“You don’t want to go back out in that,” Hank said.
“We’ve got to,” I said.
We pushed the hay aside and felt our way to the ladder. I was stiff and sore, but no longer jerking as I found the rungs with the tips of my shoes and lowered myself into the water. The flood had gone down some, but was so cold it burned my ankles. I held on to Hank’s
leg and then his hand as he climbed down. When we got to the barn door everything was so dark we couldn’t even see the house.
“We’ll have to feel our way,” I said, “the way we come out here.”
“I ain’t no good,” Hank said.
“It don’t matter if you’re any good or not,” I said, “we’ve got to get back to the house.”
The flood tore at my legs as I stepped into it, but I pushed my feet hard against the ground and held on to Hank’s arm, both steadying him and steadying myself.
“If I fall down just let me go,” Hank said.
“If you fall down I’ll fall down too,” I said, “and we’ll all be drowneded.” But I knowed he wasn’t going to fall down. Hank was strong as a big Percheron horse. He was shaky in his head, but he wasn’t shaky in his big shoulders and powerful back. He was strong as a rock wall. Without a lantern we couldn’t see the crazy water, but it splashed up on my chest and took my breath away. I held on to Hank’s arm like it was an oak tree.
“Oh!” I said when an icy splash hit my neck. The shock of the cold water on my chest and belly made me forget myself and stop.
“Come on,” Hank said and jerked my arm. I held on to him as the flood thrashed between my legs. Now that he was out in the wild stream Hank come back to hisself a little. Lightning flashed and I seen the porch was not where I’d thought it was. We had been pushed by the current below the corner of the house, past where the washpot and clothesline was. We swung to the left in the ghostly light, and then it was dark again.
By the time we got to the steps my feet was too numb to feel anything. Hank had to help me up and across the porch.
“Let’s go upstairs where it’s dry,” I said.
“I’ll have to find a lamp,” Hank said.
• • •
WHEN WE GOT to the bedroom in the attic everything looked cold and damp. The day of rain had made everything clammy, and with the fire out the house was getting cold. I stood at the top of the stairs to let my muddy shoes and the bottom of my skirt drip as much as they would. In the bedroom I put the lamp on the table and went back to the stairs and wrung out the hem of my filthy skirt. It was a good thing we had not moved downstairs to Mr. Pendergast’s room after Lou and Garland visited us. Thank goodness most of our clothes was upstairs.
“There’s nothing to do but take off our wet things and get under the covers,” I said. But Hank didn’t answer. He had set down on the bed and put his face in his hands, and he was crying. A chill went through me, like an icicle had been drove down my spine. I went to Hank and took him by the shoulders. He sobbed into his hands like a baby. It didn’t seem possible a man as big and strong as Hank could be so unstrung as he had been that night.
“Let’s jump in bed and get warm,” I said. I got down on my knees and untied his wet boots and pulled them off. I slipped off his soaking-wet socks. “Get out of them wet overalls,” I said. He let me undress him like he didn’t care, like he was a sleepy baby that didn’t pay no attention. I was shivering with cold as I got his flannel nightshirt on him. I took off my own clothes and put on my flannel gown and got in bed beside him. Our feet was cold as snow. Hank had turned on his side away from me. He wasn’t sobbing anymore; he was just sullen and quiet.
“We’ll be warm and dry up here,” I said. I listened to the rain and to things rubbing and knocking on the house. I reckon boards and trees in the flood was washing against the walls. Once I felt the walls jar, and wondered if the house had broke loose from its foundations. It was strange to think that I was stronger than Hank. He was wore out and I still felt like fighting. I felt of my belly where it
had begun to swell a little. I cupped my hands around my belly like I was protecting it.
“I’m afraid,” Hank said.
“I’m afraid too,” I said. The fact that he was so scared made me feel less afraid. I couldn’t explain it. Hank turned and put his face against my breast, and I pulled the gown to the side so the nipple was exposed. The nipple got hard and long and he put his lips to it. I run my fingers through his hair.
He leaned his head over and nibbled at my other breast, like he was hungry. He was so hungry he could never be filled.
“You don’t never need to be so afraid,” I said.
When I put out the lamp it was so dark in the bedroom you couldn’t see the dark. Most times you can see the dark because there is just a little bit of light. But it was so dark I might as well have been blind. The sight had been took away, and there was no way of seeing. The house shuddered as big trees or logs washed up against it. The house creaked and groaned, as if something was pushing it. There was a kind of bark, of one board slapping another. And suddenly there come a flash. And I seen the one window in the bedroom lit up with blinding chalk dust. It was lightning again. The brightness burned my eyes.
Thunder hit the air like a timber slammed down on the roof. The house shook and seemed to rock on its foundation. Thunder followed thunder, as though a pile of big rocks was falling on the roof. Doors was slamming all over the sky. And as soon as it quieted down there was another flash of blue. And thunder followed like a train busting out of a tunnel. It sounded as if the sky was crumbling in big chunks and crashing down the mountainside. Thunder echoed off the ridges and repeated itself and echoed again.
And just when it felt like I couldn’t stand to hear another thunder, I heard the wind. Suddenly wind brushed the house like it had
been released by the thunder. Wind appeared as if it had been turned out of a cave and shoved up against the house. The eaves whined and windows shook. And trees across the valley and on the ridges above roared. I could hear another roar too, of a waterfall further up the valley, where floodwater was dropping hundreds of feet in the dark and breaking trees and churning up roots and boulders.
“Sounds like the end of the world,” Hank said.
“Nothing is the end of the world,” I said. I said it off the top of my head, but then I seen how true it was. If everything in the world come crashing down, the world would still go on. It would start all over again. The creek would go back to its banks and broke things would rot and turn into mulch and fertilizer. The sun would dry out the mud and silt, and weeds would start growing again.
Wind hit the side of the house again and flung drops pinged on the window. “It’s Christmas,” I said.
“Don’t seem like Christmas,” Hank said.
WHEN I WOKE up, Hank was gone from the bed. The place beside me was cold and everything about the bedroom seemed wrong. I looked around and tried to see what it was that was so bad about the room. Everything looked ordinary, except for our wet clothes on the floor. And then I thought that it was light, which meant it was much later than I was used to getting up. I had slept too long and I was uneasy in my stomach.
Another thing that was odd was the wind had stopped. The windowpanes was quiet and there was no rain on the roof. It had rained so long it sounded eerie not to hear drops on the tin roof. It was the quietness that was so strange. There was no dripping from the eaves. I listened to see if Hank was stirring around in the rooms below. The house was still.
• • •
WHEN I GOT dressed my shoes was still wet, but I put on dry stockings and climbed down the stairs. Opening the door into the living room I expected to see water standing on the floor, but there was none. Instead there was things laying on the floor, scattered here and yon, like an animal had been loose in the room. It was stuff that had been floating and was left when the water went down: soaked cardboard boxes, pieces of wood, bottles and jars, corncobs from the kindling box, clothespins, a broom. But the thing that struck me was not the look of the living room: it was the smell. There was the smell of a place wet and already sour. It was a stink of moldy rotting things. The water had only stood in the house a few hours, yet the house smelled like it had been rotting for months. It was a stink of soot and charred wood in the fireplace, and bitter soaked ashes. It was a stink of wet cloth and filth and festering mud. The floor was slick with a film of mud, and silt stuck to the bottoms of the curtains. The Christmas tree had mud on its lower limbs.
“Hank,” I called. I looked in the kitchen and seen the floor was littered the same way the living room was. “Hank!” I hollered. But there was nobody in the house. The kitchen smelled worse than the living room. The wood was all soaked and sticks was beginning to mold and sour. The water had brought out all the stink of the charred wood and soot inside the stove. And there was the stench of rancid grease and bits of rotted fat and crumbs from the table that had been found and loosened by the water. The floor was slick with red silt.
I put a hand over my nose and hurried to the back door. I expected to see water standing in the yard, but there was only a few puddles. The yard had been tore and scrubbed by the flash flood, and most of the grass had been peeled away. Wood had floated out of the woodshed and was scattered over the yard and pasture. A chicken coop had been carried away and washed up against the pasture fence. The outhouse had been knocked over. Otherwise the
buildings was all in place, and sun sparkled on the puddles. But I didn’t see but six or eight chickens pecking in the mud.
“Hank,” I called.
My voice echoed off the side of the barn. The air was so warm it felt like early fall, but the trees on the mountainside was bare. The ice was all gone and the trees flashed silver in the sun. It had indeed turned warm after the sleet. I called for Hank again, and then I seen him come out of the hallway of the barn. He was leading the horse, and he took the horse to the pasture and turned it loose. After he put up the bars of the milkgap, he started back toward the house carrying the milk bucket. I could tell something was wrong by the sag of his shoulders.
“The cow is dead,” he said when he got closer.
“Drowneded?” I said.
“Hung herself,” Hank said. “She climbed up to the top of her stall as the water rose and caught her collar on a nail. Then hung herself when the water went down.”
“I don’t believe it,” I said.
“I didn’t believe it either,” Hank said. “But the cow is dead, strangled by her own collar.”
“We got a baby coming and there won’t be no milk,” I said.
“I never heard of a cow hanging herself before,” Hank said.
“Can we eat the meat?” I said.
“It has already started to rot in this warm weather,” Hank said. “And beef won’t keep the way pork does.”
“You can’t salt it down?” I said.
“It has already started to rot,” Hank said, “because the blood is still in the carcass.” I wondered if the meat could be boiled and canned, but I didn’t say nothing. I didn’t want to argue with Hank, now that he was calm, after the way he had acted the night before.
When I went back into the kitchen I had to adjust my eyes to the
dark. But the stink hit my nose quick. It was a sweet, sickening smell, worse than mildew. It was the smell of rotten things.
“First thing is to mop the floor,” I said.
Hank raked the wet ashes out of the stove and went to find some dry kindling in the barn. He didn’t mention what he had done in the flood, and I didn’t either. I got the bucket of fresh water from the back porch. It was clean and clear and had only been touched by rainwater. I took a drink, for I was parched from the long night of worry.
“The spring will have to be cleaned out before we get any more fresh water,” Hank said when he come in.
“We’ll have to keep fires going in the stove and in the fireplace to dry the house out,” I said.
I DON’T THINK I’d ever faced such a job as cleaning up Mr. Pendergast’s house after the flash flood. Looking at the red mud on the floor and on the chair legs and table legs, and smelling the stench of wet wood and ashes, you just wanted to walk out of the house into the morning air and never come back. The smell threatened to make me sick. I felt like grabbing a coat and a head scarf and staying outside.
The first thing that had to be cleaned was the floors, for we was tracking red silt all over the place and it caked on the bottom of our shoes. It was like walking in red grease. The mud smeared on everything and was too deep to mop directly. Hank got a fire started in the stove, and then he went into the living room to start one in the fireplace.
From the toolshed I got a hoe and an old bucket we had used in the hog killing. I lit a lamp in the kitchen so I could see better, and with the fire roaring in the cookstove, I begun to scrape the floor
like I was peeling soft paint, and put the scrapings in the bucket. By the time I got to the living room Hank had a fire roaring and prancing there. I moved the Christmas tree so I could scour under it. With the fire cracking and snapping, the house already smelled better, as if the fire was eating up the smells.
When I toted the bucket of mud out to the backyard to dump it, I seen Hank was digging a hole beside the barn. It was a grave for the cow. It would take him most of the day to shovel out a hole deep enough. I wished I could do that job. It would be good to get out of the smelly house.
After the floors was scraped clean as I could make them, I heated water on the stove and shaved some soap into it. With the mop I scoured the kitchen and living room and front bedroom. I lifted all the curtains and bedclothes and hanging clothes in the closet away and tried to wash in the corners and melt the mud in cracks. Afterwards I washed my shoes on the back porch and put on some water to boil for grits and ground some beans for coffee.
Just about the time the coffee was ready and the grits was cooked, there was a knock at the front door. Who could be out visiting the morning after a flood? I was more startled and flustered than I had a right to be. I guess I was still shook up from the night before. I wished Hank was in the house and not way out behind the barn. I hoped it wasn’t Timmy Gosnell drunk on Christmas morning. Drying my hands on my apron, I walked slowly to the front door.