I made a turn off the highway at Ellenton, saw the huge shopping mall I’ve never been to flash by me and headed west toward Palmetto.

Past the Gamble Mansion, preserved as it had been when slaves lived in shacks and the second floor was reached by ladders that could be pulled up in case the Seminoles attacked. Past the tomato-packing plants, tiendas and pawnshops where the migrant Hispanic laborers worked and shopped.

By the time I had made a turn and headed north on Tamiami Trail, I was sure we were going to be too late.

It began to rain. It began to rain hard. Summer was the time for rain on the Gulf Coast. But weather truths, like human ones, had begun to change here long before I arrived.

My windshield wipers worked. I was driving a newly rented white Geo Metro, which wanted to leave the road with every blast of wind.

I had an address and only a general idea of where I was going, but with a turn again I knew I was in Palmetto. Palm trees went wild in the wind. The streets began to flood. Traffic slowed to a crawl. People, all black, ran for cover or home. I drove trying to see street signs and passed the one I was looking for. I went to the next corner and turned left around a battered green Chevy that was stalled in a deep puddle. The driver was an old black woman with gray hair. I caught just a glimpse of her but I could see that she was sitting in a state of near-perfect calm. She had been through this before. She had been through much worse before. So had I. She would endure. I probably would too.

I found the house whose address I had been carrying around for three days. It was dark. The morning was almost as dark, with black, driving rain. A pickup truck with a tow winch was parked in the driveway. The house was a one-story cinder-block bunker. There was no grass on the place where a lawn should be. There was just a thin lake of rainwater with bits of debris, dirt, beer bottles and rocks peeking out.