Sarah's Window (18 page)

"You think it's going to rise much more?"

"No way of knowin'. That's why everybody's takin' precautions." He raised the cup to his lips and took a gulp of coffee. "I remember back in 'fifty-one my daddy had a pool table in the basement and he wasn't 'bout to let that flood ruin it. He had us all down there takin' that thing apart. Spent darn near all night unscrewin' those bolts and draggin' the big heavy oak legs upstairs to the attic. Then him and my mom and my brothers, we carried that slate top upstairs and laid it across my brother's and my bed, and my brother and me, we slept on the floor for a week until the waters went down and Daddy moved it back down to the basement."

Ray took a breath and then eyed his coffee. He was old and getting a little slack of memory, and he'd told his stories so many times that nobody paid much heed to him anymore. So he was pleased to have a fresh captive ear, not at all in a rush to go the three blocks to the end of the road.

Only then did he seem to notice Will in the backseat, and he craned his leathery brown neck around to glance at the child and commented on how Sarah'd seemed a little down since she didn't have that baby to fuss over anymore.

John answered that they'd been lucky to find her, said she'd done miracles with the boy. There was a silence while John rolled cautiously through an intersection, then he said, "You've known her for a long time, haven't you?"

Ray was squinting through the rain, eyes focused on the road ahead. He chuckled to himself, a caustic, dry sound.

"Hell yes. I can tell you stories 'bout Sarah'd make your hair stand on end. Like when her dog bit her. Tore open the side of her leg. Know what that kid did? She went and heated a poker in the fireplace and cauterized the wound herself. Didn't want to have to go to the hospital." Ray shook his head in wonder and turned his face to John. "Well, when Jack found out what she'd done, you know what he did? Think he'd scold the kid? Not a chance. He took care of the burn best he could and sent her up to her room, and then he made some cockeyed excuse to Ruth so Sarah wouldn't have to come downstairs to dinner. Then he called me, and the two of us took that husky up into the hills behind the railroad tracks and we put a bullet between his eyes. That dog'd been a birthday present to Sarah, and Jack'd spent a chunk on him and he was a beauty. Beautiful dog. But Jack couldn't have that dog around after what it did to Sarah. Never could tolerate anybody hurtin' Sarah." He swilled down the last bit of coffee. Then he crushed the paper cup in his big hand. "Jack's like an old mother hen with that girl. Sometimes I think that's why Sarah don't move on with her life."

"What about Billy Moon?" John asked.

Ray shrugged. "I don't know. Billy's a good man. Be better for her than that English fella. That jerk broke her heart and darn near killed her. But she was crazy about him. It showed all over. She just sort of came alive. Had a different face on her. I ain't never seen her look like that since." He shot a glance back at Will again. "Except maybe since you folks came to town."

They had come to a stop where the road dead-ended at the old bridge. Before them, stretching along the bank of the Cottonwood River from the bridge on past the Mill Stream Resort, lay a three-foot-high wall of sandbags. John leaned forward on the steering wheel and wiped the fog from the glass.

"Jeez," whistled Ray.

The once benign river had turned ugly. The waters were swiftest along the old main channel, racing downstream in great roiling currents, carrying with them branches and debris. The dam and old bridge had disappeared and the river had leveled out and started moving across the valley. Bates Grove Park north of the river was completely submerged. Now, only parallel rows of sycamores marked the entrance to the park from the highway, and picnic tables bobbed like rafts in the eddies.

"There's no way that river's gonna go down, even if it quits rainin'. Those creeks still got a lot of runoff to dump on us. I seen water move in on Saffordville when it hasn't even rained out there."

Ray pulled out a pair of binoculars from underneath his raincoat and leveled them on a tree at the edge of the river.

"Lord Almighty," he murmured, and then he took the strap off his neck and passed the binoculars to John. "Take a look at that. See that gauge there stickin' outta the water?"

He pointed to a wooden post notched and marked with hand-painted numbers.

"Yeah."

"That's the official river gauge. What d'ya read?"

"Looks like just a shade under twenty-one."

"Yeah." Ray took back the binoculars and buried them under his raincoat. "In 'fifty-one the river topped out at twenty-one feet one inch. And we're almost there. Hell, that scale don't go above twenty-two feet."

On the way back, John told him Billy Moon had called, said he was thinking about heading over to his place to give him a hand sandbagging, and Ray said that would be a real neighborly thing to do.

When John drove away he saw Ray with his nose screwed up inches from the flood chart tacked to the door of the Senior Center, clutching a pen and carefully noting down his findings.

It had been Sarah's idea to give John a call. She had been in the kitchen making a fresh pot of coffee while Billy was on the telephone with him, and she listened through the doorway. She could tell from Billy's end of the conversation that he wouldn't be corning. She looked up and forced a smile when Billy came in, held out a mug of coffee to him and urged him to sit for a few minutes. Jer Meeker had been over earlier in the day, and they'd moved the tack and feed up to the loft. Jer had loaded the horses into his trailer and taken them up to high pasture, but the river was rising fast and they were shorthanded. Anybody who had land sitting high and dry was over helping a neighbor, but most of the population resided down in the valley cut out by the South Fork or the Cottonwood, and they were all busy shoring up their own property.

"He can't come," Billy said as he took the mug of coffee from her and lowered himself into a chair.

"Well, it was worth a try." She glanced out the window, trying to keep her voice casual, disinterested. "When did he say they were leaving?"

"Tomorrow."

Billy peered at her over the rim of his mug. He had never questioned Sarah about it, but he knew she had feelings for the man, had known for sure ever since the night of the barbecue, knew something had gone on between them, didn't really want to know how much and when and where.

She turned back around to him then, smiled and said not to worry, they'd get the job done. Deep down Billy was relieved John Wilde wouldn't be coming, thought perhaps he'd rather lose a few things to the flood than witness the two of them together again, watch the way they tried to avoid each other's eyes, then stole glances when they thought he wasn't looking.

They were still in the kitchen when they heard the car drive in, and Sarah's heart leaped at the sound of tires on the wet gravel, but it was Billy's youngest daughter, Angie, who had driven down from Manhattan, although Billy had cautioned her to stay where she was because the roads were too dangerous. Billy's neighbor dropped by right after that, said he could spare an hour or two, and so the men carted the sandbags down the drive and the women set about unloading concrete blocks and lugging them into the kitchen to raise the appliances. Sarah tried to give Angie a hand emptying the china cabinet, but Angie was quarrelsome and seemed to resent Sarah's presence, took offense at Sarah's every move, so Sarah went back outside to help the men.

She had the hood of her vinyl poncho over her head and the rain was beating in her ears so she didn't hear the car, didn't even know he was there until she looked up and saw Billy talking to John on the front porch, and John holding Will in his arms. Little Will was like a church steeple in a thunderstorm, a safe channel for that electrifying love of theirs. When Sarah saw them she came sloshing up the hill, her jeans splattered with mud and the green vinyl poncho flapping at her sides so it looked like she might take wing and fly. She came up the steps toward them, her face exploding with joy, and without lifting her eyes to John she threw off her hood and held out her arms to take the child from him. Will recognized her instantly, stretched out his hands to her, and John moved closer and shifted the child into her arms. They spoke in low voices, a complicity of which neither of them seemed to be aware hanging over every word.

"I'm sorry I had to bring him."

"I'm so glad you did." She nuzzled the baby's neck, avoiding John's eyes.

"I didn't know if there would be anyone to watch him."

"I'll take him inside. There's a lot to do in the house."

"It won't be a problem?"

"We'll manage," she said, and she glanced up at him and smiled.

John slogged up and down the muddy drive that afternoon bent double under the weight of sandbags. He paused from time to time and looked out over the low sloping land, and marveled at what the river had done to this seemingly immutable landscape. Plowed fields had slipped out of sight, fence posts and barbed wire vanished. The river had broken the south bank first, filling in the lower valley. Now it was rising quickly up the steep north shore, and men like Billy who had never had the river in their homes were waging a futile battle, had not yet learned to give the river what it wanted, to wait and see what it left behind when it was gone.

By mid-afternoon the rain had finally ceased and the sun was pressing hard through thinning clouds, but no one seemed to notice. They were all working at a frenzy. The women had cleaned out the basement, hauled up Christmas decorations and boxes full of rusted gardening tools and sleeping bags. More than once Angie, deluged by memories of her mother, had broken down in tears and Sarah had left her alone with Billy, had gone up to the kitchen to clean out the lower cabinets, bag and box everything and cart it upstairs to the bedrooms. She had penned Will into the corner with a few boxes and put Billy's dog in there with him to entertain him and keep him quiet. The old dog seemed to sense she was a necessary sacrifice in time of crisis, and when Will yanked her ears and tugged on her fur and force-fed his cookies to her, she would only wince and turn her sad brown eyes up to Sarah in a silent plea.

It was a hectic afternoon, and emotions and tempers ran high. The men came inside and raised the kitchen appliances and the furniture up onto the concrete blocks, and when they ran out of blocks they used tall juice cans; when they ran out of those they stacked the peaches and tomatoes Maude had preserved in glass jars and stored down in the basement, which upset Angie again. Billy was afraid they hadn't raised things high enough, and Angie was worried about her mother's piano, so the three men hauled Maude's piano upstairs.

By dusk Billy felt they'd done as much as they could do. The afternoon had been dry, but at sunset the wind came up and the air turned cold, threatening more rain.

John was preparing to leave, had already settled sleepy Will in the back of his car when he saw Sarah come out onto the front porch and pause at the railing, studying the sky. She was exhausted, her face drawn from lack of sleep and hunger, but she smiled at him as he approached. They exchanged a few banalities about the weather, and she said something that made him laugh, about how the countians really thrived on these disasters, needed their annual floods and fires and tornadoes to give them a sense of self-importance.

He held her look for a long moment after their laughter had faded.

"And your grandparents are all right?"

She nodded. "They're on high ground."

"That's good."

She smiled. "You'd better go before it gets dark."

"I will miss you, Sarah," he said.

He could not bear to tell her goodbye, just stood there in the dim light getting cold, the rain trickling through his matted hair and down his face.

"Go," she whispered finally.

The windshield wipers batted away at the light rain as he barreled down the county road, fishtailing in the loose gravel, eyes keen on seeing into the darkness along the tunnel of his headlights. The only living creature picked up in the beams was a wet and bedraggled dog loping alongside the road, but even he ignored the passing vehicle, just kept up his measured trot as John drove by.

John got a little confused once or twice, in the rain with such poor visibility, wasn't sure if he was still on the right road, and he breathed a deep sigh of relief when he finally met up with the state highway. It wasn't but a few miles down the blacktop when he spotted red flares in the distance, and a little farther down he came upon two highway patrol cars stationed broadside across the lanes. He had to wait while a pickup truck pulled a U-turn and headed back in the opposite direction, then a state trooper in a rain slicker advanced toward the car. Road up ahead was out, he said tersely as he leaned down and squinted through the window at the man and the baby in the back. Two miles of state highway submerged.

"Where you headin'?" he asked.

"Just down the road. Cottonwood Falls."

"Sorry. This area's pretty much cut off. Unless you want to head back through Florence. Fifty's still open that way. You can cut south to El Dorado and then take 177 back up to the Falls."

"How long would that take me?"

"Oh, I'd say a good two hours."

John frowned up at him. "Two hours?"

"Sir, I suggest you head back where you came from. Weather's pretty freaky right now. Got some serious fog coming in."

The trooper stepped back with an impatient wave of the hand to move John on his way.

John sat at the side of the road for a few minutes with the engine idling while he thought about what to do. He had called Susan from Billy's not long before he left. The movers had finished and the truck had gotten safely on its way. But she was uncomfortable, she said, all alone in the big empty place. He had expected her to be angry, but she had only sounded apprehensive, wanted him to hurry back.

He knew there were back roads through the hills, thought maybe Sarah could draw him a map. If there was a way to get home, keeping to high pasture and avoiding the floodplains, she would know it for sure.

He headed back down the highway and turned off onto the county road, and just past the cemetery he saw the approaching fog. It floated eerily across a field of maize, passed effortlessly through barbed wire and fence posts, crept up to him and wrapped itself around him, carrying him along in its silent grasp. He had to slow down to a crawl and feel his way back along the gravel road. From time to time, emerging abruptly into a pocket of black night, he would catch a glimpse of the land and sky. A thin sliver of cold moon hung distant and high in the heavens while fine wisps of cloud sprinted below, whipped along by the wind. The treeless hills were caught in a shifting bed of pale dappled light. Just as suddenly he would plunge back into thick fog, and land and sky would disappear.

At times it seemed as if he were not advancing at all, as if this forward motion were but illusion and it was the land that was in motion, and the land had returned to its watery origins, the flint-colored sea. Once he yawed too near the edge, careened off into a rain-swollen ditch. He sat with his heart thumping and his tires spinning in the mud and fear sounding alarm in his head, until finally he was able to coax the car forward, up the shoulder and back onto the road. He had lost all notion of time and distance, and he wondered if it was possible to get lost in such a place.

He knew he had taken a wrong turn somewhere, because the gravel road to Billy's place stair-stepped down range and township lines at right angles in a gridded, orderly fashion. But the road he was now wending along resembled the old Indian trails, had a natural serpentine flow to it that fit the contours of the land: at times it was no more than uneven ruts of flinty limestone.

He thought he must have come down off the plateau, was somewhere near the river. When he cranked down his window he could hear a swollen creek rushing by in the distance. He was hoping to find a section of road wide enough to allow him to turn around, but the mist hung over him like a shroud, and he could see no more than a foot beyond the hood of the car.

There was a sudden break in the fog, and he was briefly able to see ahead. The road had faded to a rutted cattle trail, gradually losing itself in a sea of swaying prairie grass. But there, just to the right of where he had stopped, stood an opening in a dense thicket of thorned honey locust. It was an entrance onto the land, with nothing more to discourage passersby than a rusted barbed-wire fence coiled around a pole near the road and a buckshot-riddled sign warning
trespassers will be prosecuted
. John backed up, then swung around into the opening. A patch of fog drifted by, and when it cleared he saw in his headlights a truck parked far ahead in a clearing. He recognized the truck instantly. It was an unusual color, a faded apple-green—Sarah had bought it used years ago from a rancher who had been particularly fond of it, wanted to sell it to someone who had a liking for things that stay the same.

He turned off his engine and sat a moment with the truck in his headlights. In the back, Will began to stir. John reached back, tucked the blanket around him, then opened the car door and got out.

Sarah's truck was unlocked and he opened it, checked inside. There was nothing to suggest vandalism, only clutter, a bit of trash, an odd Coke can and coffee cup on the passenger seat, and maps refolded and stuffed into the pocket on the door. There was even a sketchbook.

He stepped around to the front of the truck and tried to get his bearings, but he could see no farther than a few feet ahead. The fog crept around him in slow, sinuous swirls, and there was the dull roar of the creek somewhere off to the left, and a faint rushing sound, as of leaves high overhead, but he could see no trees.

Will had begun to cry; the sudden absence of motion had woken him. As John turned back toward the car, he stumbled and sent a rock clattering into the thicket. There was a sudden rustle of branches and a soughing of wings, and then the distant yipping of coyotes. Suddenly, with dramatic abruptness, the fog rolled back and he found himself standing on a great yawning stage of bare limestone. All around, massive blocks quarried in years past rose in colossal mounds like ancient ruins. In the darkness with wisps of earth-bound clouds floating through it, the old quarry resembled an ancient Greek theater.

Sarah used to come here, not only to sketch but to connect herself in a visceral way to the land, to dream her way into it.

"Sarah?"

He did not recognize his own voice.

"Sarah?" he tried again, with more force.

It was absurd, she was not out here, she was safe with Billy.

Yet, ignoring Will's wail, drawn by curiosity, he moved a little deeper into the enclosure. The wind passed through again, a strong wind that rattled the leaves on the cottonwoods and set them chattering. Far in the distance where an arm of the ledge curved around, beyond a labyrinth of blocks stacked in giant columns, a white-haired figure stood erect, Christlike, at the top.

He advanced along the ledge toward the figure, and the mist seemed to follow him, twisting and turning through the narrow lanes. The figure seemed to move, and then it disappeared in the mist, and the fog crept up and closed around him. John halted, alarmed, his breath caught in his lungs. He reached out but his hand met with nothing but air, yet only seconds before there had been rock at his fingertips. He blindly groped around in the mist, stepped forward, hands still outstretched, took another step. Finally, his fingers found solid rock. He breathed relief and advanced another step. For a split second he felt the shock of empty air below his foot, and then he flew forward, propelled into the darkness.