by Tim Poland
13
STINK WAITED TILL HE STOOD SQUARELY IN THE MIDDLE OF Sandy’s little kitchen before shaking off the rain soaking his coat. A brownish mist of splattered water coated the kitchen cabinets around the muddy pawprints tracked over the linoleum floor.
“Thank you, dear.” Sandy decided to wait to clean up until after she had tracked in the portion of the mess that she would soon contribute. She slipped into her poncho and pulled the hood over her head.
The plain black plastic container holding Edith’s ashes sat pushed to the back of the kitchen counter. She’d driven into Sherwood from the headwaters the day after her arrest to collect the old woman’s remains from the funeral director. The rains had only recently begun at that point. She could have fulfilled Edith’s request and disposed of her ashes right then and been done with it. The lower Ripshin was beginning to rise, but was still clear and easy enough to wade into. And she drove right by the spot. Edith’s favorite spot. Sandy wondered now why she had delayed completion of the simple ritual. Had she been waiting for some sort of appropriately ceremonial moment, some set of conditions more fitting to the memory of the old woman she so revered? Truth was, she didn’t want to stop for anything. She wanted to get back to the bungalow along the headwaters as soon as she could. We live up there.
She picked up the urn and held it for a moment, still as surprised by the heft and weight of it as she’d been when the white-haired funeral director first handed it to her with a solemn nod of his head. Densely compact there in her hands, it seemed heavier than the living woman she’d carried in her arms so many times. She set the urn back on the counter and tugged her hood closer around her face, turning to Stink, who remained beside her in the kitchen.
“I’ll be right back. Just want to go look at the river.” Sandy opened the screen door off the kitchen. “And stay off the furniture.” Stink’s bent tail wagged slowly as he sauntered into the living room and tugged himself up onto the sofa. “Good boy,” Sandy said. She stepped out the kitchen door into the rain that had only rarely relented since she’d arrived back on Willard Road the afternoon before.
SANDY walked down the slope of her gravel driveway, through the stand of small pines separating her house from the road, across Willard Road and dropped onto the short path through the brush and trees to the bank of the lower Ripshin. Even as she stepped from the road onto the path, she could hear the rushing waters of the river ahead of her. Falling rain mingled with water dripping from the trees through which she walked, creating an erratic rhythm pattering against the plastic of her poncho. Through her rain gear she could feel individual drops pelting her flesh as she walked.
The weedy banks, the trees that lined the raging, coffee-colored river, maintained a striking sheen in the gray late morning light. Sandy emerged from the path and stood on the bank. The world surrounding her was drenched in a fluid, undulating glow, split by a fierce, swollen river, eager to jump its banks. Pebbled shoals that normally lined the bank at this point were invisible. Years of the river’s flow had long since both nourished and exposed the roots of larger streamside trees, but those massive tangles of roots were now fully submerged beneath the seething waters that augured the looming flood. It couldn’t be much longer. They’d have to open the floodgates above the dam soon. She’d keep her ears alert for the warning signal. Her house was probably far enough up the gentle slope across the road for it to be safe from the worst of the deluge, but still, the situation would merit diligent caution.
Sandy felt strangely even-tempered as she stood in the rain with the threatening river hurtling past her. The anger and irritation that had slammed the bungalow door yesterday, that had driven her in a huff away from Keefe’s obstinate aloofness, her impatience to be done with the final ceremony with Edith’s ashes and her nagging guilt for not having done it earlier when she could have done so easily, her inability to feel any remorse for slapping that woman—these pecking concerns washed away in the presence of the river’s promised violence. It was all much simpler than she had thought. Since the rains had begun, because of the deepening, stirred-up waters, she hadn’t been able to fish for more than two weeks. Edith was dead. Keefe’s behavior was no different than it had ever been. The nursing-home manager was irrelevant. Her trial date was scheduled. She scoffed at herself, realizing she was a simpler creature than she had assumed. Once the flood had passed, once the waters had receded to a reasonable flow, she would cast her line into those waters and recognize herself again.
On the opposite bank of the river, perhaps twenty or thirty yards upstream, a black bear emerged from a stand of rhododendron. It extended its thick neck, pushing its snout out to test the air above the roiling waters before it. Turning its head downstream, it paused at the sight of Sandy at the riverside. Its neck seemed to extend further and its nose lifted in her direction. Confirming the scent of its sight, the bear snorted and lumbered upstream, disappearing into the brush, turning upslope in the direction of the headwaters.
Sandy recalled the bear-baiting pit up the fire road that Keefe had found, a lure for a bear like this one, treading the boundaries of its range, lurking on the fringe of a dangerous human world. She turned and disappeared back up the path to her house.
THE hydroelectric dam towered above the riverbed, a quarter mile upstream from Sandy’s house. Walking the last few paces up her driveway toward the house, she could clearly hear the warning signal commence, even at that distance, as the siren blast began to roll downstream. The siren would continue to blare for a few more minutes. And then the floodgates would be opened.
As if announced by the dam’s warning signal, the snarl of Tommy Akers’s pickup truck ground to a lower gear as it turned into her driveway. She turned to the sound as Tommy’s truck pulled through the opening in the pines and began to crawl up the slope, towing a stock trailer. The truck strained against the weight of its tow load, rear tires slipping on the wet gravel, spraying bits of rock in its wake as it lurched up the driveway. One small stone grazed Sandy’s shin, and she bent to clutch at the brief, stinging pain, more out of reflex than any real need. She thought she heard Tommy calling something like “Sorry, neighbor” from within his closed truck cab as he drove on past, swerved around Sandy’s truck, and pulled his rig onto the plot of nearly level ground behind the house. As he rolled past her, Sandy could see the cargo Tommy hauled inside the stock trailer—a huge, humpbacked black bull.
The tires and wheel wells, the side panels of Tommy’s truck, the sides of the stock trailer—all heavily caked and splattered with mud. Tommy cut the engine and lugged himself out of the cab as Sandy reached the top of her driveway and walked toward the rig parked behind her house. Tommy flipped the hood of his rain jacket over his cap and stomped around the front end of his truck in her direction. Sandy stepped to the side of the stock trailer and looked through the slats at the bull. He wore a halter, tethered to each side of the trailer. The hump of his back rose higher than Sandy’s line of sight, and his sides were every bit as mud-splattered as the truck and trailer that hauled him. The bull’s black eyes were moist and wide with fear, glistening in stark contrast to the dull black of his hide. When he spotted Sandy gazing at him, he snorted and heaved his flank toward her, making the trailer jump and buck. Sandy hopped back as Tommy stormed up and pounded the butt of his fist against the side of the trailer.
“Behave, you crazy old cuss.” He hammered the side of the trailer once more, and, to Sandy’s mild surprise, the bull snorted again but calmed. “Still not too late to turn you into a steer.”
“Sorry,” Sandy said. “I didn’t mean to rile him up.”
“Aw, hell. He was born riled.”
“He looks frightened.” Sandy leaned closer for another peek.
“Well, that’s kinda what I was hoping to talk to you about.” Tommy cocked his head and looked past Sandy, listening to the warning siren, squinting up into the rain.
“What?” Sandy flicked rain from her cheeks with her fingertips and turned
to Tommy.
“I’m sorry to come charging in on you like this without asking.” Tommy scraped mud off the soles of his boots on the hitch bar of the stock trailer. The bull huffed and stomped, and Tommy slapped the side of the trailer again, not as forcefully as before. “Hush in there.”
“What is it, Tommy?”
“I should’ve got going on this mess sooner. Seems my judgment ain’t aged along with this fat old body of mine. Can’t quite get things done as quick as I used to.”
Sandy noticed how flushed his face was while she waited for Tommy to finish beating around this particular bush.
“Suppose I should’ve taken care of this guy first. After I got the cows and steers put up in the barn, I thought I’d better get some sandbags in around the doors on the barn and house. They sit far enough away from the river that they’ll likely be all right, but you can’t never be sure. Just took me longer than I would’ve thought. Once I got it all done, I couldn’t think of what else to do, so I just trucked him on down here. I’m sorry.”
“What? The bull?”
Tommy raised his eyebrows and smirked apologetically as he pressed the heel of one boot into the soggy ground. “Can’t put him in the barn with the others. You don’t know the hell that would break loose if I did. And his pen’s too close to the river. Even if the water don’t run out across it too much, he spooks so damned easy, he’d probably find a way to drown himself anyway.”
“He seems pretty spooked now,” Sandy said.
“Doesn’t take much for that old fool.” Tommy shot a quick glance at the trailer. “Like I said, didn’t know what else to do, so I just ran him on down here. Water don’t ever get up this high, even at the worst. Was hoping it’d be okay to park him up here till the flood passes.”
“Of course, Tommy. It’s fine.”
“Good of you. I’ll get unhitched and get out of your hair.”
While they talked, the warning siren had become a sort of background noise. When it cut off, the silence was deafening, even with the sound of the rain. They both turned to the absence in the air.
“They’re opening ’em up now,” Tommy said.
Sandy and Tommy walked out from behind the house and stared down the slope to where the driveway disappeared through the pines, as if this location would afford them more precise foreknowledge of what was coming.
“It’ll come up pretty fast now.” Some of the red had drained from Tommy’s cheeks, and he stood still and stony, staring in the direction of the river.
“You don’t think the water will come up this far?” Sandy asked.
“Naw. Worst I ever saw, it should still crest a good ways down from here.”
“How far down?”
“A ways.” Tommy shrugged his shoulders. Rain ran in thick rivulets down the front of his rain jacket and cascaded over the round hump of his belly.
“Oh, shoot.” He turned his eyes quickly toward the bull in the trailer, then back in the direction of the river. “Time I get him unhitched . . .” His voice trailed off for a moment.
Sandy followed his gaze to the trailer, then back to his face.
“Banks are a lot lower down here,” Tommy said. “Road’s a lot closer to the river. By the time I get unhitched . . . Oh, goddamn that government dam.”
“What, Tommy?”
“Time I get unhitched and gone, the road could be underwater. Like I said, it’ll come up fast now.”
“You can’t risk that, Tommy,” Sandy said. “Just stay here.”
“I was just hoping to park that fool old bull up here. I sure didn’t mean to dump both of us old fools on you.”
“Tommy.” Sandy laid her wet hand on the wet sleeve of Tommy’s rain jacket. “You’re welcome here.”
“Mighty good of you,” he said, patting Sandy’s hand. “You’re a good neighbor.”
“Why don’t you come on inside and dry off. I’ll make us some tea.”
“Think I’d best stay out here a while longer,” Tommy said. “Keep an eye out for just what this river’s got in store for us. But I would surely appreciate a cup of that grass tea of yours.”
“Okay. Tea it is.”
“Besides, I’m guessing that ratty dog of yours is in the house, waiting to have a go at me.”
Sandy smiled and turned toward her back door. “I’ll make sure he behaves himself.”
While Sandy brewed the chamomile, Tommy moved around to the little wooden deck on the front of Sandy’s house. At the sound of his heavy tread thumping up the steps to the deck, Stink raised his head, let out a low, half-hearted growl, then curled back to sleep on the sofa.
“Hush, you. Behave,” Sandy said from the kitchen. She pulled the hood of her poncho back up, held the two mugs of steaming chamomile close to her chest, and shouldered her way out the front door to rejoin Tommy.
The rain had let up a bit while Sandy made the tea. It still came down steadily, but more lightly now. She and Tommy stood on the deck, sipping the hot tea, shielding their mugs from the rain with cupped hands, and waited for the river to reveal itself.
“Now comes the hard part,” Tommy said. He took another sip of his tea and laid his hand over the top of his mug. “Just standing here, waiting, watching, not being able to do a damn thing about any of it.”
The slope on the far side of the river rose above the barricade of small pines. Leaves on some of the hardwoods had already turned brown, others beginning to hint at the shades of red, orange, and yellow to come, and all this swirled through the persistent deep greens of the hemlocks and pines. The landscape still bore that liquid shimmer, wavering, rippled, as if the rain were within the eyes and not before them.
First they only heard the water. A low, sibilant growl announced the approaching torrent of wild water that would cut its own channel, shape its own world, indifferent to what world lay in its path. Soon the growl grew into a recognizably wet sound, the sloshing, churning din of agitated water, relentlessly on the move. The rain could not be heard.
And then they began to see it. The shadows beneath the small pines began to move, to slowly brighten, first to a dark brown, then to something vaguely golden, almost shining as it flowed through the trees, rose up the trunks, and rushed on out of the pine grove, beginning its creep up the slope toward the house. Willard Road would be fully submerged.
Her eyes fixed on the rising water, Sandy clutched her mug handle tightly and sipped the lukewarm tea, oblivious to rainwater mingling with chamomile.
“Here it comes,” Tommy said.
As if Tommy’s words were an invitation, the flood seemed to double itself. While one strand of current continued to rush through the pine trees, a new strand split off and churned suddenly through the opening the driveway cut through the trees. It gushed out of the break in the trees, thick and heavy with flood debris, the dark, silt-laden water whirling into foamy whitecaps. For a moment, the new strand of current appeared intent on running right up the driveway to the house until, caught by its own weight and gravity, it swept in a wide curve and pushed itself alongside the other strand. Riding the new strand of current through the tree break, a large deadfall trunk crashed through the opening, rose up partially in the roiling water, and tore down two of the smaller pines in the grove, dragging them into its surging course.
“And here it is,” Tommy said.
“My god.” Sandy’s words seemed to cling to her teeth.
And just then she noticed that something felt different.
“The rain. It stopped,” Sandy said.
“It has that.” Tommy’s eyes turned to the sky for only an instant, then locked again on the flood before them. “Ain’t gonna make a lick of difference for a while. Too much water already in the channel.” Tommy glanced quickly at Sandy, as if to check that he hadn’t unduly frightened her. “A step in the right direction, though.”
Despite the cooler autumn temperatures, Sandy felt a stifling heat encased in the heavy plastic of her poncho. She tugged it over her head, raked her
fingers through her hair, and draped the poncho over the deck railing. Tommy slid back the hood of his rain jacket and resettled his cap onto his head.
“What do we do now?” Sandy asked.
“Nothing,” Tommy said. “Stand here and watch it. Maybe hope a little.” He unsnapped the front of his rain jacket and laid his thick-fingered hands to the sides of his belly, patting slightly. “That grass tea of yours sure did go down nice.”
“It’s called chamomile, Tommy.”
“Chamomile. Gotta remember that. Another cup of it sure would be nice, if it ain’t too much trouble.”
In the time it took Sandy to make two more cups of tea, the river crept a few more feet up the slope. The two braids of current continued to twist and swirl away from each other, only to fall back together and flow on. Sandy and Tommy leaned their elbows on the damp wood railing of the deck, held two fresh cups of chamomile in their hands, and watched the river slowly press toward them. Sandy estimated the water was still a good fifty feet down the slope from them.
“Was a lot like this the day my granddaddy died.” Tommy stared straight ahead, his gaze stony and fixed on the rising water. The flush of red had left his face, except for the ruddiness of his round, stubbled cheeks, which never faded.
Tommy carried with him the history of five generations of Akers family life on the “skinniest” farm in the valley, a kind of personal history with which Sandy had no experience. And he carried it close to the skin, always. That much, that close to the surface, it couldn’t help but seep out from time to time.
“Tell me about it,” Sandy said.
“Nothing much to tell. The river flooded, a lot like this, and my granddaddy died that day.”
