The Color of Your Skin Ain't the Color of Your Heart

by Michael Phillips

  Tears were falling from her eyes. I think she realized the rain wasn't going to stop.

  HE RAIN DIDN'T STOP. IT DIDN'T LET UP FOR three days. I'd never seen it rain so hard. And when it finally did let up, it didn't stop but only slowed down a little. Already the streams and rivers had filled so full that a few of them were lapping at the top of their banks. As for the cotton, it wasn't just wet-half the field sat under two or three inches of water. The first big rainstorm of the year turned out to be the worst storm Shenandoah County had seen in a dozen years. That's what Henry told us later that folks were saying.

  Katie was somber and so were the rest of us. From being so hopeful such a short time earlier, now our hopes of raising the money to pay off Rosewood's second loan were gone.

  We didn't see Henry or Jeremiah again for several days. We didn't know it, but after the third day of rain we were cut off from them anyway. The river had come up over the road in several places and we couldn't have gotten to Greens Crossing if we'd wanted to, or anyone from there to us.

  We stayed inside, not doing much but trying to keep a good fire going and keep dry and warm. The cows, of course, couldn't go out to pasture and had to stay in, and that took more work because we had to feed them and clean up after them. None of us realized the danger we were in from the stream that wound west of the house. I'd gone down the road to keep an eye on the river, which was about a half mile northeast and then wound in closer by one of the cotton fields. And while the river was getting mighty huge and was spilling over the road in spots, it was still too far away from us to cause us any worry. But it's a funny thing about floods, sometimes the littlest streams can grow as big as rivers. And without us even realizing it, the stream that went through the woods at Katie's secret place was quickly becoming a river and was overflowing its banks. Though it wasn't moving fast, it was spreading out everywhere and flowing over the fields toward Rosewood.

  Katie was the first to see it. She was upstairs one day and absently glanced out the window of Emma's room, a window facing west. All of a sudden she gasped in astonishment.

  "Mayme!" she cried. "Mayme, come up here ... there's a lake out there! A whole lake I can't even see the end of. The road toward Mr. Thurston's ... it's gone. It's covered by water!"

  By then we had all heard her and were running upstairs to see the sight.

  I don't know if we were really in any danger. The house and barn and other Rosewood buildings sat on slightly higher ground than any of the surrounding fields. But seeing the water so close, and stretching out in three directions farther than we could see, was about as fearsome a sight as I'd ever seen in my life. The look on Katie's face wasn't just concern, it was a look of terror.

  I don't think we had felt so helpless since we'd been together as we did at that moment. All four of us just stood there in silence. The sight struck awe into us. The raw power and terror of nature seemed so overwhelming, and we suddenly seemed so small and insignificant and powerless. And still the rain kept falling like it was never going to stop. I know we were all thinking the same thing-how much higher would the massive lake get ... and how much closer to the house would it come?

  It was Aleta who finally broke the silence.

  "Is it going to come and swallow the house?" she said in a trembly voice. "What will we do, Katie?"

  Her obvious fear brought Katie back to herself. Like she always did, she put her own fear aside to reassure Emma and Aleta.

  "I don't know, Aleta," she answered, placing a gentle arm around Aleta's shoulders. "But if it comes to the house, we'll just stay upstairs. It could never get this high. It would have to cover all of Greens Crossing to do that!"

  We didn't know it, but that's just what people in town were worrying about. We weren't the only ones with problems from the flood. Everyone for miles was looking at the rising water just like we were, and some houses and plantations were in far more peril than Rosewood. The bottom floors of a few were already under water.

  Later that day, when Emma and Aleta were taking naps, Katie and I were alone in the kitchen. We stood for a few minutes just looking out. It seemed like that's mostly what we did these days, stand staring out windows into the dreary mist and slanting rain, wondering when it was going to stop. We both had serious expressions on our faces and were thinking the same thing-that maybe we ought to take a closer look at what was going on to see just how serious the danger really might be. Without a word, we went to the workroom next to the kitchen, put on big raincoats and galoshes and hats, then walked outside. We stood a moment more on the porch, then Katie led the way down the steps and into the rain.

  "I think we should look at the river," she said.

  I nodded in agreement, and we trudged off across the muddy yard, past the barn and stables, and in the direction of the old slave cabins, which had been vacant since the war.

  We didn't get much farther than that. Halfway across the field adjacent to the last little shack, a field that sloped down from the high ground of the house and most of Rosewood's buildings, we saw the edge of the river lapping gently against the mud and stalks of cotton we'd picked. In just the few days since I'd checked the road, the river had come over its banks. Once it was that high, all the flat surrounding fields began to fill with its overflow. Out in the water beyond us the stalks poked up like the stubble of a white man's beard. The actual banks of the river were more than two hundred yards away from us. This was the closest place where the river came to Rosewood. But those banks had disappeared along with the two hundred yards. The river on this side of the house was so wide toward town we couldn't see the other side of it. Just like on the other side, the water looked like it went forever. Now for the first time we really realized that we were completely surrounded and cut off from Henry, from the town, from the whole rest of the world.

  Rosewood was an island surrounded with water everywhere. We were alone.

  Slowly we continued across the field through the mud until we came to the water's edge, where we stopped.

  Again we just stood and watched, mesmerized by the awesome sight. Right in front of our feet, the water was shallow and calm and muddy. But as it stretched out into the distance, it was easy to see the flow of the huge expanse out where the actual river used to be. And it was moving fast, swirling and frothing like a torrent.

  It was brown and muddy. Logs and bushes and sticks and small trees floated down past us out in the water as we watched.

  "What if the river and stream both keep getting higher?" said Katie. "Rosewood's right in the middle of it."

  "I know," I said. "The stream must pour into the river over yonder. That's what must be making the river so high. And you're right, Rosewood's right in the middle."

  Before we could think any more about our worries, suddenly we heard a mournful moo and saw a helpless cow rushing by out in the middle where the river was moving fast, struggling to keep its head above water.

  "Oh, Mayme!" cried Katie. "Can't we do something!"

  "I'm afraid there's nothing we can do for it now, Katie. Once a river like this takes something, it's not going to stop till it gets to the ocean."

  We watched as the poor cow disappeared and then we just kept standing there. If anything, the rain began to pound all the harder on our heads.

  "I'm scared, Mayme," said Katie after a minute.

  "I know," I said. "Me too. But we'll be okay. I'm sure the water could never reach the house."

  "But it's only fifty yards away from the slave cabins."

  "I know. But the house is quite a bit higher. Look-" I said as we turned around behind us-"the road goes up from the colored town. It can't possibly get much higher."

  As we turned back around to face the swirling river and looked down, we saw that our boots were in the water. Just in the time we had been standing there, the river had risen another inch.

  Without saying anything more, we both stepped back and slowly began making our way back to the house. Despite my optimistic words, I was worried to
o. If the water was rising this fast, there was no telling what might happen.

  AY AFTER DAY THE DREARY GRAY CONTINUED, and the rain kept falling from the sky. Everything was gray and brown. The two brown rivers and lake of water surrounding us met the endless gray of the rain and sky off in the distance in every direction you looked, broken only in a few places by trees.

  And still the water from the lakes surrounding us from the river and Katie's stream kept rising and getting closer and closer to the house. Three days after Katie and I had gone to look at it, the water from the main river had not only reached the furthermost slave cabin, it had completely covered the porch and floor and was rising up the outside of the wall and making its way to the others. On the other side of the house, the lake from the stream that went through Katie's secret place in the woods was lapping at the grass and trees in front of the house only a couple hundred feet from the porch.

  But as frightening as it was to watch the water getting nearer and nearer, the worst of it was that the water was now trickling into the barn from the low-lying pasture next to it. That field wasn't connected to the river itself but had become a little lake of its own just from the rain. The cows were all clustered at the open and covered end of the barn where they could get out of the weather. We had no choice but to let the pigs take care of themselves in the rain and mud, getting what shelter they could in the little pig shed, where they crowded in on top of each other at night. Trying to feed them was horrible and messy but we did what we could. I suppose they were fat enough that a few days without food wasn't going to hurt them anyway. And there was certainly plenty of water in all the troughs!

  The main problem was the five horses. Their stables too were half covered from an overhanging roof of the barn and opened into the outside pasture, where they mostly stayed when it was nice. But even the covered area sat at the low side of the barn, and it was the first to get flooded by the water trickling in from the fields. Almost from the first of the flood we'd had no choice but to take them all the way into the barn. There wasn't much room with all the equipment and the two full wagons of cotton, but there was no other place for them to stay.

  But as the storm continued, though the cows made a terrible racket too, we knew the horses were most miserable of all. You could tell they were getting fidgety and restless, and though I was no expert about horses, I knew that when they got nervous they also got dangerous. Dangerous to themselves and to everyone else. And now with water seeping into the barn and turning the hard-packed dirt floor into a mass of mud, there was hardly a dry place for the horses to stand, and sometimes their hooves were two or three inches deep in mud and water because they didn't have the sense to stand in the few dry places left.

  It was Aleta who surprised us with how much she knew about horses by alerting us to the danger they were in.

  She had bundled up in hat, raincoat, and galoshes to go out one morning and help me feed the animals. As we were feeding the horses in the barn, she spoke up.

  "The horses' feet are wet," she said.

  "I reckon everything's wet," I laughed, thinking nothing of it.

  "It's not good for them to be wet," she said.

  "Why not?" I asked.

  "Their hooves can rot and get infected."

  "How do you know?"

  "My daddy shoes horses. He knows all about them and I listen to what he says when he's talking to people. He says there's nothing worse than a horse with foot rot."

  "What happens?" I asked.

  "I don't know," Aleta answered. "But I've heard him say that horses aren't like other animals, and that they need special care."

  I knew that too. Whatever made horses so beautiful and majestic also made them delicate.

  "What should we do?" I asked.

  "I don't know, get them someplace where it's dry."

  "But there is no place that's dry," I said.

  "There's the front of the house. It's grassy there and isn't so muddy."

  "But it's raining. They'd get soaking wet and would still be standing in the wet. And the water's only a stone's throw from the house."

  "They could go up on the big front porch."

  "On the porch!" I said.

  "It's dry and their feet wouldn't get wet."

  It sounded like a crazy notion to me. But if she was right about their feet, then I reckoned it was something that was worth thinking about. Later that same day I told Katie what Aleta had said and we went out through the parlor onto the front porch that looked out through the trees across the expanse of brown water.

  The porch was huge and went the whole width of the front of the house and even around both sides between the big white columns and walls of the house.

  "I think we could do it, Mayme," said Katie. "There's plenty of room for them here. They'd have more dry space than they do in the barn."

  "But how would we keep them here?" I asked.

  "Where else would they go? Everywhere else is wet. They wouldn't go out in the rain or where the water is over there, would they? Wouldn't they just stay on the porch to keep dry?"

  "I don't know. Sometimes animals have minds of their own. They can be ornery. I don't know ... maybe it's worth a try."

  "How would we get them up on the porch?" asked Katie. "What if they don't want to go up on the boards?"

  "You put oats there," said Aleta, who had been following us and listening to every word we said. "I heard my papa say that a horse will always follow feed if it gets hungry enough."

  Katie and I looked at each other.

  "I reckon it's worth a try," I said.

  So we set off to start making preparations. In an hour we had lugged a small feed trough around to the front of the house and put a bucket filled with water beside it. Then we dumped a bucketful of oats in the trough.

  "Shall we bring the horses from the barn?" said Katie excitedly. I guess we were all excited just to have something to do after all the dreary days of endless rain.

  "Probably not all at once," I said. "We better let them get used to it a little at a time. Horses can get mighty jumpy when they get nervous."

  "Let's bring one or two, then," she said as we walked back around to the barn still wearing our rain clothes. "Red and Dover are older and calm most of the time."

  "That's good," I said. "We'll start with them and when they get used to it, we'll bring the other three."

  Five minutes later I had one of the big barn doors open and Katie was leading the two horses out with ropes around their necks. She was talking gently to them, but they seemed happy enough to go with her and get out of the barn, where they'd been cooped up so long.

  They snorted and moved around as if the fresh air and rain and wind was filling them with energy. We walked around the house to the front, their hooves thudding and sloshing in the mud and wet grass.

  We reached the steps leading up to the porch. There were only three steps.

  The two horses hesitated as Katie walked up onto the porch. She gently tugged on the rope and then they came. But you could tell they didn't like the idea of the steps or the feel of the wood beneath their hooves. They clomped up all agitated and fidgety, then one of them looked like it was going to rear.

  "Look out, Katie!" I yelled.

  "Here, Mayme, take Red," she called back to me, tossing me the rope. "-Dover ... Dover," she went on to the skittish horse, "it's all right ... there are some oats over here."

  But by then Dover was moving all about, his feet kicking and clattering and making a racket on the wood.

  Luckily I'd managed to get Red's nose stuffed into the trough where we'd put the oats and I gently tied the rope around one of the porch columns and went to try to help Katie. Aleta, who had been following us, now began stroking Red's nose and talking to her.

  But Dover was getting more and more agitated every second.

  "I don't know why he's so nervous," said Katie. "I don't think this was such a good idea! We need to get him off the porch so he can calm down!"


  I couldn't have agreed more. As content as Red seemed to be to eat oats out of the rain up on the porch, Dover was dangerously excited.

  But just when it seemed things couldn't get worsethey did.

  Emma had been upstairs trying to get William to sleep during all the commotion and didn't know what we were doing.

  All of a sudden the front door of the house opened and out she walked, leaving the door wide open.

  "What all dis racket?" she began, bumping straight into a huge brown flank that had backed up a couple steps just at the moment she'd come through the door.

  "Laws almighty ... what dis fool horse-"

  But she didn't have the chance to say anything else. And neither did the rest of us, for that matter.

  Spooked all the more by Emma's sudden appearance on the other side of him from where Katie was trying to calm him down, Dover reared and whinnied and yanked the rope from Katie's hand. The next instant he bolted past Emma and through the open door, and disappeared into the house.

  "Oh no!" cried Katie. "Mayme!"

  We ran inside after him, Emma following us, babbling away with a flurry of questions.

  Dover was clomping around the parlor in a frenzy of snorting and terrified whinnies and prancing hooves. He'd already emptied himself and made a big mess on the carpet and was in danger of breaking all the furniture and hurting himself really bad.

  "Emma," I said, "please go back outside."

  "But, Miz Mayme, what's-"

  "Please, Emma ... right now"

  Fortunately for all of us, she was too scared to argue anymore and went back outside.

  "We've got to calm him down!" I cried to Katie.