by Jack Todd
The oak, whipped by a gust of wind, slams the house with a sharp crack. As if on cue, the vanguard of the rain lashes the gravel driveway, the cedar windbreak, the tumbledown stone wall that has been there for a hundred years or more. A granite outcrop that shelters the back porch is scoured by a drift of hail, and the rain comes down in a savage wall of water, backed by an unbroken rumble of thunder.
Rose thinks to rouse Poe, but he is in such a peaceful slumber she leaves him be. He can’t think of climbing the path to the goat pasture in this storm. The lightning would incinerate him, big as he is. By the time she thinks to turn on the radio, the weatherman says Belle Coeur County has already received six inches of rain and the storm rages on. He is about to say how long it might last when the power goes out. The radio falls silent, and in the gloom of the kitchen Rose hunts for lanterns, candles, and matches, fumbling around until the first candle is lit because the room is plunged into midnight darkness.
It has settled in to rain as though it might go on forty days and forty nights. Poe wakes of his own accord a little before seven. Rose lights the propane stove to make breakfast, and they sit eating and waiting for the storm to end, but the deluge shows no sign of easing and the goats have to be milked. The thunder and lightning have eased some, and she helps Poe wriggle into his old Mackintosh and a pair of oversized fisherman’s wading boots that she had found at the army surplus and sends him on his way.
She watches him go. Within fifty feet, he has vanished into the murk. She locates spare batteries in a drawer and slips them into the radio so she can get the weather report, then puts on another pot of coffee. The weatherman is talking about the Belle Coeur River, which is rising dangerously and threatens to overflow its banks. Rose thinks of the poor folk at the Split Rock Trailer Park. Most of the trailer park washed away in a flood twenty years ago, but they rebuilt it on the same ground, betting that nature would not strike twice in the same place. Now it looks like they lost that bet. Rose has good friends down there and she worries for them, especially those with kids. It’s no place to bring up a child.
Two hours later, Poe is back with as much milk as he can tote, two big buckets in each six-fingered hand, heavily watered down by the rain. He says the goats are all huddled in their shed. He and Joey Ballew put it up on a concrete foundation. The shed is solid, the goats will be fine. They play a little slapjack, the only card game Poe knows, and listen to the radio.
The news keeps getting worse. All the bridges that lead out of the county are under water. The only way out is to cross the border into Canada. “They should call this place Belle Coeur Island,” says the man on the radio, “because we’re not going anywhere for awhile, folks. Might as well relax. Here’s an oldie but a goodie. Patsy Cline with ‘Blue Moon of Kentucky.’”
Rose leans back to listen to poor Patsy. She remembers hearing the news on her transistor radio when Patsy’s plane fell out of the sky on a March day in 1963. They say time heals all wounds. It isn’t true.
~
Sunday prayers
The rain falls for three days and three nights. Four bridges are out and the others are under water. Roads have been washed away, cars are under water on low-lying streets, basements flooded, electrical power fitful but mostly out. Nine trailers at the Split Rock Trailer Park have floated away and the rest are up to their doors in water. Most of the residents are able to get out with whatever possessions they can throw into cars or pickups, but a woman, her three children, and their two dogs have to be rescued from the top of their trailer house, floating two miles downstream in the Belle Coeur River.
The fourth day, a Wednesday, dawns clear, sunny, and warm, with a light breeze from the south. People emerge blinking from their houses to survey the damage. Couches and carpets from basement rooms are brought out to air. They mosey around the streets, comparing notes on who lost what, swapping yarns about how they survived the great flood. There is for a time a sense of neighborliness, concern for those less fortunate, a desire to help.
When Sunday rolls around, Rose decides that it’s time to pray, to thank God for deliverance from what might have been. They are regular churchgoers anyway, Rose and Poe, but today is more important than most. There are two churches in Hartbury, the First Gospel Church of the Pentecost and the Lamb of Jesus Gospel Church directly across the street. There are more churches in Bunker’s Corner and Belle Coeur: Methodist, Seventh Day Adventist, Episcopal, Unitarian, Lutheran, even Catholic, but Rose figures two churches in a village ought to be enough for anyone. She doesn’t want to hurt the feelings of either preacher, so she and Poe put on their Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes and stroll down to First Gospel one week and attend the Lamb of Jesus the next.
Rose is popular in both churches for her powerful alto voice on the hymns and her habit of intoning amen, brother and praise Jesus and sweet Lord above at intervals during the sermon, so that she and the preacher seem to be working in unison to get the whole congregation worked up. She also contributes her cherry and apple pies to the bake sales, helps out with the church picnics, and invites the preachers to her little yellow house for supper once a month.
On this Sunday, she fixes an extra-big breakfast of waffles, eggs, and bacon for Poe, and after she has done the washing up they get dressed and walk to the Lamb of Jesus, where the sermon is one of her favorites, on the tale of the Good Samaritan. They sing “Just a Closer Walk with Thee” and “Rock of Ages” and “An Unclouded Day,” Rose’s favorite, and when the service is over, they stand outside for a time, basking in the August sunshine and listening to the church ladies gossip about the storms.
When the congregation begins to break up, heading off in different directions for Sunday dinners and afternoon naps, Rose and Poe stroll home arm in arm. Poe greets everyone they pass, pausing to tickle babies and pet stray dogs. Now and then he comes to a halt on the sidewalk, lost in contemplation of the vast, spreading arms of a century-old beech tree or a towering blue spruce or a pair of cardinals on a branch of a crabapple tree. Rose lets him be. The natural world has never ceased to amaze him, and Rose believes that’s just fine and dandy. It would be a better world if more people stood in awe of their surroundings. Back home, she fixes a lunch for Poe, sandwiches of sliced salami on home-baked bread, while he packs up his fishing tackle. Sunday afternoons are Poe’s fishing time, and he never misses a one — fly or bait fishing in the summer, ice fishing in winter. Sunday evenings, they eat Poe’s catch, usually brook trout, pumpkinseed, or smallmouth bass. Wild Bill taught him to fish, and in all the years Poe has been fishing, he’s never once come home empty-handed.
~
“And if a woman have an issue . . .”
Poe stoops to lean his great head on Rose’s shoulder, then hoists his fishing pole and tackle box and sets out. A fine morning has tilted on a whiff of breeze-borne minor key into a sullen afternoon and there is the threat of more rain. The sun is filtered through haze that thickens into cloud, and the birds are oddly silent. Everywhere burst milkweed has scattered, and the spidery threads dangle from the maples like Halloween decorations.
The river and both the creeks he likes to fish are running too high, the water roiled and muddy and clogged with broken branches from the flood. Poe decides instead to hike the six miles to the gravel pit where he worked for a time after the army. The old pit is now a miniature lake set in a grove of trees overlooking the river. Only a few people know of its existence, and the lake throbs with fish. When Miranda was ten or eleven years old, she came here with him almost every summer Sunday. He taught her how to bait the hook and cast and reel in her catch. She shrieked with joy every time she caught one, no matter how small. Then she got to be an older girl, and she had studies to do, sports practice, girlfriends to hang out with, boyfriends maybe, and Poe went back to fishing alone.
When it was still a working gravel pit, the pit-man ran the gravel pump from a makeshift raft out on the water. The pump dredged sand and gravel fro
m the pit and forced it up a long pipe into a ten-ton chute supported by a tower built with railroad ties. Next to the chute was a cabin equipped with an old tractor seat, a window that was a square foot with no glass, and a cast-iron lever. When the chute was full, a trucker would back his dump truck between the support posts of the tower. It was a tricky job, because the heavy dual tires on the back end of the truck would slew to the side in the spilled gravel, and if the truck hit the supports hard enough, the entire tower would come tumbling down, likely crushing the trucker and killing the chute-man, too. It was Poe’s job to watch the truck back in and holler Whoa! when it was at the right spot, then pull the lever to dump the gravel into the truck bed and watch that it didn’t overflow. When it was full, he’d close the lever and holler Go! The truck would pull out and Poe would sit happily, holding the lever in one hand, listening to the long ssssshhhhh of wet gravel from the pit pouring in to refill the chute. When the dour pump-man shut down the engine to eat his lunch or take a nap, Poe climbed down to fish. Most days, he caught plenty for himself and Rose, with enough left over for the pump-man and the truckers.
Poe would prefer to fish at the gravel pit every Sunday, except that the hike is long and arduous. If he goes by the road it’s twice as far, so he cuts across country through the wreckage of the old concrete plant on the edge of town, past the ghosts of dead machines, tangles of rusted cable, torn and jagged metal, a crane with its boom lowered to the ground in a parody of prayer, tumbled heaps of mortar and bricks, dark scuttling rats that vanish before his tread. There is a crater where oil from some unseen source has seeped and pooled, a scum of dead leaves and the oil-soaked feathers of dead birds on its surface, and beyond that a reeking cesspool. Poe gives it a wide berth. Farther on are stone arches through which run abandoned tracks on a railroad to nowhere, a heap of old railroad ties soaked in creosote, a jungle of rusty razor wire where a hasty or careless man might slash himself to pieces.
On the far side of the wreckage, Poe emerges onto a gravel road where the walking is easier. He’s half a mile along the road when he hears the ring of hooves on asphalt, the squeak of wagon wheels, and the creak of harness leather. He knows without looking that Elmer Hepp is taking his team of prized Percherons out for a drive, pulling an old wagon whose axles are badly in need of grease. Elmer pulls the team to a halt next to Poe and fixes him with a fierce one-eyed gaze.
“Are ye in need of some relief for shank’s mare, boy?”
Poe lifts his Red Sox cap and stares at Hepp, not gathering his meaning.
“Do ye need a lift? Are ye tired of walking?”
Most folks in the county refuse when Hepp offers a ride because of his habit of reciting scripture as they trot along. Poe doesn’t understand a word of it, so he doesn’t mind. He nods amiably, hefts his pole and tackle box onto the wagon, and climbs up next to Hepp on the driver’s seat, the wagon tilting to the right as he settles in. Hepp clucks to the horses and they set out, their matched tails snapping at flies. He begins his recitation from the book of Leviticus: And he shall take of the blood of the bullock, and sprinkle it with his finger upon the mercy seat eastward; and before the mercy seat shall he sprinkle of the blood with his finger seven times . . .
Elmer Hepp always wears his hat tied down tight around his ears with a woman’s scarf. He wraps gunnysacks around his hands and feet for warmth and ties them with binding twine, even though it’s upwards of ninety degrees and humid after the rain. They travel a mile or so before Hepp breaks off his recitation of the scripture and turns to Poe.
“Know ye the day?”
“Yessir. It’s Sunday.”
“That it is. Sunday. Know ye the year, boy?”
Poe thinks on it. “The year it rained?”
“Aye, the Year of the Flood, son. Sign of the End Time, ain’t it? Even the village idiot knows that much. Judgment Day staggers near, my boy. The conflagration is about to come down upon us, contagion and flood, the curse of Eve. That’s where we stand, Poe. Mark the time and suck your portion dry, because we’ll none of us be here for long. Never forget how close ye are to the Apocalypse and the day when St. Peter separates the wheat from the chaff, the saved from the sinners.”
Poe tries a solemn nod. Riding with Elmer is like being in church.
The sky turns dark as a skillet, heavy with cloud. The dark fools the birds. Poe hears a great horned owl off somewhere, a flutter of the wings of a night hunter, a frantic squeak, the death of some small scuttling thing back in the woods, field mouse or ground squirrel. He shivers. Hepp pays it no mind and goes back to reciting scripture. Then shall he kill the goat of the sin offering, that is for the people, and bring his blood within the vail, and do with that blood as he did with the blood of the bullock, and sprinkle it upon the mercy seat, and before the mercy seat.
Poe wants to ask what a mercy seat might be, but Elmer has a manner that does not encourage idle questions. Wild Bill says that too much scripture can addle a man, and that Elmer Hepp is a prime example of the damage the Good Book can do.
At the turnoff for the gravel pit, Elmer hauls on the reins. “This is where ye get off. I’ll not be driving this fine team down that road. Nothin down that way but rusty barbed wire and old concrete rebar. There’s enough out there to rip the guts out of a prime Percheron. Careful where ye step now, lad. I’d not want to tell your poor mama that ye came to a bad end.”
Poe climbs down. The wagon rights itself with a noisy creak. “Thank you kindly, Mister Hepp,” he says as he hoists the tackle box out of the wagon. Hepp ignores him, clucks to his team, and drives away, still bellowing a verse from Leviticus: And if a woman have an issue, and her issue in her flesh be blood, she shall be put apart seven days: and whosever toucheth her shall be unclean until the even.
It’s a good day to fish in still waters. The black clouds have blown over and the sun feels like a lash on the back of Poe’s neck. Dragonflies skim the surface, tempting the fish from the depths. After a little more than an hour, he has a dozen fish on his string. When he’s done fishing, he climbs the long ladder to the tower where he had once worked, dragging his gear and his catch up with him, each rung of the ladder bending dangerously under his weight. He squeezes through the narrow passage into the little cabin next to the chute and settles onto the old tractor seat bolted to the floor. The rusty lever is between his knees. He heaves it back and forth. It needs oil, but it still works.
Next to the lever is a wooden box built to hold an oilcan and various tools. The can and the tools are gone but the old comic books are still there, crudely drawn and graphically obscene imitations of real comics. They are tattered and water stained and stiff with age, but most of the pages still open to scenes of men and women from the funny pages having graphic sex. These comics make him feel the way he feels when he lies in bed at night, remembering the outfits Miranda has worn. After thumbing through a few pages, he pulls down the suspenders of his coveralls, undoes the buttons, and spits in his palm.
When he is finished, he’s too drowsy to wipe the jism off his coveralls or hold his eyes open. He stretches out on the floor, gazes up at the sky through the gaps between the boards on the roof of the tower, and falls into a deep, untroubled sleep.
~
The stink of fish
Poe wakes to the stink of fish. Rose won’t like that. Bring your fish right home, she says. Don’t stay out there all the livelong day, Poe, till the fish stink and they ain’t no good. He has stayed out all the livelong day and the fish stink. The air has thickened and his head throbs. He pulls the fob watch on its chain out of his pocket, but the hands aren’t pointing to a time he knows. He peers through the tiny window to find the sun, but it’s on the far side of the tower.
Poe sees something move in the grass up on the little rise where you can look down toward the Belle Coeur River, the spot where he used to picnic with Miranda when he brought her out here to fish. He blinks and waits for his eyes to adj
ust to the light, and then he sees her clearly. It is Miranda, lying on a blanket in the sun. It’s magic. She was not-there before he went to sleep, and now she is there. Like when she goes into the house, Miranda and not-Miranda. He starts to call out to her, but a voice in his head says no no no. He wants to go on looking at her. Her long brown legs. White dress with lots of tiny buttons up the front. She’s lying on a red blanket and the dress is pulled up so she can get the sunshine on her brown legs, and he can see her seeing-through underpants. The sun washes away the shadows and he stares hard at the seeing-through underpants, and he can see a dark patch where the hair is, the down-there hair. He sucks in his breath through his teeth and looks at her. He can see Miranda but she can’t see him. He’s hidden in the shadows of the tower. Like playing hide-and-seek. He can hide and look at the seeing-through underpants.
Miranda has a picnic basket beside her and parked behind her is a big black car. She is reading a book and eating grapes. Her legs open a little more. Poe makes a sound in his throat, feeling himself stir. Then he hears her call out to someone. C’mon and eat before I gobble it all up. Is she calling to him? He thinks of climbing down from the tower, saying Hello hello Miranda and her saying Hello hello back, happy to see him, like he feels happy to see her. But then a man comes into the picture, a blond man wearing a funny kind of hat. The man bends over and pours a glass of wine for Miranda, turning his back to her as he pours. Poe sees him reach into his pocket, and his hand moves over the glass like he’s blessing it. He swirls the wine a little and hands it to her, then he pours a little in a glass for himself and holds the glass out to her.