October 2024, right after Hurricane Helene
It began right after Nummit’s fundraiser for Hurricane Helene relief. I felt positively virtuous because I had given twenty whole dollars to the cause. I texted my parents that I’d had fun, even though it was all so serious, of course. Then they mentioned that my aunt and uncle were going to Black Mountain that weekend. They needed to check on their house.
I am not sure why I thought I should go too. Perhaps I suggested it as lip service at first. But the next thing I knew, I was texting my family in western North Carolina and hoping they had cell service so they could see my offer to help. If they would have me, I wrote, I was theirs all weekend. I remember thinking, “It’s the right thing to do.”
“But Emmy the conditions are not good. No power, water, cell service,” my aunt Katie wrote back.
Only then did I wonder what I was throwing myself into. Katie is infinitely competent on backpacking trails and at the helm of a sailboat; I should, I realized, take her “not good” seriously. Yet instead of dissuading me, her hesitation hardened my resolve from half-hearted to genuine.
The following morning, her response—“let’s do it”—felt like a beginning I would remember.
The next morning, there I was in the front seat of the Frenches’ Kia. I was not sure if I should be excited to see my little cousins or solemn on behalf of the occasion, so I just watched Katie’s calloused hands, pushed against the top of the steering wheel. She told her kids that whatever feelings they had in response to the destruction were the right feelings. Such an awesome mom, I said to myself.
Only later did Katie tell me she had said the same thing about a month ago, on the way to her mom’s funeral.
As we drove further and further west, we saw more and more scenes that bespoke the aftermath of mass destruction. As we drove past a ragged hole in the side of the mountain, I pictured a wave of mud slamming across the highway, creating the brown stain on the other side; as we crossed a bedraggled field, I imagined the swollen Swananoah River bursting from its banks and flattening the grasses. The massive bank of river silt beneath a stop sign on Route 9 seemed unremarkable in comparison, but of all the scenes I saw, it struck me most. Perhaps it stood out because rather than in spite of its banal setting. It forced me to realize that the damage permeated even seemingly innocuous scenes.
We drove under a tree trunk and over a power line. Then we turned down the driveway of the Frenches’ grandmotherly neighbor Sheila.
When I focused only on Sheila’s house, everything seemed normal. Sheila’s dog yipped and came wagging up to the car. My cousins, Aubry and Will, ran to embrace their neighbor. Katie, grinning, rolled down the window to wave.
When I turned to the yard, the American dream gave way to disaster. I found myself staring at the road over the creek, or rather, at the road’s absence. My memory fixates on the jagged pavement layers—they were easier to look at, perhaps, than the yawning gully, the fallen trees, the turbid creek. I had never seen a cross-section of a road before. I had not expected the asphalt to go so deep into the pungent, orange Carolina clay.
Then Katie was introducing me to the flurry of neighbors at work on the bridge, and I was worrying about first impressions and trying to think of something intelligent to say, and wondering who I thought I was, getting out of the passenger seat to see the destruction. Sheila, in contrast, seemed to take it all in stride. She came right up and embraced me, asking about Davidson and about my little brother. None of the storm damage appeared to shake her. She smiled and proclaimed that she and her husband had been “saved by the trees and God above.”
I think it was then that I first felt an irrational, overpowering need to write down everything—yes, everything! Everything! As soon as my family was ready to drive to their own house, I scrambled back into the car, and I was typing furiously before we even pulled out of the driveway. I didn’t know what I was going to do with Sheila’s words: “fat in a hurricane” because all the restaurants were serving free meals, some guy named Bill whose extensive connections made him the neighborhood’s “cell service,” so on. I just knew they demanded remembrance.
“The neighbors are doing really nice things,” Will said thoughtfully. I wrote that down, too.
“When horrible things happen, you see the best parts of humanity,” Katie agreed slowly. Then, with more confidence, she added, “It’s beautiful.”
A tree trunk perhaps a foot and a half in diameter dangled over my aunt and uncle’s driveway, supported by an unraveling power line. We parked next door.
My uncle, Berry, had driven to Black Mountain the day before, and it seemed he had been working nonstop ever since. I had never before seen him too tired to issue a hyperenthusiastic greeting. In its place, through mouthfuls of the takeout we brought him, he gave orders to drag tree limbs away from the driveway, stoke the burn pile smoldering in the backyard, and check the house for mold. I began my work feeling like a valuable addition to the team. After half an hour, I was exhausted, wondering how Berry had possibly managed this project by himself. And this is far from the worst impact, I reminded myself as the sunlight faded and our work finally wound to a close. We got so, so lucky. Blessed, even.
Most blessed of all, it seemed, by a community no flood could wash away. Over dinner in Sheila’s driveway, Berry and Katie’s neighbors laughed about everything: that, without power, they felt like “people in the 1800s;” that someone nearby had dodged a “noose” by avoiding a house closure just up the road; that Mrs. So-and-So had showed up at their door with pounds upon pounds of pumpkin cake. The neighbors’ gratitude for each other stood out too. Local restaurants fed everyone for free with community-provided food, someone told me proudly. What’s more, one man explained, “those first few days were grassroots, organic.” No leader had taken charge; instead, a whirlwind of community outreach encompassed the whole town. “‘Who’s running this?’ ‘Aren’t you?’” he quoted, smiling. Awestruck, I soaked up every word, notebook in hand.
Yet under the surface of that laughter and gratitude, I could see—as I wrote that night—“pain, and suffering, and loss that is now ‘normal.’” Part of the dinner conversation revolved around a looming necessity for expanded food banks. We also talked about teachers frantically checking if their students were alive. No amount of jovial banter could change the pain of those realities. “Unsettledness,” Katie called it.
At one particularly jovial moment, Berry whispered to me, “this is a different scene from four or five days ago.” But how deep, I wondered, did the jovial difference go?
I did not know. All I could do was write it down.
The next day was Sunday, and the question was not whether we would attend church, but when the service began. Katie and I left the house around 10:00 AM. Black Mountain Presbyterian had become both a place of worship and a volunteer center, so if we were early for church, we would simply help out.
However, we did not make it five minutes down the road before Katie stopped to greet Helen, an older neighbor my aunt treated like family. Their conversation seemed comfortably easygoing unless I focused on their words. Katie was asking whether Helen had enough water to drink and whether her cell service had returned—in other words, whether she was safe. The contrast between atmosphere and content was difficult to process.
Gradually, the discussion turned to Helen’s precious wooden furniture. It sat on new, now flood-soaked carpet, and it was beginning to warp and rot. Helen’s cheery equilibrium belied the impact that damage wrought, not only on her home, but also on her. Katie told me later that Helen had crouched on her hands and knees for days after the flood as she tried to leach the water from the carpet with a shammy towel. But the dampness was indefatigable, and she had given up the carpet as a lost cause. Now, she spent her hours contemplating how to move her furniture to safety. She lacked the physical strength to do it herself.
In the midst of the large-scale destruction I had seen, I had not stopped to consider the small, humanizing details the hurricane had destroyed. Just then, though, as I imagined watching pieces of my home slowly moulder away without any way to stop them, Helen’s chairs seemed equally important as broken bridges and downed power lines.
So much for volunteering at church.
Katie sliced the carpet to shreds with a box opener, and I gripped each sodden, weighty piece and dragged it outside. It was unbelievably heavy, and the sopping carpet fuzz and flopping pad underneath squelched and dripped in my hands. But when Katie and I hoisted the last chair to the bare concrete floor, it was worth it a hundred times over.
At last, we made it to church. I have never attended such a service. The pastor cried during her sermon. My family cried during the prayers. The congregation cried the whole time, especially during the passing of the peace. Yet in the midst of their tears, they also laughed and embraced and held tight to one another. Katie told me that when she had visited immediately after Helene, “people just needed to talk,” even people who usually kept to themselves. They needed information, and they needed to process the disaster. As I witnessed the way the congregation literally held on to each other, I realized that they also needed community. The mudslides, crushed cars and downed power lines still rest heavy in my mind. However, the unity with which my family and their neighbors confronted those disasters left an even greater impact.
I am back at Davidson now, but I am still thinking about my experience in Black Mountain. In fact, I have more questions now than before I left. I noted a connection between wealth and degree of recovery, for example. How do we address that? Black Mountain Presbyterian worried that donations would cease as soon as the next big disaster hit somewhere else. What to do about that?
In other words, I am still wondering about justice after Hurricane Helene. What does justice look like when the climate crisis wreaks injustice? Can we ensure justice for everyone—from people who lost their homes to people who just need help moving their furniture?
I do not know. All I have to offer is the words I wrote down. The last phrase I recorded was Sheila’s parting call to my little cousin Will as we drove him back to school. Before Sheila returned to the hole in her driveway, she called:
“Another week, buddy! We’re both gonna get through another long week!”
