PORT ARANSAS -- The walls had begun to contract, squeezed and yanked by the 130-mph winds of the punishing storm Bill and Paulette Rogers had foolishly underestimated.

With a resounding crack around 10 p.m., the two-story beach home shook. A tree tore through the upstairs bedroom. The frames and a wall clock came crashing down, and water surged in, fast, warm and deadly. It was then that Bill Rogers, 61, knew he had a made a mistake by staying home.

"Get the dogs," he shouted. "Move it. We gotta go -- now."

Bill, a lifelong mechanic with tough hands and soft blue eyes, had spent Friday morning boarding up the windows, and Paulette, 64, his wife of 40 years, had picked up the groceries and sundries they figured were enough to outlast a Category 2 hurricane. Thanks to a generator, they spent the evening watching TV news, of excitable people fleeing the coast.

With their cellphones they rebuffed texts from Misty and Will, their grown children, who begged them to evacuate with hundreds of their neighbors.

They'd weathered bigger storms, they thought, and we're on the weak end.

But the forecast changed, as it tends to do, and by the time the couple could question their decision, leaving was not an option.

Paulette corralled the two big dogs and the two little dogs -- "toys," Bill calls them­ -- and the six of them crammed into a red Ford Focus in the garage.

Quickly, the Gulf of Mexico gushed in, reaching the dash.

" I talked to them right before the cellphone went out, and they were in the car, joking about how the winds were so high," their son, Will Rogers, an assistant English professor living in Louisiana, would later say. "This is how they are as people."

The cell towers fell. Nowhere to go. No contact, their children watching helplessly as a well-organized and powerful hurricane named Harvey swirled around Port Aransas, promising catastrophic storm surge and deadly rains.

The Focus was being submerged, so they transferred to Bill's white Ford F-250 Super Duty.

The truck that Bill and Paulette passed Friday night in during Hurricane Harvey in Port Aransas. It was filled to the dash with water until morning, with them and their dogs inside. (Nathan Hunsinger / Staff Photographer)

High ground

Bill plowed through the water swallowing up his home, headed for a patch of high ground -- a driveway at his neighbor's house.

He turned the corner, nearly there, but then slammed the brakes. Three boats, still attached to their trailers, were whipping in the tide, blocking his way.

He tried to maneuver, but the steering wheel wouldn't crank. Something was stuck in the axle.

Water was spilling into the cab. Paulette set the toys, a Chihuahua and a Pomeranian, on the dashboard, the other two holding their own on the back seat.

Bill opened the door to check if he could dislodge the debris.

He stepped onto the running board, and his feet instantly slipped under him, his body claimed by the surge rushing back to the harbor 200 yards in the distance. With all he could muster, he held on to the door and his life. Paulette reached out and grabbed him.

"If you're dying today," she remembers saying, "I'm going with you."

Bill reached and reached for the running board, only to slip and slip off. Finally, he heaved himself into the cab, tired and unable to go back out.

So, at midnight, they sat and prayed.

The water surged in, and in, over the doors, up to the dashboard, 5 feet above the road.

As Harvey raged on, crawling toward Rockport, where at least one person died, Paulette prayed and talked about their plans for the future.

Bill called himself stupid, repeatedly. As a young man in Fort Worth, he had raced motorcycles, and once he had crashed one trying to jump a river.

But, he would live to tell a reporter, "This is the dumbest thing I've ever done."

Bill and Paulette told each other "I love you."

The water did not relent as the dark early morning wore on, and they sat, water to their shoulders, in the cab of a truck, now buoyant, bobbing with boats on the street. For moments at a time they gave in to exhaustion and slept.

"If you had to pee," Paulette says, "you just peed."

Dawn finally comes

At dawn, the water finally subsided, and the couple stepped out to find themselves lost in a ravaged neighborhood.

Paulette was looking around for the house, but Bill knew it was right in front of them, unrecognizable, the entire second floor reduced to a pile of wood and broken furniture and their clothing. The walls were gone, everything lost: a house, a car, a truck, two tractors and a generator.

1 / 11Bill and Paulette Rogers search for his wallet after Hurricane Harvey destroyed their house in Port Aransas, Texas on Aug. 26, 2017. (Nathan Hunsinger/The Dallas Morning News)(Nathan Hunsinger / Staff Photographer) 2 / 11Bill Rogers looks at what's left of his property after Hurricane Harvey destroyed his house in Port Aransas. (Nathan Hunsinger / Staff Photographer) 3 / 11Bill and Paulette Rogers looks at the damage to their house after Hurricane Harvey destroyed their house in Port Aransas, Texas on Aug. 26, 2017. (Nathan Hunsinger/The Dallas Morning News)(Nathan Hunsinger / Staff Photographer) 4 / 11Bill Rogers surveys damage after Hurricane Harvey destroyed his house in Port Aransas, Texas on Aug. 26, 2017. (Nathan Hunsinger/The Dallas Morning News)(Nathan Hunsinger / Staff Photographer) 5 / 11Paulette Rogers looks at her destroyed pineapple tree after Hurricane Harvey destroyed their house in Port Aransas, Texas on Aug. 26, 2017. (Nathan Hunsinger/The Dallas Morning News)(Nathan Hunsinger / Staff Photographer) 6 / 11The truck that Bill and Paulette passed the road out the storm in during Hurricane Harvey in Port Aransas, Texas on Aug. 26, 2017. The trucks was filled to the dash with water with them and their dogs in it until the morning. (Nathan Hunsinger/The Dallas Morning News)(Nathan Hunsinger / Staff Photographer) 7 / 11Boats line the streets after Hurricane Harvey hit Port Aransas, Texas on Aug. 25, 2017. (Nathan Hunsinger/The Dallas Morning News)(Nathan Hunsinger / Staff Photographer) 8 / 11Bill and Paulette Rogers search the second story of their home for his wallet after Hurricane Harvey destroyed their house in Port Aransas, Texas on Aug. 26, 2017. (Nathan Hunsinger/The Dallas Morning News)(Nathan Hunsinger / Staff Photographer) 9 / 11Bill Rogers searches the second story of their home for his wallet after Hurricane Harvey destroyed his house in Port Aransas, Texas on Aug. 26, 2017. (Nathan Hunsinger/The Dallas Morning News)(Nathan Hunsinger / Staff Photographer) 10 / 11Bill Rogers looks at his property after Hurricane Harvey destroyed his house in Port Aransas, Texas on Aug. 26, 2017. (Nathan Hunsinger/The Dallas Morning News)(Nathan Hunsinger / Staff Photographer) 11 / 11Bill and Paulette Rogers search the second story of their home for his wallet after Hurricane Harvey destroyed their house in Port Aransas, Texas on Aug. 26, 2017. (Nathan Hunsinger/The Dallas Morning News)(Nathan Hunsinger / Staff Photographer)

The neighborhood, all of Port Aransas, had sustained devastating property losses. Yet, miraculously, no one had died. And their dogs had made it, too.

Through the morning the couple assessed the damage, Bill tossing rubbish off the roof that had once been the bedroom, Paulette gathering up the valuables that had survived.

Neither is fussy or angry or anxious, a trait their son says is less rational than he prefers. Both say they never doubted for a second they'd make it through, just as they had the other storms.

"Death?" Bill muses. "I ain't afraid of death. What I'm afraid of is the IRS."