The Uncollected Stories of Allan Gurganus

by Allan Gurganus

  Tonight what first seemed silence became a million suckings, bubblings, gurgles. Instead of rain driving down, it was black wetness canceling us from underneath. Wind spares some things. Water, climbing, testing, claims them all.

  At least in mid-September it wasn’t too cold. I sound like my late wife: Jean was always finding the glass half-full. Now everything was.

  I motored our Alumacraft from house to major house. I made all my usual walker’s shortcuts but now at roof level.

  The Hutchesons, half-dressed, on their third-floor turret, stood behind two barbecue grills set ablaze as signal pyres. I tied up to their Flemish-bond chimney, calling, “Ride, folks?”

  “Well, well, our favorite insurance agent. We covered for ‘acts of God’?” Hutch, wearing only polka-dot boxers, sounded amused. “Because just yesterday I paid a man twenty-six thousand for finally painting this doggone barn!” Hutch kept gesturing toward water, hinting with his arms that it should split like the Red Sea. Hutch laughed till he coughed. His wife gave me a look. Their teenage daughter said, “Even tonight, Dad, you talk only about money, Dad. You’re sadder even than this,” and she nodded toward our former neighborhood. We all eased Hutch into my boat. He kept laughing.

  Familiar streets seemed the canals of Venice, and we always had right-of-way. Humidity sogged your clothes then shoes. The darkness smelled of transmission fluid and ginger lilies. We heard roarings from the distance.

  In a friend’s sunken carport, his new Lexus acted mighty shorted-out: under five feet of green sludge, it ran every possible lighting combination, brights to dim flashers, oddly beautiful, a dead loss. —Which neighbors were home, which drowned?

  We tacked by all three Alston boys paddling boogie boards, wearing just Hawaiian swim trunks. They told us the mall was still above water, rescue trucks gathering there.

  These kids had surfed since age six and now, splashing off no place, called back to me, “Is this not awesome?” —For once, the word fit.

  I might’ve shouted: “It’s not some mountain stream you’re swimming in. Our neighborhood’s gone septic tank, kids.” But they would all three learn this later. I just let it go. You can’t monitor everything.

  On top of a gazebo, Charlie Hague, four-time winner of our Top All-Round Golfer Cup, kneeling in pj’s, stared out of an avocado facial. Tonight Charlie showed how he’d maintained his Hollywood handsomeness. Face caked green, the guy looked like some cannibal headhunter. The Hutchesons helped Charlie and his tough-talking third wife down into our sixteen-footer. The wife rose behind him, pressing one finger across her lips. For her, a flood seemed almost worth letting all of Riverside see how her ex-Marine CEO primped for usual beauty rest. —Turns out Charlie, as my late wife called it, “moisturized.”

  Moisturize! Our mall lot, overlit by twelve generators, gave the only brightness for square miles. Approached by boat, it looked like the shores of Heaven, I swear. I started dropping off my neighbors. Nine drowned bodies were already stretched beyond the dumpsters. Seven had been non-swimmers from the projects.

  People said not to worry, refrigerated trucks were on the way.

  II.

  I JUST KEPT BOATING back for more. Excellent—staying busy. Since Jean died, aside from my golf-and-coffee pals, it’d been mostly me and the leading sports channels. One genius secretary pretty much ran my office. I had perfected Sitting on My Dock with Bourbon-and-Water, had brought that sport to new heights.

  Now? I’d been shanghaied back to action. Odd, but losing everything made me feel decades younger. That couldn’t last. (Adrenaline, always a good idea, seemed the opposite of prediction!) The other side of pick-up is pure letdown.

  My neighborhood stood two stories deep in … well, in shit. Wasn’t this some early practice-form of dying? And yet, at first at least, I felt alive because again a little useful.

  Didn’t know quite how this mess had happened. But, some way, I knew exactly what to do.

  Bart Tarlton waved a flashlight, signing I should boat on past, just leave them atop their carport roof. “Others will be by, and she’s not … ready.” He shone the beam on Caitlin, squatted, arranging soggy child-photographs across their roof’s white gravel.

  “Cait’s got lots of Saran Wrap up here.” Bart sounded sad. “She’s busy sealing all of Carolyn’s baby pictures. Keeps saying, ‘First things first.’ —Thanks for stopping, pal, but we’ve got to get through this part. Hell, where else are we going?” He shook his head. “Oh, and Mitch?” he hollered as we passed. “Sure glad your dad didn’t live to see this. I know he thought the world of your house.”

  It amazed me that while his own wife sat playing paper dolls with baby photos, Bart would be imagining my father.

  True, this would have re-killed Dad. In 1950 he overpaid for our stone manse, guaranteeing my boyhood social standing. On a street known for its two brain surgeons and one college president, my dad managed Milady’s FootFair. To make the fierce down payment on our 1939 Colonial, he gladly knelt half-a-century before Falls’ best and worst female feet.

  Dad’s wish? That I run wild with our Episcopal rector’s delinquent (if platinum-blond) sons. We did shoot hoops; we raced our boats; we made bourbon both a daily staple and a science experiment. Still, neighbors never called Dad anything but “Shoe” Connelly. “Proves I know my stock,” the sweet guy smiled.

  He titled our house “Shadowlawn”; put a sign in the yard; painted its front door a shiny tomato-red. Pals forgave me. Being scrawny and funny, I knew to never claim that much. Always sent these buddies home when Dad, back late from work, three vodkas in, started, “Best in town? I’d say young Diana de Pres has the toes of Greek goddess. —Joy to see, touch, and serve.”

  Dawn came pink and gold but with many a wet and sorry sight. We puttered by drowned long-horned cattle—washed into town from where? They’d stacked up under a bridge like something from the Wild West. And on top of a pile of such carcasses near the underpass? two live deer, a mother and baby, just stood grooming each other.

  I heard, “Mister? Boat! Mister Boat!?” Soon I wrestled onboard two skinny water-treading black kids. They’d Australian-crawled clear from the projects. The weakest swimmer was looped within an inner tube he kept blowing up while kicking it forward. Grateful, each tried shaking hands, even while—with my bad back—I fought to pull them in. Water beaded like mercury across their hair. Kids were about fifteen and looked scared to death. We didn’t talk much. I had a boat. They were in it now.

  With them settled, I figured I’d go rescue a gal my age I’ve always liked. She’d probably be alone tonight: her dashing husband was two-timing her with his freckled college-boy “executive assistant.” Every local knew except maybe my friend.

  I motored toward her now: our generation’s all-time Riverside glamour-puss. The face that launched … at least one bass boat. Diana’s were certainly the feet that kicked off my dad’s highest praise. “White marble,” he’d announce, as Mom and I gave each other steady sickened stares. But Shoe Connelly was right, Diana looked ideal. Unfair advantage in a town this small.

  I hated loving the very one my Dad would want for me, for us. I lacked the looks, height, trust fund. Only had such access as Shoe’d overpaid for. (Dad would love seeing me tonight, boat at the ready, with an oar and a tarp. I’d become a beloved entitled ole coot, so naturalized he’s colorless.)

  And yet, even now, with me sogged and sixty-five, I still pictured my ninth-grade crush. She’d be stranded on her second-story balcony, wearing satin like her “Juliet” in our school play. Figured I’d go muscular up a vine, then bring her to my waiting gondola below, her satin frock pressed damp within these brawny arms, etc., whatever. Pathetic. Still, I aimed her way. —I am a widower now.

  Churches, as sunken as private homes, somehow looked sadder, having once claimed more. At least their steeples gave every boater bearings. As I motored past First Baptist’s chromium upright, it showed steel rivets, a fuselage of copper flashing, so much rusting armor
now. But, poking above our waterline, each denomination still insisted on itself.

  In our Williamsburgy town, even the synagogue sports a Georgian portico.. Churches are often set face-to-face on corners opposite, paired like fighting cocks. A minaret might not be long in coming. —Ours is a God-fearing community. Afraid of what? Plagues? Floods?

  Looking clear downtown, I saw just trees and steeples bristling into the distance. And over all this, without form, and void, news-channel helicopters getting great shots of poor people clawing up their chimneys, waving bedsheets.

  You didn’t need to be a structural engineer to know that most of Falls’ old homes were done for. You let a house, however well-made, stand in twenty feet of wastewater for one week, that’s curtains. The mold alone will kill you ever afterward.

  I sputtered past the Epsteins’ pink-stucco Spanish Colonial, the Murchesons’ replica of Andrew Jackson’s home, the Hermitage. In its basement rec room I’d first felt a girl’s breast, the left one only, but enough aplenty to interest me for life. Now I banked behind my dead wife’s girlhood home. The breast in question had not, I’m afraid, been Jean’s. But, here among the camellias of her mother’s formal garden, Jean and I were married. Now around our altar-pergola’s Corinthian columns, sewage bobbled.

  I chose not to Alumacraft past my house. I recalled overhearing a local dowager say, “Those shanty Irish would shoehorn themselves into the biggest home right on the river.” Photo albums were most of what I wanted, and my bronzed baby-bootie that Dad made much of. Those, stowed in the attic, might still be safe. But for now I had people to collect …

  My boy passengers sat discussing friends: “You think Lottie still be on they roof? Wouldn’t leave the little ones. Somebody bound to find them. Could be, this city man, once he finish gettin’ his own folks out, might could go on back, fetch Lottie and them …”

  So my passengers saw me as a town employee! Paid to rescue them. Hmmm. That was okay, I guess, but strange. (Son of a “Shoe,” after all.) What had I expected, a Lifesaving Merit Badge? Did it really change anything—being assumed? Till now hadn’t that been pretty much my family’s life’s goal hereabouts?

  Unlike the boys’ friends, most of mine had been rescued by first light. Other Riverside boaters, using personal canoes, Sailfishes, and paddle wheels, had hoisted neighbors off their butlers’ quarters, SUV roofs, pin oaks, and from the head of at least one life-sized bronze Saint Francis. My bass boat had fetched maybe thirty to the mall when we finally sloshed into the yard of the woman I have loved since age thirteen. (In fact, her left breast was my first breast, ever. I can admit that since she wouldn’t remember it.)

  Her Wright-style low-slung home seemed missing in action, but I saw she’d breaststroked toward the only sturdy vertical around. I found our town beauty treed like a wet raccoon.

  Prediction so regularly fails me: For fifty years I’ve believed she was maybe meant as mine. Dad encouraged such faith. He thought our owning in Riverside outranked lace-curtain Irishness, made us Lord Proprietors. Man never really guessed that “Shoe” is a servant’s name. (I fought to keep it from him. Of that at least, I’m proud.)

  She’d been born rich with red hair and green eyes so you didn’t know if you were coming or going. Seeing how I and six other boys from our cul-de-sac all loved her, she had already found a substitute for me. Diana promoted her plainer sidekick for my romantic attention. She offered me the girl who let Diana copy algebra homework, who held her coat and laughed at her usual jokes. She was Diana’s gal Friday who personally delivered her sarcastic notebook-paper come-ons to us sad hopeful males. One such note, hand-brought, explained: Jean here is smarter than I and looks-wise grows on people. She has scads more tobacco money than I’ll get (even when Dad finally goes). And trust me, honey, she loves you WAY more. Choose Jean, Mitch.

  I stared into the fine if simple face of this love-note delivery girl. She could not know how its contents had just shifted her future and mine. “Return answer?” she, innocent, asked. —I smiled at her.

  I kept that note for twenty years. A town beauty always makes such matches for her handmaids. And I somehow had done as told. Was Jean also following orders? Dad, even knowing Jean’s exact net worth, still always treated her with fond pity.

  And yet our marriage proved fairly lively, forty years. Maybe not a love match at first, but … practical. We were really just best friends. I guessed my own face’s sketchy net worth. I’d really wanted to head north to college, where my brightness—or goodness, whatever—might get me noticed as more than the by-product of flat-footed others.

  My Jean had proved a wit, a “man’s woman” regularly out snagging bass with me from this same boat. I had chosen well, at least, in picking the one who picked Jean for me.

  The treed survivor’s hair, this wet, had all but disappeared. Not since our thirteenth year had I ever caught her without benefit of makeup. Now, aside from orange-nylon panties, poor thing was damp and bare as God made her. Coiled around a rough-barked pine tree, her white marble looked curdled all over.

  “Uh-oh. That old lady she butt-naked,” one kid observed.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I know her.”

  “Gosh, it’s Mitch. And me hoping to be rescued by some handsome Yankee new to town. —But, hell, no secrets ’twixt old friends, hunh?”

  “Diana.” I nodded as if greeting her at the club.

  Her lips were blue (the nipples also, truth be told). I had the tarp in my boat and soon saw her wrap herself as if in sable. This old lady left up the tree should’ve founded Flirters Anonymous. There have been years when I worried I still loved her more than I did my wry, quiet wife.

  III.

  WHAT I REMEMBER best is how the flood confused or dignified our animals. Some neighbor kids I ferried would hold their tetchy Siamese cats or keep their shivery Yorkie terriers wound in doll blankets. I saw how it comforted even three-year-olds to take care of something still smaller than themselves. Two swimming water moccasins tried crawling in the boat with us and had to be discouraged. But I couldn’t bring myself to hurt one with the oar. You’d just redirect them and hope they’d find some log somewhere.

  A few birds were very noisy, as if sounding the alarm for all us other creatures. But crows, being real intelligent and often loud, kept oddly silent. They lined up along lower tree limbs, looking out and down like disappointed tourists.

  The oddest things floated. A yellow high heel. One oil-painted photo, some bride and groom shown smearing cake across each other’s mouths. Its wooden frame, like a life preserver, bobbled them along.

  I felt more shocked by each dead drifting dog (a boxer, one beautiful collie). Here came swollen pigs and cows. We’d pass clever living deer swimming here and there in a strange mild-looking panic.

  At eight-thirty a.m., having found the two boys and then Diana, I figured I had my boatful. Could reverse direction.

  I did a last hairpin curve over the former Shady Circle Drive twelve feet under. The kids stayed quiet if with teeth chattering. Though teenage boys, they kept their arms around each other for sheer warmth. Diana sat hidden within tarp, silent as royalty, looking out at the water hiding her holy stomping ground. She seemed undisturbed, staring in a clear and noiseless way that made me remember why I loved her.

  The mall would have its bonfires, media, hot tomato soup. First I’d just swing back by, check if Cait Tarlton and her photo show had been saved.

  Odd, by then it seemed that I, full of tidal surge myself, would always run this bass-boat-shuttle out of our disaster. I liked the work, this leg-up shoe-clerk service. I felt relaxed in ways that might have been hysteria or gratitude or both. Water seeks its own level.

  Without one real possession past my clothes, this motorboat, a wedding ring, I felt lightened, simpler. But also babyish. The damp fetus somehow gone sixty-five and out on good behavior. A nineteen-room house? Dad’s idea. Marrying Jean? Some great notion of Diana’s then Jean’s then all the Riversiders who
adored us two sweet runts. “Good idea. Who else will they get? I think they’re cute together.”

  Surely I could finally move on.

  We heard a terrible yodeling. It sounded pitiful but violent. I glanced back at my passengers. I could tell they dreaded whatever sight such sounds would bring us.

  I chugged across Hutcheson property, over Greta’s beautiful knot garden spoilt beneath brown water. At the corner of Carter and Shady Circle, in what was the front yard of some new doctor from Nash General, we came on two young golden retrievers.

  Flailing, by now they were barely afloat. Dogs kept paddling in gulping circles, reduced to saving themselves by climbing up onto each other’s backs. Nails and teeth of each had slashed the other bloody.

  Seeing help, they howled and, spastic, flapping, angled to face us. But what most struck us in the boat: Though water here easily went down fourteen feet, despite higher ground’s being visible close by, these yellow dogs still made themselves swim—whimpering circles—right over their owner’s yard. No wall, no street was visible, only drifting deck chairs and dark free currents coursing everywhere. And yet both animals stayed put, treading the very water they were bloodying. As if assigned one jail cell, pets spasmed back and forth, floundering in that one brackish narrow.

  We called to them and, treading half-under, they gladly turned and watched us. But each kept whining in place, wanting help yet scared to come for it. One kid behind me asked, “Why they hanging there, mister?”

  I only knew while answering, “It’s their ‘Invisible Fence.’ They think the power’s still on. So scared of one little shock, they’re drowning right over their yard.”