Sign Languages (17 page)

There were no tornadoes with this storm, so she could relax a bit. And, by the end of April, classes would be over. She would have made it through. And this summer they were going to Italy—their first vacation abroad in ten years of marriage.

As she was about to turn on a lamp in the den—outside it was as dull as dusk—she thought she saw a broad sheet of water rushing through the yard, swirling around the trunks of the post oaks just off the porch.

When Evan drove into their subdivision he was terribly worried. Though all the houses in Amarilla Creek Estates were well off the asphalt roads, hidden by yaupons and post oaks, the storm sewers were flooded and the rushing water threatened to reach his car doors. Today had been trash day, and he had to weave his way through tumbling plastic cans, their contents floating ahead of them.

On Creek View, his street, water covered the road and poured down the slope of his gravel drive. His front yard was flooded. Wiping the windshield, he slowed to a stop and tried to locate a reference—a newly planted bed of lantana, a water faucet at the foot of some yaupon—but couldn't. He realized it had all disappeared under the yellow muddy flow.

Alice had the garage door open. She stood amid the rubble of boxes they hadn't quite gotten to in over a year. They had laughed about what could possibly be in them since they seemed to have everything they needed. Maybe they're somebody else's, he remembered saying.

Evan slammed the door shut and splashed through the water, his head bowed, ready for the towel. But stopping in front of her, he raised his eyes. She had been crying; her face was puffy and seemed old. He hugged her awkwardly, causing them both to totter a little, their legs bumping into boxes. Alice held on; they seemed to dance a bit to gain their balance. She took a deep breath and brought the towel to Evan's face, patted it dry as if he were asleep and she didn't wish to wake him. He closed his eyes and tried to shut himself down a little.

“What'll we do?” Alice asked and, laying the towel on a box, took Evan to the garage door. Looking down, he saw how the water had risen over the lip of the foundation and was slowly gathering itself to menace the nearest box.

“Jesus Christ,” Evan said. And for a while they stood there waiting. He felt caught again. The child playacting the adult. Alice was ready to mind. She was ready to wait and listen. She refused to notice his lips moving or to question whatever it was he had never possessed for himself.

The next day the newspaper would be filled with accounts of the localized flooding. Of how, for some reason unclear to meteorologists, the heavy thunderstorms had stalled directly over the city and dropped nine inches of rain in under four hours. Two young boys had already drowned in separate events—one lodged facedown in a storm sewer; the other swept off a raft he had launched down a street—but no one knew this yet. As Evan and Alice didn't know that the rain coming down even harder now would produce real threats to them.

Soon they were working frantically. Evan tried moving the mystery boxes because the water began tunneling in from the drive. His mind churned a thousand ragged thoughts as he sloshed around in the cold muddy water. Twigs floated into the garage, pieces of trash from somewhere up the street. It's not fair. It's our first house. Goddammit, stop it
now
. He felt his pulse in his throat. His brain felt as if it were full of clots ready to break loose. I'll die, he thought. I'm about to fall over with a stroke.

Later Alice phoned the police. 911. “What do we do!” she had asked in tears. “Put your furniture up. Take things to the second floor. Leave if you should. Where you are shouldn't get too bad. Some people…” Alice slammed down the receiver. She ran upstairs and looked from the study into the backyard. Now it was almost completely dark, but though the lightning had almost died out, the sky was lighted somehow, the low swirling clouds at treetop level. Below she saw the roiling water sweep the porch clear. It took her potted plants, dammed the downstream side with deck furniture.

She came back down to the den's sliding doors to see water coming through onto the linoleum. Save us, she kept chanting to herself as she lay rolled towels along the door and baseboards. Save us, she chanted, thinking she was asking everyone she knew for help. People from Clarion, her students, her parents' spirits, God, Evan. She worked and imagined the community coming to pack sandbags, form a human chain to place them, bail water, put out fires, make coffee. “Please,” she said clearly out loud and surprised herself.

Evan discovered the water bubbling up around the baseboards in the living room. When she came in with the last of the towels, her footprints in the carpet filled with water.

She told him what the police had said. They pulled books from the bottom shelves of bookcases. They unplugged the stereo and television. Very soon they'd have to consider taking the furniture they could lift together upstairs. Alice carried, as far as the landing, a wooden rocker that had belonged to a great-grandfather.

She sat down in the soft circle of light from the chandelier high overhead. All the lights in the house on as if their heat would help dry the water up. “If we lose power,” he shouted up at her, “we'll leave, okay?” She looked down the stairs to where a thin film of water, filtered clear by the carpet, flowed to meet the water coming in from the kitchen.

Some minutes later, Evan looked into the garage again. He had closed the automatic door and stuffed some work rags into the crack where the door met the concrete. But now the water bubbled up in long sighs and the rags waved like seaweed in the current.

“Goddammit,” he said, and stepped down from the door into ankle-deep water. He worked quickly, putting the boxes up on metal shelves and his workbench. He bent to retrieve things as they floated by: candles, shoes, a purse from some waterlogged boxes already split open. He didn't recognize any of the objects.

All the time his mind seemed out of step with his hands grasping here and there. Lifting up, reaching down again. At one point he tried a foolish idea. He opened the garage door and water poured in; he looked back to see it lap over the doorsill and swirl under the poorly fitted door and into the utility room. Then he took his wide stiff shop broom and tried pushing the water back against itself and into the flooded drive. He strained more forcefully than he had in years. His pulse raced, his tie, which he had forgotten to remove, fluttered over his shoulder. He noticed himself reflected in a storm-door pane propped against a shelf.

But he barely recognized himself engaged in such a silly effort. Instead his mind worked in aspic, in thoughts slow and viscous. He despaired. It was their first house after saving money for years. He fretted for Alice inside; he believed he thought her thoughts for her and cursed such a punishing event. All the day's thoughts came back. And yesterday's too. And soon Evan stopped and wanted to cry out. He was a child trying to do combat only adults were able to comprehend. His heart ached more than it had in years. He wished for safety and comfort. It's not right, he thought, as he dropped the broom and watched it float toward the car in the driveway, its headlights still on. I shouldn't be punished. Or if this is the punishment, get it over with. He wished he had not come home from work. Or gone to a party and met her. He wished he had stayed in Oklahoma. Never undressed her, taken his own clothes off. He told himself he was a crybaby, but the admonition didn't have much of an effect.

He sloshed through the cold water, leaves clinging to his pants legs. He grabbed the broom before it floated around the corner of the house.

He stood up under the eaves with it in his hands and looked around. The low clouds boiled overhead reflecting the city lights. Lightning occasionally ripped the sky. The rain had lessened some. Evan tried to gauge its intensity by holding out a wet arm. All around him the water sucked and moaned. Somewhere far off he heard a shout.

“Hello!” he yelled back through cupped hands. But instead of a reply, the klaxon of an ambulance or fire engine began in the distance. Stepping off the foundation, he felt the water rise to his knees. He clung to the brick wall like a blind man. Passing shrubs, he noticed the debris snared in their branches. At the rear of the house he stopped. Here the water rose to his waist as the yard dropped sharply to the creek.

Evan felt for the rain again with his bare arm. Then he watched something black and large emerge from the water in front of him. He opened his mouth and called Alice. Down the hill the landscape timbers of the perennial bed showed symmetrical in the twilight. The first thing he had built in his own garage for his own house. The water was going down. “Alice!” he shouted. “Alice, come look!” Yes, he kept thinking. Yes. Yes.

But then the rectangle lost its form, turned away from him. Rotated on its plane. Its shape dissolved and Evan realized he could see none of the plants, not even the top of the tall hollyhock, and he knew the water wasn't going down. Then the floating landscape timbers eased over the farthest corner of the chain-link fence and rushed downstream. The cold water pulling at his thighs had told him the truth all along. But the betrayal wasn't lessened. He retraced his way along the wall even though the swamped porch was closer. He remembered that floods brought out snakes. Back in the garage he looked at the incongruity of yellow flood water illuminated by the overhead light. He listened to the echo of his foolish shouting voice. “Alice, come look. Alice, we're saved.”

Some time later Alice went to the garage for help. She had run out of towels, the floor was flooded, and she needed Evan to come back inside. But when she opened the door and saw him sitting on a stool looking out into the car lights, she closed the door quietly. There's nothing to do, she thought.

Alice sloshed across the kitchen linoleum and opened the sliding door. She took in a deep breath of wet air and listened to the rain slashing through the oaks and yaupons. But over that noise and the distant sounds of emergency vehicles she heard the sharp cry of a cat. Stepping out into the rain to the edge of the porch, Alice listened until her eyes adjusted to the odd glow from the low clouds.

The cat clung to the top of the chain-link fence at the side of the house, its feet constantly moving, its balance uncertain in the tangle of trumpet vine. The black water ran easily through the open links but surged around the vines. The fence swayed, the precarious cat cried, its voice almost the sound of a baby's.

“Here, kitty… kitty, kitty, kitty.” Alice slapped her thighs to attract its attention. And before she spoke again, the cat leapt into the water.

“That's it. Come on,” she shouted as, crawling across the porch on her hands and knees, the water over her calves, she edged toward the railing.

“Come on… come on over here,” she said softly, almost to herself. For a moment the small dark shape of the cat's head disappeared under a swell of water and Alice regretted calling it off the fence. But in a few seconds the slick head emerged. The cat paddled furiously toward her and, when it was within arm's length, she lunged to grab it, falling across the flooded boards.

She sat up, the soaked cat against her soaked chest. For a while it was quiet from its exhaustion but suddenly it pushed vehemently against her chest until she dropped it. She watched it cross the porch and leap up on the railing. After a second's hesitation the cat scaled a tree and disappeared above the roof-line. Alice smiled. She closed her eyes and relived the last few minutes. She saw the triangular head barely above the water, the cat swimming furiously against the current. She thought about how much cats hate water. It was something she had never seen before. Both their chests had rattled for a time. She opened her eyes and retraced the cat's escape up into the oaks above Amarilla Creek.

Around ten the rain stopped completely and the water began to fall. By midnight their yard was empty.

They slept with the windows open so they could listen for more rain. The wet carpet and soaked boxes and furniture produced a sour pungent odor.

The next morning they both got up with headaches. Evan phoned the insurance company while Alice washed and dried towels. The water had left its level on the white walls in the living room. The legs of the dining-room table were discolored three inches above the floor.

Evan came into the utility room shaking his head. “Rising water's not covered in this state.” He took Alice's coffee cup off a shelf and drank. “Wind-driven rain… now that's covered. That's what I should have said. I'm sure that's what she expected me to say… wanted me to say.” He laughed an ugly snort of a laugh. Alice looked at him and bent back over the clothes. She didn't know what to say.

Angry all day Evan barked at people over the phone. Around noon two men came and took up the carpets and plugged in huge fans. Evan followed them from room to room telling them this was their first house. Before the men left, they told Alice to run the air-conditioner though it was cool outside. Mildew would ruin the carpet, they said, if she didn't.

The next day they would take a walk around the neighborhood. And Evan would stop and point out the water marks on trees. He would laugh at rising water versus wind-driven rain. They would learn the neighbors had been better and worse off. One had just installed new parquet floors. Then, of course, there were the two drowned children.

But this day, with only drizzle falling out of a nonthreatening, light gray sky, Alice had finished the best she could inside and surveyed the yard. A jumbled carpet of waste paper and twigs covered the grass. One of the wooden flower borders had lodged in a corner of the fence. Broken planks, empty plastic flowerpots, a child's sandbox, two pairs of garden gloves, and a ton of other odds and ends from neighbors upstream were wedged in yaupons, draped around the base of the oaks, caught in the porch railing.

“Shit,” she yelled, and hopped to the faucet to wash the biting fire ants off her bare ankles. “Bastards,” she said as she danced under the water. The flood had destroyed their beds and they swarmed over everything.