Authors: Carrie Brown
Conrad turned around and walked back down May's front path. Crossing into his own yard, he passed around the side of the house, out to his terrace. He looked down Paradise Hill, out into
the rain streaming through the early morning light. What he saw shocked him, for the river below was not just high, not just swelled up to its rocky banks, but branching over it in tiny rivulets, threading through the grass. The thin trunks of scrub trees floated up from a froth of water where there had once been dry land. Conrad walked to the edge of the steps, stared down the hill. His pigeon loft was now only a hundred yards or so from the river's edge, across a meadow that Rose had sown with wildflowers, the shifting heads of poppies, the wild, twirling faces of daisies and black-eyed Susans.
He descended to the loft, slipping now and then on the slick stones of the path. The gray morning sky was full overhead, pouring water. Inside the loft he shucked off his raincoat, moved among his agitated birds, talking quietly, pouring fistfuls of grain into the pans. “That was a nasty night,” he said. “Thunder worry you?”
His helmet pigeon, the one he used as a decoy to draw down the others, bobbed its bare black head at him. The Gazzi Modenasâoffspring of the flock Lemuel had passed on to himâand the nunsâsoft-feathered pigeons Conrad appreciated for their affectionate quality (though Lemuel scorned their ability as fliers)âstepped lightly in their cages, back and forth, the embroidery of their bronze and white feathers shifting. Pasquale rustled on his nest, and Conrad suffered a pang for the beautiful Evita, borne off in the owl's talons. At the cage where he'd installed the lost pigeon, Hi Roller, he stopped and cocked his head at the stranger. “Settling in?” he inquired after a moment. But the bird averted its one eye, stared away from him.
In his workshop he stood at the open door and stared out into the rain. He looked out over the river, saw its furious pace down through the meadow. The mountains were invisible, drenched in
low clouds. They acquired, for being unseen, a disproportionate height, a vague menace.
Conrad tried to gauge how much rain had fallen to have made the river rise so fast, and swiftly calculated the slight incline across the meadow to his loft. Were his pigeons in any danger? He'd feared for them only once before, during a week of intermittent rain when the river had risen like this, just enough to lick over its banks. Then, he and Rose had boxed the pigeons and driven them up to Harry's, though the rain had stopped the next morning, the water receding by afternoon to its usual height.
And then he remembered the reservoir, the choked dam, what Nolan had said. Was it really possible? He tried to imagine it, the stalled flocks waiting in the trees there, suddenly blown skyward as the dam exploded, a tangle of torn roots and broken branches, the sky full of beating wings, a massive alarm. And the bells, the church bells. Had he only imagined that sound last night, the doleful sound of warning?
He put his hand to the joist by the door, pushed slightly at it, testing its strength. Drops of hardened resin clung to the pine boards, little amber-colored beads, as if the wood were still alive and might, under some enchantment, sprout new buds, new branches, the whole building bursting into leaf, a forgotten bower.
And then, without waiting another minute, he hurried back up the hill, climbed into his truck, and headed into town.
The only place open this time of day would be Eddie's, he knew. Though the Vaughans owned a house in town, Conrad didn't think Eddie ever stayed there anymore. After Kate's death, Eddie had seemed to prefer closing down the restaurant at night and sleeping a few winks on the cot in the back room by the giant, round dishwasher, with its comforting tumult of suds and clinking plates. The state of the Vaughans' house, which had gradually
fallen into disrepair, had been a subject of some annoyance on the part of the garden club, which liked to hold an annual tour through that part of town, where the houses were oldest and considered most charming. Conrad remembered Rose shaking her head over it one day, coming home from a meeting about the tour.
He had been sprawled out on the sunny terrace on a settee, having come home the day before from a long trip to Philadelphia, where he'd been gilding the gates to a new park on the Schuylkill River.
Rose had sat down at his feet and taken off her hat. “It's not so much of an eyesore,” she'd told him, grumbling. “They're all so exacting.” She heaved a little sigh of annoyance. “And I think Eddie's girl is living there. I wish they wouldn't disturb her about it.”
“Well, why doesn't she fix it up?” Conrad had asked lazily, shoving Rose over a little to make room for his feet.
She adjusted her position, turned to look at him thoughtfully. “Connie,” she said at last, “you're just a fountain of good ideas.”
And Conrad, who hadn't cared about the garden club in the least, had reached up and pulled Rose down on top of him. “What have you been doing while I've been gone, anyway?” he'd said, nuzzling her neck.
Driving into town now, he thought about Eddie, thought about a hot breakfast. Pancakes, a couple of eggs, toast, hot coffeeâthe notion filled him with longing, and he headed down Paradise Hill toward town. But as he neared the bottom of the hill, he saw that the road in front of him was awash with water. Conrad braked, held hard against the steering wheel as the truck hit deep water and shifted sixty degrees across the road. After a moment, though, the tires caught, and he righted the wheel, plying slowly through the current, plumes of spray spinning from his wheels.
Conrad glanced to the side, took in the dark houses, black pools
of water lying in uneven patches over the lawns. Here and there, cars were sunk up to their hubcaps. At one house the yellow front door was open, and a man in a bathrobe and galoshes stood frowning out at the street, surveying the water lapping his picket fence. This was where the river turned, just behind these houses, Conrad realized. No wonder the water was so high here.
He steered slowly through the water, fearful of stalling the engine. Where the road began to rise slightly, he was able to pull out of the confining stream and turn into town. In the square, water ran high along the curbs, lapping the sidewalks. A thicket of broken branches crowded the storm drains. The awning of the hotel was torn, flapping in the wind and rain, and the canvas tenting for the bandstand had pulled away in parts, as though a giant hand had ripped it and flung the strips over the drenched grass. There wasn't a soul to be seen. It was Saturday morning, Conrad remembered, and still early, a little before six. Maybe everyone was still asleep.
When he turned down the hill toward Eddie's, he saw lights for the first time and realized that Eddie must have a generator. He could hear its low hum. He pulled the truck off the road, glancing out into the channel of the river, now racing high and thick between its mortared banks. Eddie, a black umbrella over his head, was standing across the street from the restaurant, balancing on the edge of the river bulwark like a small, dark insect, looking down into the churning water.
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 whereâ” 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. “Wellâ” 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 andâheyâ” 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?”