by Linda Ellen
He started the motor, yet merely sat staring straight ahead as he tried to decide what to do on a lonely Friday night with three dollars and change burning a hole in his pocket. A rainy, lonely Friday night. He thought about meeting up with Alec and his date, but that just didn’t appeal to him. He considered for a moment catching a movie at another theater, but he nixed that idea, as well. Going to the movies solo was definitely not his idea of a good time.
Glancing back at the large brick duplex, he could see light shining from one of the rear windows and he wished now that he had asked the lovely Louise if she wanted to take her sister’s place. The raindrops glittering on the glass in the muted light of the street lamp faded from his view as sparkling hazel eyes and a breathtaking smile swam across the screen of his mind. He’d never felt so drawn to a girl before…
Finally, Vic sighed as his hand settled onto the ball-shaped knob of the shifter and put the car into gear. “Ehhh,” he grumbled with a whispered expletive. “Guess I’ll just head on over to Lucky’s and shoot a little pool.” He sighed as he glanced over his shoulder to check for traffic before maneuvering out and on down the wet street.
For the rest of the evening, Vic couldn’t shake the memory of the girl in the doorway…
‡
CHAPTER 4
Something is Coming
Life went on for the inhabitants of Louisville the following week. Life…and rain.
Vic went back to pounding the pavement, or more accurately ‘dodging puddles’, looking for work. Having heard through the grapevine that Colgate, over in Clarksville, might be hiring, Thursday found him completing an employment application in the main office of the large plant; although, he knew it would be a long shot at best.
Placing himself at the tollgate of the Second Street Bridge, he begged the favor of each driver that paused to toss in a quarter. Finally a Colgate employee – an old man in a rusty Ford pickup – took pity on him. Vic gratefully sprinted around to the passenger door and climbed in out of the elements. He and his benefactor then headed to the huge former Indiana Reformatory-turned-soap making facility, with the famous, forty-foot wide, brightly lit clock.
As the wheels of the old pickup rolled along with the flow of traffic on the wet bridge, Vic stared at the gleaming lights of the huge timepiece on the opposite shore. Its red radiance appeared distorted through the raindrops on the windshield and the dim glow of the thickly overcast dawn. Somehow the large, slowly ticking hands of the device intensified the sense of inescapable urgency and doom he had been feeling for weeks. It was as if the hands themselves, stroking by the minutes on the clock’s huge illuminated face, were somehow dragging him closer to the brink…of what, he didn’t know.
With a shudder, he turned his head away from its looming presence. Through the rain-dotted side window of the old truck, the swiftly moving brown water below the bridge appeared thick with mud, and rife with grayish flotsam and floating debris – evidence of flooding upriver. Bits of splintered wood, brush, rusty metal, and even an old car, bobbed up and down in the swift current. With a grimace, he pictured it all jammed up against the dam or floating through the locks.
All the way across the bridge amidst the slow moving traffic, the old man’s conversation consisted of nothing but dire predictions about what he considered the inevitable. Flood. A BIG one. “We’re due. No doubt about it,” the bewhiskered old gentleman intoned as he rolled the driver’s window down and spat out the juice from a wad of chewing tobacco. “Livin’ in a river town, the question ain’t if we’ll get one, but when.”
Vic merely nodded, staring downriver as they crossed the center of the bridge. He tried to fathom what it would mean to the city…and its people…if a big flood did indeed happen.
Ah, the river…The Ohio…Gateway to the West, Vic mused. Ohi-yo’ – Good River – the Iroquois had named it, or so an old Indian he had encountered once on the riverbank had told him. Vic had lived near the river his whole life and had always taken it for granted. At times, during the long hot months of summer, the river seemed so peaceful, cool, and calm – kind of like a wise, trusted friend. As a boy, he had gone swimming in it, fished along its banks, and hunted for fossils on the Indiana side of the ‘falls’. He even worked on it the summer he was sixteen, lucking out with a job as a seasonal worker on the steamboat, The Idlewild.
He knew the river is what had made Louisville a town to begin with, since the ‘falls’ forced the flatboats and steamboats to stop and offload their cargo. It’s where they got their drinking water, and most of their electric power. But now…it seemed more like a sleeping monster just awakening and stretching its massive limbs. As he stared through the rain-speckled window at the murky, swiftly flowing water below, he wondered how far those limbs would stretch…
An hour later, Vic handed his completed application to the girl behind the desk in the Colgate office. She smiled up at him and he noticed she had wavy brown hair and hazel eyes, making him think once again of the lovely Louise.
I wonder what she’s doin’ on a wet Thursday morning like this…
*
Louise was going about her daily life, attending school, running through the rain to rehearsal at the neighborhood house, and fulfilling her duties at home. Now, however, her mind would drift often to the handsome Vic Matthews, wondering if she would ever see him again. Louisville was a big city, and it was impossible to know everyone in it. Several times, Louise prayed she would be able to find out more information about him. She had no idea where Vic lived or worked, or the places he frequented. Louise had casually asked her sister, but Edna knew nothing about him other than his name.
All these thoughts kept her preoccupied, to the extent that she hadn’t really noticed the slowly worsening situation and impending emergency. Nor could she have imagined just how it would turn her world, and the world of her loved ones, upside down.
On Sunday, the tenth of January, the Red Cross began warning people in the lower flood areas to be prepared to move if the rain continued. Old timers that had been through floods before began packing things to take with them, if they couldn’t be moved to an upper floor. However, just as the river seemed determined to rise, it halted at 1.9 feet above flood stage. This gave the people hope that the warnings were yet another false alarm, and that the harbingers of doom were once again mistaken.
The water level in the river remained stationary for five hours, prompting the people to begin unpacking. This set them to griping about the inconvenience of the situation, the stupidity of the forecasters, the Red Cross, and everyone down at WHAS – their main source for news and information.
However, after those five hours, as if a large unseen switch had been magically flipped, the river suddenly began creeping further and further up from the confines of its banks. Those of the older generation, while heaping plenty of wisecracking ‘I told you so’s’, continued moving their belongings and furniture to the second floors of their homes. Or should circumstances demand, to their vehicles for transport to higher ground. All the while, the river rose higher and higher, seeping ominously closer to the heart of the city.
By Thursday the fourteenth, the unending rain and the rising river were the primary topics of conversation across the entire Ohio Valley.
Thursday evening, as Louise and her mother set the table for supper, the steady rain kept up a continuous cadence outside the kitchen window.
Sonny was once again packing his satchel in preparation for another evening of pushing papers and dodging raindrops. Pausing for a moment as he actually read the main headline, he let out a low whistle.
“It says here that over the last two weeks…165 billion tons of rain has fell!”
“Good heavens!” Lilly blustered. Pausing in the act of placing silverware on the table, she stared at her son as she tried to comprehend such a thing. Shards of fear regarding a flood that could actually affect their family began to zip through her consciousness for the first time since the marathon showers had begun. A
ritual from her childhood resurfaced and, with a shudder, she unconsciously made the sign of the cross over her face and chest.
Billy stopped in mid action of bouncing a rubber ball against the door. “Dang that sounds like a lot.”
“How do they know that? They weigh it or somethin’?” Edna snorted as she wandered over to the stove and lifted the lid on a pot of meatless spaghetti – her face immediately registering a pout of disappointment.
Sonny shrugged and continued loading his bag. “They got ways of knowing that kinda stuff, I guess.” Pausing again as he stared at the article, the young man read the names of the different meteorologists working for the National Weather Service, such as J. L. Kendall. Musing for a moment, Sonny wondered just what it took to become a ‘meteorologist.’ Probably college, he mused downheartedly, knowing there was no way he or his parents would be able to afford such a costly academic pursuit. But it sure seems like interesting work…
Just then, the soft music on the old Westinghouse was interrupted by yet another news and weather report. This time, swallowing with nervousness, the family crept closer to the large radio. Staring at the apparatus, they listened in rapt attention as the newscaster delivered an updated report on the crisis.
“The river has breached its banks in most of the towns along the Ohio, and Louisville is no exception,” informed the nasally voice of the WHAS announcer. “According to officials minutes ago, the Upper Gauge measured 2.3 feet above flood stage, with the Lower Gauge measuring 1.2 feet above, but it is rising steadily,” he intoned, speaking of the gauges set above and below the rapids erroneously called ‘falls’. “Rain has continued, non-stop, up and down the Ohio Valley, with no end in sight. National Weather Forecasters are predicting many more days of unending rain if the unusually perfect conditions do not begin to change in the immediate future. The Red Cross is urging everyone within broadcast range of this station to begin preparations for eventual evacuation.” The urgency in his voice set the nerves of everyone in the room on edge.
With a shudder, Lilly lowered herself into her husband’s favorite chair, fervently wishing that he were with them. She hated being without his calm, reassuring presence and being responsible for making such monumental decisions for the family, such as whether to stay or go – and what to take with them if they did indeed evacuate. The thought of leaving their home and belongings to the greedy fingers of a passing looter was simply unacceptable. Biting her lip, she began to unconsciously clasp and unclasp her hands in her lap as she stared out the window at what now seemed like menacing rain.
The newscaster’s voice droned on, concluding with a report on a business having already been looted in the lowest section of The Point, the area opposite Towhead Island and Jeffersonville.
As the family hovered around their connection with the outside world, they gazed nervously into one another’s eyes, each one reaching to grasp the hand of the one next to them.
“Mama…?” Billy murmured, gazing at his parent for reassurance, as all children will do in a crisis situation. “Will the water get up this high?”
“I…I don’t know, Billy,” Lilly whispered, reaching to draw the boy to her side.
Louise, now wide-eyed, turned her gaze to the eldest male in the room – sixteen-year-old Sonny.
“Sonny? You think we’ll have to leave?” she murmured nervously.
Striving to be the man-of-the-house, as per the promise he made his father each time Willis left for Bowling Green, Sonny drew himself up to his full height and flashed his sister a brave smile.
“Nah,” he assured with more bravado than he felt. “That ol’ river’s rose lots ‘a times, but I ain’t never seen it flood all the way in here.”
Louise nodded in meager relief and hopeful faith in her brother’s wisdom. Just then, the newsman on the radio paused in his narrative, mumbled some unintelligible words to someone on his end, and then cleared his throat.
“This just in. Elderly man reported stranded in riverfront shanty at the edge of The Point. The Red Cross has requested this be broadcast to anyone within hearing…Send a boat.”
*
Vic stepped down from the trolley as it slowed to pass through the intersection at Fifteenth and Market. Crossing the street and jogging through the rain, he hastily managed the fifty or so yards to the door of his brother’s apartment house. Taking the front steps two at a time he immediately disappeared inside. He unzipped his jacket, removed his hat, and tried to rub his hair dry as he slowly climbed the dimly lit internal stairs, his posture one of defeat. Reaching the door of apartment four, he paused and took in a fortifying breath before he turned the knob and entered.
Dispirited after another long day of slogging around in wet clothing while remaining frustratingly unsuccessful at obtaining gainful employment, he began to shed his damp jacket. Glancing toward the kitchen area, he saw his sister-in-law washing up the supper dishes, the sleeves of her dark gray wool sweater pushed up to her elbows. Her thin lips were clamped in a firm disagreeable line, which was her usual dour expression. She wiped at an errant strand of auburn hair with one shoulder as she sent him a smoldering glance.
The fragrant aroma of fried chicken hung tantalizingly in the air of the small apartment, but once again, no food had been saved for him. He sighed tiredly and closed his eyes as his stomach rumbled in reaction. Great! That’s a perfect cap on a lousy day…
“Hey Uncle Vic!” a small voice interrupted his melancholy musings, and he opened his eyes to see his eight year old auburn-haired nephew, Timmy. The boy smiled up at him from the floor, where he’d been playing with his set of Lincoln Logs. At least somebody’s glad to see me.
“Hey, Tim. Whatcha building?” Vic asked the boy, sending him a tired smile.
“Hey Uncle Vic!” echoed six-year-old Shirley, Tim’s sister, as she came skipping over. He instinctively reached down and lifted the tiny carrot top into his arms, glad for the affectionate welcome. She wrapped her petite arms around his neck and kissed his cheek.
“Hello sweetie. You been good today?” he asked the little girl. She nodded enthusiastically.
Just then, their mother turned from the sink and reached for a dishtowel with which to wipe her hands.
“Timmy, Shirley, go and get your nightclothes on, its time to get ready for bed,” she ordered. Snapping her fingers, she pointed toward the room the children shared in the small two-bedroom apartment.
Vic put the little girl down and the kids immediately obeyed, knowing from earlier that their mother was definitely not in a good mood. Neither one relished testing her volatile temper.
Jack, ten years Vic’s senior, with similar coloring and build, glanced up from his paper. Offering no greeting to his younger brother, he merely resumed his reading.
The tension in the air was palpable. Vic could tell he had recently been the topic of discussion.
Liz crossed her arms over her chest, eying her brother-in-law as he stood near the door. An uncomfortable feeling made him grit his teeth, as she seemed to be centering him in her ‘sights’.
“Well?” she asked crisply.
“I put in an application at a few places, includin’ Colgate,” he answered. Liz raised her eyebrows in interest.
“But…they all hired somebody else,” Vic added quietly. He glanced at Jack, then back at Liz, hoping for a little sympathy. Can’t they see this is hard for me, too? He felt as though he were standing at the bottom of a deep empty well, reaching up begging for a rope with which to climb out, but no one would toss him one. Worse yet, the people at the rim merely looked down at him, hundreds of feet below, and berated him for not ‘picking himself up by his bootstraps.’
Liz threw up her hands in frustration, her mood already half way to anger due to a hard day at work, the rain…and the anniversary of something heartbreaking.
“Again! Why are you always passed over? What’re you doing wrong?” she griped accusingly.
“I wish I knew…I wish somebody’d just give me a cha
nce…”
“If you were worth giving a chance, they would!” she shot back, her face reddening with unreasonable anger. “Your brother never had any trouble finding work,” she added snidely.
“Lizzie…” Jack murmured with a quiet sigh as he folded and laid his paper aside. Jack knew the underlying reason his wife flew off the handle so easily. The truth was, their first child had been stillborn, and Liz had suffered tremendously, both physically and emotionally. The anniversary of their first baby’s death seemed to hit her harder and harder each year. As a result, he tended to remain silent most of the time when she went on a rampage; however, he had never shared that rather private information with his brother.
“Well, it’s true!” Liz shot at her husband, though at his potent stare she had the decency to feel a tiny spark of guilt for her unprovoked attack.
“I’m trying, really,” Vic defended himself, but she cut him off.
“Well, obviously you aren’t trying hard enough.”
“Liz, now just calm down a little. It ain’t all Vic’s fault,” Jack began, pausing as his wife shot him a piercing look. Turning to his younger brother, he added, “But Vic…you been with us for four years, since Aunt Peg died. You’re a man now. You should be on your own.”
“Don’t you think I wanna be on my own?” Vic shot back, his own frustration rising to the surface. “Don’t you think I want a job and a place…a wife and kids of my own? I DO! But I can’t help the stupid stock market crashed and messed everything up!”
“Me and Jack both work, and you shoulda stayed in the C’s,” Liz tried to interrupt, but Vic fired right back, “You and Jack were workin’ before the crash hit! Jack took a cut in pay to keep his maintenance job at the Heyburn Building – and you lucked into your job at the cotton mill ‘cause your uncle was a foreman, or did you forget that? I ain’t got no foreman uncle I can get favors from.”
