by Carrie Brown
Conrad raced the engine once before turning off the ignition.
Eddie turned at the sound. “Mighty high,” he called over the roar of the water.
Conrad got out of the truck and walked across the street to stand beside him.
“Water’s up all over town,” Eddie said.
“I saw,” Conrad said. “I came through the square.”
“No power, either. And they’re having a problem with the generator at the hotel. Lucky they only got a couple of people staying there. Probably come down here for breakfast if they want anything hot.” Eddie continued to stare into the water, its boiling surface. “They got a backup at the Aegis, of course, but the captain’s gone down with his ship.”
Conrad turned to look at him. “What?”
Eddie turned, hopped down awkwardly from the bulwark, his leg prosthesis following him stiffly. “Let’s get out of this,” he said. “I’m getting soaked.”
Conrad followed Eddie inside, where they deposited their wet coats on a chair sticky with dampness. He pulled up a stool at the counter, and Eddie pushed a cup of coffee at him and then turned to crack three eggs onto the splattering surface of the griddle. He broke the yolks with the back of a spatula, shoved at the runny mess.
Conrad took a sip of coffee. “What happened? At the Aegis?”
Eddie put two pieces of white bread into the toaster, shoved down hard on the handle. “Peak went to pieces,” he said.
Conrad looked up from his cup. An image of Nolan standing morosely on the dam at Lake Arthur flew up in his head, sent a flutter of alarm through him. What had Nolan said then? You don’t have any control over it at all.
“Didn’t you hear it?” Eddie went on. “Last night? That was him up there, ringing the bells. Told them it was a warning, when they got up there and brought him down. He’d had some kind of stroke. Been drinking, too.”
Conrad stared at Eddie. The notion of Nolan drunk filled him with sadness. And then he remembered an evening from a long time before, the summer he’d been gilding the bandstand, in fact. One night, having just finished work, he’d been sitting on the steps of the bandstand, cleaning his equipment before going home. The square had been deserted, but Conrad could see through the windows into the hotel’s dining room, where a few guests still lingered at the small tables over coffee or tea, their heads close together. He’d leaned back on his elbows, enjoying the soft breeze, and looked up at the sky. Stars were out. The tipped urn of Aquarius balanced coolly along the celestial equator. Orion rose in the bluing east with his golden glove.
Conrad had startled when the sharp report of a hammer against wood rang out on the opposite side of the bandstand. It had felt as though someone were battering a two-by-four between his shoulder blades. Jumping to his feet, he had turned around to see Nolan, his white shirtsleeves rolled to the elbows, nails clenched between his teeth, furiously banging away, tacking a fluttering piece of paper onto one of the posts.
“Christ!” Conrad wiped his hand over his mouth. But Nolan didn’t even look up at him.
Conrad stood for a minute on the steps. A fine sweat had broken out over his forehead. The noise had scared him half to death.
“You just about gave me a heart attack,” he said finally, exasperated. “Didn’t you see me sitting here?”
“Sorry.” Nolan shifted the nails to the other side of his mouth. He moved a quarter turn around the bandstand, began hammering in another nail.
Conrad walked across the floor, leaned over the railing, and looked down at the sign: LOST CAT. ORANGE. NO TAIL. REWARD. CALL THE AEGIS.
Conrad stood up. Across from him Nolan drove in the nail with a few more strokes, punctuated by dull thuds when he missed and struck wood instead. At last, apparently satisfied, he bent down unsteadily to pick up the pile of papers spilled on the grass at his feet.
“Lost your cat,” Conrad said, putting his hands in his pockets. “Too bad.”
“Not my cat,” Nolan said, and when he looked up into the glare of the utility light, which Conrad had hung when the sun had gone down, Conrad saw that his face was red, his hair disheveled. “My mother’s. Bennett’s cat.”
“Oh.” Conrad waited a moment. “Well, they often come back, I understand,” he said at last. “Don’t they just go off sometimes, on their own, and then come back again?”
“Not if they know what’s good for them,” Nolan said. He stared up at the fluttering sign and then suddenly lifted his arm and gave the nail a savage whack with the hammer. “There must be a million places in the world,” he began, and looked vaguely away across the shadowy green. “A million places where—” But he never finished his sentence.
“Good night,” Conrad called as Nolan walked off, weaving, into the dusk.
Nolan had raised one arm behind him, the one with the hammer, but he hadn’t turned around. At the curb he’d stumbled. Conrad heard his distant voice, a short curse. A few minutes later, as he was loading his equipment into his truck, he heard the sound of the hammer meeting tree bark, an artillery of rage.
Now Eddie leaned back, glanced down at the toaster. “He told them the dam was going to break. He wanted people to know, he said, so they could get out in time.” Eddie turned back to the griddle, mashed fiercely at the eggs. “Sad thing is, he’s probably right.”
Conrad shook his head. “Well—” He couldn’t exactly think what more there was to ask. He imagined Nolan in his too short coat hanging from the bell ropes, his face twisted and crumpled, the bells pitching their giant weight into the rain, Nolan hanging beneath them, trying to swing clear to someplace else. He shuddered slightly.
“Wouldn’t see the doctor,” Eddie went on, folding his arms and leaning against the counter. “He was mad as hell, in fact, when they brought him down. Babbling on about angels and—hey—” He stopped suddenly, stood upright, the spatula raised in his hand. “That was some letter you wrote.”
Conrad dropped his head in embarrassment. It all seemed so long ago, with so many strange things having happened since, that he was having trouble sorting out the truth of it. “Mmmm,” he said indistinctly, hoping Eddie would just drop it.
Eddie put his hands on the counter in front of Conrad. “My daughter saw that letter. Hero did,” he said. “Cut it out of the paper and brought it down here to show me. She hadn’t been down here in a long time. I was pleased she came on.”
Conrad still said nothing, hanging his head lower over his coffee cup.
“Well,” Eddie said discreetly, turning back to the griddle. “I would have thought it would have been your wife, anyway. She was the real angel.”
Conrad glanced up as Eddie put the plate before him and set a fork down beside it.
“Just like my Kate,” Eddie said. “A real angel.”
Conrad picked up his fork, realized he was starving. “Where’s Nolan now?”
Eddie snorted, wiped his hands on a dishcloth. “They called Betty Barteleme, right from the church. She came down and got him. Still in her bathrobe! Now there’s devotion for you.”
Conrad looked up at Eddie again in surprise, his mouth full.
“Wasn’t anyone else to call,” Eddie went on. “His mother wouldn’t have anything to do with him once she heard he’d been drinking. Harrison Supplee came down here afterward. I was just closing up. He said Peak fell to his knees when Miss Barteleme came in the door. Fell to his knees and put his arms around her legs.” Eddie lifted the coffeepot, refilled Conrad’s cup. “Supplee was disgusted, of course, but if you ask me, it was meant to be all along. I’ve seen that woman come down here a million times, running down the hill with some message for Peak while he ate his lunch. She thought he was some kind of god.”
Conrad smiled, thinking of Nolan’s letter, and took another mouthful. “Is he all right?”
“I don’t know. I imagine so, though Supplee said his face looked funny and he was bent over like his shoulder hurt. Might have been from pulling on the ropes, though.” Eddie came around the counter and sat down beside Co
nrad, wiped aimlessly at the Formica. “She’ll get him checked out. She’s responsible about that kind of thing. You can count on her for that.”
A silence fell between them. Conrad chewed steadily through his breakfast. “One thing, though,” Eddie added after a moment. “He did make everybody nervous about that dam. The National Guard is up there now with a whole lot of sand, checking it out. Supplee called the governor’s office last night. And I’ll bet Peak was right, even if he did have a funny way of getting the word out. I wouldn’t bet a cup of coffee on that dam. That’s the thing about Peak. He’s not what you would call an appealing sort of person, but you know he wouldn’t bullshit you.”
Conrad pushed his plate away. “I was up there with him yesterday,” he said. “At the dam. He showed me.” He wiped his mouth. “Thank you,” he said. “That was good.”
“No problem,” Eddie said. “On the house.”
He held up his hand when Conrad started to protest. “It’s the least I can do,” he said. “I would have done anything for your wife, Conrad. Brought her breakfast in bed every morning if that’s what she wanted.” He took a breath. “My Hero’s been up at the cemetery holding down a job for six years now. I never would have thought I’d see that day. And your wife’s responsible. Ever since that first time, when she came by the house and showed Hero how to fix up the garden there. Your wife did what no doctors and no drugs have ever been able to do. She gave Hero something to be good at. Gave her some peace of mind.
“I’m not saying she’s normal now,” he went on, standing up and straightening the napkin holders along the counter. “She’s never going to be what you or I would call—normal. But she’s got that nice little cottage up there, and her little dog, and all those pretty flowers and things, and I think she’s almost—happy. You don’t know—” His voice caught, and he took a breath. “You don’t know what it would have done for Kate to know that. To know that she’s happy.”
Conrad watched Eddie. “She’s a good girl, Eddie,” he said then. He was surprised that Rose had taken his advice—if it could be called that—about Hero and the Vaughans’ garden. He thought for a minute. “You know, she’s kind of been taking care of me, since Rose—”
Eddie turned to him, surprise on his face.
Conrad raised his hands in a shrug. “She’s been cooking for me, Eddie. Bringing me food. Leaving it on my porch. And I’ve never been able to thank her. Not really. I can’t ever seem to find her exactly.”
Eddie sat down heavily on a stool. “I’ll be,” he said slowly, staring at Conrad. “Is that right? Cooking, huh?” He gave a big smile. “Well, that would really make Kate happy.” He sat still, nodding vigorously, smiling at Conrad.
Both men turned then as the door opened and Harrison Supplee and Louis French, Mignon’s husband, came in to the restaurant. The wild, static sound of the storm outside rolled briefly into the warm room. Harrison stopped at the table nearest to the door, bent over, and shook his long legs within his waders. Conrad watched him rear up in the high boots like a praying mantis, stretch his shoulders against some discomfort. He looked pale and waterlogged. He had high, finely shaped eyebrows, which gave him a delicate, faintly sorrowful appearance. Conrad saw Louis take him in with a sneer of disapproval, a look suggesting that Conrad had been caught sitting out on all the work. The men advanced to the counter.
“How’s things?” Eddie asked.
“Black as night,” Harrison said shortly. “Power company won’t touch a wire while the river’s rising.” He took off his cap, set it on the counter, and folded himself awkwardly onto a stool. “National Guard’s bagging the dam, but they’ve started evacuating folks already. They’re sending everybody up to the natatorium.”
Louis French took the stool beside Harrison. “Know how many inches of rain we’ve had? Twelve. Twelve inches.”
“And it’s all just sitting there, waiting to blow,” Harrison said gloomily. “It’s going to be just like last time if they can’t find a way to hold that dam. I’ve said many times that Laurel deserves better than that old piece of crap. I’ve said it so often I think I burst a blood vessel.” He smacked his pale, creased forehead with the palm of his hand.
Louis reached for the cup of coffee Eddie pushed across the counter to him, took a sip, bulged his cheeks. “Know how much a bathtub full of water weighs?” he asked no one in particular. “One cubic yard equals one ton.”
“Three-quarters of a ton,” Conrad said quietly. He knew such things from his days as an engineer. “One inch of rainfall over one square mile has the potential energy of six thousand pounds of dynamite. That’s about three times the force of the Enola Gay’s load.”
Louis didn’t look at him, shifting his eyes sideways as if Conrad hadn’t even spoken, but Harrison gave a snort of surprise.
“Well, I guess we have Peak to thank for getting the ball rolling,” he said. He shook his head. “Crazy old fool.”
“Anybody heard from him?” Eddie asked, refilling Conrad’s cup. Conrad looked up and nodded his thanks.
Harrison gave a short laugh. “He was up at the natatorium already this morning, dressed to kill in some old army flak jacket, cameras draped every which way around his neck, Betty Barteleme right behind him with a notepad. ‘You can’t keep a good man down, Harrison.’ That’s what she told me.”
Eddie raised his eyebrows.
“He looks like shit,” Harrison said, and took a noisy slurp of coffee. “Looks like he’s about to keel over. Toronto’s trying to get him to go home.” He wiped his mouth with a napkin. “He did us all a favor, though. The least we could do is save him from himself now, lock him up someplace until it’s all over. I’m afraid he’ll drag Betty Barteleme off on some idiotic mission with him. I told Toronto just to clonk him over the head with one of those cameras of his.”
Conrad looked up at Eddie for a second. Then he turned to Harrison. “If they’re evacuating,” he asked, “isn’t this place included? I mean, it’s right on the river.”
Harrison leaned over and glanced briefly and significantly at Conrad. Then he looked at Eddie, who had turned his back to them suddenly and was scraping the griddle. “That’s why we came by,” he said quietly. “Eddie, you need to close up shop.” He waited a minute. “The whole of River Road and up to Pine Street. Everybody out.”
Eddie kept his back to them, withdrew a rag from his belt, and wiped it over the surface of the griddle. There was a silence while each man, Conrad thought, considered his coffee cup, the cooling dregs, what was left, and the prospect of what might come, the unimaginable future. He thought that each of them was seeing the river in his mind’s eye, imagining the current’s labored flow through town, the path of its destruction.
“Like you said”—Eddie spoke without turning around, and the men watched his back—“it’ll be just like last time.
“Remember?” he said then, turning at last and facing Harrison. “Remember, after it stopped raining, how we all stood on the hill, where the natatorium is now, and looked down into town?”
No one answered him.
“It was beautiful, in a terrible sort of way,” he went on quietly. “I was home by then. It was after my leg. Kate and me stood up there, on the hill, along with everybody else. Hero wasn’t even born yet, but we thought Kate might be carrying. We just stood there, looking down, and nobody said anything. And it seemed like it was all over, that we’d never come back here, that it would stay that way forever, just the roofs sticking up here and there out of the water. It was like we were cut loose, in a way. I couldn’t believe I’d come home to that.” He shook his head. “It was hard to believe a few days of rain could change everything so much, so that you looked down at your life and it seemed like something that had happened a long time ago, to someone else.”
No one said anything for a minute.
“Lot of people got ruined,” Louis said then.
Harrison shot him a look. “Eddie,” he said. “I promise you. River comes through here,
we’ll just build you a new place. More up-to-date. Just like before. You did it before, Eddie.”
But Eddie didn’t answer him, just stared out over Harrison’s head toward the window. He could see the water coming, Conrad thought. He was considering whether he could stand his ground against it.
“We were wrong,” Eddie said, as if Harrison had never spoken. “Kate wasn’t carrying then. It wasn’t until later, until after we’d rebuilt this place, a few years later—Hero was born then.” Eddie was still looking off over the men’s heads. “Not a flood child after all,” he said. “A restoration.”
Harrison glanced at Louis and Conrad, appealing for their help. “Old warhorse like yourself,” he said then, making his voice light. “This ought to be getting your blood running.” He reached over and laid a narrow hand on Eddie’s arm. “This place could use a bath anyway.”
A sudden urgency filled Conrad, the first real stirrings of fear. He didn’t want to be sitting there anymore. He wanted to get out, and he wanted Eddie out, too. He stood up, nodded at Harrison and Louis. “Come on, Eddie,” he said. “I’ve got the truck. I’ll help you get a few things out.”
Harrison and Louis stood then as well, moved toward the door.
Harrison stopped at the table and collected his coat. “Don’t waste time now, Eddie,” he said. “Dead man can’t fry an egg.” He glanced at Conrad once more, jerked his head in the direction of the road. “We’ll be seeing you,” he said. And then they were gone.
Conrad waited. He did not look directly at Eddie, did not want, he realized, to look upon this old man’s world, cramped and lonely within the four stained walls of the restaurant. He did not want to imagine it in the pitch dark, engulfed in black water, the room’s contents swallowed by the river, bottomless and terrifying. He thought of Hero safely on her hill as though a hand had lifted her there, set her carefully on high ground, out of harm’s way. Whose hand? Rose’s, he realized.
He tried to make his voice sound persuasive. “What’ll it be?” he asked Eddie. “The register? Toaster? Couple of chairs?”