John no longer had the slightest doubt about Will, knew his instincts had been true from the start, knew he had done the right thing to make him his son. If he had failed Hortense once, all those years ago, he redeemed himself now.
And then, of course, he could never smile at Will without seeing Sarah, and every time he held the child in his arms there was a connection to her that went beyond the tangible, and he felt he was loving her, and she him.
Susan had followed the movers back upstairs to supervise the dismantling of Jacob Blackshere's old four-poster bed, and when she came back downstairs she found John rifling through some boxes stacked near the front door. He straightened, pulled an old baseball cap out of the pile, and fitted it on his head.
"John!" she scolded. "What are you doing?"
"I was looking for a raincoat." He bent over to dump the pile of clothing back into the box and she noticed then that Will was dressed in the little slicker they had bought for him back in San Francisco. It was still too large for him, but he tottered there next to his father, gripping John's pant leg to steady himself, his dark little face peering out with bright anticipation from underneath the yellow hood.
"Where are you going?"
"I thought I'd take a ride into town. Check up on the flood situation."
"You're taking Will?"
"You don't want me to leave him, do you?"
"No... I mean, I can't keep an eye on him and keep up with the movers."
"No problem. I'll take him." He bent down to pick up the child, then opened the door and stepped out onto the front porch. A gust of cool wind blew a fine spray of rain over them, and Will recoiled and buried his face in his father's shoulder.
Susan followed them outside.
"You'll get drenched like that."
He seemed not to hear her, was following the clouds with his eyes.
"You won't be gone long, will you?"
"I don't know. I may drive over to Billy Moon's place. Give him a hand sandbagging."
The look on his face stalled her rising frustration. She said nothing to him about the movers or his books or his office.
"You'll call me if you do."
"Of course."
He turned and, drawing the yellow hood over the little boy's face, darted down the front steps to his car.
There was a sense of urgency gripping the town as John drove down Broadway. Storefronts had already been sandbagged, and merchants were scrambling to move their goods out of the reach of the oncoming waters. There was a pickup truck backed up to the doorway of Cleo's Antiques, and two men in rain ponchos were hoisting a heavy oak dresser into the back.
Parked at the curb in front of the Senior Center were a half dozen cars and pickups with hastily loaded belongings—dry goods and cookware stuffed into bags and crammed into backseats, clothing and tennis shoes plastered up against rear windows—all signs of families fleeing disaster. The center had been transformed into a community flood watch, gathering information from throughout the county—what towns were being evacuated and where the evacuees would be sheltered, what roads were impassable—giving advice and counsel and serving coffee and doughnuts around the clock.
A hand-drawn graph was tacked to the door charting the flood level, and a tall, gangly farmer clutching a cup of coffee in one hand and a tattered straw hat in the other had his nose up against the chart. Ray turned, settled his hat on his head, and shuffled down the sidewalk. John recognized him then, had seen him at the Casso-day Cafe, and he stopped and rolled down his window, shouted a greeting through the rain and offered him a lift. Ray said he would be grateful if John would take him down to the bottom of Broadway, down to the old bridge to check the flood level.
"Hell, I ain't never seen it like this," Ray said as he settled into the front seat. He laid his hat on his knees and smoothed back his sparse white hair with a huge liver-spotted hand. "This is gonna be worse than the flood of 'fifty-one, I can tell you that for sure."
He had taken on the job of monitoring the flood level every few hours, he explained, and when John asked where he wanted to go, Ray pointed straight down Broadway. "To the old bridge. 'Course you can't see it no more. Went under two days ago."
"You think it's going to rise much more?"
"No way of knowin'. That's why everybody's takin' precautions." He raised the cup to his lips and took a gulp of coffee. "I remember back in 'fifty-one my daddy had a pool table in the basement and he wasn't 'bout to let that flood ruin it. He had us all down there takin' that thing apart. Spent darn near all night unscrewin' those bolts and draggin' the big heavy oak legs upstairs to the attic. Then him and my mom and my brothers, we carried that slate top upstairs and laid it across my brother's and my bed, and my brother and me, we slept on the floor for a week until the waters went down and Daddy moved it back down to the basement."
Ray took a breath and then eyed his coffee. He was old and getting a little slack of memory, and he'd told his stories so many times that nobody paid much heed to him anymore. So he was pleased to have a fresh captive ear, not at all in a rush to go the three blocks to the end of the road.
Only then did he seem to notice Will in the backseat, and he craned his leathery brown neck around to glance at the child and commented on how Sarah'd seemed a little down since she didn't have that baby to fuss over anymore.
John answered that they'd been lucky to find her, said she'd done miracles with the boy. There was a silence while John rolled cautiously through an intersection, then he said, "You've known her for a long time, haven't you?"
Ray was squinting through the rain, eyes focused on the road ahead. He chuckled to himself, a caustic, dry sound.
"Hell yes. I can tell you stories 'bout Sarah'd make your hair stand on end. Like when her dog bit her. Tore open the side of her leg. Know what that kid did? She went and heated a poker in the fireplace and cauterized the wound herself. Didn't want to have to go to the hospital." Ray shook his head in wonder and turned his face to John. "Well, when Jack found out what she'd done, you know what he did? Think he'd scold the kid? Not a chance. He took care of the burn best he could and sent her up to her room, and then he made some cockeyed excuse to Ruth so Sarah wouldn't have to come downstairs to dinner. Then he called me, and the two of us took that husky up into the hills behind the railroad tracks and we put a bullet between his eyes. That dog'd been a birthday present to Sarah, and Jack'd spent a chunk on him and he was a beauty. Beautiful dog. But Jack couldn't have that dog around after what it did to Sarah. Never could tolerate anybody hurtin' Sarah." He swilled down the last bit of coffee. Then he crushed the paper cup in his big hand. "Jack's like an old mother hen with that girl. Sometimes I think that's why Sarah don't move on with her life."
"What about Billy Moon?" John asked.
Ray shrugged. "I don't know. Billy's a good man. Be better for her than that English fella. That jerk broke her heart and darn near killed her. But she was crazy about him. It showed all over. She just sort of came alive. Had a different face on her. I ain't never seen her look like that since." He shot a glance back at Will again. "Except maybe since you folks came to town."
They had come to a stop where the road dead-ended at the old bridge. Before them, stretching along the bank of the Cottonwood River from the bridge on past the Mill Stream Resort, lay a three-foot-high wall of sandbags. John leaned forward on the steering wheel and wiped the fog from the glass.
"Jeez," whistled Ray.
The once benign river had turned ugly. The waters were swiftest along the old main channel, racing downstream in great roiling currents, carrying with them branches and debris. The dam and old bridge had disappeared and the river had leveled out and started moving across the valley. Bates Grove Park north of the river was completely submerged. Now, only parallel rows of sycamores marked the entrance to the park from the highway, and picnic tables bobbed like rafts in the eddies.
"There's no way that river's gonna go down, even if it quits rainin'. Those creeks still got a lot
of runoff to dump on us. I seen water move in on Saffordville when it hasn't even rained out there."
Ray pulled out a pair of binoculars from underneath his raincoat and leveled them on a tree at the edge of the river.
"Lord Almighty," he murmured, and then he took the strap off his neck and passed the binoculars to John. "Take a look at that. See that gauge there stickin' outta the water?"
He pointed to a wooden post notched and marked with hand-painted numbers.
"Yeah."
"That's the official river gauge. What d'ya read?"
"Looks like just a shade under twenty-one."
"Yeah." Ray took back the binoculars and buried them under his raincoat. "In 'fifty-one the river topped out at twenty-one feet one inch. And we're almost there. Hell, that scale don't go above twenty-two feet."
On the way back, John told him Billy Moon had called, said he was thinking about heading over to his place to give him a hand sandbagging, and Ray said that would be a real neighborly thing to do.
When John drove away he saw Ray with his nose screwed up inches from the flood chart tacked to the door of the Senior Center, clutching a pen and carefully noting down his findings.
CHAPTER 33
It had been Sarah's idea to give John a call. She had been in the kitchen making a fresh pot of coffee while Billy was on the telephone with him, and she listened through the doorway. She could tell from Billy's end of the conversation that he wouldn't be corning. She looked up and forced a smile when Billy came in, held out a mug of coffee to him and urged him to sit for a few minutes. Jer Meeker had been over earlier in the day, and they'd moved the tack and feed up to the loft. Jer had loaded the horses into his trailer and taken them up to high pasture, but the river was rising fast and they were shorthanded. Anybody who had land sitting high and dry was over helping a neighbor, but most of the population resided down in the valley cut out by the South Fork or the Cottonwood, and they were all busy shoring up their own property.
"He can't come," Billy said as he took the mug of coffee from her and lowered himself into a chair.
"Well, it was worth a try." She glanced out the window, trying to keep her voice casual, disinterested. "When did he say they were leaving?"
"Tomorrow."
Billy peered at her over the rim of his mug. He had never questioned Sarah about it, but he knew she had feelings for the man, had known for sure ever since the night of the barbecue, knew something had gone on between them, didn't really want to know how much and when and where.
She turned back around to him then, smiled and said not to worry, they'd get the job done. Deep down Billy was relieved John Wilde wouldn't be coming, thought perhaps he'd rather lose a few things to the flood than witness the two of them together again, watch the way they tried to avoid each other's eyes, then stole glances when they thought he wasn't looking.
They were still in the kitchen when they heard the car drive in, and Sarah's heart leaped at the sound of tires on the wet gravel, but it was Billy's youngest daughter, Angie, who had driven down from Manhattan, although Billy had cautioned her to stay where she was because the roads were too dangerous. Billy's neighbor dropped by right after that, said he could spare an hour or two, and so the men carted the sandbags down the drive and the women set about unloading concrete blocks and lugging them into the kitchen to raise the appliances. Sarah tried to give Angie a hand emptying the china cabinet, but Angie was quarrelsome and seemed to resent Sarah's presence, took offense at Sarah's every move, so Sarah went back outside to help the men.
She had the hood of her vinyl poncho over her head and the rain was beating in her ears so she didn't hear the car, didn't even know he was there until she looked up and saw Billy talking to John on the front porch, and John holding Will in his arms. Little Will was like a church steeple in a thunderstorm, a safe channel for that electrifying love of theirs. When Sarah saw them she came sloshing up the hill, her jeans splattered with mud and the green vinyl poncho flapping at her sides so it looked like she might take wing and fly. She came up the steps toward them, her face exploding with joy, and without lifting her eyes to John she threw off her hood and held out her arms to take the child from him. Will recognized her instantly, stretched out his hands to her, and John moved closer and shifted the child into her arms. They spoke in low voices, a complicity of which neither of them seemed to be aware hanging over every word.
"I'm sorry I had to bring him."
"I'm so glad you did." She nuzzled the baby's neck, avoiding John's eyes.
"I didn't know if there would be anyone to watch him."
"I'll take him inside. There's a lot to do in the house."
"It won't be a problem?"
"We'll manage," she said, and she glanced up at him and smiled.
John slogged up and down the muddy drive that afternoon bent double under the weight of sandbags. He paused from time to time and looked out over the low sloping land, and marveled at what the river had done to this seemingly immutable landscape. Plowed fields had slipped out of sight, fence posts and barbed wire vanished. The river had broken the south bank first, filling in the lower valley. Now it was rising quickly up the steep north shore, and men like Billy who had never had the river in their homes were waging a futile battle, had not yet learned to give the river what it wanted, to wait and see what it left behind when it was gone.
By mid-afternoon the rain had finally ceased and the sun was pressing hard through thinning clouds, but no one seemed to notice. They were all working at a frenzy. The women had cleaned out the basement, hauled up Christmas decorations and boxes full of rusted gardening tools and sleeping bags. More than once Angie, deluged by memories of her mother, had broken down in tears and Sarah had left her alone with Billy, had gone up to the kitchen to clean out the lower cabinets, bag and box everything and cart it upstairs to the bedrooms. She had penned Will into the corner with a few boxes and put Billy's dog in there with him to entertain him and keep him quiet. The old dog seemed to sense she was a necessary sacrifice in time of crisis, and when Will yanked her ears and tugged on her fur and force-fed his cookies to her, she would only wince and turn her sad brown eyes up to Sarah in a silent plea.
It was a hectic afternoon, and emotions and tempers ran high. The men came inside and raised the kitchen appliances and the furniture up onto the concrete blocks, and when they ran out of blocks they used tall juice cans; when they ran out of those they stacked the peaches and tomatoes Maude had preserved in glass jars and stored down in the basement, which upset Angie again. Billy was afraid they hadn't raised things high enough, and Angie was worried about her mother's piano, so the three men hauled Maude's piano upstairs.
By dusk Billy felt they'd done as much as they could do. The afternoon had been dry, but at sunset the wind came up and the air turned cold, threatening more rain.
John was preparing to leave, had already settled sleepy Will in the back of his car when he saw Sarah come out onto the front porch and pause at the railing, studying the sky. She was exhausted, her face drawn from lack of sleep and hunger, but she smiled at him as he approached. They exchanged a few banalities about the weather, and she said something that made him laugh, about how the countians really thrived on these disasters, needed their annual floods and fires and tornadoes to give them a sense of self-importance.
He held her look for a long moment after their laughter had faded.
"And your grandparents are all right?"
She nodded. "They're on high ground."
"That's good."
She smiled. "You'd better go before it gets dark."
"I will miss you, Sarah," he said.
He could not bear to tell her goodbye, just stood there in the dim light getting cold, the rain trickling through his matted hair and down his face.
"Go," she whispered finally.
CHAPTER 34
The windshield wipers batted away at the light rain as he barreled down the county road, fishtailing in the loose gravel, eyes
keen on seeing into the darkness along the tunnel of his headlights. The only living creature picked up in the beams was a wet and bedraggled dog loping alongside the road, but even he ignored the passing vehicle, just kept up his measured trot as John drove by.
John got a little confused once or twice, in the rain with such poor visibility, wasn't sure if he was still on the right road, and he breathed a deep sigh of relief when he finally met up with the state highway. It wasn't but a few miles down the blacktop when he spotted red flares in the distance, and a little farther down he came upon two highway patrol cars stationed broadside across the lanes. He had to wait while a pickup truck pulled a U-turn and headed back in the opposite direction, then a state trooper in a rain slicker advanced toward the car. Road up ahead was out, he said tersely as he leaned down and squinted through the window at the man and the baby in the back. Two miles of state highway submerged.
"Where you headin'?" he asked.
"Just down the road. Cottonwood Falls."
"Sorry. This area's pretty much cut off. Unless you want to head back through Florence. Fifty's still open that way. You can cut south to El Dorado and then take 177 back up to the Falls."
"How long would that take me?"
"Oh, I'd say a good two hours."
John frowned up at him. "Two hours?"
"Sir, I suggest you head back where you came from. Weather's pretty freaky right now. Got some serious fog coming in."
The trooper stepped back with an impatient wave of the hand to move John on his way.
John sat at the side of the road for a few minutes with the engine idling while he thought about what to do. He had called Susan from Billy's not long before he left. The movers had finished and the truck had gotten safely on its way. But she was uncomfortable, she said, all alone in the big empty place. He had expected her to be angry, but she had only sounded apprehensive, wanted him to hurry back.
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