Come Helen High Water

by Susan McBride

  “No, you don’t get a badge,” he told her, scowling. “Let’s move out,” he said and shepherded his sidekick through the door to where the crowd had gathered. They all had on boots of some kind, from rain boots to waders, as Main Street sat a couple inches underwater. Every time a vehicle drove through it, the wake splashed brown puddles onto the sidewalk. In spots, trees that sprouted from green spots between the concrete looked like they were floating, their roots invisible below the brown muck.

  So far the sandbags were keeping the water out of the buildings, but it was only a matter of time. If the river didn’t start to recede soon, the sandbags would be useless.

  Frank cleared his throat and addressed the crowd with a curt “Good morning, all, and thank you for helping out. This is a rescue mission, and time is of the essence.”

  He spotted more than a few faces that were all too familiar: Ida Bell and Dorothy Feeny, a pair of local tree huggers who looked dressed for a safari; Felicity Timmons, resident green thumb, wearing an oversized hat and traditional black English Wellies; and even shy Mary Garrett from the Cut ’n’ Curl in bright purple ankle boots and bedazzled blue jeans, her brown ponytail bobbing.

  “I know Mrs. Winston is grateful that you’ve come out to look for her husband,” he announced as his gaze scanned the crowd of mostly weathered faces. “All I ask is that you keep your eyes and ears open. Don’t try to cross the creek at any point. Look out for snakes. And avoid taking risks, you hear me?”

  He quickly split the two dozen into six groups of four, sending each to canvass a portion of River Bend. The town wasn’t big, about a mile square of valley between the bluffs on either side, and with all these hands on deck, Frank had high hopes that Bernie would be found quickly.

  “Stick together and stay within the town proper,” he advised the civilians, because he didn’t want to lose one of them in the process of locating Winston. “You may scan the flooded valley and harbor, but do not attempt a rescue or recovery without the proper gear. Leave the deep woods and the bluffs to me and my deputies.”

  Frank couldn’t imagine that Bernie Winston would try to climb the bluffs. It was quite a hike up, and the old man surely didn’t have the stamina.

  He’d parked his cruiser right on Main Street in the floodwater. It still wasn’t more than shin-high, so the undercarriage of his car stayed dry so long as he drove slowly.

  “We’ll head up Springfield Avenue,” he told Helen as they slogged toward the car and got inside, not bothering to shake off wet boots before buckling up. “Since the Winstons live that way, I want to follow the creek beyond the dead end.”

  The sheriff had instructed Art and Henry to take their dogs up Jersey Avenue to check the back road beyond the edge of town. If Bernie had wandered that way and stuck to the asphalt, he’d end up in farmland. Biddle knew the couple who owned the fields beyond the forest: Hannah and Peter Allen. He’d called them already and given them a heads-up. If Bernie should get that far, they’d let him know.

  Biddle drove at a relative snail’s pace, and not just because of the twenty-mile-per-hour speed limit. There was enough floodwater that most of the streets looked brown. He spotted at least two canoes tied up to porch railings, preparing for the worst.

  He rolled his window down, and Helen did the same, and both kept their eyes peeled for any sign of the missing man. Every now and again Helen would see folks on the sidewalk and would wave them down, calling out, “Bernie Winston’s gone missing! If you see him, please, take him home to Betty. She’s beside herself.”

  “Will do, Helen!” they’d call back, and Frank would shake his head.

  Yep, he silently affirmed, she was River Bend’s town crier, all right, a veritable Silver Alert unto herself.

  Chapter 13

  “Shouldn’t we stop at Betty’s first and check in?” Helen asked as Frank Biddle steered the cruiser past her own whitewashed house on Jersey and slowly—but slowly—crossed through floodwaters over the bridge onto Springfield Avenue. “What if she’s remembered something or found a clue that might lead us to Bernie?”

  “It’ll just delay us.”

  “I’ll pop in and out. It won’t take a minute,” Helen promised.

  The sheriff sighed before reluctantly agreeing. “Okay, we’ll stop. Though I figure Mrs. Winston would’ve hollered if she had any brainstorms about where Bernie might have gone. That’s what phones are for.”

  Maybe so, Helen thought, but sometimes things were forgotten when one was flustered. “You might as well park nearby,” she suggested, as the Winstons’ place sat beyond a second bridge on a cul-de-sac at Springfield’s end. “It’ll be best to go by foot from there anyhow.”

  Biddle gave her a sideways glance that looked anything but pleased. “So you’re planning this mission now, are you?”

  “I’m only trying to help.” Helen knew it didn’t pay to knock heads with the sheriff. So she added to appease him, “I’ll be quick and then we can search the woods.”

  “I’ll give you exactly what you asked for: one minute,” the sheriff said, emphasizing those last two words. “If you’re still piddling around and a minute has passed, I’m starting without you.”

  Helen raised her eyebrows.

  So much for the buddy system, eh?

  “You won’t need to do that.”

  My, aren’t we crabby, she thought. Was his foul mood caused by the flood, the missing man, or his wife’s failure to believe that her childhood pal had forsaken their friendship for an Internet Romeo? Or was he merely grumpy because he’d miss his usual lunch at the diner? Everyone in River Bend knew how much the sheriff liked the midday meat loaf special.

  Heck, everyone out searching for Bernie probably had grumbling bellies. But they could all sit down and eat when Bernie was safe and sound, couldn’t they? Maybe hunger would drive them to find the man posthaste.

  “Have no fear, Sheriff,” she said, reassuring him. “I’ll fly in and out of Betty’s faster than a toupee in a tornado.”

  Helen put her hand on the clasp of her seat belt, ready to leap out as soon as he stopped the car. She was raring to go. She’d exchanged her frog rain boots for the waterproof hiking boots she always wore for Ida Bell’s spring bird-watching walks, and she cradled a small knapsack in her lap.

  Biddle seemed to be eyeing the latter.

  “First things first,” he said as he shifted his foot from gas to brake. “You’ve got your walkie in case we get separated while we’re hiking?”

  “Check,” she said, tapping the backpack. “Plus, I’ve got bottled water, two granola bars, my cell phone, and a first-aid kit.”

  His thick brows arched. “You could’ve been a Boy Scout.”

  “Well, I was married to one for fifty years,” she replied with a laugh.

  The sheriff summoned up a tight smile.

  The upper part of Springfield was dry enough that Helen heard the gravel crunch beneath the tires as he pulled the squad car to the shoulder. It stopped in front of the Winstons’ clapboard house with the covered front porch.

  Such a pretty place, Helen thought, though it could use a new coat of paint.

  She had always liked the fact that the homes in River Bend were mostly Victorian cottages with gabled roofs and carved bargeboard. All had porches and many extended around the entire house. More often than not they were screened in so residents could enjoy mornings and dusk in nice weather without constantly swatting away the bugs.

  It was too bad that none of the Winstons’ neighbors had been sitting on their front porches drinking coffee in the wee hours when Bernie wandered off. If they had, he never would have gotten far. They would have insisted he step inside and share a mug. Then they would have walked him back home and handed him off to Betty.

  It didn’t just take a village to raise a child, Helen mused. It took a village to ensure the safety of a confused old man.

  “Be right back,” she told Biddle as soon as he cut the car’s engine.

  She slipped h
er backpack over her shoulder and hopped out, then crossed the front walk and hurried up the porch steps. She hadn’t even raised a fist to knock when the door came open.

  Clara stood in the threshold, wild-eyed.

  “So what’s the word? Has he been found? Is he all right?” she asked, rubbing her hands on the thighs of her daisy-covered muumuu.

  “Not so fast,” Helen told her friend, and she was sorry she didn’t have better news. “The search has only begun.”

  “Yes, yes, I know you’re right. Art and Henry were just by with the dogs not fifteen minutes back.” Clara bobbed her head. “Betty gave them a dirty old pair of Bernie’s jeans to sniff. Good thing she’d missed them doing the laundry this morning.”

  “The sheriff and I are about to head into the woods toward Lerner’s cabin,” Helen said. She reached out to take Clara’s restless hands and still them. “We’ll catch up to him.”

  “Yes, Lerner’s cabin,” Clara repeated. “Bernie always did find fascination with that old shack. He trekked there with Sawyer every summer when she was little before the Alzheimer’s.”

  “Have faith,” Helen told her, squeezing her hands before letting go.

  Clara swallowed hard, glancing over her shoulder. “I’d best get back to Betty. She’s a nervous wreck, as you can imagine, though it helps that Ellen’s here now. She’s such a godsend. I’m not sure what Betty would do without her.”

  The sheriff loudly cleared his throat from the sidewalk.

  “I’ve got to go,” Helen said. She leaned in toward her friend. “He will turn up, and all will be well.”

  “All will be the same, you mean, which isn’t very well at all,” Clara whispered. “But I guess it’s better than the alternative, isn’t it?”

  Helen thought she caught a flicker of fear in Clara’s eyes before she stepped inside and shut the door.

  “Mrs. Evans?”

  Though he didn’t bark, the sheriff’s voice was crisp enough to remind her that this wasn’t a social call. She needed to stay on target.

  “Coming!” She turned on a boot heel and headed down the porch steps toward Biddle.

  He gave her a look. “Did you get anything?”

  “I did. Lerner’s cabin was somewhere Bernie knew well, so I think we’re heading in the right direction,” she said and tugged on the straps of her backpack. Without missing a beat, she started walking at a brisk pace. “Last one to the woods is a rotten egg,” she called over her shoulder.

  He grunted, and his belt jangled as he tried to keep up with her.

  When the streets weren’t flooded, Helen walked to and from the river every morning—and around town as much as possible—so she was in pretty good shape for a woman her age, if she said so herself. She might have a few decades on the sheriff, but he hardly went anywhere on foot, probably why he was huffing and puffing by the time they reached the dead end of the street and headed into the woods that made up most of the rear end of the valley.

  “You seem to . . . know where you’re . . . going,” the sheriff said between breaths, following her as she crunched over twigs and dead leaves.

  “I do,” she replied. “And I believe that if I were lost in this thicket, I’d follow the creek, or as close as one can get when it’s flooded.”

  “But what if Bernie . . . isn’t thinking . . . logically,” Biddle countered.

  “I’m sure he’s not,” Helen told him over her shoulder. “But sometimes it’s not logic that guides us. It’s instinct. If Bernie trekked to that old cabin time and again with his granddaughter every summer as she grew up, his feet will remember it’s there, even if his brain doesn’t.”

  The sheriff huffed and puffed in response.

  “Things can’t have changed much since I hiked this path with my own children ages ago,” she said, feeling like her feet knew exactly what route to take.

  Who in River Bend hadn’t gone through the woods to Lerner’s cabin when it was the focus of half the town’s ghost stories? Back when she was a young mother, it had been simple enough to walk in the creek bed during the heat of the summer. They’d picked up uncountable rocks along the way, cracking them open to see if they sparkled on the inside. “Look, Mommy, a geode!” she could hear a young voice gleefully cry. Occasionally, they’d turned up fossils. But that was when the creek had been dry as a bone.

  As Helen pressed on, tree branches with budding leaves stretched their arms wide in front of her, as did the thick boughs of evergreens. She ducked when need be, scrabbling toward the noise of the water because it was the water that would lead them. Without the creek, there were just trees and more trees. If you blindly wended your way through, you’d end up either climbing the bluff or hiking out of the valley into the farmland beyond.

  If only the flooding hadn’t turned the creek bed into a raging river and the banks on either side into a swamp.

  The best-laid plans and all that.

  Helen realized they’d have to steer clear of the bog the flood had created, sticking to the tree line to avoid the water.

  “If you . . . want to . . . hang back,” Biddle puffed, catching up with her, “it’s . . . okay. I can . . . continue to search . . . on my own.”

  Helen looked back at him and smiled. He was standing with hands on his knees, catching his breath. “I was going to tell you the same thing,” she quipped.

  She had given birth four times, had nursed her beloved husband back from one heart attack, and had watched another take his life. She was hardly going to let a little thing like water thwart her. The best tool she could utilize to plow through the brush was her patience, and that she had in spades . . . though she couldn’t say the same for Frank Biddle.

  He scowled as he straightened up. He set his hands on his hips, on either side of his rounded belly, and Helen saw him open his mouth to respond. Only nothing emerged.

  Instead from somewhere deeper in the woods came a terrified shriek.

  Biddle’s eyes widened at the sound. “Was that a hawk?” he asked. “Or maybe an eagle?”

  Having lived in the valley for half a century, Helen had heard plenty of squawks and calls and cries of birds of prey, but that scream wasn’t one of them.

  “Bernie?” she found herself saying, her heart thumping in her chest. Her legs started moving even as she prodded, “Time to shake a leg, Sheriff!”

  Chapter 14

  John screamed again as he saw the pale specter of a man standing in the doorway, his skeletal frame haloed by the daylight. He felt a trickle of damp begin to run down his leg, but he was too petrified to care. “You . . . You’re Jacques Lerner’s . . . g-ghost,” he stammered, his whole arm shaking as he raised it to point.

  “I am?” the apparition moaned.

  He was gaunt, his eyes filmy, white hair in disarray, his face scratched. His blue shirt was streaked with dirt, and his pants were wet up to his shins. If he wasn’t a ghost, he was the walking dead.

  “You’re not real! You can’t be!” John cried and made a dash for freedom, knocking into a bony shoulder as he rushed past the specter. His boot caught on a root that had grown up through the wooden steps, and he tripped, hitting the ground with a thud and biting his tongue.

  “I—I’m not real?” the ghost repeated from behind him. The voice sounded strained, stuttering as he asked, “I-Is this your house? I don’t know where I am. I was looking for the coal mine, but I think I got lost. I’m an engineer for Peabody.”

  An engineer for Peabody?

  Did the ghosts of French fur traders say things like that?

  Deliberately, John picked himself up and turned around, willing his racing heart to slow down. He wrinkled his brow and took a good, long look at his ghost.

  Could he see through him?

  No.

  Was he floating off the ground?

  No.

  Oh, geez, he wasn’t a ghost, he realized, just a tired old man, clearly lost.

  As the staccato pace of his pulse eased, John studied the withered face.


  He didn’t know the guy from Adam—had no clue what coal mine he was babbling about, although there were plenty of caves in the area—but he sure as shooting wasn’t a zombie or the specter of Jacques Lerner come to chase away a treasure hunter. He was flesh and bones. Well, mostly bones, from the gaunt look of him.

  “I’m so sorry. I’m a fool with a vivid imagination,” John said and stood up, though his knees wobbled. He squared his shoulders, dusting himself off. “I tend to get carried away sometimes.”

  The fellow gave him a blank stare.

  “You know, I don’t think there’s a coal mine in this particular valley,” John said and approached the stranger, this time without trepidation. “You’re quite a bit off the beaten path. Do you live in River Bend?”

  The man got the most puzzled look on his face. “My wife and I, we’re from Coal City. Is that near? I seem to have lost all sense of direction. I’ve been traveling a lot lately. That must be it.”

  “What’s your name?” John tried asking. He sensed something wasn’t right, and it went beyond the man’s frazzled appearance. He could see it in his eyes. They had a fuzzy, vacant look to them. “Do you know who you are?”

  “Win. My name’s Win, at least that’s what my buddies call me,” the man replied, then made a face, like that wasn’t quite right. After a slight hesitation, he explained, “I work for Peabody, inspecting the mines.” He scratched at his chin, his befuddled gaze raking in the woods around them. “I must be lost.”

  No fooling.

  John sighed, relaxing. The fellow might not be a real ghost, but he was definitely the ghost of a man and lost in more ways than one. He could see all the signs.

  “So your name’s Win,” John repeated. “Is that your first name or your last name?”

  The fellow had to stop and think. “Winston,” he finally said. “It’s Winston.”

  John wondered if the old guy’s mother had been a fan of Churchill.

  “I need . . . I need to . . .” He cocked his head, white hair flying about his crown like Einstein on a bad day. “I need to find my wife. I should get home . . . Gotta clean up before the cocktail party.”