Rose's Garden (26 page)

Stepping across the street, he looked down over the edge of the wall into the river. The heavy rain jostled and pitted its surface now nearly to the top of the wall; just a few more feet and it would roll over the edge and onto the cracked and buckled pavement of River Road, running like a fault line into the distance.

A warning. Is that all it takes? he thought. It's what Nolan believed, what had sent him up into the bell tower, made him ring the bells to wake even the dead. Was it enough just to be warned? But wasn't everybody warned, from the moment they breathed their first cold breath of true air? From that first moment, a circumference was drawn around them, a line that described and contained their lives, their beginning and end. He'd known Rose would die, that he himself would die. He'd spent his whole life anticipating it, he thought, so afraid of this place he'd come to now, so afraid of this desolate aftermath, that any sign of infirmity along
the way had struck him with fierce and unreasonable terror. You could be warned, he thought, and still not escape.

But then he thought about his own house, high on Paradise Hill, safe from the rising waters. He felt across his coat, to the framed four-leaf clover resting there against his heart. All around him were people answering the knocks at their door, people who could stand and run, who even now were making for safety. But there were others, too, he knew: People still asleep in their beds, or just rising slowly in the unnatural silence, unaware. People who would never be able to run from what was headed toward them, a wall of black water. How would they survive? Hand to hand, he thought, mouth to mouth, someone else's hot, reviving breath in their lungs for an instant, someone else breathing for them when they could not, the most essential form of charity.

He thought of Lemuel and his insistence on the world's beneficence. He thought of Rose, of how often her faith had been shaken by her own grief, of how often she had recovered it in an act of generosity. And he thought of Hero, her anonymous deliveries to his door, patiently gardening for the living and the dead. What is heroism, he thought, if not a moment of faith at exactly the right time?

He turned away from the water then, hurried across the street to his truck, climbed in, and turned up the hill toward the natatorium. Spread the wealth, Eddie had said.

Go home, Conrad, Lemuel had said.

Home was Paradise Hill, but Conrad knew where he needed to go first.

IN THE PARKING
lot of the natatorium, Conrad steered slowly through the queues of dark figures leaving their cars and moving toward the open doors. Though it was well past dawn now, the morning was stubbornly dark, and headlights blazed through the rain. Cars clogged the graveled lot. People moved in maddeningly slow procession, their faces averted from the slanting wind, their belongings heaped in their arms, their children gathered close.

He stopped the truck at one point to allow a group of people to pass. When the group crossed before his headlights, Conrad recognized the Pleiades, huddled together under two large black umbrellas. He stared through the streaming windshield at them. Henri turned her white face toward him for a moment, blind against the glare of the headlights, her eyes squinting. Her face was creased, as if she had just been woken. Under a rain hat her hair was awry, slipping oddly to one side—a wig, Conrad realized, shocked. Mignon had her by the arm, was tugging her along, but Henri's step was uncertain. None of them seemed to recognize his truck, and Conrad let them pass, watching after them until he saw them shoulder safely through the doors of the natatorium.

Where were their families? he thought, feeling dazed. The line of figures, bowed like refugees, continued to pass before him. But then he realized that most of them were, like himself, alone. Except for Mignon, whose husband was out with Harrison, and Nora Johnson, whose husband was still a volunteer with the fire
department and was presumably out knocking on doors, all the rest were widows.

When he caught sight of Toronto hurrying in front of the truck, he rolled down the window. The rain soaked his shoulder and neck in an instant, bitterly cold. “Kenny!” he yelled above the sound of the storm. “Toronto!”

Toronto stopped a moment, looking around in confusion; then, recognizing Conrad, he raised his hand, hurried around to the passenger side of the truck, climbed in, and slammed the door behind him. He smelled like rain, Conrad noticed—like water itself.

He reached up and unclasped his coat at the neck, stretched against the stiff rubber. “They're not clearing out Paradise Hill, are they?” he asked, surprised. His face shone with wetness.

Conrad shook his head. “I was down at Eddie's. I just came up here to—” To what? he thought. What had he expected? “I thought I might be able to help,” he said at last.

Toronto leaned forward and stared through the windshield. “Well, unless you've got a private line up to heaven,” he said, “I don't think there's a damn thing to be done.” And then he looked over at Conrad and smiled sadly. “But maybe you do.”

Conrad grimaced. Somehow his own private vision, Lemuel spreading his wings over Paradise Hill, seemed to have nothing to do with this exodus. If there were any kindness in the world, he thought, the rain would stop right now, and everybody would halt suddenly under a clearing sky, growing quiet as the sun stepped up overhead. Birds would resume their music, the wind would dwindle and die, and the river would sink, coldly brilliant, back to its familiar level. He thought of the Nile River basin, the Egyptian fellahin staggering into the breaches in the canals dug to irrigate the valley. He thought of the men standing shoulder to shoulder
against the water, armed with torn-off doors and windows, bundles of cornstalks, pushing terrified livestock ahead of them, trying to block the tears in the levees. Every engineering student studied the Aswân High Dam, the world's most ambitious flood-control project, and every one of them understood how it held sway over forces of nature that before had seemed beyond control. There were dams, and then there were angels, Conrad thought. And if it was the business of angels to avert disaster, everybody could just go home right now.

Conrad folded his arms over the steering wheel, stared along with Toronto out into the rain. “What's happening up here?” he asked.

“People are moving stuff in,” Toronto said. “The National Guard's bagging the river in town and up at the lake, but I don't think they really have much hope. The square is four inches deep already. It's just like a big bathtub, except there's no drain.” He squinted into the rain. “I've never seen so much water,” he said. “And there's no place for it all to go.”

In the town below them, the streets were laid out in an uneven grid that accommodated rock outcroppings and ancient trees, marsh basins and the snaking tributaries of the river. Conrad closed his eyes a moment and tried to follow the course of the river, tried to recollect its path behind sheds and barns, through backyards and gardens. And then he remembered his own loft, his pigeons gathered there against their cages, trapped.

“There's too many old people in this town,” Toronto said, interrupting Conrad's train of thought. He glanced over at Conrad. “Sorry,” he said, smiling ruefully and lifting his hands in a slight shrug. Conrad realized how old he must seem to Toronto. No, not seem, he corrected himself. He was old.

“It's just that they move so slow, most of them,” Toronto went
on. “It makes me crazy just watching them. Half of them don't see what business it is of anybody's if they choose to stay right where they are, clinging to their credenzas. A lot of them lived through the last flood. You'd think they'd remember. But people hate to be pried away from their homes, don't they?”

Conrad didn't answer. He stared out through the dark half-moons cleared by his windshield wipers. An endless chain of people moved slowly toward the natatorium, the glass roof over the pool glowing with a green, subterranean light. Rose had liked to swim there, and sometimes Conrad had gone along to keep her company. He would take a book and settle himself in a plastic-webbed chair a foot or two from the pool's edge, the pages curling in the humid air. It was restful, watching other people exercise. He often nearly fell asleep, breathing in the smell of chlorine and something else, citrusy and sharp, like lime. Every now and then, glancing up from the page, he'd look up and watch Rose and two or three others quietly swimming their laps, their bodies flattened and distorted under the water like stained glass.

On the tarmac before him now, people carried suitcases and boxes, strange shapes bound in canvas and tied with rope or wrapped in blankets, all the things they thought to rescue. He watched a man and a woman carrying a birdcage between them, its dome covered with a flowered pillowcase. The woman, a rain hat crushed on her head, hesitated before Conrad's headlights and tried to lift the cloth cover. But the man, his mouth open in an expression of fear and anger, snatched at the cage, grabbed her arm, and hurried her along.

Conrad winced. “How do they decide what to save?”

“I don't know,” Toronto said quietly. “All the wrong things, probably.”

Conrad turned to look at him. “Your place all right?”

“Oh, we're high enough that unless this is the end of the world, we won't do anything more than see a lot of mud,” Toronto said. “Stella's still at home with the kids. We took in a bunch of people who live below us. She's cooking something to bring up here later. Thank God for gas.”

Conrad thought for a moment, then said, “I heard about Nolan.”

Toronto looked over at him with a rueful smile and shook his head. “He's had a bad week.” He leaned back against the seat. “First your letter showing up in the paper—Betty surprised me, you know, doing that, but I give her credit for it. She may worship him, and worship is usually blind, but she thought she was right and he was wrong, and she was willing to take a risk. For her, I guess it was the biggest risk she'd ever taken.”

“Well, I'm grateful, I guess,” Conrad said. “Surprised and grateful. A lot of people came by the house.” He thought of the PS. Betty herself must have added it to his letter; it was a nice idea, he had to admit. He liked the idea of a garden planted at the cemetery in Rose's name.

He looked out at the dark parking lot, still massed with people. And then he thought again about Nolan. “Harrison Supplee said Nolan was up here this morning. Did you see him?”

Toronto nodded. “I tried to get him to go home,” he said. “I think he had some kind of small stroke last night, up there in the bell tower. But he's so stubborn. ‘Kenny,' he said to me. ‘I haven't done anything for this town except put out a terrible newspaper for thirty years. And now I'm going to do something real.'

“And then, you know what he did?” Toronto laughed. “He put his arm around Betty, who'd been following him around like a worried mother hen, and he said, ‘I know what I've got to lose now. I'm not going down without a fight.'” Toronto smiled. “You should have seen the look on her face.”

He pushed his hands through his wet hair, wiped at his forehead.
“Nolan's so serious. Almost dramatically serious. And this morning he was deadly serious. He's gone up to the dam. He wants to help, but I can't imagine he'll do anything other than get in the way.” Toronto reached for the door handle.

“I think Harrison was grateful to him,” Conrad said quickly. He didn't want Toronto to leave, not just yet. It suddenly seemed important to be clear about what Nolan had done. “He thinks Nolan woke everybody up,” he offered.

“Well, he certainly tried,” Toronto agreed. “You know,” he said, leaning back against the seat, “I've never hated him like so many people do. He cares a lot about Laurel, about the people here. He just doesn't have a good way of showing it.” Toronto kept his hand on the door handle but was quiet for a moment. “He took me bird-watching with him once,” he said finally. “I'll never forget it. We went out near the fairgrounds for the Christmas count—you know, when all the bird-watchers go out and literally count all the birds they see, the different species, trying to track migratory patterns and so forth. You've probably done it yourself.” He nodded at Conrad. “I've never been so cold in my life. It must have been ten below, anyway. But Nolan just kept on walking, no hat or anything, no gloves, and then at one point, in this little glade of pine trees, he stopped. He put his hand up like I should be quiet, and then he made this whistling noise, with his hands against his lips.” Toronto put his fingers up to his mouth and gave a low whistle. “Like that, only I can't really do it the way he did. And then, out of nowhere, all these birds came fluttering down out of the trees, hundreds of them. I don't know how he even knew they were there. I just stepped back and watched, and the ground around him filled with birds standing there and looking up at him, like they were waiting for him to tell them what to do. It was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen.”

Conrad watched Toronto's face, thought of the birds choking
the trees up at the lake. He thought Toronto was finished, but after a moment he spoke again.

“You know, he could have put out his arms and they would have lighted on his hands,” Toronto said. “But he didn't. He just stayed there for a few minutes, as if he couldn't even see them. And then he turned around and walked back out of the glade. He could have had them feeding from his hands, but that wasn't it, wasn't what he wanted. I don't know if he knew what it was he did want, but whatever it was, he didn't find it there.”

Toronto turned then and smiled at Conrad. “Since then, I've always had kind of a soft spot for him. He's not a mean man. Just sort of—scared to death all the time.”

Conrad didn't say anything, but he thought of Nolan in his garden, wrestling with the idea of the improbable, angels and miracles and faith. Everybody's idea of what's extraordinary is different, he thought.