The Movies

by George Gauthier

Chapter 9

The Lord Was Willing So the Creek Did Rise

Before Hurricane Hellene struck the Southeastern US Kyle and I and our other friends in the city had thought ourselves safe from hurricanes. Our city was situated more than a hundred miles from the Atlantic Ocean and four hundred miles from the Gulf Coast Hurricane Helene made landfall. Situated as it was above the low lying Atlantic coastal plain North Carolina's Research Triangle lies west of the fall line at an elevation of more than three hundred feet above sea level.

In coastal regions the main threat from hurricanes normally is strong winds, crashing waves, and storm surge. Inland the main threat from hurricanes is torrential rains which can fall hundreds of miles from the coast and cause catastrophic flooding.

The rains dropped over North Carolina by what had become Tropical Storm Helene by the time it reached us were made far worse because of the counter-clockwise rotation of the storm winds which generated what is called orographic rainfall when moisture-bearing winds are pushed onto and over mountain ranges. It did not help that two days before Helene arrived, heavy rains had pre-soaked the ground in the Southern Appalachian Mountain. The deluge from Helene could only run off ridges and collect in the valleys of creeks and rivers, locally called hollows or hollers. This in what was already the second rainiest region of the country after the Pacific Northwest. The Nantahala National Forest is in fact a temperate zone rain forest.

Helene brought utter disaster to the inland region as four or five months worth o of rain fell in only three days totally overwhelming the drainage system. Towns in the Southern Appalachians to the west, those built along creeks, were totally swept away by roiling waters, buildings smashed by whole trees, houses, and vehicles converted into battering rams, leaving only their foundations if that much. Even the sidewalks got stripped away. Major roads including interstates were impassable due not only to flood waters but because bridges got swept off their foundations.

The citizens of Asheville, the major city of the western part of the state, long viewed as a climate haven, could only watch helplessly as its two major rivers flooded the downtown. Everywhere homes and businesses were destroyed or damaged. Flood waters unearthed and broke the conduits supplying potable water from two of the city's three reservoirs. Toppled trees and broken branches took out overhead power lines. Even buried utility lines were cut.

My heart went out to those poor souls who were swept away in the flash floods or simply drowned as waters rose in their homes sometimes trapping them in attics which they had hoped would remain above the rising flood waters.

Franklyn Dyson had put his three autogyros and their pilots including our boyfriend Will Laurier at the disposal of the authorities. Their assignment was scouting and airlifting victims where there was at least a minimal landing field, thus freeing rescue helicopters to rescues where a landing was impossible.

Rescue helicopters could hover in place and were equipped with winches which could lift victims from the roofs of their houses or from the tree tops they had taken refuge in. One advantage of the autogyros was that they were so very quiet. The folks on the ground could hear what the pilots shouted over a portable loud speaker. In turn the pilots used shotgun mikes to pick up what was shouted back to them.

Will later told us that besides the damage in the valleys from floods, high winds had felled trees over large areas of timber especially atop mountains and on steep slopes where water soaked soils lost their grip on tree roots, leading to the massive blowdowns.

In our own city located in the eastern part of the state we had to deal mainly with loss of power. Our local power lines were OK but the storm cut high-voltage power lines which carried electricity generated by the TVA across the state line into North Carolina. Our region had to deal with local blackouts and brownouts from low voltage.

Fortunately the upgrades to our spooky old mansion included four Teslas PowerWalls so no matter the fluctuations in the availability of transmitted electric power Kyle and I and our neighbors had enough for minimal lighting, electronics, and refrigerators though definitely not enough to run the air conditioning.

With our home situation manageable, Kyle and I volunteered to help the search and rescue effort. The professionals in fire and rescue, police, and national guard would work the heaviest hit areas to the west. We volunteers would work the peripheral areas east of the major disaster zone, , where, no longer confined by narrow valleys, overflowing rivers and creeks waters spread out over the landscape, collecting in the lower areas. With the flow so much less energetic, the flood waters could not sweep buildings away but even a few feet of water would put a store or shop out of business temporarily. A flooded ground floor and basement could make a home uninhabitable.

The role of the volunteers was to navigate the flooded neighborhoods and contact stranded persons to see what assistance they needed whether evacuation or other help. The electric company had records of addresses which needed power twenty-four seven to run life sustaining medical equipment like respirators or to charge the oxygen concentrators which had largely replaced oxygen tanks for those with breathing difficulties. Some households might have emergency generators or battery backups like our PowerWalls, if so, fine. If not we would call it in.

Dyson lent Kyle and me an inflatable twelve foot rafting and fishing boat that could transport up to five people. It had only one set of oars but we took along a couple of canoe paddles too. We contacted the authorities and offered our services. It helped that both Kyle and I were certified rescue swimmers and also trained in first aid. So we saddled up and drove westward to the headquarters of the rescue coordinator. He was mildly skeptical till we gave him a ride on our craft.

"This is a fine watercraft. Besides I remember you two now from news reports about your rescue of those kids from the van which sank into the river. You both have credentials and experience in rescue swimming and first aid, and your boat has enough buoyancy and room to be useful. Quite a few boats were lost in the flood so we have had to rely on inflatables like yours and canoes. Anything that floats. We have to get to these people and make sure they are OK or if not, get them help"

"So I am going to enroll you and assign you two guys an area to work together. As an organ of the state government, our office can issue you official IDs and brassards so that no one will mistake you for looters."

"Looters?"

"Yes. Looters are out there all right, low-lifes taking advantage of other folks' misfortune, preferentially working our region since access to the worst hit areas in the mountains is so limited. Keep an eye peeled and report if you see something, but do not intervene yourselves. That is the job of law enforcement."

"There is a briefing in the school auditorium in twenty minutes which you do not want to miss. Cots are set up in the gymnasium for you to sleep overnight. It looks like we might need you guys for anything like a week to ten days."

"Thanks, but we drove here in a borrowed camper so that is where we will sleep when we get back in the evening though we will be glad to use the restrooms and showers."

"Fair enough. The school cafeteria will serve a hot breakfast in the mornings and a stew in the evenings. After the briefing be sure to pick up printed copies of both the topographic and road maps of the area. You can also download digital maps via our Wi-Fi connection. Remember, there is likely no electric power, internet, or phone or cell service where you guys are going."

"Understood, but we also have sat phones so we can get in touch if we need to."

"Excellent. With your limited transport capacity, you will contribute most as scouts. Find out who is where and what kind of assistance they need, especially if you run into victims whom you cannot transport yourselves such as the bedridden or who need an floating ambulance or just a group too large for your craft. Call it in so we can dispatch a more capacious rescue vehicle."

"Got it!"

Water, Water Everywhere, Nor Any Drop to Drink

Poet Samuel Coleridge described it perfectly in his "Rime of the Ancient Mariner", except in that case it was because his protagonist was adrift at sea surrounded by undrinkable salt water. In our own disaster, it was polluted flood waters which were undrinkable. With city water systems out of commission, and no electricity for pumps in private wells, people were at a loss for potable water. Some folks in old houses equipped with wood burning stoves or fireplaces could boil water and we would later find folks who used charcoal briquets on their backyard broiler to do the same. Also, outdoorsy types might have water filters for camping trips.

Now Kyle and I could not transport useful amounts of drinking water, but we could pass out packs of water purification tablets. These tablets gave the treated water an off taste, but at least it was drinkable and would not make you sick.

We offered them to stranded residents as we paddled through our assigned search zone, reporting in by my sat phone. (Kyle had lent his to another team.) Most folks were more than glad to see us, though disappointed that I would not lend them my phone to contact loved ones. We explained that the folks they wanted to call might not have service anyway. Besides we were under orders not to overwhelm the phone network with low priority calls.

Most folks were glad we stopped by and checked on them. Even if they were OK with sheltering in place, it comforted them that they had not be forgotten, that the authorities now knew who they were and what their situation was. Others grumbled that our efforts were inadequate to the need, and they were absolutely right, but we were doing all that we could, Kyle and I and the other volunteers.

Some people we encountered had special problems like diabetics who had to keep their insulin under refrigeration. We carried a supply of dry ice in a cooler and We also provided small cans of gasoline to run home generators for just that purpose.

At on point we passed several parked cars submerged almost to the their roofs on one of which we found a bedraggled calico cat. The poor thing look positively miserable. She looked up hopefully as we approached and uttered pitiful meows. Kyle reached up and set her into our boat. She soon settled down atop our pile of gear in the bow.

In one memorable incident we followed the sound of a police whistle to a house which while itself still above the flood waters was isolated by the lower land which their driveway and the county road ran over. There, standing next to two kayaks pulled up on the lawn we found two beautiful teenage boys.

The way they looked at each other and grinned as we approached I suppose was due to the way our tongues were hanging at, mine and Kyle's, at the sight of these two lovely youths, so slender and glabrous, a pair of raven haired beauties about halfway in height between me and Kyle. The white tie cords of their colorful low-rise Speedos invited a suitor to reach out and undo the bows. Palpitations!

"Hi, I am Finn and this handsome fellow to my left is Eike. And no, despite our resemblance we are not related -- not by blood anyway, though very much by affinity, if you take me meaning."

I nodded. "So you two are a couple. Kyle and I are boyfriends too. We live in the same building though his apartment is one floor down. My name is Troy, Troy Ganymede."

"Seriously?" Finn replied. "No offense, but that sounds like a stage name."

"For better or worse, my name is all too real. Ganymede is an anglicized version of my grandpa Trofim's original surname, one which most folks who do not hail from the Caucasus Mountains would find an unpronounceable combination of eight consonants and only two vowels. My given name is either an anglicization of my grandfather's given name or an in-joke, a reference to the prince of Troy abducted and carried off to Olympus by Zeus as his boy toy. Growing up I got both explanations from my folks."

"I see. Either way I am glad you guys were close enough to hear our whistle. We have an injured man inside whom we cannot transport on our single man kayaks but your boat is plenty large enough. The house behind us is his, Mr. Benson's that is. He was riding out the storm and was getting along well enough till we showed up to the house. When he hurried down the stairs to confront what he took to be intruders, his foot missed a step and the poor man fell all the way down spraining a wrist and breaking an ankle. We have managed to stabilize him but he really needs to get to a hospital. Come inside. We'll show you."

"Ok, Finn, but I see a bandage on your left foot. So what happened to you?

"It is why we went to the house in the first place. I had stepped barefoot onto broken glass and gotten a nasty cut. So we stopped by this house hoping they had a first aid kit to control the bleeding. Luckily they did. You see when no one answered when we called out, we entered by the back door. Wouldn't you know it, right there in plain sight was a large first aid kit atop a shelf. I patched myself up, and Eike cleaned up the blood I had left on the floor."

I interrupted his narration:

"Your injury is why Kyle and I protect our feet with elastic water socks which slip on without laces. Their special anti-slip soles can not only protect the feet from rocks, shells and gravel, but also from broken glass like you ran into."

Finn nodded. "You guys are fully dressed for the occasion with both jammer swim suits and swim shirts and even kayak helmets. But then, you are here for a serious purpose while the two of us a just a pair of kids out on a lark and the next thing to being naked in those abbreviated Speedos of ours. Gosh, does that make us a couple of flirts?"

"You know it does."

"You are absolutely right. Some folks are unkind enough to call us exhibitionists. We just figure that when you are as young and good looking and sexy as we are, you are practically obligated to share your physical beauty with the world at large."

"Boys after my own heart," I assured them. "Anyway, what happened with the home owner?"

"After I got my heel attended to we walked into the living room only to encounter Mr. Benson who was standing at the top of the stairs. He mistook us for a pair of intruders and likely looters, grabbed a baseball bat, and rushed us, only to take a tumble down the stairs."

The homeowner confirmed their story in all particulars and expressed his gratitude for the first aid the boys had rendered. Very professional he described it.

"First aid training as Eagle Scouts." Eike explained.

"It's just too bad that we aged out of scouting last month. Alas, in little more than a year, no longer teens, we will no longer be genuine twinks but mere twanks in our twenties, on our way to aging out yet again as twunks when we hit thirty. Such is the cost of growing up." Finn noted philosophically.

I chuckled at Finn's three-fold terminology. The three life stages of twink, twank, and twunk for one's teens, twenties and thirties were clearly named after the model on the past tenses of the verb sink, sank, sunk and even echoed their meaning.

"Your scheme does have a definite logic Finn: twinks are in their teens, twanks in their twenties, and twunks in their thirties, but is that really fair to twinks? The teen years start at thirteen so amount to only seven years at best, but really only five when you acknowledge that boys at thirteen and fourteen are still just children, before their full sexual awakening so not yet twinks."

"You really should mark the mid-decade years, the fives, as the boundaries. That way twinks get ten full years from fifteen to twenty-four, not turning into twanks till twenty-five. After ten years as twanks, that is till age thirty-four twanks become twunks for the next ten. At forty-five a man would be deemed to have reached his middle years which will last for two decades till sixty-five. After that they are oldsters."

"This periodization better reflects the slower rates at which guys show their ages in modern times compared to the past thanks to improved nutrition, sports and exercise, healthier cities, etc. Just look at gay heartthrobs like Timothée Chalamet and Troy Sivan. They both turn thirty this year. By your reckoning neither has been a twink for going on five years and will soon turn into twunks. Does that reflect reality? Are they over the hill? Do those two look any less desirable than when they first burst onto the scene? I don't think so, and I don't think you do either."

"You know Finn. I believe our new friend has the truth of it!" Eike allowed. "Which means that we two will be twinks for six more years not for less than two."

Finn nodded. "Works for me."

Extraction

"OK Finn, we should all head for rescue HQ where medical assistance is available for both Mr. Benson's injury and for yours. That cut really calls for a tetanus shot just in case."

"My first aid training tells me that you're right. Lead on!"

"OK. Now we will head directly toward HQ rather than retrace the route which Kyle and I took to get here. That was much longer since it ranged back and forth across our general axis of advance. Mostly we will keep to the waterway and flooded areas. When we come upon short stretches of higher ground like road berms or the slightly higher elevations between swales, the four of us, by uniting our efforts should be able to portage Mr. Benson and your two kayaks and to drag the inflatable across."

"Let's hope our strength is up to the challenge. None of us is a Jack Reacher."

"Not to worry, Finn," Kyle told him confidently. "Troy here may be the smallest of us, but the guy is a real power house -- as you will find out for yourself when he takes you into his arms."

"I'm looking forward to that!" Finn said with a wink.

Eike rolled his eyes theatrically. "You and your blondes! Honestly Finn there is just as much to be said for raven-haired beauties and gingers. Maybe even more."

Turning to me Finn said dryly:

"As you must realize, simply from the company he keeps, that my friend Eike here is inordinately fond of raven haired twinks such as myself." Finn explained.

The chuckle I heard from the injured homeowner Mr. Benson caught me by a surprise. I turned and remarked:

"You seem pretty cheerful for a man nursing a broken limb."

"I took ibuprofen and anyway I have a high pain threshold, as a dentist told me when I was a kid. You guys also help by distracting me with the entertaining banter passing back and forth among you and your new friends. You see I grew comfortable with the company of young gay men thanks to my youngest, him, his friends, and his lover."

"So, you are not gay yourself."

"No, not at all, but I am still a member of PFLAG."

"Still?"

Benson grimaced. "Alex is gone now. Three tours to the sandbox was one too many. It was the blast from an RPG that got him. I had to give my boy a closed coffin funeral, his body was mangled that badly, dismembered really, or so they told me. I could not bear to look."

With a pained look Kyle told him: "I know that I am supposed to say that I am sorry for your loss, Sir, and I am, but that phrase sounds so rote, so formulaic. I really do sympathize; I am no stranger to loss myself, but those I lost were in their middle years or elderly. Your son was how old..."

"Twenty-four. He had only two dozen years but he did get a decent taste of life and of love and of his father's instant and total acceptance of who and what he was when he made the big reveal which was no surprise at all. I knew Alex was gay before he did. Anyway you four guys reminded me of what made my Alex so special, his joie de vivre and his well-developed sense of humor. Thank you."

That made us sober up. We spent most of the rest of the trip in companionable silence.

After turning Benson over to the care of the EMTs the four of us younger guys used the communal showers then went over to the camper to outfit the kayak kids with T shirts, shorts, and slip-on sneakers. We took the evening meal together, all of us opting for second helpings of the savory stew on offer. At bedtime we paired off, me with Finn and Kyle with Eike.

That night we did not go at it full throttle but made love almost languidly, enjoying the easy company and feel of the warm naked bodies of our new friends. Morning did start off with a round of energetic romance. We also got the good news that in the fall both lads would be living on campus, so not so far from me and Kyle and the rest of our circle.

We would have driven them over but their neighborhood was still cut off from access by road. So they had to go back the way the came, by water. Now though they did wear their Speedos on the short walk to the river bank, they slipped them off their hips and threw them into the bows of their kayaks. Finn explained that yes that was naughty of them, to make the trip back bare ass naked, but who could tell with them seated in their kayaks?

"You guys will fit right in with the friendly folks at our spooky old mansion," Kyle assured them. "The grounds out back and around the pool are clothing optional. Also we have access to a private lake for windsurfing and standup paddle boarding, also clothing optional."

"For two nature boys like us, that sounds great!" Eike enthused. "No need to keep an eye out for cops or nosy parkers. Did you know that last year some Karens got the cops to arrest a guy for public indecency even though he was not in public but in his own kitchen. You see he always slept naked. On waking up he would step into the kitchen to make coffee: grinding beans and setting up the drip coffer maker. The Karens were scandalized to look through the window of his kitchen to see him parading around in a state of nature, in public view to hear them tell it."

"His lawyer got the charges dismissed by pointing out that the man was not on public view at all. He was at home. His kitchen window looked onto the side yard of his property not the street. The Karens could see him only because they regularly ignored his No Trespassing signs to traipse across the property as a short-cut to a newly installed commuter bus stop. That made them trespassers not innocent members of the public.

Turning the tables the lawyer filed a criminal complaint charging the women with voyeurism as well as criminal trespass. His client was no exhibitionist; it was the ladies who were Peeking Thomasinas! The spoilsport cops and district attorney refused to make arrests or prosecute, but the lawyer filed a civil lawsuit and won hands down. The court not only issued a restraining order, it made the Karens pay for a tasteful wrought iron fence plus compensation for damages to his holly hedge and the sod on the side lawn with tripled damages for emotional distress and damage to the homeowner's reputation."

Summing up, Eike said: "And so Justice was served!"

After they left, Kyle and I then went out to resume the interrupted sweep of our assigned area.

Previous
Chapter