Floodmarkers

by Nic Brown

  This was when the man finally spoke.

  “[French.]”

  Cotton didn’t speak French but he knew what it sounded like. The man had clearly just said something to him in French.

  “I’m sorry? Hello?”

  “[French.]”

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t understand you.”

  “[French.]”

  “I cannot understand you. Do. You. Speak. English?”

  “No.”

  “I’ve fallen and I think my hip is broken. Do you understand?”

  “[French.]”

  “Do you understand ‘emergency’?”

  The man set down his bag, took five steps down to where Cotton lay, and bent over. He was still backlit and Cotton could not make out his face. He grabbed Cotton underneath each shoulder and lifted him from the stairs. The pain was overwhelming. Lights flashed before his eyes and he screamed out in a high, cracking yelp. The man then set Cotton on the dry stairs and started back into the kitchen. Cotton moaned and gasped for air as his bones readjusted to new angles.

  From above, the refrigerator door opened and closed. A few cabinets banged open and shut. The man was taking his time now. As he tried to catch his breath, Cotton listened to the man leave the house and then return. This happened three times. Because the footsteps soon led back to his bedroom, Cotton now guessed that the man had found Nora’s jewelry, which he kept, along with his cuff links and collar stays, in a wooden box on his dresser. Her engagement ring had belonged to his grandmother and was the only real heirloom he owned. It had become more precious to Cotton as his interest in genealogy had grown, but he found it less important right now than his desire to have this man out of the house before Lee returned.

  Cotton heard the front door open again. This, he hoped, meant that the man was gone for good, but then suddenly the man appeared again at the top of the stairs and stepped into the basement. He silently shut the door, making the small beams of light creeping through the floor stand out even more against the now deeper darkness.

  “Shhhhhhhh,” the man said, crouching on the steps above Cotton. “[French.]”

  Cotton listened. There was someone else in the house.

  “Granpy!” came from upstairs. Little footsteps scurried across the floorboards, finally stopping in the living room.

  The man smelled like a wet dog. The water was still dripping into the basement, and on top of that sound Cotton could hear the rain, the man breathing, and his own teeth chattering.

  Lee’s little footsteps spread slowly throughout the house, stopping in other rooms, opening closets, circling.

  “Grandpa? Hello?”

  “Shhhhhh,” the man said again.

  Cotton didn’t even think about calling out. This was the safe thing. Silence. Lee’s little footsteps entered the kitchen. Leave, Cotton thought, just leave. He heard the pantry door open. Surely Lee was noticing items missing. Please don’t look down here, Cotton thought. Just go back to Donnie’s house. Go.

  Then the basement door opened and Lee’s silhouette appeared in the rectangle of dim light.

  “Grandpa?”

  “[French!]” the man said, standing up.

  “Lee,” Cotton said. “It’s OK.”

  “[French! French! French!]” the man yelled, now stepping up the stairs towards Lee.

  Lee crouched slightly and then methodically carved his hands into the air, as if they were attached to a low, slow gear.

  “Lee,” Cotton said.

  “I don’t know you,” Lee said, then karate-chopped the man in the face.

  The man’s head whipped to the side and Lee’s little footsteps rushed across the floor and the front door shut.

  Cotton had taught Lee emergency procedure many, many times. Even if he didn’t remember what to do—which was probable, Cotton thought—he would at least run to Donnie’s house and tell his parents. They were teachers. They were at home today. They would know what to do.

  The man never looked at Cotton again. He walked up the stairs and then his footsteps slowly crossed the house. He was obviously not chasing after Lee, and finally Cotton heard the front door squeak and thud.

  The sirens were clear for a long time before they finally stopped in the street. There was a cavalcade of boots. Flashlights, their multiple beams crossing, exploded into the basement with so many voices at once. Cotton was strapped to a yellow gurney and glided into the living room on the shoulders of young men. The television, the new answering machine, Lee’s Intelevision, he couldn’t tell what else. They were gone.

  “You saw the man?” a voice said.

  “Yes,” Cotton said. He couldn’t see who was speaking.

  They were now going through the front door. Someone held an umbrella above him, trying to keep the rain off, but it wasn’t working well, and Cotton’s face was getting rained on.

  “And he attacked you?”

  “No, no. I slipped.”

  “During the confrontation?”

  “The . . . ?”

  “He said there was a confrontation.”

  “Who?”

  “Your son.”

  “No. I had already fallen.”

  Lee stood at the curb with Donnie’s parents, Janet and Dave Organtip, thin and windblown in their noisy bright rain jackets. Lee looked terrified and was holding Janet’s boney hand.

  Dave called out, “We’ve got Lee, Cotton. We’ll see you at the hospital. Hang in there!”

  The gurney crunched against the edge of the ambulance. Its collapsible legs folded and more rain fell on Cotton’s face before he was inside.

  “OK. Your son—” the floating voice said.

  “Grandson.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s just, we want to get this as quick as we can. I’m sorry. But your son, grandson, said that he attacked the man.”

  “Lee did karate.”

  “Karate?”

  “Lee calls them karate chops.”

  “Your son struck the gypsy?”

  “Gypsy?” Cotton said.

  He had heard about them all his life. People in North Carolina blamed almost every burglary on them. They were the ones who came into town and broke into your house, usually during the day. They would send their children to the front door to ask where their lost dog was while the parents snuck in the back. They would come in your house when you went to the grocery store, even while you were gardening. They posted lookouts at the end of the block to blow whistles if someone was coming. They stole babies. Picked your tomatoes. Used your swimming pool. Cotton had friends who claimed to have seen them. His own parents said they had, many times. They were dark, people said. But Cotton had never thought they were real.

  “They’ve been all over today,” the man said. “All over the place. So let me get this straight. Your son struck the gypsy?”

  “Grandson. He calls them karate chops.”

  “Jesus Christ. You hear that? A nine-year-old attacked the gypsy.”

  Cotton closed his eyes as the vehicle began to roll. The lights from the ambulance were comforting, seeping red through Cotton’s eyelids. These were the lights of an emergency vehicle, a machine whose engine he knew inside out, a system of safety and communication he understood and had used countless times.

  At Wesley Long, Cotton was attached to a morphine drip and propped on an adjustable mattress that smelled like plastic. The hospital had power running off of a generator. Outside, Cotton could see the rain still falling and that the streetlights were dark. He wondered if the water in his basement was still rising.

  Lee stood near Cotton’s right shoulder. Dry tufts of blond hair stood up against darker wet spots, clearly the effect of someone having towel dried his hair, and he was wearing clothes that Cotton did not recognize.

  “Was he really a gypsy?” Lee asked.

  “He was an intruder.”

  “He took my Intelevision.”

  “Mmm.”

  “Are we going to get a new TV?”

  “Mmm.”r />
  “Mrs. Organtip said that I am a vigilante. That’s like The Punisher.”

  Lee was deep into a comic-book stage.

  “A lot of people are real excited right now,” Cotton said, “but I’m going to tell you that what you did was not smart. You cannot act like that.” Cotton let that sink in. “When you’re dealing with people like that, you just let the man have what he wants. You hear me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  If there were a world where Cotton was not the only one raising Lee, if there were others to set the rules and examples, he might admit that what Lee had done was brave. Cotton had this in him. He had always admired drivers who risked safety successfully in service of a win. These people had networks of rules, systems of social examples that they could break and return to knowingly. Lee, though, had only Cotton.

  “I want you to know that I am glad you are OK. You did well enough by calling emergency.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That was a job well done. Now, why don’t you go get the Organtips. I want to talk to them.”

  Lee left the room and Cotton continued to look out the window at the rain and the fading light.

  There’s a saying in NASCAR that if a crew ain’t cheating, it ain’t trying. Cotton knew it was true, that sometimes you had to work outside of the rules, even lie to get things done for your teammates. He didn’t know how else he might do it, but he thought he might have to fib a little to get the Organtips to take Lee in until he got out of the hospital. He would need to make it seem like the injury wasn’t serious, that he’d be out of there right away. In truth, he had no idea how long it would take. The orthopedic surgeon had yet to come in.

  The Organtips rustled into the room behind Lee. Both coached high school track and were wiry and athletic, yet something about their physiques seemed unhealthy to Cotton. They were so veiny. Especially in this fluorescent light, it was like they both had some excess vein structure that was forcing its way up and out of the skin. Lee stood at the window, his back to the adults, and Cotton could tell from the way he was fidgeting that he was ready to leave.

  “Cotton,” Janet said.

  “How are you?” Dan said.

  “Fine, fine. These things happen all the time. I want to thank you so much for bringing Lee here.”

  “Not at all.”

  Cotton had barely ever spoken to them before, usually only waving when he drove by, or giving them the quick OK to take Lee on different outings with Donnie. The boys never played at Cotton’s house.

  “They said it’ll be a pretty quick procedure,” Cotton said. “In and out, really. I hate to ask you this, but I’m worried about my basement. I don’t know if you know someone who might could—”

  “Already done it,” said Dan. “Took a look right before we came. The water’s still rising. Storm drains filled up with leaves and stuff pretty early on this morning, and the whole system is screwy. There must be a cracked main drain somewhere, but you’re not the only one. The whole street is filling up. I spoke to the work crew out there now, and they said that it looked like things would be slowing down pretty soon, mostly because of the rain tapering off.”

  “Oh boy. Oh boy,” Cotton said. He had never assumed that Dan would just take a look without being asked. “I have some books down there. Photos.”

  “It’s no problem. I’ll get them when we go back.”

  “And,” Janet said, “we would love to have Lee for as long as you’re here.”

  She beat him to the question. How long had it been since he’d had someone do him a favor? How long had it been since he had really even interacted with a neighbor, or anyone other than Lee? He felt embarrassed for having thought he might need to trick these people.

  “I . . .” Cotton said. “That would be wonderful. Thank you.”

  “It’s our pleasure. The little hero.”

  “Oh, this karate. It’s got to stop,” Cotton said.

  It occurred to him that Lee had so many friends. He had Donnie, and schoolmates, and now even their parents. Cotton’s friends were gone. Little Mike Tankersly was still living in Reidsville—he had been on Cotton’s pit crew for thirteen years—and Laura was at Green Valley, but there was no one in Lystra, really, no one he could call a friend.

  “Lee, does that sound alright?”

  Lee turned from the window.

  “Yeah.”

  He sounded excited.

  “Good,” Cotton said. “I’ll be out of here and like new before you know it. This hip, it’s plain smashed. But they’re going to switch it out. It’s like putting in a new carburetor these days. These guys, they just switch them out.”

  “Yes, sir.” Lee said. He was barely paying attention.

  “So don’t you worry about me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Just forget about it. Tell me what you did today.”

  Lee started speaking quickly. It was his I-want-to-go tone. “Um. We found this trampoline and then later Jessica and Madeline and Will and Henry came over and we played light as a feather stiff as a board.”

  “Whoa. Slow down.” Cotton had no idea who these people were. “Tell me about this game.” He didn’t want Lee to leave quite yet.

  “It’s when, like I lay down, and then everyone puts two fingers underneath me, and then they all chant, ‘Light as a feather, stiff as a board,’ and then they can pick you up like it’s nothing. Like I was a feather. It’s awesome.”

  “I’ll be dog,” Cotton said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Cotton envisioned a group of children carrying Lee around a dark room with their fingertips. He wondered if they’d been doing this while he lay on the stairs.

  “I’ll call as soon as I have any sort of information,” Cotton said. “If you can just write down your number, I—”

  Janet wrote a string of numbers on a hospital menu, her jacket making so much noise that Cotton could barely hear the rain.

  “Lee. Lee, where are you? Lee. Look at me. Manners do matter.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “OK. Dan, Janet.”

  “There’s a breath in and a breath out. That’s all that we have,” Dan said, swishing near the bed. “So breathe.” He placed his veiny hand on Cotton’s shoulder. This was surely some coaching maxim Dan used with the track team, and it was a bit too much for Cotton. It embarrassed him, though he remembered similar things that he’d said to his own drivers. What was it that he had said?

  “Thank you.”

  Lee was in the hallway now, looking back in towards Cotton while holding Janet’s hand. Dan swished out, the door silently swinging shut behind him, and through its small window, a square of wired glass, Cotton watched them pass.

  The rain seemed louder in their absence, clicking like fingernails against the exterior windowpane. If it didn’t stop soon, Cotton thought, it was going to rise into his house. It would well up into his kitchen, sweep across the linoleum, and run through his living room, washing down the hall and into their bedrooms. The beds would be ruined and the carpets would have to be removed. His photo albums might already be swelling up. Laura’s baby pictures could, at that very moment, be floating across the surface of the floodwater.

  He tried to think of how much it was all going to cost. The repairs. The surgery.

  He owned some cars. There were three that he kept in storage, in Little Mike’s garage. He never even worked on them anymore. He could sell those, he thought. That might cover the surgery. And if the water damage was only in the basement, maybe they wouldn’t have to do any repair. Four thousand. Three. There would be other bills, too, though. Constants. Laura’s bills. Telephone. Gas. He closed his eyes and tried to calm down. In the only building with electricity in downtown Lystra, Cotton added up how much would be left over.

  floodmarkers

  Fletcher stood at the edge of the floodwater in her front yard as her older brother Mike blew air into the mouth of her best friend Grier. Grier lay on her back, wearing only her underwear.
Water lapped gently over her feet. Mike was blowing too many long breaths into her, though, and with her head at the wrong angle like that—chin tucked against the sternum—Fletcher knew that the air wouldn’t reach Grier’s lungs.

  “Stop,” she said.

  Mike’s lips parted from Grier’s as he turned to look at Fletcher. His embarrassing six-inch mohawk—a construction he maintained with the annoying and perpetual practice of microwaving a small bowl of cherry Jell-O every morning and then rubbing the liquefied gelatin into his hair—was now drooping in the rain. Jell-O ran in red streaks down his face.

  Fletcher knew CPR from lifeguarding at the Lystra Country Club but had only ever practiced resuscitation on CPR Annie, a mannequin torso with latex lips that smelled like balloons.

  “You’re not doing it right,” Fletcher said.

  “Well, help!”

  Fletcher looked at the cold water, its surface pocked by countless raindrops. She wasn’t supposed to be out in this.

  “Come on!” Mike said.

  He looked so hopeful. So needful of Fletcher. It was a look he had never given her before. She fell to her knees in the shallow water and pushed his hands away.

  Earlier that morning, before sunrise, before Hurricane Hugo had knocked the electricity out, before the water had risen out of Mankin Park and spread low and stealthy across the neighborhood, Fletcher had seen Grier in bed with her brother. It was the first time she’d found them together naked, but it wasn’t a complete surprise. Only weeks earlier Fletcher had discovered them together singing “Sit Down You’re Rocking the Boat” in the kitchen. They had their clothes on then and were clearly only practicing for Guys and Dolls, but Fletcher could see what was happening. She’d said nothing, only watched unseen from the hallway as they sang “sit down sit down sit down.”

  Grier smelled like frozen sandwich meat, but her mouth was still warm against Fletcher’s lips. With each chest compression, vomit coursed out of Grier’s mouth.

  “Keep doing that,” Mike said.

  But Fletcher knew it wasn’t Grier who was breathing. This was only her brother’s breath being forced out of an inflated stomach.