“Your letter is not a court order,” she said, and I watched her face as she said it, because she had said the exact same words to me at that first board meeting eighteen months ago, and she thought it was still her best move. “You’re right,” I said, “it’s not, but this is.”
I had already called Faye Holbrook at county emergency management at 6:00 a.m. the second the evacuation order was confirmed. Faye had made two phone calls. The first was to the county sheriff’s department requesting a deputy be dispatched to the east entrance of Pelican Cove for an access obstruction during active evacuation. The second was to Lieutenant Colonel Gerald Oats.
At 6:28 a.m. a sheriff’s cruiser pulled up behind the buses. At 6:31 a.m. a guard staff car pulled up behind the cruiser. Marlene watched them arrive. I watched Marlene. I watched the exact moment when the math completed for her, when she understood that the clipboard, the folding table, and the regulation sign were not, in fact, sufficient armor against a declared emergency, a founding document clause, a county deputy, and two National Guard soldiers.
Her attorney Greer was not there. It was 6:31 in the morning during a hurricane evacuation. Nobody’s attorney is there. The deputy, young guy, maybe twenty-eight, with the efficient economy of movement that comes from good training, walked to the gate. He did not yell. He did not draw anything. He simply said, in a calm and reasonable voice, “Ma’am, I’m going to need you to open this gate. This entrance has been designated an emergency access corridor. Any further obstruction constitutes interference with emergency operations under Georgia law, which is a criminal misdemeanor.”
Marlene opened her mouth, closed it, looked at her clipboard, at the folding table, at the sign, and then at the four school buses, the sheriff’s cruiser, the guard staff car, and me standing on the community side of her gate, watching. She opened the gate. It took her eleven seconds.
The buses went through. Dotty Banks gave me a nod as her bus rolled past. Not a big gesture, just the kind of acknowledgement that passes between people who understand what just happened without needing to perform it. Forty-three kids got out of the storm. That was the thing. Everything else was secondary to that, and I kept reminding myself of it, because what was about to happen next had nothing to do with Lily’s safety or those kids’ safety. It had to do with accountability, and those are different battles.
After the buses cleared, Marlene gathered herself. She called Greer. She retreated to the clubhouse. She sent an emergency message to the HOA email list, which I received because I was a member, saying that the board had been subjected to a coercive government overstep, and that she was consulting legal counsel regarding appropriate responses.
She also, in what I can only describe as the petty power equivalent of a Hail Mary, attempted to have my community gate access revoked within forty-eight hours, claiming I had facilitated an unauthorized entry by being present at the gate. This was the kind of maneuver that sounds plausible to someone who has been getting away with things for six years, and sounds insane to anyone with a functional understanding of law.