Floodmarkers

by Nic Brown

  Rapid footsteps scurried across the grass. It was The Punisher, standing above him in terror. He was so wet that Manny could see his little boy nipples through the T-shirt.

  “Are you OK?” The Punisher asked.

  Manny looked across the street. Amelia was standing on the top step in a red raincoat.

  Manny laid his head back and yelled, “Goddamn it! Oh Christ almighty. My leg! Oh God!”

  “Oh my God. Lady,” The Punisher said, turning to Amelia.

  Manny moaned.

  Amelia slowly walked across the street and Kenny stepped outside.

  “It’s his leg!” Izod yelled.

  Manny moaned again, then listened. The rain pinged off the trampoline.

  “You alright, Manny?” Kenny said, kneeling down beside him.

  “I . . . I think it’s his leg, sir,” Izod said to Kenny.

  This gave Manny a new burst of energy and he began to moan again.

  “Oh my God,” The Punisher said, his voice cracking into a sob.

  “Is this your trampoline?” Amelia said from the curb.

  “It’s Myron’s,” Izod said.

  “Who is Myron?”

  “He lived down there. They moved.”

  The Punisher was whimpering now.

  “Manny,” Amelia called. “You’re scaring the children.”

  “I love you!” Manny yelled. “You’re talking to me!”

  She didn’t say anything. Kenny was still kneeling beside him.

  “My leg isn’t really hurt!”

  “I know it isn’t,” Amelia said.

  “What the fuck?” Kenny said, standing up.

  “Go home now, boys. Go on,” Amelia said, walking away. “And Manny, take that thing back.”

  Manny heard four little Nikes scurry off. Then, after a moment, two screen doors slammed shut as Kenny and Amelia went back inside their houses.

  He lay there for a long time, long enough that he began to feel as if both he and the ground around him were so saturated that he was melting into it. The rain had become a solid blanket pushing him into the soil. The wind was constant, just strong enough to force the weakest branches out of the dead oak at the edge of the yard. They landed with quiet thuds around him.

  Manny rolled his head to one side and looked through the grass and fallen branches. Amelia had opened the windows to let the pressure out of the house.

  He got up and pushed the trampoline back onto its side. A sheet of water fell off it in a rush. He began rolling it into the road.

  Though Manny knew they’d moved out, the Haskells’ house did not look uninhabited. There was still a plastic Big Wheel in the front yard and the garden had a hose strung across it. Wind chimes still hung from the gutter, emitting a constant, violent clanging. The air smelled electric.

  He rolled the trampoline down the driveway. In the back there were scattered pieces of trash on the ground, things he hazily remembered from the night before. The apron, the Trapper Keeper. Old magazines and Tupperware. And a dog. A skinny, dirty dog sniffing in a torn bag of trash. A skinny, dirty white pit bull.

  Manny let the trampoline down and it made its funny rattle.

  Casper raised his close-set eyes and barked once, then went directly back to the trash.

  God loves me, Manny thought.

  Old boxes of food that were ripped apart formed a circle around Casper. Sloppy Joe mix. Jell-O. Beef bouillon cubes. Casper wasn’t interested in Manny. It didn’t matter, though. He had found his way back from five miles away in a hurricane. Casper was back, and Amelia was going to be very happy.

  The rain was falling in huge sheets now and the wind began blowing in extended, violent bursts. The chimes flew off the gutter and landed with a last muffled clatter in the grass. Manny ran out to the street, leaving Casper to the trash. He had to get Amelia, show her that he’d put the trampoline back and found the dog. The luck, he thought. The luck!

  He didn’t have to go far. When he made it to the Haskells’ front lawn, he saw Amelia standing in the road in front of their house. She was looking at the spot in Kenny’s yard where Manny had been lying, where the trampoline had been. Now a large branch from their dead oak tree lay in the spot, its branches reaching up, long wet veins dripping black against the sky. Manny couldn’t help but think Amelia had come back out to make sure he was alright, that the branch hadn’t landed on him.

  He jogged towards her and called out, “Amelia! Amelia!” then smiled when she looked at him. She looked furious, mad with confusion and fear.

  “I’m OK,” Manny said, coming up the middle of the empty street. “I’m right here. Right here.”

  He slowed to a stop and put his arms around her.

  “I hate you,” she said in a sob.

  “I know, I know. But you’ll be getting over that very soon.”

  A torn white trash bag was stuck on Casper’s head. It was a strange sight, a white dog with a white bag over its head, barking and running in a slow, jerky circle. There was more trash scattered on the ground around Casper’s shuffling paws.

  Amelia pulled the bag off his head. Casper snapped at her hand and she stepped back. He barked twice, then crouched and bared his teeth.

  “Casper,” Manny said. “Casper!”

  “He’ll be alright once he gets some food,” Amelia said. “Hey boy. Hey boody boody.”

  Casper hissed air through his teeth. Amelia’s back was against the trampoline frame now. She had nowhere else to go.

  “My God,” she said.

  Manny took Amelia’s hand in his own and put another at the small of her back. He stood between her and Casper, then helped her onto the trampoline, where Casper couldn’t reach. She crawled up and sat in the middle. Manny followed her onto the undulating surface, then stood and helped her to her feet.

  Casper carried on for another minute or so, then went back to chewing on an empty bag of gingersnaps.

  At first Manny and Amelia tried to stand still on the trampoline, but the combination of two weights sent one up every time the other moved. And Manny kept on moving, taking steps and sort of bouncing without leaving the fabric. They stopped fighting the trampoline, finally, and just started jumping in this alternating rhythm.

  They were each getting higher. Manny wondered if Amelia had ever done this before. She looked so comfortable. From time to time, he thought he even saw her smiling in the air.

  The discarded trash bag had already filled with an overflowing puddle, and Casper was violently lapping from it. The wind was blowing trash around underneath them and the rain was exploding off the fabric at their feet. Manny’s giant lips were floating up with his hair as Amelia’s braces glittered darkly from her smile. They kept on bouncing like this, higher and higher, and for a moment every jump, as one fell and the other rose, each was suspended in air beside the other.

  MIDDAY

  12:00 PM

  SEPTEMBER 22, 1989

  WKLB RALEIGH, CHANNEL 2

  FIRST ALERT DOPPLER FORECAST

  We’re still seeing some serious flooding as rain continues at record levels throughout the Piedmont at this hour. Let’s look at some footage shot from around the viewing area.

  This is in downtown Lystra a few hours ago. Look at that.

  And here’s Mankin Park, also in Lystra. There’s a bridge under all that. Massive flooding in the Boylan area there in Lystra.

  Tragic scene in Alamance County at this hour. This is by the Haw River in Graham, where flooding has forced cattle onto the only dry space they can find. That is the top of a barn.

  And this is the Hagee Recycling Plant outside Durham. They lost an area of roofing on their sorting arena; therefore, I’m guessing that would be the newspaper area. Look at that.

  Extensive flooding reported throughout the Raleigh-Durham area at this hour, but we can expect some clearing later in the day.

  For a clearer picture, let’s go to the map. Rob?

  humans fall into my field

  In the parking lot
behind his veterinary clinic, Dr. Pat Doublehead led Confetti through the floodwater. Pat had tied a lab coat around the horse’s head, remembering that horses should be blindfolded during barn fire evacuations. He didn’t know if that wisdom also applied to a flood, but Confetti was staying calm as they struggled through the knee-high water.

  Pat had already evacuated the lizards, the cats, the dogs, and the rabbit, almost all of which had been boarded with him by evacuees from the coast or locals concerned that their own houses might flood. He had assured these pet owners that his office was safe. It never flooded. Not before Hurricane Hugo had blown in that morning. Now a sky that looked like mashed potatoes was dropping endless rain onto Lystra and the water was already into his file cabinets.

  Pat was a paunchy forty-one-year-old Cherokee Indian whose weathered face lacked almost any chin. His bottom lip was full and red and stuck out over this chin void, framed by fat cheeks creased by a permanent smile. A bristle of thick black hair grew low on his forehead, under which Pat kept wiping at his pinched eyes as wind blew spray into them.

  Close to three decades had passed since Pat had ridden bareback in Cherokee ceremonies at the reservation, but he thought he might still remember how. He threw his arms over the horse’s spine and began to pull. He had almost reached the point where he could swing his right leg over Confetti’s back when he slid off, into the water.

  All of his weight bore down on his left wrist and something stabbed into his palm. When he lifted his hand out of the water, a long wooden splinter lay under the translucent flesh, probably three inches long, reaching from his pinkie to the meat before his thumb. It was thick and his hand was more numb than painful. It was the numbness that scared him.

  Confetti hadn’t moved; he just stood calm and blindfolded in the water. Pat began to climb the horse again. There were no other options. Pat’s pickup truck stood behind them in even deeper water, its engine fatally submerged. This time he reached Confetti’s back, where he untied the lab coat and tossed it into the water. The current carried it away, spinning like a drowning ghost, as Pat and Confetti began to walk.

  Confetti was a twenty-seven-year-old roan who belonged to Pat’s sister, Wendy. Wendy and Pat were the last full-blooded Cherokees living in Lystra, and Wendy lived on the family’s old land near Buffalo Creek, an area that flash flooded even in weak thunderstorms. She had boarded Confetti with Pat in an attempt to keep the horse safe from the water that seemed certain to rise onto her property.

  Before Pat’s veterinary practice had ever opened, while he was finishing his Cherokee Nation scholarship at the North Carolina State College of Veterinary Medicine, Wendy had operated a full stable. It had done well. At one point she was boarding more than a dozen horses. One of those horses, though—a gelding—had kicked her twice while she was mucking his stall. One hoof hit Wendy in the lower back, ruining a kidney, and as she fell, the other hoof connected with the section of her neck below the cerebral cortex, breaking her spine like an icicle. She was forced to sell her own horses to cover medical expenses—all except Confetti. He was Wendy’s favorite. Horses are people, too, she’d said.

  Pat had felt a rush of love for Wendy’s doctor when he told Pat that Wendy would walk again. It was an even bigger relief when Wendy was finally able to return home from the hospital, not only because Pat loved his sister, but because he had been caring for her six-year-old son, Graham, while she was gone, and things had slipped out of control. Pat had felt confident that he would always be able to resist certain desires around the boy, but he had been wrong.

  It started with his simply placing a finger in Graham’s mouth, encouraging the boy to suck. This filled Pat with a heretofore unknown physical excitement. The desire to put his nephew’s genitalia inside his own mouth, however, was one that he knew was simply unacceptable. Eventually, though, he did it anyway.

  Pat had long ago moved to Mankin Park, one of the nicer neighborhoods in Lystra, and his house was a two-mile walk away from his office to the far end of Tripp Lane. Dead branches fell from scrub pines and landed around him as he rode Confetti along the shoulder of the road. They were out of the floodwater now, but the rain was continuous, the grey continuous. Even the falling branches were just solid pieces of grey, slightly darker pieces of the sky settling into the mud at Confetti’s hooves.

  When he heard the sound of a car approaching from behind, Pat consciously tried not to look. He knew how ridiculous he must seem, riding a horse bareback on Tripp Lane. The wheels ground to a halt on the wet concrete but he kept his head forward.

  Then he heard his name.

  It was his sister, Wendy. Her horse trailer was attached to her truck and she was already getting out.

  Pat had bought the horse trailer for Wendy two weeks before Graham’s thirteenth birthday. By then, Pat’s veterinary practice had opened and he was paying all of Wendy’s expenses—her dialysis, rent, utilities. She was no longer able to work, due to her injuries, and Pat was glad to help. He lived alone; he didn’t need all that money. He remembered the date of the trailer purchase because Wendy had called after Graham’s birthday party to say that he had just told her some stories, horrible stories, about Pat doing things to him. Sexual things. Poking, licking his privates. Pat acted shocked but forgiving. He told her that Graham needed to know the consequences of lying, the effect something like that might have on all of their lives. Wendy never even asked Pat if it was true. Pat sounded pained when he suggested that she consider sending Graham to live with his father in Memphis for a while. He pointed out that Wendy had been having a hard time caring for him anyway, in her condition.

  Graham eventually had gone to Memphis, where he was now a sophomore in high school. In addition to providing for Wendy, Pat also wrote a monthly check that she sent to Graham.

  Pat hadn’t spoken to his nephew in over two years. He now had control. He just kept it to photos and videos—a stash of items that he bought from The Matchbox Adult Bookstore on Route 60 and hid in a plastic storage bin in the back of his walk-in closet.

  “Just look at you,” Wendy said, stepping towards Pat through the rain. Her black hair was loose, hanging wet and stringy far past her uneven shoulders. Since the accident, her body had been utterly erased of symmetry. Her spine curved out one way near her shoulders, her head permanently angled in the opposite direction.

  “The office—” Pat said.

  “I know. I heard Elm Street was flooding, so I just drove over. I couldn’t even make it to Lee, though. Hey boy, yeah. Hey.”

  “The truck died,” Pat said, sliding off Confetti’s wet back. “And this was all I could think to do.”

  “Your posture looked good,” Wendy said, leading the horse to her trailer.

  Inside Wendy’s truck, water dripped off Pat and puddled in the seat bottom as he shivered, exhausted. Wendy gave him her knit pullover, but it didn’t stop the shaking.

  “Water’s already in the house,” she said.

  “It’ll be alright,” Pat said. “I got flood insurance for you on the last policy. It’ll be fine. Just stay at my place.”

  “Where’s everything else?” she said.

  “At home. The dogs I put upstairs, but the cats I just let loose. I didn’t have time to situate everything. And now,” he held up his hand, “there’s this.”

  “Pat.”

  “I fell.”

  The area around the splinter was filling with fluid and his wrist was already swollen.

  “You need to get that out.”

  “I know.”

  “We’ll get it out,” Wendy said.

  At Pat’s house, a two-story stucco, Wendy put Confetti in the garage as Pat went inside. Cats were everywhere. Some were sleeping, some were hiding. Some of them were still in their carriers, even though the doors stood open. Pat knew that when cats sensed an ominous change in weather, they searched out small places in which to hide. The dogs were barking on the second floor; the lizards were sleeping in three glass aquariums in the kitchen.
He didn’t know where the rabbit had hidden.

  Pat went straight to the bathroom, stripped, and began to run a hot shower. Without electricity, his bathroom was barely manageable, only a dim bit of light coming through a section of glass brick in the wall. Horsehair and mud covered his arms, and he knew he needed to wash his hand before he cut out the splinter. Wendy had told him that she would have ice ready for his hand when he came out. She always fawned over him. Once he began paying her bills, it was all he could do to not have her calling every hour to see if he needed anything. Dry cleaning? Floors waxed? Dinner?

  After the shower, his hand throbbed from the heat. The skin was going to need to be cut. In his medicine cabinet Pat kept a small box of Tetracaine samples. Tetracaine was a local anesthetic used for animals. He applied a generous amount to his palm, then took an orange bottle from the shelf and shook out a pill the size of a wasp. He put his head under the tap, and the pill, a Ketaset horse tranquilizer, struggled down his throat. Ketaset was an anesthetic, but in some people elicited a type of rapture. Out of curiosity, Pat had taken one before, but it had only rendered him comatose.

  Pat stepped into the living room but stopped when he saw Wendy on the couch. On the table before her sat the plastic storage bin, the one filled with his photos, his unique photos, the ones he special-ordered from the owner of The Matchbox. They were all of boys. Young boys. His most recent ones were of a four-year-old in a hay loft with two grown men, bearded and naked.

  “What are you doing with that?” Pat said.

  “A cat was crying in your closet,” Wendy said. She looked scared, her face almost sideways, its muscles drawn taut and severe.

  “That’s some crazy stuff, isn’t it?” Pat said.

  “What?”

  “Did you look in there?”

  “It was open,” Wendy said. “The cat was in there. What is this?”