Pensacola, Florida—Hurricane Irma made landfall. Most people are watching raw footage on the corner TV in this breakfast joint.

But not her. She sits at the counter alone. She has sugar-white hair, sharp blue eyes. She’s holding her coffee mug, people-watching.

“Can I sit here?” I ask.

“It’s a free country,” she says.

I shake her hand. Her name is Martha, she’s almost ninety. Her face is angelic. Her laugh is sweet enough to initiate world peace.

“Hope this Hurricane ain’t as bad as they say,” she says. “My grandson’s in Tampa.”

We are instant friends. This is a strong woman, I’m thinking, who knows how to fry chicken using nothing but peanut oil and the King James Bible.

On her breakfast plate: bacon, sausage, eggs, hashbrowns, and enough grease to lubricate the axle of a ‘69 Buick Roadster.

“Bacon’s what keeps me young,” she explains. “Doctors been telling me to quit eating it. What do they know?”

Miss Martha been single for a long time. She lost her husband forty years ago. After he died, she raised three children on her own.

“When

he died, all I knew was being a housewife. Had to get me a job’s what I done.” she said. “It was a hard time.”

She says her life began a second time. She found a job, and paid her own way. Hers is a story you’ve heard a thousand times:

Hardworking woman faces adversity, muscles her family through life without getting slaughtered.

Woman ages. She slows down. Her kids talk about her like she’s a saint.

She is a saint, of course. She’s the closest thing to holy you’ll ever see—just like anyone who taught children to fly.

Miss Martha is every woman who’s ever punched a clock. She is every woman who lived on coffee and bad habits, who still found time to make Deviled eggs for the grieving.

She is sacred. And she…

September 9th, 9:18 A.M.—Hurricane Irma is making landfall in less than 24 hours. Anxiety fumes are in the air—you could light a match and the room go up in flames.

I’m in a Holiday-Inn lobby. This place is overrun with people. The desk clerk tells me that most guests are evacuees from south and central Florida.

In the main area: televisions are playing—volume cranked high. A few families gather around screens with worried faces.

I meet a Miami man.

“I’m pretty stressed right now,” he says. “We’re crammed in two rooms. My mother’s eighty-three, man. She don’t travel well.”

If the hurricane hits where forecasts predict, he’ll lose his home and his business.

He goes on, “I worked eight years finding new clients. All those twelve-hour workdays, my livelihood is gonna disappear.”

He snaps his fingers.

“This is my wakeup call, dude,” he adds. “I’ve spent too much time with my business, not enough time with my son.”

I meet a woman. Late sixties, wiry, with white cropped hair.

“Lost my husband two months ago to cancer,” she says. “And this hurricane might

destroy our house, where we raised our kids.”

A few weeks ago, she started riding a bike to help fight depression. She brought the bike with her to help release nervous energy.

“I told God this morning,” she says. “Go ahead, take my house. It's all just stuff anyway. I'm just grateful to have my kids with me this weekend.”

I meet a man with a long beard. He is six-four, and roughly the size of a General Electric refrigerator. His family lives in Central Florida.

“I'm with my wife and son,” he says. “But my mama and baby sister are evacuating now, they're still stuck traffic.”

He shows me a cellphone photo of a traffic jam.

“My sister’s freaking out,” he says. “She’s twelve. I try to tell her funny stories to make her laugh.”

His…

SEPTEMBER 7th, 9:29 A.M.—Hurricane Irma is close enough to smell. Most of Florida lives within the geographical area meteorologists are labeling the “Run-Like-Holy-Hell Zone.”

I’m eating a late breakfast at Waffle House. I am the only customer here. George Strait sings in the background.

The woman behind the counter is in her late sixties. She is lean, rough features. Her voice is like a pack of Camels.

The regular fry-cook is gone. He has evacuated town. She’s here alone until the replacement cook shows.

She takes my order, then cooks my breakfast herself. She is a go-getter, this woman, she knows how to cook an egg.

I ask if she’s worried about Irma.

“Ain’t worried about nothing,” she says. “Been through too many hurricanes to worry about this little old storm.”

Irma isn’t a “little old” anything.  Irma is wider than the SEC, stronger than forty-mule-team Borax, and heading straight up the pant-leg of Florida.

The woman delivers my plate, refills my coffee. We talk.

Her husband was killed when they were newlyweds, long ago. She raised two children on her own. It

was no cakewalk.

Every summer, she managed to take them to Disney World as kids. She saved her pennies and dimes to do it.

“Family vacations was important to me. Used to stay in an RV park, only we was the ONLY tent, between all them big rigs.”

After raising her kids, she should’ve been cruising Easy Street. But that’s not how it happened. Her daughter got pregnant and returned home with two grandbabies.

She raised them while her daughter attended college.

Today, her daughter is a registered nurse in Birmingham. Her grandkids are in college. Her son lives in Albuquerque. They are successes, and they make her so proud her teeth are showing.

“That’s my daughter,” she says pointing to a cellphone photo. “She's pretty, ain't she?”

I hear melancholy in her voice. I’m not the…

September 6th, 11:13 A.M.—Hurricane Irma is moving closer. And it looks like the storm is getting angrier every few hours.

Here in the Panhandle you can see people gathered around TV’s and cellphone weather videos everywhere you go.

Walmart is a nuthouse. They are out of bottled water, milk, bleach, toilet paper, bread, and according to one official, they’re running dangerously low on ketchup.

People wander through the store with tight faces. There is a man wearing a homemade T-shirt that reads: “Irma Sucks.”

In the peanut-butter aisle, I see a child who follows his mother’s cart. The woman is stocking her buggy with essentials.

The kid holds a cellphone, volume turned up. I hear the tinny voice of a weather report.

The little boy says, “Mom, are we gonna be okay?”

Mom turns to him. She gives him a warm look. It’s the same sweet look mothers have been giving children since the invention of the diaper.

It’s a look that says: “Everything—no matter how afraid you are—is going to be alright.”

It's the same look my mama gave me when a swarm of red ants crawled up my legs and bit the Holy Spirit out of me. I had an allergic reaction, trouble breathing.

“Mama,” I said. “Will I pull through?”

She gave me that look, and here I am.

I also see an old woman. She is frail, she walks bent over. She’s searching for bottled water on barren shelves.

A female employee notices her. She asks what the woman needs.

“Where am I gonna find water?” the old woman asks. “What am I gonna do?”

The employee gives the elderly woman that look—the same one I was just telling you about.

“Let’s…

Somewhere in Alabama—a white clapboard building. The place is a trip backward in time. The steeple was added during the Great War. The cemetery is even older.

It’s a weeknight. Small-town kids play tag on the church lawn.

A mother barks: “Be nice to your sister!”

I meet an old woman who has been the church organist since Davy Crockett sailed the ocean blue.

A black-and-white image of her hangs in the fellowship hall. Think: big hair, petite frame, and one metric ton of eye makeup.

“Wasn’t I pretty?” she asks.

She still is.

Anyway, I have never seen a covered-dish party this size for a church so small. There are more casseroles than there are forks.

One old woman says, “Some of our ladies usually bring two, maybe three dishes. Willie Sue brought the tea.”

Willie Sue.

There are plenty of elderly people here. Several younger ones in their late forties and fifties, too.

One man says, “I came back last year. Used to

work in the big city, for a company that built smartphones. I was miserable. Doctor said my blood pressure was through the roof.”

He quit his job, and he left the tech field. He moved home and started attending potlucks again. They elected him janitor.

Today, he carries the church key ring and takes out the trash.

I meet another man who is missing his right arm below the elbow—a hunting accident. He cooks hamburgers on the grill, using a prosthetic hook.

“When I lost my arm,” he says. “The whole church chipped in and delivered suppers for a year, they never skipped.”

Three hundred and sixty-five foil-covered plates.

The children in the congregation are few. There is only…

The Alabama-Florida State game is on television. My mother-in-law is watching with me. She’s sitting in her recliner, Velcro shoes propped in the air.

She just had surgery, she’s too weak to cheer. She’s been in the hospital for two days. Doctors discharged her only a few hours ago.

When she arrived home, my wife and brother-in-law helped her limp into the house on weak knees. I carried purses and offered verbal assistance.

They ushered Scarlett O'Hara over the brick steps, through the hall, into the living-room—where she sits now.

On the wall behind her are graduation photos of her children—framed in gold.

On her sidetable: a magazine, with her redheaded son-in-law's article in it. She shows this to visitors.

“You can’t write about me tonight,” says my mother-in-law. “I’m not wearing my pearls. You’re only allowed to write about me if I have pearls on.”

My wife disappears, then returns with a strand of pearls. She fastens them around the sophisticated belle's neck.

“There,” my wife says. “Now he

can write about you.”

My mother-in-law knows, of course, I’ll write about her. This is why she starts telling detailed childhood stories during the most pivotal moments of the SEC football game of the century.

She knows I like her stories.

There’s the story, for instance, of when she lost her pet duck. The duck escaped and flew over Brewton, Alabama's downtown during hunting season.

The fellas sitting in front of the hardware store shot the bird dead. The duck made the front page of the paper.

Then there’s the one about her pet baby alligator. She loved her alligator. She dressed it in girly clothes, took it to tea parties, and let it sleep beside her.

One autumn morning,…

I’m in a Mexican restaurant. I’ve been driving. I’m tired. I’m here to enjoy cold beer and something salty.

Earlier, I tried visiting the joint up the road. The place has allegedly good barbecue. I left after three seconds. They had a band that only knew two volume levels: loud, and nuclear holocaust.

So I’m here.

Behind my booth are children. It’s a birthday party. There are at least fifteen. They sit around a long table which is mounding with gifts. They holler and laugh.

A few wear pointy hats. I didn’t know kids wore pointy hats anymore.

My waitress brings my beer, and I overhear all the Top-40 hits of childhood happening behind me.

“Gross, you eat boogers?”

“I know you are, but what am I?”

“My dad could beat up your dad.”

“COOTIES!”

How have we come this far as a civilization, and still not eradicated cooties?

Then, parents hush kids. Children's voices run quiet. A mother walks to the door and looks through the glass.

"Here

she comes,” the woman says to her group. “Get ready.”

There is a pregnant pause. I am holding my beer with both hands, watching the door.

The door opens.

Children scream “Happy Birthday!” loud enough to break stained glass. Then, applause.

The birthday girl is dressed like a princess. She has a diamond tiara, a pink dress with sequins. She has Down syndrome.

Her father helps her to the table, holding her arms. The girl sits and covers her face. She’s blushing.

“YOU GUYS!” she says.

Her smile is bright enough to tear the cotton-picking world in half.

Mexican waiters in colorful sombreros visit her table. They sing. Parents…