I waited while the river dropped two, three days, a week, but the floodplain freed of water was more isolated than before, caked with mud, in places half a foot of it. Then a cold front. All afternoon and night the arctic came to visit. The 11 o'clock TV news showed National Guardsmen at roadblocks exhaling clouds that hung luminous above them, M-1 rifles slung on shoulders, hands extended toward fires flaming up in 50-gallon drums,.
Could this cold create a route? Before dawn, I found frozen mud, sneaked atop it like a looter on side roads, and when the growl of rushing water smothered car sounds, I stopped. My brights showed the brown river lunging as if angry, trapped in its banks. Had that current weakened the bridge? I couldn't take the time to study it, couldn't stop myself from gunning the motor, spinning up onto the span, and racing across it with the hungry creature roaring just a few feet below. Safely over, on the other side, I entered a land merely fondled by the flood.
Through gate and barnyard, I found my lover feeding the livestock. She was anxious and up-wrought. As we drove along a lane and parked among apple trees under the coldest of early suns, she told of coffins floating ashore on her family's farm. Of her town friends' escaping from rooftops in boats. They'd stayed for a while at her farm. We clung to each other while our breathing froze on the windows. I scraped it off and took her home, happy she was safe.
I crossed the bridge, but this time chose the Mason Morrow Millgrove Road on a whim, to see her friends' houses. In the early light, everything suggested mutation. The whole valley was altered. Young trees and all of the bushes were angled downstream as if a huge, heavy hand had bent them over. Tree limbs 20 or more feet above me were caked with debris: paper, plastic, other trees and limbs. Washers, dryers, stoves, refrigerators, tables, chairs, sheds. Then an entire two-story white frame house blocked the way into Morrow, wedged across the road, snagged on a small bridge over a stream.
I jockeyed around, suddenly conscious of danger, of being in the heart of unstoppable power, aware my mother's car might wreck or mire. She didn't know that I had it, didn't know I was gone. I carefully turned around and at the bridge followed Stubbs Mills Road up out of the valley, then raced through the farmland, through the fields staked out for bulldozers, and finally relaxed in the newest suburbs. Did I feel safe then? Behind me was Nature untamed. No, the tires and the engine reminded me of the distant river flow muffled. A face in the rearview mirror stared at me. I couldn't explain what I'd done, carried along as I'd been on a flood welling up from inside myself.
Could this cold create a route? Before dawn, I found frozen mud, sneaked atop it like a looter on side roads, and when the growl of rushing water smothered car sounds, I stopped. My brights showed the brown river lunging as if angry, trapped in its banks. Had that current weakened the bridge? I couldn't take the time to study it, couldn't stop myself from gunning the motor, spinning up onto the span, and racing across it with the hungry creature roaring just a few feet below. Safely over, on the other side, I entered a land merely fondled by the flood.
Through gate and barnyard, I found my lover feeding the livestock. She was anxious and up-wrought. As we drove along a lane and parked among apple trees under the coldest of early suns, she told of coffins floating ashore on her family's farm. Of her town friends' escaping from rooftops in boats. They'd stayed for a while at her farm. We clung to each other while our breathing froze on the windows. I scraped it off and took her home, happy she was safe.
I crossed the bridge, but this time chose the Mason Morrow Millgrove Road on a whim, to see her friends' houses. In the early light, everything suggested mutation. The whole valley was altered. Young trees and all of the bushes were angled downstream as if a huge, heavy hand had bent them over. Tree limbs 20 or more feet above me were caked with debris: paper, plastic, other trees and limbs. Washers, dryers, stoves, refrigerators, tables, chairs, sheds. Then an entire two-story white frame house blocked the way into Morrow, wedged across the road, snagged on a small bridge over a stream.
I jockeyed around, suddenly conscious of danger, of being in the heart of unstoppable power, aware my mother's car might wreck or mire. She didn't know that I had it, didn't know I was gone. I carefully turned around and at the bridge followed Stubbs Mills Road up out of the valley, then raced through the farmland, through the fields staked out for bulldozers, and finally relaxed in the newest suburbs. Did I feel safe then? Behind me was Nature untamed. No, the tires and the engine reminded me of the distant river flow muffled. A face in the rearview mirror stared at me. I couldn't explain what I'd done, carried along as I'd been on a flood welling up from inside myself.
