No Ordinary Day

by Polly Becks

  Lucy squinted in the dark, then allowed the beam of her flashlight to brush across them, as all the emergency lights were routinely doing.

  And smiled.

  The woman on the ground was Mrs. Burlingame, whom she had threatened with hair pulling to Mrs. Cox the day before, with both her sons, Garrett and Devin.

  Safe, and grateful.

  She was grateful herself just to be out of the ever-present water in the school building.

  Her tired mind wandered back a few hours to the memory of the young Sergeant standing in the window just before he began his series of climbs up and down the outside wall, and shook her head in amazement. The dark eyes were like searchlights, almost looking through her, the mouth that was haunting her thoughts, making her own lips buzz—there was no doubt that Ace Evans was pretty to look at.

  She shook her head to drive out the memory of how his body looked as he stood in the window, the strong neck above heavily muscled arms and shoulders, a waist that tapered down into the turnout gear. She had not gotten a clear view of anything below his waist, swallowed as it was in the heavy rubber fire pants and suspenders, but she could only imagine what his legs must look like, legs that had strode without difficulty through deep flood waters, carrying three children on his broad back, or rappelling repeatedly up and down the exterior wall of the school, taking each of the five girls, and her, to safety.

  And now he was back in the command of his unit, being deployed elsewhere in the suffering town.

  Lucy’s brain told her she should feel weak, outclassed, but her mind was too tired to care.

  “Lucy?” The voice, craggy and exhausted, came from the air above her. “Lucy Sullivan?”

  Lucy looked up.

  Eleanor Preston, the ninety-two-year-old town historian, was standing above her, resting both hands on her cane and staring down at her sympathetically.

  She started to rise, but Eleanor put up her hand.

  “Well, you’ve had quite the day, I hear. Can I get you anything?” the historian asked. “More coffee? Something to eat?”

  Lucy shook her head. “Thanks, Eleanor—I’m all right.”

  “You’re an East-sider, aren’t you?”

  Lucy nodded. “Second Street.”

  Eleanor exhaled. “I’ll pray for you. Have you found a place to stay?”

  She shook her head. “Not yet. Don’t know if I need one.”

  The elderly lady’s brows drew together, and she chuckled in her famous rasp.

  “Oh, you’ll need one, all right,” she said, causing Lucy’s stomach to cramp. “Whether the flood got your house or not, there’s no electricity on that side of town. You’d best be prepared to bug out to higher ground.”

  Lucy’s head came to rest on her knees, suddenly too tired to remain upright.

  Just then, several news reporters approached in a jangle of harsh words and voices that were clearly not from Obergrande. They had been traveling back and forth across the fields and the west side of Tree Hill Park all day, documenting and reporting on the flood, trying to stop busy firefighters who waved them away before the reporters could get an interview, or attempting to speak to dazed victims, in one case almost causing a fist fight between a cameraman and a grieving husband.

  “Where?” a blond woman in her thirties was saying into her headphones as she walked, a flashlight in her hand and a camera crew right behind her. “What’s she look like?”

  Lucy’s head rose from her knees and she looked up, exchanging a glance with Eleanor.

  The reporter looked around, swinging the flashlight, and snapping its beam at Lucy.

  “Lucy? Lucy Sullivan?”

  Lucy squinted in the light. “Yes?”

  “Oh boy,” Eleanor muttered under her breath, shaking her head. “Mistake Number One.”

  “Gwyneth Cumber, Channel Three. You’re the first grade teacher—”

  “I—I teach kindergarten,” Lucy stammered, struggling to get up. She felt suddenly vulnerable on the ground.

  “Wonderful. You’re the kindergarten teacher who got the four little girls out—?”

  “Five,” Lucy said, starting to shake. “Five—uh, please, I really don’t want—”

  Eleanor planted her cane into the ground and took a careful step closer to Lucy.

  “Let’s get some light here,” the reporter said to her camera crew.

  A sudden explosion of lights, brighter than the sun at midday, stabbed Lucy’s eyes, causing both her and the historian to turn rapidly away, their arms across their faces, Lucy muttering a string of Irish curse words under her breath.

  Gwyneth Cumber looked around and muttered a curse word herself.

  From other corners of the park and the streets, several other news teams were hurrying over, some in vans, some on foot, running.

  “Great—everybody’s seen us. Let’s roll tape so we can get something exclusive.” She stepped as close to Lucy as she could and spoke into her microphone.

  “This is Gwyneth Cumber, Channel Three Action News, reporting live from Obergrande, New York, the scene of the worst flooding in New York State on record as counted in fatalities. I’m speaking with Lucy Sullivan, the brave young kindergarten teacher who defied orders of the fire department and ran back into the flooding school to save five of her young students from drowning.” She put the microphone in Lucy’s face. “Miss Sullivan, why do you think the first responders were willing to leave those students in the flooding school?”

  “Wha—what?” Lucy had been shivering from the cold night wind and her sodden clothes; now she was trembling from confusion and shaking with anger. “That’s—that’s not what happened—”

  Voices were approaching rapidly around her, causing her head to spin.

  “Miss Sullivan! Miss Sullivan!”

  “Where’s that handsome firefighter who carried you up the side of the school to safety? Is he around here?”

  “Yeah, I got some great footage of that—showed a lot of leg, no ass, unfortunately. Nice gams, by the way, Lucy—”

  A crowd was around her now, assaulting her with bright light.

  “Lucy! Lucy! Did you hear First Lady Barbara Bush maybe be coming in tomorrow to view the disaster? What do you think of that?”

  “Lucy—tell us about your brave escape—”

  “Lucy! Lucy—are any of the little girls hurt?”

  “Do you think you’ll write a book?”

  “Who would you like to play you in the movie?”

  “What’s it feel like to be a hero, Lucy?”

  “Did you lose anyone in the flood, Miss Sullivan?”

  Gwyneth Cumber, none too pleased at having to share her exclusive, was firing off questions that were too fast for Lucy’s foggy brain to process. The reporters’ demands had become nothing but noise, sentences piling on top of one another.

  Lucy, the focus of live international cable news television coverage and a spotlight of solar-level brightness, burst into tears and wept aloud.

  The noise level fell as the shouted questions ceased momentarily.

  Resuming a moment later.

  “Lucy—Lucy!”

  “Miss Sullivan, look over here—”

  Eleanor Preston had had enough.

  The historian lifted her cane and waved it at the reporters with a stabbing motion.

  “Back!” she shouted in her commanding, raspy voice as she swung the cane like a sword. “Back, you brutes! You ruffians—you—you swine. Leave her alone! Give her air, for goodness’ sake—she’s in shock.”

  The reporters stared in sudden silence.

  Then, from the outskirts of the group, a call went up.

  “Lucy—do you think there should be a lawsuit—?”

  “Bugger off!” Lucy screamed. “Leave me alone, dammit!”

  She tried to turn, but her stomach rushed into her mouth.

  And she vomited in full view of the camera.

  Right onto Gwyneth Cumber’s shoes.

  Splashing her microp
hone in the process.

  The reporters looked at one another. The reporter closest to Lucy recovered first.

  “Reporting live from the scene of the disaster, Gwyneth Cumber, Channel Three Action News.”

  The bright lights were suddenly extinguished, and Lucy, still bent over at the waist, heard the blond reporter as she turned away.

  “Well, that was gross.”

  Exhausted and sick as she was, Lucy could not suppress a smile.

  SOMETIME LATER, LUCY, sitting alone, wrapped in the Red Cross blanket, felt a warm arm sliding across her back and anchoring itself on her shoulder.

  She looked up anxiously, then smiled as tears sprang into her eyes.

  “How ya doing?” Kelly Moran asked, holding Lucy close against her chest.

  “Oh lord.” They were the only words Lucy could bring herself to utter in the depths of Kelly’s embrace.

  “You all right?” Lucy asked, wiping the tears away with the Red Cross blanket.

  “I’m fine. Rick’s with the fire department, so I haven’t seen him in a while, but I know—we both know—the other spouse is OK, so we’re good. You’re a beast, you know that? I couldn’t be prouder of my supervising teacher. You are The Woman.”

  “Now all I want to be is the woman home in bed, but I don’t think that’s happening,” Lucy said morosely.

  “Not in your own bed, most likely,” said Kelly, sitting down beside her. She looked up into the dark sky split with moving beams of light from television crews and rescue vehicles, almost like an insane dance.

  “Can you believe it?” she said, staring above her.

  Lucy looked up as well. “What?”

  “That tree’s arms reach all the way out over here, almost to the edge of the park,” Kelly mused, her eyes on the occasionally visible shadows of Obergrande’s great limbs. “Like it’s protecting us, even all the way over here, even now, after this awful day.”

  “A truly awful day,” Lucy agreed. She closed her eyes.

  “Did you hear about Eleanor?” Kelly asked, handing Lucy her fourth cup of coffee that evening.

  Lucy took and opened it gratefully. “No—is she OK?”

  “OK? She’s a new cable news star. After you got out of there, one of the news organizations found out that she is the town historian—as well as being quite the ninety-two-year-old rock star—so they actually asked if they could interview her, what a concept.” Kelly took a hit off her own cup of coffee. “She’s a natural, especially with that wonderful voice. She held court, after dressing down the people who were bothering you, then went on to explain all sorts of interesting history, including previous floods, the historic treaties, the French-and-Indian-War thing about the Queens of the Town, and a few bawdy stories that made both the news reporters and the people sitting around listening laugh. Ooop—here she comes now.”

  The whirr of a scooter motor approaching caught Lucy’s ear. She took another sip of the coffee, then stood, coming over to Eleanor’s “chariot,” as she called it.

  She bent and kissed the lush white curls that looked like pictures of women’s hairstyles that she had seen from the 1920s.

  “Thank you for sticking up for me, Eleanor,” she said.

  The elderly historian smiled.

  “Oh, that’s all right,” she said, waving her hand as if to dismiss the thanks. “You get the Save of the Day—you perfectly timed your, er—”

  “I try,” said Lucy wanly.

  Her face brightened after a moment.

  “By the way, Eleanor, while we were waiting for the little rescued girls to be cleared by the doctor for transport to the hospital, they were getting nervous and antsy, so I told them the story of the Eight Queens of Obergrande.”

  “Wonderful!” said the historian. “I don’t usually do that until sixth grade—there’s some pretty scary details to that story, a little bit of sexual content.”

  Lucy blinked. “Well, I didn’t even know that, so I only told them the more fairy-tale aspects to it. I also told them that, like the Eight Queens, they had been very brave and didn’t give up in the face of life-threatening danger, so I suggested we name them the Five Princesses of Obergrande.”

  “Good idea.”

  Lucy’s brows drew together. “I was just joking.”

  “I’m not,” said Eleanor. “What do you think history is, Lucy? It’s the records of significant events in the life of a place, like a continent, a country, a state—a beautiful little town. The events of this day will most likely be some of the most historically significant ever. Probably not a good idea to make a big pageant out of it—there are way too many fatalities already to have a princess parade. But I will write the story of it, if you come by the Historical Society when you’re feeling up to it, and you can relate it to me. It will be a first-person account—that’s solid history. Blessedly, the Society was spared from the flooding, being on the west side of town. I don’t know how I would ever recreate the town records if we hadn’t been.

  “By the way,” she continued, “I put your name on the list for shelter, and I think I may have found someone to take you in. If I recall from the photograph in your room, you have a kitten, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” Lucy said in surprise. “I can’t believe you remembered that.” Her smiled faded a moment later. “Actually, I’m not sure whether or not she made it. I haven’t been back to my house yet, but I’m going to later tonight.”

  Eleanor shook her head. “That whole area of town’s locked down,” she said. “But Mildred Caulfield’s on her way back from Newcomb. She’ll be in rather late, but I spoke to her before she left this afternoon. Her son is driving her—she’s way younger than me, but still up there in years. She lives on High Street, number 18, yellow house, up by the Overlook—so her house was out of the way of the flood. She had a cat for almost twenty years, Oscar, who she lost a while back. She’s a widow, and is eager to be your hostess for however long you need one.”

  Lucy bent over and kissed the historian’s cheek. “Thank you, Eleanor.” She exhaled, feeling her lungs still cramped with anxiety. “You’re up so late. Isn’t this way past your bedtime?”

  Eleanor flapped her hand again, waving away the thought.

  “Goodness, no,” she said. “I’m usually up ’til at least 1:00 AM. Bloody Murder is on the detective channel starting at midnight.”

  Lucy just shook her head and smiled.

  Chapter 19

  ‡

  9:07 PM

  At the water’s edge

  THE CRIES FOR help had stopped a short time after the sun had gone down.

  Dave Windsor pulled his fire helmet from his head and rubbed his forehead with the back of his wrist, more exhausted than he had ever been in his life.

  And numb. Completely numb.

  There had been some successes for his team earlier in the day—the rescue of a sinking motorboat that was spinning helplessly downriver in the blasting floodwaters; the freeing of a pair of women trapped under a dock that had been broken from its stanchions at the river’s original edge and flung onto their car; repeated carries of people caught in their flooded homes and businesses to safety.

  But the losses were far greater, heartbreaking and awful.

  They had been pulling bodies from the water and the mud all day with the help of the Army National Guard, extinguishing propane fires and trying to comfort distraught people searching for lost loved ones.

  And Company #1 had lost a beloved member, one of their own, a high school classmate of Dave’s, Frank Harrigan, the station officer in West Obergrande. He had been standing in the lee of the raging torrent, assisting an elderly woman trapped in the middle of Heavenly Street, when the crest of a tall wave, full of beams from a collapsed roof, hit the old woman, and swept the two of them away, because Frank apparently had refused to release her hand to save himself.

  Dave had had enough.

  “Let’s take a break,” he said to his crew, whose faces showed signs of the same exhaus
tion, the same numbness in the flashing lights atop police and fire vehicles parked up and down the edge of the flood zone. “There’s coffee coming, I hear.”

  Without a word, the volunteers of Obergrande Fire Company #2 looked around, exhaled, and began laying down their rakes and shovels, utterly spent from the hours of digging hopefully.

  But finding nothing alive in the wreckage at the water’s edge.

  Wearily, Dave sat down on a broken barrel that had, the day before, been part of the landscaping he had undertaken each year to plant around the base of Tree Hill, small, evenly-spaced displays of annuals from the region that bloomed with flowers, vines, and decorative grasses throughout the spring, summer, and fall. Earlier that morning, that display had been more than six city blocks away from the waterfront.

  Now, the floodwaters were pooling at the edge of the parking area around the park that had been in the center of town.

  The barrels that had survived were half-submerged.

  As the Ladies Auxiliary, led by Betty Finley and Emmie Klein, came around, passing out the promised coffee, he tried to focus on the knowledge that Sue and the twins were safe, having been evacuated early on, and that Sarah had been rescued from the flooded school. He tried to recall the feeling of holding his oldest daughter in his arms a few hours before, the relief he had felt knowing she had made it out alive.

  But all of the good feelings had been buried forever by a day of other people’s tragedies.

  Dave had never been so discouraged in his life.

  Don Farmer sat down next to him, staring at his steaming coffee.

  “I don’t think I can do any more of this, chief,” he said quietly. “Can’t look at one more dead kid. Just—can’t. I’m sorry.”

  Dave let his breath out slowly. “Go if you need to, Don. I understand, believe me.”

  In the flashing lights, he looked up to see a dozen other faces like Don’s staring at him.

  “That goes for all of you,” he said, taking a sip of his coffee. “Anyone who has to leave, go.”

  “We don’t do that,” protested Thad Cochrane. “C’mon, Dave—that’s against one of the rules of the constitution—”