Marooned with the Maverick

by Christine Rimmer

  When they finally got to Falls Street on the southeastern edge of town, they had to circle around and take other roads farther east and then work their way back in. It was nothing but mud, pools of water, swamped, abandoned vehicles and way too much debris south of the creek. The buildings they saw before they turned east were still standing, but bore the telltale signs of water damage within.

  Eventually, they reached Sawmill Street and turned west again. The water level was way down from flood stage and the bridge appeared intact. Collin pulled the pickup to the shoulder before they crossed it. They both got out to have a look, to make sure that crossing would be safe. Buster jumped out to follow them.

  But then a couple of pickups came rolling across from the town side. Behind the wheel of the second truck was a rancher they both recognized, Hank Garmond. Hank owned a nice little spread at the southwestern edge of the valley.

  He pulled to a stop. “Willa. Collin. I see you’re both in one piece and still breathing. Could be worse, eh? I’m headin’ back to my place. We still got a house, but we lost the barn and sheds. Haven’t started counting cattle yet. I just stopped in at Crawford’s to try and get a few supplies to tide us over.” Crawford’s General Store, on North Main, was a town landmark. The store sold everything from basic foodstuffs to farm supplies, hardware and clothing. “Shelves are already lookin’ pretty bare in there.”

  Collin asked, “How bad is it?”

  “In town? Power’s out, and all the phones. North of the creek is okay, from what I heard. No flooding, the water supply unaffected. South is not lookin’ good. Commercial Street Bridge is washed out. There’s damage to the Main Street Bridge. People are bypassing it. We still got this bridge though.” He pointed a thumb back over his shoulder. “Praise the Lord for small favors.” Very small favors, Willa couldn’t help thinking. True, it was pretty much what she and Collin had thought it would be, but somehow, to hear Hank confirm their suspicions made it all the more horribly real. “And then there’s what happened to Hunter McGee.” Hunter McGee was the mayor.

  “What?” Willa demanded.

  “Tree fell on that old SUV of his. So happened he was in the SUV at the time.”

  Willa respected Mayor McGee. He was a born leader, a real booster of education and had planned and promoted several school-related fund-raising events. “My Lord,” she cried. “Was he hurt?”

  “The tree fell on the hood. Not a scratch on him.” Hank resettled his hat on his head and Willa felt relief. But then Hank added, “Must have scared the you-know-what right out of him. He had a heart attack.”

  Willa put her hand over her mouth. “Oh, no...”

  “Oh, yeah. It was over real quick for Mayor McGee.”

  “Over?” Willa’s heart sank. “You—you mean he’s...?”

  Hank nodded. An SUV and another pickup came across the bridge. The occupants waved as they drove by. Hank said somberly, “They took him to Emmet’s house. Emmet pronounced him DOA.” Emmet dePaulo, a nurse-practitioner, ran the town clinic. “Clinic’s flooded, in case you were wondering.”

  Willa and Collin exchanged grim glances. They weren’t surprised. The clinic was south of Main. “Emmet and a couple of his neighbors waded in there and saved what equipment and supplies they could first thing this morning. Luckily, Emmet had a lot of his medical stuff stored on the second floor and the water didn’t make it that high. He’s set up an emergency clinic at his house, for now.”

  “They got the volunteer fire guys out on search and rescue?” Collin asked.

  Hank shrugged. “Can’t say. I ain’t heard of anybody dead, hurt bad or stranded...’ceptin’ Mayor McGee, I mean. Rest his soul. But I did hear that some county trucks brought in salvage-and-rescue equipment and sandbags yesterday before the levee broke. This morning, the town council put together an emergency crew to patch up the places where the water got through. So that’s taken care of for now. And you can just have a look at the creek. Water level’s back to normal range.”

  Collin gave a humorless chuckle. “Yeah, one good thing about breaks in the levee. They tend to bring the water level way down.”

  “That they do,” Hank concurred. “Plus, there’s no rain in the forecast for at least the next week. So we’re unlikely to have a repeat of what happened yesterday—oh, and the town council called a meeting at noon in the town hall to talk cleanup and such. Wish I could be there, but I got way too much cleanup of my own out at my place and I need to get after it. Bought the bleach I needed, at least. I can disinfect my well.” Hank tipped his hat.

  “You stay safe and take it slow on the road, Hank,” Collin said.

  “Will do. You keep the faith, now.” The rancher rolled on by.

  Collin put his arm around her. “You’re lookin’ kind of stricken, Willa.”

  She leaned into him, because she could. She needed someone to lean on at that moment. And Collin was so solid. So warm. So very much alive. “I’d been letting myself hope that at least no one had died—and I really liked Mayor McGee.”

  “I hear you. Hunter was a good man and this town could sure use him about now.” He pulled her a little closer in the shelter of his arm and turned them both back to the pickup, Buster at their heels. The dog jumped in back again and they got in the cab.

  As they drove across the bridge, Willa tried not to dread what might be waiting for them on the other side.

  Chapter Four

  It didn’t look so awfully bad, Willa told herself as they drove along Sawmill Street. In fact, there on the northern edge of town, things seemed almost normal. Willa spotted a couple of downed trees and some flattened fences, but nothing like the devastation they’d witnessed coming in.

  When they turned onto Main Street going south, they saw that the Crawford store parking lot was packed, people going in—and coming out mostly empty-handed. She supposed she shouldn’t be all that surprised. It wouldn’t take long to clear out the shelves of emergency supplies if everyone in town and most of the valley’s ranchers showed up all at once and grabbed whatever they could fit in a cart.

  The Community Church had its doors wide open. People sat on the steps there or stood out under the trees in front. Most of them looked confused. And lost.

  “Shouldn’t the Red Cross be showing up any minute?” she asked hopefully. “And what about FEMA and the National Guard?”

  Collin grunted. “With a lot of the state in this condition, the phones out and the roads blocked, we’ll be real lucky if a few supply trucks get to us in the next day or two.” And then he swore low. “Isn’t that the mayor’s SUV?” The old brown 4x4 was half in, half out of the town hall parking lot. It had definitely come out the loser in the encounter with the downed elm tree. The tree lay square across what was left of the hood. The driver’s door gaped open. A couple of boys in their early teens were peering in the windows.

  “That’s just too sad,” Willa said low. “You’d think they’d want it off the street.”

  “Damn right.” Collin muttered. “A sight like that is not encouraging.” He hit the brake—and then swung a U-turn in front of the library, pulling in at the curb.

  “Collin!” Willa cried, surprised. “What in the...?”

  He shouted out the window at the two boys. “Hey, you two. Get over here.”

  Both boys froze. They wore guilty expressions. But then they put on their best tough-guy scowls and sauntered to Collin’s side of the truck. They were the older brothers of a couple of Willa’s former students and when they spotted her in the passenger seat, they dropped some of the attitude and mumbled in unison, “’Lo, Ms. Christensen.”

  She gave them both a slow nod.

  One of them raked his shaggy hair off his forehead and met Collin’s eyes. “Yeah?”

  As he’d already done several times in the past eighteen hours or so, Collin surprised her. He k
new their names. “Jesse. Franklin. Show a little respect, huh?”

  Jesse, who was fourteen if Willa remembered correctly, cleared his throat. “We are, Mr. Traub.” Mr. Traub. So strange. To hear anybody call the youngest, wildest Traub mister. But then again, well, the Traubs were pillars of the Rust Creek Falls community. Some of that probably rubbed off, even on the family bad boy—especially to a couple of impressionable teenagers.

  Franklin, who was thirteen, added, “We were just, you know, checkin’ things out.”

  Collin leaned out the window and suggested in a just-between-us-men kind of voice, “You two could make yourselves useful, do this town a real big favor....”

  The two boys perked up considerably. “Well, yeah. Sure,” said Jesse.

  “How?” asked Franklin.

  “Head on up to the garage. See if Clovis has a tow truck he can spare.” Clovis Hart had owned and run the garage and gas station at Sawmill and North Buckskin for as long as Willa could remember. “Tell him the mayor’s SUV is still sitting in the middle of Main Street with a tree trunk buried in its hood and lots of folks would appreciate it if Clovis could tow it away.”

  The boys shared a wide-eyed look. And then Franklin said, “Yeah. We could do that.”

  “You want me to take you up there?”

  “Naw,” said Jesse, puffing out his skinny chest. “We can handle it ourselves.”

  “Good enough, then. Thanks, boys—and tell Clovis he probably ought to bring a chain saw for that tree.”

  “We will.” The two took off up Main at a run.

  “That was well done,” Willa said, and didn’t even bother to try and hide the admiration in her voice.

  Collin grunted. “Maybe, but do you think they’ll make it happen?”

  “You know, I kind of do. They’re good kids. And this is a way for them to help. And you know Clovis.”

  “Yes, I do. Clovis Hart respected Hunter McGee and he won’t like it that the car Hunter died in is sitting on Main with the hood smashed in for everyone to stare and point at.”

  She glanced toward the dashboard clock. It was 10:45 a.m. “So what do we do now?”

  “I was thinking we could go and see how your house made out....”

  She glanced over her shoulder, out the back window, past a happily panting Buster, at the Main Street Bridge. Someone had put a row of orange traffic cones in front of it to warn people off trying to use it. And one of her brother’s deputies was standing, arms folded, in front of the pedestrian walk that spanned one side. “It doesn’t look like they’re letting folks cross the bridge.”

  Connor glanced over his shoulder, too. “We could try heading back to the Sawmill Street Bridge, then going on foot along the top of the levee until we get to your street.”

  “That could be dangerous...I mean, with the breaks in the levee and all. We would have to go carefully, and we don’t know what we’ll find if we manage to get to my house. It could take hours and we would miss the noon meeting Hank mentioned. I do think we should go to that.”

  Collin faced front again, his big shoulders slumping, and stared broodingly out the windshield back the way they had come. “You know who’ll be running that meeting now Hunter’s gone, don’t you?”

  She did. “Nathan Crawford.” Nathan was in his early thirties, a member of the town council. Everyone expected him to be mayor himself someday. He and Collin had never liked each other. It was as if the two had been born to be enemies. Nathan was as handsome and dynamic as Collin was brooding and magnetic. Collin had always been a rebel and Nathan considered himself a community leader.

  Rumor had it that five or six years back, Nathan’s girlfriend, Anita, had gone out on him—with Collin. Word was Anita had told Collin that she and Nathan were through. But apparently, she’d failed to inform Nathan of that fact. There’d been a fight, a nasty one, between the two men. Some claimed Collin had won, others insisted Nathan had come out the victor. After that, the two had hated each other more than ever.

  Plus, there was the old rivalry between their two families. Nathan was a Crawford to the core. The Crawfords not only owned the general store, they were also as influential in the community as the Traubs. And for as long as anyone could remember, Crawfords and Traubs had been at odds. Willa didn’t really know the origin of the feud, but it seemed to be bred in the bone now between the town’s two most important families. Traubs didn’t think much of Crawfords. And the Crawfords returned the favor.

  She spoke gently, but with firmness. “I really think it’s important that everyone who can possibly be there attends that meeting.”

  He put his arm along the back of the seat and touched her shoulder, a gentle brush of a touch. She felt that touch acutely. His dark eyes sought hers—and held them. “So you want to go to the meeting first and then decide what to do about getting to your place?”

  She smiled at him. “I do. Yes.” Right then, a Rust Creek Garage tow truck came rumbling toward them down the street.

  “I’ve got a chain saw in my toolbox in the back.” Collin got out to give Clovis a hand.

  * * *

  At ten past two that afternoon the town hall meeting was still going on.

  Collin sat next to Willa and wished he was anywhere but there. He was getting hungry, for one thing. And he figured the rest of the crowd had to be hungry, too.

  The big multipurpose meeting room was packed. They had a generator for the lights, but there was no air-conditioning, never had been in the town hall. As a rule, it didn’t get that hot in Rust Creek Falls. But with all the bodies packed in that room, it was hot now.

  Tired, frightened, stressed-out townsfolk had taken every chair. More people stood at the back or along the side walls. There were children, too. People didn’t want to let their kids out of their sight at a time like this. And kids got restless when forced to sit or stand in one place for too long.

  Babies were wailing and small voices kept asking, “Daddy, when can we go?” and “Mommy, is this over yet?”

  There were a lot of big talkers in town and every one of them was insisting on being heard. Plus, that jerk Nathan sat up there on the hall stage with the other useless members of the council and kept banging the mayor’s big hand-carved oak gavel for order.

  All right, it was true. A lot of people thought the world of Nathan Crawford. And maybe, if Collin were being fair about it, he’d admit that Nathan had a few good qualities. However, when it came to most Crawfords, and Nathan in particular, Collin just plain didn’t feel like being fair.

  Nathan had the council in his pocket, naturally. They all looked at him like he was wearing a damn halo or something, like he was the one sent down from heaven to single-handedly fix everything that had gone so completely wrong since the day before.

  “Everyone, your attention!” Nathan boomed in that smooth baritone that made people think he knew what he was talking about. “We all have to work together here. As I’ve said before, though phone, internet and TV are temporarily out of commission, we have the radio system at the sheriff’s office and we are in communication with DES—that is the state office of Disaster and Emergency Services. They are well aware of what is going on in Rust Creek Falls and the valley. And, unfortunately, in far too many other communities in western Montana. The good news, however, is that everything is under control and moving along.”

  Somebody in the crowd made a rude noise.

  Nathan banged the mayor’s gavel some more. “If we could all just be patient for a little bit longer, we will get these teams firmed up, so we can all get going on the cleanup right away.”

  Collin knew he should keep his mouth shut. His plan had been to get through the meeting, help Willa deal with the probable ruin of her home and then pitch in wherever he was needed. But Nathan and the council had their priorities turned around. And while there were plenty of
people willing to go on and on about the difficulty of the situation and how much they wanted to help, nobody else seemed ready to tell the council they were putting the cart before the horse.

  He got to his feet. Beside him, Willa startled and looked up at him, wide-eyed. She did amuse him, the way she always looked so worried about what he might do next. He sent her a glance that he meant to be reassuring. Her eyes only got wider. So much for soothing her. He faced front and waded in.

  “I’m sorry. Nobody’s speaking up about the real issue here and so I suppose I’m going to have to be the one. Nathan, cleanup is not the issue yet,” he said good and loud. “First, we need to get teams into the flooded areas and see who needs help there. We need search and rescue and we needed it hours ago.”

  A chorus of agreement rose from the crowd. Apparently, others thought there should be a rescue effort. It was only that no one had been willing to stand up and say it out loud.

  Nathan banged his gavel. He looked at Collin the way he always did: as though he’d just crawled out from under a rock. “Order. Please, everyone. I already explained. We have the volunteer firefighters out searching for trapped or injured survivors.”

  “One team, you’re saying? With how many men on it?”

  Nathan didn’t answer either question. Instead, he went right on with his argument. “Those men are trained for this and know what they’re doing. We don’t think it’s a big problem. No one has reported anyone missing.”

  “And how’re you going to know if someone’s missing?” Collin demanded. “People can’t call. The phones are out. There can’t be more than a third of the people in the valley here at this meeting or hanging around Main Street. Where are the rest of them? Trying to clean up what’s theirs? Off to Livingston for the rodeo, or down in Thunder Canyon with the rest of my family? Or trapped on the upper floors of their houses, wondering why no one’s come looking for them?”