"Sorry, Paul, we been too busy to look in on her. But Mayor says I can take you there before we go up to Deep Hole."
It was strange, chugging down Main Street. Paul knew he ought to have remembered how it was from yesterday. But yesterday Chincoteaguers were sloshing along in hip boots, or riding horses or DUKWs, and they were trying their best to joke and laugh. Today there were no home-folk faces. Grim soldiers were patrolling the watery streets, rifles held ready.
"What they here for?" Paul asked.
"To prevent looting," the Coast Guardsman replied.
But what's there to loot, Paul wondered, looking at the houses smashed like match boxes, with maybe only a refrigerator showing, or a bathtub filled with drift.
They passed other DUKWs plying up and down, delivering food to the Fire House, to the Baptist Church, to the few houses on higher ground where owners had refused to leave. And they passed heaps of rubble which once were old landmarks—the oyster-shucking house, and the neat white restaurant whose owner boasted he bought his toothpicks by the carload. Now there was not even a toothpick in sight.
As the DUKW headed eastward to the spit of land that was Beebe's Ranch, Paul winced. The pretty sign, "Misty's Meadow," was still standing, but it didn't fit the spot. There was no meadow at all. Only a skim of murky yellow water.