Target Time

Lately it seems that every time I open my computer or pick up my phone, someone else I know or know of has died. Sudden deaths, too.

If they haven’t died, they’ve had gruesome injuries.

Or there is another angry weather system bearing down on us.

(I’ve been in Houston all month, still waiting on that cortisone shot, scheduled for Tuesday.)

On July 8, we had a hurricane hammering the glass walls of my apartment, rattling them to show just how puny July Fourth festivities are by contrast.

Way too exciting for me, standing one thickness of plate glass away from Nature’s power.

Of course, like most people in Houston we lost power. But the building has a generator, so the lights and electric stoves came right back on. Not the air-conditioning, though. Not for 48 breathless, steamy hours.

We know how lucky we are. Other people have gone more than ten days without it.

That was followed by a week of no internet or television, so I couldn’t work. But I could read books, however.

For very light reading, I chose “Irene in a Ghost Kitchen,” the new culinary mystery by my friend Judy Alter. I admit to enjoying mysteries with food salted into the plot and Judy has written a lot of them, as well as more serious work.

On the day I got my internet back, the first piece of news I saw was that Judy had died. It was a shock.

Aword or two about this extraordinary woman: single mother of four adopted children, former editor, then director of the TCU Press, author of one hundred books for YA and adults, recipient of countless awards including induction into the Western Writers of America Hall of Fame.

And world-class friend and mentor to countless Texas writers and editors, including me.

You’ll recall the additional surprise that week of an assassination attempt on the former president, and the loss of several iconic entertainers—Kinky Friedman, Ken Hoffman.

A day or two later, a good friend of mine who lives near Waldeck slipped on her wet porch steps and shattered her ankle. That is an injury of considerable consequence for a person who lives alone in the country with dogs and donkeys.

It’s just my age, you’ll say. With that recent birthday, I’ve arrived at the place in life where people wink out on all sides without apparent warning.

Maybe so. I do note, however, that babies arrive just as frequently, though not with the equivalent shock value to most of us, bystanders as we are. News is never all bad.

And maybe what washes it in such dramatic portent is the weather that surrounds us, unpredictable and destructive as it has been.

For Winedale, that tornado. For Houston, there was a “derecho” in May that flattened trees, broke limbs and electrical wires—followed in less than a month by the hurricane. And last week, a sudden thunderstorm rose up to batter my windows just like Beryl did, maybe with more noise, in fact. More fear.

We feel a bit battered ourselves, here in the city. And I think longingly of Winedale after storms have passed. Of birdsong and the distant daytime noise of farm tractors at work.

Of the slow pastel evenings we have so often in summer, the sleepy chirps of redbirds roosting.

Of the morning walk in the woods with Rosie, the shine of early light on the surface of our tank.

Of home. Soon, I hope.

Readers can contact Hale at bfhale2017@gmail.com Her new book, This Familiar Heart: An Improbable Love Story, is available at the Fayette County Record office and bookstores everywhere.