Beware the River

by Kitty Margo

  He aimed his flashlight toward the dam and even though his whispered words were drowned out by the roar of the river I got the general idea. In a daze, he began backing up the hill like he had just come face to face with a starving Tyrannosaurus Rex. He had the same dazed expression Billy had when he woke to find the buffalo in the cabin. Was he going to get in his car and hightail it back to Mayberry leaving me here to be swept away by the raging current? Evidently! He didn’t look back as he turned and did an Olympic Sprint up the hill.

  “Hey, come back! Don’t even think about leaving me here! You took an oath to protect and serve, didn’t you? Well, get back here and start protecting. I am a citizen of this county and my mom pays a hefty chunk of her salary each week for taxes, which by the way pays your salary. So, get back here!”

  But he didn’t seem to hear me as he shouted to his partner. “Jim, call the station and tell them the dam has been breached and we could be headed for a catastrophic failure! We don’t have a second to waste. Tell them to start evacuating downriver. I’ve got to get this kid out of here!” “How are you going to get him out, Sam?” Jim glanced anxiously at me and then toward the spider web of cracks that were now branching out from the original breach. He had most likely taken a tour of the dam as well and knew that the immense cement structure held back roughly 5,264 acres of water. “We don’t have any bolt cutters strong enough to cut through a fence that thick and I doubt we could get help here before…”

  “Well, what do you expect me to do? Leave him?” Jim snapped, interrupting his dire prediction. “Don’t just stand there with your mouth catching flies! Go make those calls!”

  Then he turned to me, but his words seemed to be in slow motion and I couldn’t focus on what he was saying. My pounding heart fell to my feet as that one word kept echoing in my head over and over.

  Everyone I loved was downriver! Asleep in their beds!

  I had been so busy being terrified by the buffalo that I hadn’t even thought about them. But now, I wasn’t afraid for myself anymore. I had to save my family!

  Chapter 14

  Sam was yelling and waving directly in front of me trying to get my attention. “Get behind the building, son! Hurry up!” He waited while I slowly trudged through the swift current and stood behind the building before he began firing his gun at the lock. The gunshots echoed against the dam and were deafening. Sparks flew from the padlock, yet it remained intact, barely dented.

  I turned to look at the dam and my heart sank in my chest. Water was shooting into the sky like a geyser at Yellowstone National Park. “Please get me out of here.” I looked toward the heavens knowing that only one of Gram’s miracles could help me now. “Please, I have to warn my mom.”

  Then a thought hit me and I plowed through the current and to the top of the hill toward Sam. “Hey Sam, you have a phone in your car, don’t you? Please! Go call my mom! Don’t worry about me, just warn my mom so she can get my family to safety. I’ll wait here while you make the call.”

  “You can forget about that, son. I’m not leaving you here alone. You just calm down while I get you out and then you can make the call yourself. Now get behind that building!”

  “Help is on the way!” Running down the hill toward us, Jim screeched to a grinding halt and gasped when he saw the water beginning to lap around my knees. I was trapped, pressed against the fence at the top of the hill. I could see the fear in his eyes and it tripled my own.

  “Okay, kid, you have to trust me now,” Sam yelled above the noise of the river, looking around frantically. Get behind the building and don’t come out until I tell you to. Do you understand? No matter what you hear, stay put. Got it?”

  “I got it.” I forced my way through the rising water to stand behind the office, grasping the back door handle to keep my balance. I looked back once to see Sam climbing the hill toward the squad car. He looked like a man headed to the electric chair. I’ll admit, seeing his lack of confidence didn’t do a lot to boost mine. Neither of the policeman had any hopes of saving my life. They thought I was a goner!

  Sam got in the car and backed to the top of the hill. I knew this was my one and only chance. If Sam failed, I wouldn’t get another one. “Please let this work,” I prayed as I gazed at the heavy-duty fence designed to keep out all intruders. There were huge metal poles sticking up from a cement base about every three feet apart. He would have to hit at least one of them.

  Sam gunned the motor like he was getting ready for a Nascar event at the Concord Speedway, gathering his courage I suppose. Then he floored it and the police car headed straight for the gate. I closed my eyes. I couldn’t watch. Then I heard the loud crash and a horrible sound of metal crunching against metal and the hissing sound as the car’s engine was submerged in the cold water. I couldn’t bring myself to look.

  After several long minutes, I knew he wasn’t coming. He had been my only hope. Without him, there was none. I felt scalding tears stinging my eyes. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

  What had I ever done to deserve an ending like this? I had heard someone say once that you should live your life like there was no tomorrow. If I had it to do over again, I would have already asked Megan to the dance and told my family that I loved them everyday. Unfortunately, it was too late for could haves and should haves.

  Then, suddenly, a comforting hand was placed on my shoulder and I looked up to see Sam standing beside me in the rushing water. “Let’s just say I am eternally grateful to the inventor of airbags. I said you could trust me, didn’t I, kid? Have a little more faith in those who have sworn to protect and serve next time. By the way, what’s your name?”

  “BJ?”

  “Let’s get out of here, BJ. I don’t know about you, but I’m not in the mood for a swim tonight.”

  “Me, either!” I actually laughed out loud as he held my arm to hold me steady as we waded through the waist deep, swiftly moving water and climbed over the jumbled wreckage of the hissing, smoking police car. We turned briefly to watch as water covered the office and the police car went sailing down the river and bobbed along under the bridge. “Dang!” Sam grinned. “My doughnuts and coffee were in that car.”

  His mention of food caused me to think of James and I looked to see him and Billy waving like crazy. I motioned for them to follow us. If the dam broke they would be sitting ducks on the bridge. “Hurry! Get off the bridge!” I yelled, but they couldn’t hear me above the raging river.

  “Come on, BJ. I think you and I need to head for higher ground.” Then Sam shouted for his partner to get Billy and James off the bridge.

  “I need to use your phone, Sam.” I stopped, refusing to move another inch until he found me a phone. “Please, Sam, I need to call my mom! Don’t you understand?”

  “Don’t worry about your mom, son. Everyone downriver has already been evacuated. They’re all safe. Now let’s get you and your friends to safety.”

  As we approached the top of the hill, the bright lights of several helicopters suddenly illuminated the night sky. Man, that was fast! The town of Twin Rivers had its emergency preparedness plan on point. I ran to where James and Billy waited to greet me with excited high fives.

  “He wanted to show me the crack in the dam!” I was shivering from cold, fear, and exhaustion. “All this time! He was only trying to warn me and save us!” Someone gave me a blanket and I sat down against the trunk of a tree awed by the sights and sounds around me.

  Military helicopters airlifted in a giant crane, engineers were rushed to the site, one still in his pajamas. Huge construction trucks, cement trucks, and Red Cross vehicles arrived. Helicopters carrying the governor, a senator and several experts on dam faults set down in the parking lot. TV cameras and crews were everywhere.

  Then trucks and huge pieces of machinery were brought in. The noise of the river was soon drowned out by the sound of walkie-talkies, helicopters hovering overhead, and the deafening sound of the huge machines being put into action.

  I was relieved when
Sam borrowed a squad car and took us to a makeshift shelter in town for the evacuees. I saw Gram and my grandparents first. Then I saw Mom and rushed into her welcoming arms. It felt so good, so safe. She wrapped me in a warm blanket and handed me a cup of hot chocolate. Just before I dozed off I heard a loud chorus of cheers go up in the shelter when a Red Cross volunteer announced that the dam could be saved.

  “Thank you buffalo,” I whispered, before closing my eyes for a few minutes of much deserved rest.

  Chapter 15

  We were heroes. Mom said we were bigger than the Beatles. We knocked some celebrity off the cover of People magazine and we were the lead story on every news show and on the front page of every newspaper in the country. We were on Live with Kelly and Michael. Kelly kissed James on the cheek and he commenced to doing some rapid fire hiccups, drowning out her words for the rest of the show, and swearing that he would never allow soap or water to touch his face again. Can you believe I even received a call from President and Mrs. Obama, and talked to Sasha and Malia? And by 5:00 that evening Anderson Cooper was sitting in my living room waiting to interview us for AC 360?

  I could hear Mr. Cooper and his camera crew chatting with James and Billy while I handled some very important business. I was stretched across my bed with the phone glued to my ear blissfully soaking up Megan Cobb’s glowing commentary concerning my bravery and heroism. Can you believe she asked me to go to the eight grade dance with her? That alone was worth every minute of the last few terrifying days!

  We repeated the story over and over. It was a fictional tale, however, of how we just happened to be out walking around the dam that night and just happened to notice a crack in it. You can believe I received a major tongue lashing from my mom for strolling around the dam at 5:00 am. We never told anyone the truth about the buffalo. Who would have believed us anyway?

  “They would have us all committed,” Billy insisted.

  At one award ceremony Governor Beverly Purdue said that almost everyone downriver owed their lives to the quick thinking of the three young heroes. It was nice to hear, but we knew we weren’t the ones who deserved the credit for saving so many lives. The buffalo would forever remain their unsung hero.

  Even though Billy, James and I hadn’t been alone much since that memorable night, it had been a blast! We flew to New York for all the morning news and late night talk shows. Then it was on to Los Angeles for more talk shows and a special for Oprah’s cable channel. She treated us like royalty and laughed until she cried every time James hiccupped, which was every few seconds.

  She and my mom discussed the possibility of her production company making a movie about us. Who would play us? James’s character would have to be played by someone similar to the chubby kid in The Sandlot. Billy sort of resembles Harry Potter without the glasses, and for me picture Opie on The Andy Griffith Show reruns.

  We stayed in fancy hotels with unlimited room service. What a life! We had told the story, the fictional one, so many times that it was like a well-rehearsed play. The excitement was finally winding down though, probably because there wasn’t anyone left who hadn’t heard the story. Now it was time to go home and have some real fun.

  But, even after most of the commotion had died down, I still asked myself one question over and over. Why did the buffalo return from the grave to show me the crack in the dam? As James had said, the buffalo didn’t at any time during our adventure seem overly fond of me. He didn’t hesitate for one second to blow his nose on me, scare me enough to send me into cardiac arrest, or allow a claustrophobic kid to crawl through a cement pipe.

  Fortunately, for all of us, he had used me to save the lives of hundreds of innocent people who would have been lost if the dam had failed. I would probably never know exactly why he did it though.

  * * * * *

  It was our last day of freedom. Principle Conners had given us two weeks off from school to tour the country telling our story. We had to return the following morning, so we intended to make the most of what little free time we had left.

  We were headed for the river to get in some fishing before lunch, when we were sidetracked by a fruit tree and parked our four wheelers on the side of the dirt road to pull sour green apples.

  Billy took a bite of one and screwed up his face like he had bitten into a lemon. He threw the apple on the ground and headed for a cooler of Mountain Dew that he always kept strapped to his ATV, to wash the taste out of his mouth. “BJ, did you ever figure out why the buffalo chose to show you the crack in the dam?” he asked in between huge gulps.

  “I’ve asked myself that question at least a million times. I know there’s more to this than we’ve figured out, but I just don’t have a clue what it could be.” Then out of the blue it hit me like a ton of bricks.

  A clue!

  “A freaking clue!” I whacked myself on the head for having been so stupid. “That’s it! Don’t you guys remember? The buffalo marked an X on the old tree at the ferry landing after he made me climb through all that nasty mud?”

  “Yeah, he did!” James agreed excitedly, filling his pocket with apples for later. “I remember now. Man, how did we forget that?”

  “What are y’all waiting for?” Billy shouted, hopping on his four-wheeler and leaving us in a trail of dust.

  We made the trip down the river road dodging mud holes and briar bushes in record time. The river was full so we had to walk through a thicket of briars and thick undergrowth to get to the tree. James ran ahead of us and we heard him yelling, “Come on, y’all! X marks the spot!”

  We took off running then. I was being extra careful because Grandpa had recently told me that there was a hornet’s nest in one of these trees and you didn’t want to startle a nest of hornets. Plus, I had just watched My Girl the week before.

  When I reached the huge oak, I bent down to peer into the deep, hollowed out cavity. “Well, it looks pretty creepy in there if you ask me.” All I could see was moss and dead leaves and nasty looking insects. “I don’t see anything.” I turned to go, hoping they would follow without question. I should have known better.

  “Do you honestly think that whatever he wants to show you would just be lying out in the open? I mean come on, BJ. Wouldn’t that be too easy, all things considered? You will probably have to dig through all that moss and...stuff.” James was issuing instructions for me to do the dirty work, as usual, with a look of complete disgust on his face.

  “Me? Why does it always have to be me? Why don’t you do something for a change? I think we are all in agreement that I have done more than my fair share!”

  “Are you crazy?” was his shocked reply. “There might be a nest of rattlesnakes or copperheads in there!”

  “It’s okay for me to get bitten though, right?” I was stalling and we all knew it.

  “BJ,” James began in that annoying, intellectual tone that was quickly beginning to grate on my last nerve, “let’s just consider all that has happened thus far, shall we?”

  “James, don’t even start with that ‘the buffalo will protect you’ crap.” If he began one of his long drawn-out lectures on that subject we would never get home by dark. “I don’t want to hear it!” As was usually the case, he ignored me and continued.

  “As we all know, the buffalo led you right up to the dam and all four wheels were opened. In my humble opinion that is probably the most dangerous situation you will encounter in this lifetime. If he protected you through that he can protect you from anything.”

  “Protected me? You know that’s strange, because not once during the entire adventure did I ever feel protected.”

  “And now you are worried about a puny little snake. Use your brain for something besides a hat rack, BJ.”

  Having no desire to stick my hand into… Lord only knows what… I stalled for more time. “Speaking of the buffalo, I wonder where he is? I haven’t had a … visitation… since the night he led us to the dam. Evidently, he has moved on to his next good deed.”

  “
I have a feeling he’s watching over you wherever he is,” Billy said. Then James had to chime in with his two cents worth again. “BJ, do you remember when we were about eight years old and we were waiting in line at the county fair to ride the Terminator? I was terrified of that ride and kept trying to talk y’all out of riding it, but you and Billy kept squawking and calling me a chicken. Do you remember what that redneck behind me said?”

  “I remember.” We waited, (me patiently and James with growing annoyance) while Billy laughed until he clutched his sides. “He said, ‘Boy, either piss or get off the pot.”

  “Yep, that’s what he said.” James pretended Billy had returned to the mother ship and continued. “And I rode that ride, didn’t I? So start digging, BJ.”

  “You guys are such pathetic pansies!” I took a deep breath and plunged my hand into the cold, prickly moss. I could feel icky, slippery things wiggling against my fingers. It was ice cold inside the tree and I immediately jerked my hands out and wiped them on my shorts. “Man, that’s some wicked crap in there. I can’t do it.”

  Dumb and Dumber were looking at me like I was the world’s biggest coward, with their arms crossed over their chests. Billy was actually patting his foot on the ground.

  Just so I wouldn’t have to hear either of them flapping their gums about it, I stuck my hand back in the tree. It was like sticking my hand in someone’s grave. I felt a sudden shiver rush through me as I tried to concentrate on finding whatever it was the buffalo wanted me to find. I owed him that much.

  Whatever my fingers closed around I would pull out only to find a piece of dead tree limb, discarded bird eggshells, rocks or other debris that has been deposited inside the tree over the last hundred years or so when the river had left its banks. Then my hand touched something cold and hard.

  Try as I might, I couldn’t get my hand all the way around the object. “I feel something!” I finally got hold of it and struggled to untangle it from the clinging moss and vines, probably poison ivy, that seemed to want to keep it, and me, trapped inside the tree.