Being all by herself doesn't help. "If you're a single person, it's
harder to get anybody to be concerned:' she says. "If you're an
employable adult, social services generally don't deal with you. You've
got to have a family and you've got to have kids. Single people are
expected to weather this."
Marines are now her surrogate family. She takes the time to talk
with them, admires how they don't complain even when tent city residents
treat them like busboys. It irritates her that people who come to this
refuge have the audacity to complain that the water is too hot or too
cold. "This is not a hotel," she snaps. Nerves are frayed. The civilities
of life sometimes seem as though they have been left at home in the
rubble.
The newspaper is her link to the community; pages hold lists of
services, and columns try to put friends and neighbors in touch.
Motivation worries Counts. There is no one to push her.
"I wish I could plug in my hair dryer," Counts says. Conveniences.
Freedom. She wants them back. "Oh, honey," she says. "It ain't no picnic.
You go up to get a shower and men come to you and whistle at you or talk
to you. I'm not interested. This is not a party. This is serious
business.'
It is pointed out that sex occurs even during wartime. "I'd like to
know how they could be relaxed enough to enjoy it. I haven't even thought
about that since I've been here, especially when you don't even have a
bed" She has a cot.
And she could use a pair of boots. "The only thing I hate is the
mud," she says, "I don't mind the rain. In fact, it's kind of
peaceful."
Counts grew up in Homestead. She didn't want to leave it. "I was
the homecoming queen," she beams. "Eighty-eight girls ran for homecoming
queen." She didn't go to college, wishes she had. "I probably wouldn't be
here."
Where she wants to be next is Nashville. She's a country singer.
She's tried to make it there before, about 10 times, and wants to give it
another go. Counts sticks on the long, dirty-blond hairpiece she wears
when she sings. She fluffs it and smiles. She plans to write a song about
her hurricane ordeal. She just wants an idea of where life will lead
before she starts it.
But when she does, it might go something like this: "How does it
feel to have your world blown away....'
Becky and Bill Spillers know the tune. They've been living with
nature's threat to their livelihood for years.
"We started this thing 18 years ago and now we're going to start it
all over again," Becky Spillers says. "We started it with a master's in
horticulture, and ignorance. The Spillers had 10 acres of nursery and 11
acres of lime trees-and no crop insurance.
The Homestead area is known for its nurseries and what used to be
the Homestead Air Force Base. Stung by a pesticide that betrayed farmers
and damaged plants, the area already faced recovery from its man-made
nightmare, the so-called Benlate disaster.
"This was going to be a very good year for a lot of the nurseries,"
Becky says, "Everybody said if the Benlate doesn't get you, then we'll
get a hurricane. We've had it.'
Spillers, 47, calls herself a pessimist, her 49-year-old husband,
Bin, an optimist. A workaholic. A man with no time for interviews. She is
frank. Her voice sure and calm, almost too calm for a woman whose
business was tossed to the wind. "He thinks this is fun," Spillers says
of her husband. "A big camping trip, a challenge."
By South Dade standards, the Spillers came out pretty good. Their
house, a mile from the nursery in the Redlands, held fast. They stayed in
the house. The radio kept them sane,
Their van looks as if it was rolled down a mountainside. She thinks
it ironic that the vehicle was hit by a lime tree. They found one in the
engine. "It frustrates the hell out of me. They won't come and get it,"
she says. "I want that car out of here."
When the storm stopped, they found a porto-john in the middle of
the mess. "It blew in and landed upright, just like you could walk in and
use it.' When its owner went cruising to retrieve his 250 missing
toilets, she considered holding it for ransom. Her salty wit is
sustaining.
When a house alarm went off, she and her husband watched as a woman
threw rocks at it in an attempt to get it to stop. "Finally, my neighbor,
a fireman, went over and shot it out," she reports. "I highly recommend
living near either a policeman or fireman."
These are people with their lives planted firmly in their own soil.
She cried once. Sat down and let it out. Then she went on. She says she
doesn't feel depressed. But she finds it difficult to talk to people who
have been hit hard by the storm. They're depressed, she says.
Her 13-year-old daughter dealt with the aftermath for a week. Then
she "fell apart' and went to stay with relatives. Spillers makes a
gallant search for the silver lining. "We cat by candlelight," she
says.
"Nothing had to be done to get my head set," says Bill Spillers,
sitting on his tractor. "I knew what to do: you've got to build a shade
house and you've got to water plants. There wasn't any psychological
barrier, it was a physical limitation."
"I personally feel a hurricane is a man's sport, that's my theory.
I'm going to write a paper on it'" Becky Spillers says, "because they
have so much fun. They love those tractors. They love those chain saws.
They love being out there doing those manly things."
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