Claire Hopple
I never want to see a bucket again.
I have taken the word “disaster” out of my vocabulary.
Each time I pass the river, usually twice per day, I regard it with suspicion.
Some streets look like the hurricane just blew them to smithereens a few hours ago. Some streets look like nothing has ever happened. Some streets are still blocked off. Some streets are purely mud, paper or plastic shreds waving from the meager branches of leftover trees, and the backs of tractor trailers turned at unnatural angles.
When I looked at the river that one Friday, only roofs stuck up out of the water. It reminded me of looking into the Grand Canyon: the view did not compute. I couldn’t process it. One roof detached and floated away, but it floated so slowly that it looked like an optical illusion. I ran into a friend who was crying and I wondered why she was crying and of course she was crying. Why wasn’t I crying? Her kids were asking her questions that she couldn’t answer.
I would wake up at 4 or 5 a.m. to text my mom because the text might actually go through at that time. Calls were impossible at any time of day. I asked her where else was affected; was it just Asheville? I asked my mom questions I should have been able to answer better than anyone because I was here. But I couldn’t answer them because I was here.
These two really nice guys sitting at a downtown corner told me the “homeless secret,” a.k.a. the library’s wifi password and exactly what spot on the sidewalk to stand on in order to have a chance at connection. John was waiting in line at the ATM because suddenly cash was real again. That’s all anyone could take. Otherwise, we couldn’t buy gas to get out of town. We’d heard the traffic was ludicrous anyway.
We would start the car, just the battery, and sit inside so we could listen to football games and play cards while attached to headlamps and cans of sparkling water.
I could go for weeks without power, I said over and over again, but I can’t live without running water or internet. I said it like a negotiation.
We made it to John’s parents’ house an hour away. They didn’t have anything but water, and that was more than enough for me. I’d go to this one Starbucks (I hate Starbucks) inside a hotel to try and get online, to try and communicate with my boss. The whole company was incredibly understanding and didn’t have any expectations. But I wanted to keep working because something had to be normal. While I worked, John took truckloads of supplies back to Asheville every single day and helped set up a free store full of everything for everyone.
I came back that first weekend to clean up the makeshift store and ended up leaving chalk messages on friends’ stoops, peeing in their backyards.
We returned permanently after seven full days because our house had regained internet and power. Still no water. I realized I wasn’t saying “home,” only “back to Asheville,” like the city had turned on us. Like the city wasn’t the victim.
That’s when everybody was filling up buckets at creeks and streams for flushing water. That’s when everyone had scheduled flushes and designated bathrooms, if they were lucky.
Clean drinking water would take another month and a half or so. We’d actually listen to press conferences from this unfortunate city water guy who told us about turbidity levels and who had probably turned into a vampire.
There were people handing out water bottles at the rescue mission while I was taking a walk––again trying to pretend that everything was normal. I declined their offers and kept on walking, thinking those bottles were for people who really needed them. Then I immediately felt dizzy. I was shaking, and my mouth was dry. I called John to tell him what happened. He said to go back and take a water bottle. On my way back down the hill, I took two bottles. I gulped them down and my mouth felt sandy afterwards.
Now the wildfires are creating their own oddly similar paths of destruction on the other side of the country, and I can’t hear the wind blow without wincing. I’ve slept through an earthquake, I’ve been grazed by a lightning bolt, and I’ve outrun a tornado on the highway with its cinematic funnel in the rearview, but nothing has ever felt like 3:35 a.m. on Friday, September 27, 2024.
I don’t know what parts of town will make me cry and what parts won’t make me notice them at all, but I hope I still cry. I hope we all still cry. I hope we never get used to this.
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Claire Hopple is the author of six books and the fiction editor at XRAY. Her stories have appeared in Wigleaf, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Forever Mag, Cleveland Review of Books, and others. More at clairehopple.com