Filling a hurricane-sized void
Displaced by Harvey, a teen and his family tough it out until a caring coach and a love for the Bobcats ease the way home
REFUGIO — Eric Garcia sits quietly with his hands in his lap and smiles. The skinny 17-year-old is envisioning his return to Refugio High School on Monday.
His smile reveals a row of braces and a sense of relief that is increasing incrementally throughout this ramshackle town of fewer than 2,800 that Hurricane Harvey devastated as much as anywhere in the Texas coastal plains.
Eric’s mom, Corienna Gonzalez, is beside him at their living room table finishing the paperwork needed to enroll him.
“He is not the same person he was when we left a year ago,” Gonzalez says.
That was when Harvey forced an evacuation, severely damaged 41 percent of the homes in the county, left 96 percent of district students homeless, displaced Eric’s family — which did not own insurance for their cleaved threebedroom trailer — and spun Garcia into depression.
After the Federal Emergency Management Agency relocated the family to Lakeway, located 30 minutes outside of Austin, Garcia lost interest in attending class, in eating and in playing sports. He spent school days at Lake Travis High hiding in a bathroom stall to conceal his anxiety.
His parents had been among the one-fifth of Refugio that lived below the poverty line, and they faced the same problem when FEMA cut their assistance in April.
While town locals could not find habitable rentals, Corienna learned of a sturdy vacant house that had belonged to a relative who died a week before Harvey tore through.
One year of untouched dilapidation did not deter the family from moving in two weeks ago.
Train tracks and derelict properties flank the 55-year-old house on 1st Street. Leftover items, including two walkers with built-in toilet seats, wait at the front entrance for dump trucks.
Inside, Garcia weaves around piles of garbage bags and laundry baskets storing possessions. There is limited furniture. There are no blinds or drapes. There is no hot water. Deteriorating sheetrock in the ceiling and walls will have to be replaced, but until then, the family accepts the scars: blistering wallpaper, chipped paint, duct-taped windows and gaping holes.
Including Garcia’s stepfather and two younger siblings, the family sleeps on four mattresses on the floor. In the largest bedroom, stains from mold blacken the walls and an exposed crooked light bulb in the ceiling is the only light source. A grim vibe would persist were it not for Nadya, Eric’s 11-year-old sister, swaddled in a pink blanket and kicking her feet behind her while lying on her stomach to play a video game beneath the light.
Gonzalez wants to paint several walls in individual colors and assemble figurines of fat chef ’s holding crepes along the kitchen counter. She sees herself completing the renovation in six months. Then the rubble catches her eye.
“I just want to make it to where it’s livable and sanitary for the kids,” she says.
Garcia does not mention the disrepair. It is as if he does not see it. His mind is elsewhere.
Days hiding in the school bathroom felt like minutes, he says, because of the same thoughts that now have him looking past the clutter and smiling about the future.
It is football season in Refugio. The first game is Friday at Tidehaven, but he must wait until his enrollment begins to put on a blackand-orange Bobcats jersey again and pick up at practice where has was forced to leave off.
“Varsity football,” he says. “It’s what we do.”
A home in football
Garcia is the neediest player on one of the neediest teams in the state. Not because he has the least out of 70 players — half of whom the coach estimates still are weathering Harvey’s destruction by shacking up with friends and relatives while their families wait for rental trailers to open up, a public housing rebuild to start or a miracle to change everything — but because the hurricane ripped the most valuable thing in Refugio away from him.
His slight build belies his love for “hittin’ people,” he says, his braces appearing more menacing this time.
“He was a totally different person once he hit that field,” his mom says. “From a person that doesn’t talk, that doesn’t associate much with people, that maybe has two friends. He’s very anti-social.”
He last played for the JV team, but he considers storming the field for varsity’s 2016 state title his proudest accomplishment.
As a junior, Garcia now has two seasons to build muscle and become a college-caliber defensive back or wide receiver. His determination matches his lofty ambitions.
“Who am I to tell him any different?” says coach Jason Herring. “It’s everything to be a Bobcat. It’s what we do.”
The surfaces of his office brim with awards, including three Class 2A titles won in six finals appearances in his 11 years at Refugio.
He led the program’s most improbable run after Harvey limited a roster of homeless players to two home games. The Bobcats made it to the championship game but lost 34-21 to Mart.
Locals feel like this season is an extension of the last because of the ongoing recovery.
Six months after Harvey, a glance in any direction saw cardboard, tape, garbage bags, plywood and tarps substitute for windows and roofs. Neighborhoods look much better now, but the cosmetic improvements conceal $31.4 million in unmet needs for residents, according to the Coastal Bend Disaster Recovery Group.
More than half of the high school is unusable. An insurance battle continues over damages that necessitated gutting or condemning spaces. Toxic mold engulfs the auditorium. Debris cakes a gym where the basketball court buckled from rainwater. The library is gone.
On a tour of the school’s ruins, district superintendent Melissa Gonzales predicts recovery will take five to 10 years. She will not know updated numbers on homeless students until classes start, but she expects a mix of trauma and resiliency to last.
“I’m 51 years old, and this has changed my life,” Gonzales says. “I can’t imagine the impact it’s going to have on our students. What will they carry from this experience?”
They know their self-reliant town can come together in an emergency. They also tremble during heavy rainfall.
“It is a PTSD kind of reaction when we hear about these hurricanes,” Gonzales says.
They distress Herring, too: “We can’t survive another one.”
The noble struggle
Then again, to grow up in Refugio is to overcome hardship, and to love Refugio is to find comfort in a struggle.
“Nobody has anything,” Herring says. “Nobody’s better than anything.”
Eric felt alienated in Lakeway. He went from a school of 200 teenagers he had known since childhood and to a student body of nearly 3,000 strangers. Teachers at Lake Travis High showed compassion. They bought him clothes and brought him soup. The football team is one of the best in 6A.
“They won, like, six state championships in a row,” Garcia says, “but it wasn’t Refugio.”
He craved the humble confines that rewarded selfless work. He found it at an upscale restaurant that advertised a “style that lets the ingredients shine.” He got a summer job as a dishwasher in the same kitchen that employed his stepfather as a cook.
Garcia also could relate to his mother. FEMA had paid for the five in his family to stay in a threemattress garage apartment on the property of a bed and breakfast. Corienna picked up a cleaning job there, but she says the landlord took advantage of her with responsibilities that far exceeded her $10-per-hour wage.
Corienna says the labor exacerbated pre-existing health issues: carpal tunnel syndrome, diabetes, high blood pressure and rheumatoid arthritis in her ankles, hands and hips.
At the living room table in her new home, she keeps a gallon-size plastic bag that bulges with various daily medications.
“I am tough because sometimes that’s the only choice,” she says, slamming down the bag.
“She didn’t have any money for herself,” Eric says. “She spent it all on us and house stuff, then she winds up broke.”
So he gave her $200 out of his dishwashing paychecks and another $700 to cover the first month’s rent in Refugio.
“I’m a working man,” Garcia says with joy in his voice and on his face. “It’s what I do.”
“He’s got a big heart, like his momma,” Corienna says.
She credits Oscar Esquivel, her barrel-chested husband since 2010, for adding strength to the family. She sends him a loving gaze across the living room.
“It’s because of him that these children have a chance at a father figure,” she says.
While Eric starts school Monday, Esquivel will head west nine hours to a new job in the oil fields. He will be home only for four days out of each month, which he says beats having two or three jobs in Refugio’s small workforce.
He will miss Eric’s football games, but Corienna knows Herring will fill the void.
“He’s always been a father figure to the boys,” she says. “He’s the dad all these kids wish they had.”
She called Herring before leaving Lakeway. She could not afford to buy beds for the family.
Herring had given out 80 sets of donated mattresses after Harvey. He had four remaining when Gonzalez called.
Then Herring garnered air-conditioning units, a washer and dryer, and gift cards for school supplies. He persuaded the school district to cut Eric’s family a $3,000 check from a donation fund.
Gonzalez made another request. She asked Herring to deliver the mattresses, so he could surprise Eric with a visit.
Happy reunion
Herring and Garcia had not gotten to know each other well on JV. Herring had not remembered the rising junior ever uttering more than two words. Eric had assumed the coach did not remember him at all.
When he spotted Herring on the porch, Eric stayed inside until his shyness wore off, but he could not hide his tears.
Herring wrapped the teen in a big, tearful hug. Then he patted Garcia on the chest.
“Are you OK, kiddo?” Herring said. “Don’t worry, buddy. We’re going to get you back out on that field.”
Corienna dried her eyes to see her son smile in a way that she had not seen since he celebrated the 2016 title.
“It made me feel like a Bobcat again,” Eric says in his retelling of the reunion. “I’m ready.”
To save time getting dressed on Monday, Garcia sets aside the new black Adidas shirt he bought with one of the gift cards. He plans to wear it to sleep Sunday night in his cramped bedroom without blinds, his blighted house without hot water, his recovering town without anything more important than the upcoming game.
That is, if he manages to get any sleep at all.