The Flood
By Harry Buschman
The floods always come in early spring. They
come without warnin’ and if you
ain’t ready for them, they can be the end of you.
This year the last day of the dry weather come on a Sunday in March. Most of the town went over to see the openin’ baseball game between our town and Fayetteville, and just before the end of the game a heavy humidity settled in from the south. This usually don’t happen ‘til summer and when it does it always means a thunderstorm is comin’ to bring a little relief from the heat. We should have known better this time because it wasn’t summer and our winter was a long and hard one. There were still pockets of snow on the north sides of the trees and along the road to town. But, like children, we welcomed the rain with no thought of the deep snow still hidden in the upland hills.
The rain started nice and soft puffin’ up wisps of dust in the dry road back from Fayetteville. There was no lightnin’ or thunder which we always get before a summer storm. Instead, the sky got lead gray, dark and seamless, as though the rain had come to stay. The old men in town wagged their heads as if they knew. “It’s the flood rain,” they said -- then they moved their chairs inside.
When we got home Pop and me got the livestock
inside the barn, the horses
whinnied like worried old women and the sheep huddled close together. We had
a problem with the chickens; they panic and don’t trust nobody. It takes
all the patience a man has to get them to do what he wants them to.
The darkness come early that day, and with it the full downpourin’ of the rain and you couldn’t hear nothin’ but the roar of it on the tin roof of our porch. It was only by shoutin’ that we were able to hear each other. When I looked outside it was as though the earth had turned to water and I realized this was no everyday rain.
I lay in bed that night listenin’ to the roar of the rain on the roof until Pop come in to get me. He was already wrapped up in his oilskins. He handed me my clothes and said we had to go and see to the animals. I got up and dressed and together we started for the barn in the blindin’ storm. The barn yard was already ankle deep and water was about to spill over the threshold of the barn door and flood the dirt floor inside. We let ourselves in by way of the small door and were greeted by a chorus of frightened whinnying and bleating -- the animals could sense the peril of bein’ alone in the barn and there was nothin’ we could do to help them except to get them to higher ground. We had three horses, a pair for the plow and one for the trap. We managed to get them outside, slapped each of them on the rump and told them to git. They hurried off at a fast trot, lookin’ back and wonderin’ why we didn’t follow them. I remember seein’ the whites of their eyes as they turned their heads to look at us. The sheep didn’t need encouragement; the leader took off after the horses and the rest of them followed.
Pop said not to bother with the chickens, “They got no sense of self-preservation,” he said. “They’ll make it or they’ll drown, there’s nothin’ we can do.”
We waded our way back to the house and I could see flashes of light in the direction of Fayetteville -- there was no thunder. Pop said it was probably the electricity. The rain was shortin’ out the breakers at the power station. Even in the best of times you couldn’t depend on the electric company in our town, and lookin’ at our house through the drivin’ rain, the only light I could see was the kerosene lamp in the livin’ room window.
There was no break of day the next mornin’. I could barely see the barn and the one lane road in to town was under water. It looked as though we were anchored in a slow movin’ river, the surface of which was bubblin’ from the drivin’ rain. Rain had seeped in through the joints of the tin roof over the porch and it sagged under the weight of the water. Pop and me went out on the porch and saw the water had already reached the top step. “Another couple inches, boy, we’re gonna have’ta move upstairs.” He walked to the corner of the porch and pointed to the old Dodge standin’ in the driveway. It was slued around broadside with its engine pointed upstream.
“First of all,” Pop said, “I want’cha to find a couple of gas cans and bring ‘em out here, I’m gonna drain the tank of the Dodge and put the gas in the tractor.” It took an hour or more with the rain pourin’ down the backs of our necks trying to syphon the gas out with a rubber hose. Then we went inside to find Mom, she was in the kitchen tryin’ to get the stove lit.
“The wood’s wet and the chimney won’t draw. There’s no way to cook any more.” She looked very scared. “We’re gonna die if we can’t cook.” Pop held her for a minute to quiet her down some, then he told her to get our valuables together -- “Like all the things we need to prove who we are and what we own ... then,” he said, “We’re gonna git ourselves on that tractor and git up to high ground.”
By noon we was almost ready and in spite of the rain still comin’ down we spent most of the mornin’ tryin’ to load our stuff on the tractor. Mom wanted to take our canary, but Pop said he wasn’t runnin’ no Noah’s Ark and to let the thing fend for itself. In the back of our minds, Mom and me still had a feelin’ we should wait it out; that the house would stand the flood as it had everythin’ else in the past twenty years. But our minds was changed when the Richardson house sailed past our front porch around eleven in the mornin’. The Richardson farm is a good two miles north of us and Pop said it was a sign that things would get worse down here pretty soon. There was no sign of the Richardson’s -- just their house.
There ain’t much room in the cab of a
small Deere tractor, but Mom and Pop
managed to squeeze in with me on Mom’s lap and all the food fit to travel
was
stacked behind us on the floor. The Deere don’t have no windshield wipers
like the old Dodge so the seein’ through the rain was pretty bad. Pop had
his head out the window on the left and I had mine out to the right. Mom just
sat there with her eyes shut mumblin’, “God save us all.”
There are low foothills capped with pine woods
half a mile back of our house.
On the crest of the highest one there’s an old native stone building we
used to call the haunted house. It’s been there since the Revolution and
the story used to go around that Indians massacred a family of pioneers there.
True or not, the Historical Society put up a small monument with a bronze plaque.
My friends and me used to play up there after school, and each of us would swear
to the fact that if you stood perfectly still you could hear the tortured cries
of the family and the wild yells of the Indians.
Pop took it slow. We couldn’t see more than twenty feet ahead of us and the field behind our house was furrowed from last fall’s plowin’. He had to keep in the ruts or risk losing control of the tractor. I spotted the pine woods on the right and I shouted to Pop. He did his best to angle over there but the going was really dangerous. Although we were out of the flooded area, the ground was slick with mud. Even the big tractor drive wheels would lose their grip and we would slide back down.
It seemed to take forever, and maybe it did in a way, but we finally come into the pine woods at the top of the first rise. The rain seemed to slack off a little under the trees and even though it was dark you could see better. We weren’t more than twenty yards into the forest when Pop spotted the old stone house directly in front of us.
“This’ll be it fer now,” he shouted.
That’s where we stayed the first night -- at the site of the massacre. We spread a tarpaulin from the top of the old stone wall to the cab of the tractor and Pop and me began to collect pine branches for a fire. You can build a fire with dead wet pine if you don’t mind the smoke. Mom put together some kind of supper out of the canned goods we brought with us.
It got dark early that first spring night after the flood, there was a chill in the air now and a brisk wind picked up in the west and you could see the clouds moving fast overhead. It was hard to realize the rains had only started twenty four hours ago, but in that short time, and with the help from the melting snow, it turned the whole countryside into a runnin’ river.
We spread our sleepin’ bags on the damp
ground close to the fire and Pop said
he would stay awake most of the night to keep it going; but mainly, I think,
he wanted to keep an eye on the weather.
About midnight I thought I heard voices ... voices I couldn’t recognize ... strange sorrowful voices speakin’ in a language I didn’t understand. I heard footsteps too .. shufflin’ footsteps just outside the range of light. I remembered the legend of the Indian massacre and in my heart I knew I was listenin’ to the long dead voices of the poor Pioneer family who lost their lives in the very same stone building we was sleepin’ in. At times I could hear many voices callin’ out in low mournful tones, then they would weaken, and one voice -- like a lost child’s would cry softly.
Then suddenly I heard Pop’s voice call out loud and clear. “Look who’s here!” he cried. I struggled out of my sleeping bag and saw the horses had found us -- the sheep too! Somehow they had got themselves to the same high ground we did. They were as glad to see us as we were to see them. Pop threw our spare blankets over the horses and built the fire up as high as he could without setting fire to the tarpaulin hanging over it. “A good sign,” Pop said. “Even if we lose everything, we got the animals.”
Well, we stayed there on the top of that hill
for two days -- Mom, Pop, the animals and me. We heard nothin’ more from
the Pioneer people while we was
there and when the time came to go back down I was moved to thinking how
simple life must have been in the old days. Pop said we would probably have
to rebuild the barn and the front porch of the house, he was sure the chicken
coop and the corn crib were gone too. “Even if we found the old Dodge,”
he said, it would cost a mint of money to get it in runnin’ shape again.
Mom was sure every rug in the house was ruined, along with the mattresses and
the wallpaper, and she was sure we would need a new canary. But they both agreed
that after a look-see and a long sit down with the man from Prudential we would
probably be in good enough shape that spring plantin’ would only be a month
late.
Pop remembered an old song that seemed to fit -- we sang it together, Mom, Pop and me on the way back home ...
We’re livin’ on time
And havin’ t’borrow,
And nobody knows
What we’re facin’ tomorrow.
I guess we’ll be okay, but I can’t help thinkin’ that life was simpler back in the days of the pioneers.
© Harry Buschman 2003
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