by M. E. Kerr
“No. I mean the farm. I’m stuck with the farm.”
The heavens must have liked hearing the truth. I got a few more claps of thunder for telling it.
At ten o’clock the principal at County took a bullhorn and announced the dance was ending because of the weather.
“Be very careful driving home, those of you who have cars. The buses are out front right now, waiting to load.”
We lost the umbrella to the wind on the way to the Pontiac. We were soaked when we got inside.
“This is so exciting, Parr!” said Angel. “Turn on some music.”
She was combing her wet hair and jumping up and down in the seat, and when I stuck the key in the ignition, she put her hand on my wrist.
“Not yet. Let’s just stay here awhile.”
“I got to get you home.”
“We’ve got a perfect excuse.”
“We can’t stay long, though.”
She was reaching for me, pulling me toward her. She whispered in my ear, “I’ve never kissed anyone with the sky lighting up like it is.”
Around us cars were starting, and in the distance there was a roll of thunder.
“It’s going away from us,” I said.
“Don’t you go away.”
I don’t know how long we were there before we heard the DJ interrupt a Billy Ray Cyrus song to say Illinois Route 57 down near Quincy was flooded, and power failures had plunged the area into darkness.
“We have to go,” I said. “Now!”
“You’re no fun, Parr.”
“Didn’t you hear what he just said?”
“Quincy’s miles and miles away.”
“Yeah, well, we’re getting out of here!”
She sat very close, and we started off fine, but we were still outside Duffton when the rain washed across the windshield so hard I couldn’t see.
Angel got very quiet suddenly, and I could feel her leaning forward beside me, as though she was steering the car, too.
“I never saw it like this,” she said.
“I have to stop.”
“Just pull over and stop.”
“Where’s over?”
I cut the motor.
“We’re not going to make it unless this lets up,” I said.
“Let’s just wait, then.”
It was eleven thirty.
We just sat there. We talked about the coming Fourth of July picnic out at the county fairgrounds. There was an amateur hour included every year, and I was trying to talk Angel into singing something. Both our families were going. Everyone was. Angel said it was too big a crowd, she’d be too nervous.
After a while we couldn’t think of any more to say. The storm was getting worse. We couldn’t see anything in the pitch black outside.
All I could think about was Mr. Kidder, and what state of mind he’d be in by then.
Whatever Angel was thinking about, it wasn’t exciting her to touch me anymore.
“Daddy’s going to kill me,” she finally said.
“He’s not going to kill you,” I said.
We were still there at two A.M. when a highway patrol picked us up in a Land Rover.
Spots Starr was with the officer. “I knew you two were back this way,” he said. “I saw you behind the gym when I left, so I knew you didn’t get far.”
They dropped me off before they took Angel on to Floodtown.
“Call me when you get in,” I said helplessly. “I won’t go to bed until I hear from you.”
32
“THAT’S FOR ME,” I said. The rain was still pounding down.
“We know who it’s for,” said Doug. “He’s been calling here every hour on the hour.”
“This isn’t Mr. Kidder. It’s Angel,” I said.
It was him.
“This entire thing could have been avoided,” he barked, “if you’d left when everyone else did!”
I began a lie. “We left right after every—”
He was wise to me. “I told you it’d be over between you two if you weren’t responsible, so I’m giving you notice that it’s over!”
I could see Mom in the kitchen, cleaning the mud off my good shoes. Our yard and driveway were mush.
“I’m sorry, sir. May I talk to Angel?”
Doug was sitting on the couch with his hands covering his eyes, as though he hurt for me.
“No, you cannot talk to Angel,” said Mr. Kidder. “Not now, not ever again. I warned you, Parr!”
“I’m sorry, sir, but—”
There was a click, then a dial tone.
I put the receiver down.
Mom called in, “Now can we all go to bed?”
Dad was already there.
“He slept all through this?” I asked Doug as we undressed in our room.
“Dad sleeps off depressions. He took my news like a death in the family, went straight to bed after supper.”
“Then he doesn’t know Angel’s father was calling here?”
“He doesn’t even know about Duff’s calls. Mom handled that. Duff’s got an all points alert out on the Porsche. He doesn’t believe Evie’s in New York. He said there was no way Patsy’d drive all that distance. He thinks they’re in St. Louis, or why would she have taken the car? … Mom had to give him Evie’s number, finally.”
“Do you think Patsy’s on her way to Evie?”
“I give up on those two! I got sick pigs to worry about. Rothwell thinks it might be worse than I thought it was. Dad won’t believe it!”
We listened to the radio in the dark for a while, heard a report that the Mississippi had risen over a foot already.
“I hope the levees hold,” said Doug.
“What’ll I do?” I said. “Go over there and try to reason with him?”
“Good God, Parr! Grow up! We’ve got more important things to worry about … like what are we going to do if this weather sticks with us for a while?”
“Why would it?”
“Why wouldn’t it? And they’ve been watching that river since April. It was above the technical flood level at Quincy’s lock and dam back then, and it hasn’t budged. Now it’s rising.”
Mom poked her head in the door.
“You two stop talking. We’ve got a big day tomorrow.”
I said, “Good night, Mom.”
“Good night, honey. Don’t worry, now. Mr. Kidder was just upset. Tomorrow he’ll realize you two couldn’t help that there was a storm.”
“Yeah,” I said. I didn’t know how I was going to tell her about us staying behind the gym while the other cars left.
“Get some sleep, Mom,” said Doug.
“I hope that phone’s stopped ringing finally!”
We shut off the radio.
I whispered in the darkness, “What do you think Duff will do next?”
I couldn’t get excited about the weather the way Doug did. I believed it was the farmer in him. Dad was the same way. They were always watching the sky, listening to weather reports, talking with other farmers about signs of hard winters to come—hornets building bigger nests, caterpillars furrier than usual … They reminisced about old storms the way other people remembered their high school days or highlights of some years-ago World Series.
“What can Duff do?” Doug answered me. “He doesn’t even know for sure Patsy’s on her way to New York.”
“My money says she is.”
“Anyway, Patsy’s eighteen now.”
“I wish I was.”
“Yeah, well you’re sixteen going on twelve. You didn’t come right home, did you? … We had another call I didn’t tell anyone about. Spots Starr said you and Angel were still parked behind the gym when he left, and he left late.”
“Living in a small town sucks!” I said.
“I hope you’re packing condoms, little brother!”
“I am, but they’re just for show.”
“You better keep it that way.”
“Something tells me I don’t have a choice, anymore.”
I said
it, but I didn’t believe it was over between Angel and me.
The rest of that early morning I dozed and woke up, dreaming I was with Angel, then blinking awake and trying to think of things to say or do to make Mr. Kidder change his mind.
When daylight came, more rain came with it.
33
NEXT MORNING AFTER WE finished our chores, Cord came up to the house with Dad and Doug and me.
The radio and local TV were calling for volunteers to help with the levee. There was talk of bringing in inmates from a boot camp out past King’s Corners. The county jail had already sent over their prisoners.
“We should do some sandbagging ourselves,” said Dad.
Cord said, “What we got to do is get the hogs to market.”
“Hogs, pigs, the whole bunch of ’em,” Dad agreed.
“The pigs have to be destroyed,” said Doug.
“Not all of them!”
“All of them!” Doug said.
“Then we got to go fast,” Cord said. “The roads are already clogged with farmers doing the same thing.”
Without needing to be told, Mom was making coffee with Dad’s contraband supply. “We’re going to be all right here, aren’t we? Douglas, I want some warning if we’re not.”
“I hope we are,” Dad said. “The house is insured. The crops and livestock aren’t!”
“The sheriff took Atlee’s bulldozer to the levee first thing this morning,” Cord said, “and it got stuck halfway there. This is big!”
“Thanks for telling us,” said Dad.
While Dad and Cord were loading up the livestock to sell, Mom began making a meat loaf and some macaroni and cheese, in case we lost power later.
“What’s going to happen to Melvin?” she said.
“Tomorrow we’ll take him and the cows up to Yardley’s.”
I was changing into dry boots, planning on helping Doug with Atlee’s livestock after Dad and Cord took off. They were being moved to higher ground over past Floodtown.
Later, I was thinking, we could go by Sunflower Park, see if there was anything we could do for the Kidders. I didn’t think they’d refuse help, even if it was me. I’d heard over the radio some of the mobile homes were being hauled off, but most couldn’t afford to pay the steep prices being charged: two and three thousand dollars—no way the Kidders could afford that.
Evie’s Pontiac was still down on the side of the road.
I stood up and put on my poncho.
We heard a gunshot and Mom jumped.
“What was that?”
“Doug killing the pigs,” I said.
She kept wincing while the shots kept sounding.
“That’s all of them,” she said, finally. She’d been counting. I hadn’t.
“He had to,” I said. “They were all sick.”
Then an announcer’s voice on the radio told us the fireworks displays and picnics planned throughout the area for the Fourth of July were all canceled.
34
FOURTH OF JULY MORNING.
“Parr, are you all all right?”
“We’re all right. How about you, Evie?”
“Never mind me. Is the farm okay?”
“We’re hanging in there,” I said. “I just came in the door. Mom’s down by the barn picking strawberries in the pouring rain, and Dad and Doug are sandbagging at the levee. A levee upstream gave way, so the river’s rise has slowed some.”
“Picking strawberries?”
“For freezing. What we can save.”
I told her about selling the hogs and boarding Melvin and the cows up at Yardley’s, and that Mom had some of our valuables packed just in case.
I said, “Maybe the river will hold off. They got a hundred thousand bags on the levee. I was working up there last night. They had convicts up there with us: drug dealers, thieves right alongside farmers, forming a human chain—it’s something else, Evie!”
I’d never gotten over to Sunflower Park. Anything personal was on hold. That had finally registered with me after I’d called Angel’s number and heard Mr. Kidder bark at me to stop bothering people who had more on their minds than their own asses. I’d never heard him use the language he had, never imagined him calling me what he did: “selfish” being about the only word that wasn’t obscene.
I hoped Evie wouldn’t ask me about her car. The road where I’d left it was underwater now.
“What a time to be away!” she said.
“Well, you can always come home,” I said.
“No, we can’t,” she said.
It was the first time she said “we.”
I said, “How’d she get there so fast?”
“She flew from St. Louis on the first.”
“Everyone was out looking for the Porsche.”
“It’s in a St. Louis parking garage now.”
“Did you expect her?” I asked.
“It’s been planned for a long time, Parr. The only good thing about your weather is it’s got Mr. Duff’s mind off us. She just talked to him, so word will get out now where we are.”
“In New York,” I said.
“You’re not going to believe this, Parr. I wanted to tell Mom myself. I’ll call again tonight.”
“Believe what?”
“We just flew out of Kennedy airport. We’re on our way to France. I don’t even believe I’m on this plane! Everything’s happening so fast.”
I said, “Evie? Good for you!”
“Do you mean it? I’m sorry about what you’re going through there. I feel that I left you in the lurch.”
“Don’t worry about us, big sister. We’ll handle it!”
“Parr? Thanks for saying that.”
35
WHERE I SAW ANGEL next was in a Salvation Army aid center in Dufftown, rummaging through a box of donated sweaters in search of one for her mother.
Sunflower Park was under ten feet of water. They’d lost everything and were staying in the V.F.W. hall at King’s Corners.
We’d held out until the tenth, then moved over to the basement at St. Luke’s church.
Angel’s face didn’t look glad to see me, so my own smile faded fast as I said, “Can we talk, Angel?”
“As soon as I find something here for Mama.”
“I just picked up some sandwiches.”
“When God gets you, He gets you good.”
“It’s the river, not God.”
“Maybe it’s God using the river.” She found a pink cardigan and put it over her arm. We started walking toward the tent flap. She said, “Daddy says maybe this is to teach us something.”
“I thought he believed sometimes things happen God just doesn’t interfere with.”
“For a reason, maybe,” Angel said. “To warn us.”
“Warn us what? That levees don’t hold?”
“It doesn’t have to do with levees. It’s what people think they can get away with, and we get to thinking along with ’em they can.”
It was raining outside. When wasn’t it? We stood just inside the tent, out of the way of people coming and going. Angel had an old raincoat on, jeans and muddy sneakers. Her long black hair was held back by a red bandanna.
“Can we talk about us?” I asked her.
“I was talking about us…. Daddy’s right, Parr. You should have been more responsible back that night of the dance.”
“You wouldn’t let me leave. Don’t you remember?”
“I was just with you. I wasn’t the one in charge, or driving the car. Maybe I didn’t know better, but you should have. You’re the boy.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I was trying to think up something to answer when she put in, “Of course, who’s the boy and who’s the girl is all mixed up in some people’s thinking. Some people think there’s no difference, and I guess I got to thinking all kinds of crazy things myself, since I was actually cheering on your sister and Patsy Duff. I remember that. That was my own faulty thinking.”
I put my hand on her shoul
der. “Angel, you don’t even sound like yourself. I know this has been awful, but don’t start blaming it on things like Evie and Patsy and sin and bad thoughts. If you live in Florida, you get hit by a hurricane. If you live in California, it’s an earthquake does you in. Here, it’s the rivers. It’s geography, not morality. Do you think I’m immoral?”
“That sign you put up wasn’t moral, Parr, and it had to do with your own sister!”
“That’s the thanks I get for putting my trust in you!” I said. “I never had to tell you I did that!”
“Daddy put his trust in you. A lot of good it did him!”
She’d stopped me cold.
I didn’t want to argue with her. I was due back at St. Luke’s with the sandwiches. Then Doug, Dad, and I were taking a joboat over to see if we could get into the house through the top-floor windows.
I said, “You’re right about me not being responsible, and you’re right about it being wrong to put up that sign. I just don’t think it’s right to blame this flood on God. All these people aren’t sinners.”
She said, “Not yet, maybe. But we were all heading in that direction. I’m not the only one saying it, Parr. A lot of people are asking, How come this happened?”
“This happened because we tried to turn the Mississippi into a canal, and it’s a river!”
She was looking out toward the street, no expression on her face—until suddenly it brightened, but not because of what I was saying. She’d seen someone. She was waving her hand, smiling, finally, that old great smile of hers, like she was back to being her old self.
I saw Spots Starr heading toward the tent. He was grinning and waving, too. He looked the way I used to when I’d see Angel ahead of me.
“I should have known,” I said.
Angel said, “You should have known to be more responsible.”
“That, too,” I said. “Definitely!”
That was the last time we talked.
It wasn’t a time for talking, anyway, days that followed.
Things spoke for us.
Levees turned to Jell-O. Whole towns swallowed up. Dogs, cats, pigs, and deer clinging to rooftops. Corpses floating by, set loose from graveyards. People living in tents, attics, cellars, cars.
In the midst of it all, Will Atlee died.