe I disturbed the debris pile too much. Things shifted.  Stuff tumbled away.  Other stuff settled.  Mr. Scott fell into the side of my tent and collapsed it.

I wasn't sleeping.  Too many sand fleas for that.  Crabs scuttling around.  Shouldn't they all be dead.  Some called shrimp the roaches of the sea, nothing kills them.  But it's crabs.  Now I know it's crabs.  I also knew when I crawled out from under the weight trapping me in the tent why there were so many crabs scuttling around at all.  Mr. Scott.

He'd stayed.  I knew he was staying.  Riding out the storm.  He always did.  I usually stayed with him.  This one though, it gave me a bad feeling.  Sometimes you just know ,but even knowing doesn't knock the stubborn out of some.  Mr. Scott for one.

He wouldn't leave with me.  Hell, I didn't go far.  I was just inland across the bay bridge in a house with a bay view that flooded right up to the top of the second story steps.  It was dark.  The windows were boarded. The radio got left downstairs.  The only sound was the wind shredding the roof, things exploding against the side of the house, and tornadoes.  All night.  I never thought about storm surge, just wind.  Wind. Constant wind.  Even during the calm, I could still hear the wind.

Storm surge washed Mr. Scott Iggulden clear across the island along with shorn pilings and potted plants and patio chairs and photographs and living room furniture and toys and small boats and televisions and window frames and all the other debris.

The debris of people's lives, life debris.

Scott's right arm was bent the wrong way back and his legs looked too thin.  But his eyes were closed.  There were crabs on his chest.  I took a swipe at them.  I couldn't do anymore.

*

Roger was walking back on island across the Sikes bridge as I was walking off.  We both walked down the middle away from the edges.  We crossed at the high point.  I waved.  He nodded.

"Going home?" I called.

"Not much of a home to go to," he called back.

"More than I do" I said.

"Not anymore" he answered.

"More than Scott," I said.

"Yeah?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said.

"Right," he said.  "He's a lucky one.  Nothing's going to get him off island.  Me.  I'm gone."

I kept walking.  Nothing to say.  Too self-absorbed.  He would try to keep the wife and the kids and the SUV.  Maybe they'd go to Vegas next storm even if they were together and off island.  Debris.

Scott, he just might be the lucky one.  He'd stay on the island.

Regina Sakalarios-Rogers lives in Pensacola, Florida where she is an adjunct instructor of literature, composition, and creative writing at the University of West Florida. She holds a B.A. in English and an M.A. in Creative Writing, both from UWF, and travels the highways between Pensacola and Hattiesburg in pursuit of a Ph.D. at the University of Southern Mississippi.  She has previously published fiction in The Emerald Coast Review and poetry in Nightmares.