Flood
Bill Pronzini
She sat at the upstairs bedroom window watching the river run wild below. Rain lay like crinkled cellophane wrap on the glass, so that everything outside seemed shimmery—distorted the low-hanging, black-veined clouds, the half-submerged trees along the banks, the drift and wreckage riding the churning brown floodwaters. She could hear the sound of the water, a constant thrumming pulse, even with the rain beating a furious tattoo on the roof.
Nearly a week now of steady downpour, a chain of Pacific storms that had lashed northern California with winds up to a hundred miles per hour. It seemed to her that it had been raining much longer, that she could not remember a time when the sky was clear and blue and the sun shone. The rain was inside her, too.
When she looked into the mirror, looked into her own eyes, what she saw was a wet, gray, swampy place, a sodden landscape like the one she watched through the window. One in which she was trapped, as she was physically trapped here and now. One from which there seemed to be no escape.
She shivered; it was cold in the room. They had been without heat or power for more than twenty-four hours. The fierce storm winds had toppled trees and power lines everywhere in the region. Roads were inundated and blocked by mudslides, one of them River Road, fifty yards west of their house. Flood stage along these low-lying areas was thirty-two feet; the rising water had reached that mark at eight last night, hours after the evacuation orders had been issued. It must be above forty feet now, at two in the afternoon. All the rooms downstairs were flooded halfway to their ceilings. The last time she'd looked, the car was totally covered and the only parts of the deck still visible were the tops of the support poles for the latticework roof. The roof itself had long since been torn off and carried away.
From the pocket of her pea jacket, as she had several times during the day, she took the ivory scrimshaw bowl. Smooth, round, heavy-bottomed, it fitted exactly the palm of her hand. Her grandfather had carved it from a walrus tusk and done the lacy scrimshawing in his spare time, during the period he'd worked as a mail carrier in Nome just after the Alaska Gold Rush. He'd given it to her mother, who in turn had passed it on to her only daughter. It had been the first thing she'd grabbed to bring upstairs with her when the in-pouring water forced them to abandon the lower floor. It was all she owned of any value, as Darrell so often reminded her.
"You and that damn bowl," he'd said this morning. "Well, you might as well hang onto it. We may need whatever we can sell it for someday. Nothing else of yours is worth half as much, God knows."
She stroked the cold surface, the intricate black pattern. It gave her comfort. Her only comfort in times of unhappiness and stress.
Shadows crawled thickly in the room—moist shadows laden with the brown-slime smell of the river. She found it difficult to breathe, but opening the window to let in fresh air would only worsen the stench. She thought of relighting one of the candles, to keep the shadows at bay, but the unsteady flame reflected off the window pane and made it even harder for her to see out. She was not sure why she wanted to keep looking out, but she did and she had all through the day. Compelled to sit here and watch the rain beat down, the murky, churning water rise higher and higher.
There would be another rescue boat along soon, maybe even one of the evacuation helicopters that were brought in when the floodwaters grew too dangerous for small craft. Rio Lomas, three miles to the east, had been cut off even longer than the River Road homes had, almost a day and a half; by now they would be airlifting evacuees to one of the larger towns inland, at a safe distance from the river. She wished that was where she was, in one of those towns, in an emergency shelter where she could be warm and dry, where the lights were bright and there was clean air to breathe.
Empty wish. Darrell wouldn't leave when the rescuers showed up. No matter how bad things were then, he wouldn't budge. He had refused evacuation in 1986, the worst flood in the river's history, when the waters crested at better than forty-eight feet. They had both come close to drowning that year, forced at the last to sit huddled in the attic crawlspace with the last dozen of his paintings wrapped in plastic sheeting like corpses awaiting burial. He'd refused to leave five years ago as well, the last time before this that the river had overrun its banks and made an island of their home. Stubborn. Fiercely possessive. Yes, and so many other less-than-endearing traits. So many others. She rubbed the scrimshaw bowl and watched the rain slant down, the turmoil of conflicting currents and weird boils and eddy lines in the main channel, the soapy yellowish-white foam that scudded along what was left of the banks.
Why am I here? she thought.
I don't want to be here. I haven't wanted to be here in a long, long time.
The old, tired lament. And the old, tired response to it: I have nowhere else to go. Mom and Pop both gone, Jack blown up by a land mine in Vietnam, no other siblings or aunts or uncles or even a cousin. A few casual friends, but none I can turn to, talk to, count on. Twenty-one years with Darrell, exactly half my life, and the twenty-one before him so far removed I can scarcely remember them. Where would I go? What could I do?
Sudden crashing noise from the far end of the house—Darrell's studio. He'd been drinking all day, and now he had reached the mean, tantrumy stage where he began breaking things. Splintering, tearing sounds reached her ears. He was at his paintings again. Not the better, finished ones. He never destroyed those oils and watercolors, no matter how drunk or frustrated or enraged he became, because they were his "true art"—the ones he believed were the work of an undiscovered, unappreciated genius; the ones he bitterly hoped to sell to summer tourists and the handful of local collectors, so they could pay their bills or at least keep their credit from being cut off altogether. No, his destructive wrath was reserved for the unfinished canvases, his "false starts," and for the unsold riverscapes and still lifes and portraits of eccentric river dwellers that he decided were expendable, not quite up to his own lofty standards.
At first she, too, had believed he was a genius. A great and sensitive visionary. In those early days she had wanted to be an artist herself, at least an artisan. Not painting, nothing so important as that, just the designer and maker of earrings and pendants and other jewelry. She'd felt sure she had the talent to excel at this, but he had convinced her otherwise. Ridiculed and disparaged her efforts until, finally, she'd lost all enthusiasm and given up her work, her dreams, everything except her day-to-day existence as Mrs. Darrell Boyd. But he'd succeeded not only in disillusioning her about her own abilities, but in giving her a true perspective on his as well. He was far less gifted than he considered himself to be, at best a shade or two above mediocre.
The description fit their marriage just as aptly. At best, it had been a shade or two above mediocre. At worst—
Footsteps in the hallway, hard and lurching. She sat rigid, staring out through the rain-wavy glass. Waiting, steeling herself.
"Hey! Hey, you in there!"
She no longer had a name in her own house. She had become Hey or Hey You or harsh epithets just as impersonal.
"You hear me? I'm talking to you."
"I hear you, Darrell." Slowly she turned her head. He stood slouched in the doorway, shirt mostly unbuttoned and pulled free of his Levi's so that the bulge of his paunch showed. Unshaven, red-eyed, his graying hair a finger-rubbed tangle. She noticed all of that, and yet it was as though she were seeing him the way she had been seeing the storm-savaged river, through a pane of wavy glass. She looked away again before she said, "What do you want?"
"What d'you think I want?"
"I'm not a mind reader."
"What'd you do with it? Where'd you hide it this time?"
"Hide what?"
"You know what. Don't give me that."
"I don't touch your liquor. I never have."
"The hell you never have. There's another fifth, I brought it upstairs myself. What'd you do with it?"
"Look in the storeroom. That's where you put it."
"I know where I put it. Where'd you put it?"
"I never touched it, Darrell."
"Liar! Bitch!"
She didn't respond. Outside, something swirled past on the cocoa-brown water—a dead animal of some kind, a goat or large dog. She couldn't be sure because it was there one instant, bobbing and partly submerged, and the next it was gone.
"Where's that bottle, goddamnit? I'm warning you."
"In the storeroom," she said.
"That where you hid it?"
"It's been there all along."
"You go find it. Right now, you hear me?"
"I hear you."
"Now. Right this minute."
She got to her feet, not hurrying. Without looking at him, she started across the room.
"And put that silly damn bowl away," he said. "Why d'you always have to keep playing with that thing, petting it like it's a fetish or something?"
She slipped the scrimshawed ivory back into her pocket, walked past him into the hallway. Each step was an effort, as if her legs—like the land, like the house itself—had become waterlogged.
The storeroom was between the bedroom and his studio. It had started out as her workspace, but when she'd given up jewelry-making it had gradually evolved into a catchall storage area. Boxes, oddments of furniture, unused canvases crowded it now, along with dust and spiderwebs. When they'd abandoned the lower floor this morning she had brought up as much food as they might need and whatever else could be salvaged, and put it in there. The perishables were on melting ice in the big cooler, the rest scattered on boxes and on the floor. She poked listlessly among the food items and cartons, while he watched from the doorway. It took her less than a minute to find his last fifth of Scotch, more or less in plain sight behind the leg of a discarded table. She picked it up, held it out to him.
He snatched it from her hand. "Don't you ever do that again. Understand? You hide liquor from me again, you'll be sorry."
"All right," she said.
"Make me a sandwich," he said. "I'm hungry."
"What kind of sandwich?"
"What do I care what kind? A sandwich!'
"All right."
"Make yourself useful for a change," he said, and stalked off with the bottle cradled like an infant against his chest.
She buttered bread, layered ham and processed cheese on top, and then spread mustard on a second slice. Did it all mechanically, taking her time. She put the sandwich on a paper plate and took it to the studio.
He was over by the tall double windows, squinting at one of his older riverscapes—trying to decide whether or not to destroy it, probably. He seemed even more misshapen and indistinct to her now, as if there was more than glass between them, as if she were looking at him underwater. She set the sandwich on his worktable, between the jars of oil paint and the now-open fifth of Scotch, and retreated to the hallway.
The open door to the bathroom drew her. She went inside and close to the medicine-cabinet mirror, but it was too dark to make out her image clearly. She lit a candle and held it up. Her face, like his, seemed water-distorted, and when she peered at it from an inch or so away she could see the rain in her eyes. Behind her eyes. Rain and a turbulent, rising cataract like the one outside.
She snuffed the candle, returned to the bedroom and her seat before the window. Rising, yes. The river's surface was a ferment spotted with debris— clumps of uprooted brush, logs and tree limbs bobbing drunkenly, a fence rail, the shattered remains of a rowboat, a child's red wagon. One of the logs slammed against the side wall of the house with enough force to crack boards before it swirled away.
The rain continued to beat down in gray metallic sheets. The dark waters roared and shrieked like a wild creature caught in a snare, ripping at what was left of its banks, tearing them down and apart in a frenzy. She could feel the flood, cold, slimy on her face and the backs of her hands. Smell and taste it, too, rank and primitive.
And still the waters kept rising . . .
Abruptly she stood. On heavy legs, her mind blank, she went out and back to Darrell's studio. He was sitting hunched at the worktable, staring fixedly into a tumbler of whiskey, the sandwich she'd made uneaten and pushed aside. His portable radio was on, tuned to a Santa Rosa station, the voice of a newscaster droning words that had no meaning for her. He did not hear her as she stepped up behind him; he had no idea she was there.
You've never known I was here, she thought. Just that one thought. Then her mind was blank again.
She took out the scrimshaw bowl, held it bottom side up in her hand. She no longer heard the newscast; she listened instead to the roaring and shrieking of the flood. Then, without hesitation, she raised the bowl and brought it down with all her strength on the back of his head.
He didn't make a sound. Or if he did, the raging of the waters drowned it out.
She had no difficulty dragging him across to the window. It was as if, dead or dying, he had become almost weightless. The wind flailed her with rain and surface spume as she raised the sash, hoisted him onto the sill. The river was only a few feet below, all but filling the downstairs rooms; it boiled and frothed, creating little whirlpools clogged with flotsam. She pushed Darrell down into the brown turmoil. There was a splash, and two or three seconds later, no more than that, he wasn't there anymore.
She was seated once again at the bedroom window when the rescue boat appeared. By then, mercifully, it had stopped raining and the floodwaters did not seem to be rising any longer. The worst was over. Everything was still gray and moist and chaotic, but there was a hint of clearing light in the gray-ness. She was sure of it—light outside and inside, both.
When she saw the boat rounding the bend she opened the window and waved her arms to show the rescuers where she was. They came straight to her at accelerated speed, two men wearing neoprene wetsuits hunched in the stern. She knew both of them; they were volunteer firemen in Rio Lomas.
As they drew alongside one of them called out, "Are you all right, Mrs. Boyd?"
She touched the freshly polished ivory bowl in her pocket. It was not the only thing of value she had; it never had been. "My name is Lee Anne," she said. "Lee Anne Meeker. Jewelry-maker."
"Are you all right?"
"Yes, I'm all right."
"Where's your husband?"
"Gone," she said.
"Gone? What do you mean, gone?"
She was not a liar; she told them the literal and absolute truth. "The flood took him," she said. "He was swept away in the flood."