On the first day, it rained for eight hours straight.

On the second day, after a quiet night, the morning began with a slight sprinkle, which quickly turned into a steady shower and then, a couple of hours later, another downpour. Joe stood in the doorway of the family home, a cup of lukewarm coffee in his hand, and stared through the screen door at the deluge, his right arm aching as it usually did during wet weather.

They’d reported it last night on the news, but he hadn’t believed them. Even after living his entire life in the area and even after seeing what had happened in the Big One, the flood about a decade and a half back that everyone still talked about, he’d never really thought it could happen again.

His family farm and home had been swamped by floodwaters once, and surely that was enough for any one lifetime. Yet here he stood, coffee cup in hand and arm hurting, with crops in the fields just itching to be harvested, and the rains had come again. Two days now, several hours each day, and the news coming over NOAA weather radio was not good.

This was only the beginning. The worst of both rain and flood was supposed to be still a few days off. Which for Joe meant several more days of hurting bones.

The newscasters on TV and radio talked about fronts and pressures, highs and lows. None of that meant much of anything to Joe. What he did understand, because he could see it for himself, was the giant blot of green on the radars, a blot coming in from the west and covering nearly the entire damned state.

Joe drained the rest of the coffee from his cup, shut the door, and went back inside to spend the rest of the day listening to the tapping of rain on the roof and, only occasionally, going upstairs to check on her.



On the third day, the river had already crept past flood stage.

Joe stood on the porch, the sloping overhang keeping him from getting wet, and looked out to the west. Although he couldn’t see it (a slight rise of the fields blocked it from his view), he knew that the river was just out of sight, angry and fearsome, like a drunken man with a screaming hard on, just slavering to rush over its banks and come for his fields.

Helen, the mayor’s wife who Joe had once had the hots for when they both went to Centerville Senior High, and who he’d had no choice but to stand by while she ended up going out with someone else, had called that morning.

“It’s not official yet,” she said, “but we’re urging everyone to get out now. They’re bound to call for an all-out evacuation by evening, and there’s no sense in waiting around. Our section’s already nearly half a foot over stage.”

With the phone on his right ear, Joe had turned and cocked his left ear to the outer door. As if he could somehow hear the river coming, the outdoors seemed engulfed in a slow, steady pounding.

“I don’t think I can leave,” he said into the phone. “You know how Mom is about this place. She made it through the last one, you know.”

Helen’s exasperated sigh swished out of the earpiece. He knew that sigh only too well. It was the same sound she’d made more than once when they were kids, when he’d had to make up a lie at the last minute to explain why he was standing her up yet again.

“Joe, come on. Let’s be adults here. We’ll send out a chopper to bring the two of you out. I hate to talk this way, but it’s not like she’s in much of a condition to put up a struggle these days.”

Joe winced, and the stone silence coming over the phone told him that the mayor’s wife regretted her words as soon as she said them.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just that...”

“I know,” Joe said, cutting her off. It was no secret that his mother had been bedridden for the last fifteen years. True, she’d lasted out the last flood, making it through with most of the family home intact; her strength and endurance during those days only adding to the local lore about her. But something had happened to her during that experience, something that had warped her body and mind so completely that even now, all these years later, she was barely aware of her surroundings.

The strong, hard, merciless woman he remembered from his youth had become merely a frail husk lying in bed.

“I don’t think she’ll go,” he said. “No matter what. I think Ma and I will just ride this one out. Just like the last time.”

“We’re evacuating, Joe.” Helen’s voice now sounded desperate, almost frantic. “There’s no telling how far it’s going to rise this time.”

“It’s not mandatory, is it?”

“You mean will the Guard come out there and carry you out at gunpoint? I don’t think so. But be reasonable and...”

“Then we’re not leaving,” Joe said. “Don’t worry. We’ll get through somehow.”

“Joe...”

“Goodbye, Helen. See you all when you get back.”



On that third night, Joe sat down to watch the national news. He wasn’t sure what network he turned to; they all looked and sounded the same to a guy like him. But he turned the news on at five thirty straight up, wondering if there would be any mention of the floods.

It shocked him to see the entire first four minutes devoted to the floods, including a reporter doing a live report not three miles away. Joe sat there in the middle of the old, paisley-decorated couch that his folks had had since before his birth and watched video taken from a helicopter, looking straight down at large chunks of land he knew by heart completely covered in water.

And what water it was. Nothing like the clear, silvery liquid most city people would imagine when they thought of country rivers and streams. This stuff was thick, muddy, and dead-looking. In places where it moved, it didn’t swirl or flow so much as sludge along, bumping its way across the land with all the grace of a pack of rabid dogs.

After the report ended and the anchor had moved on to the latest bombings in Iraq, Joe got up and turned off the set. He limped over to the front door, pausing briefly to glance up the stairs.

He hadn’t heard anything from his mother all day, but that wasn’t so unusual. She almost always slept through most of the day, then spent half the night tossing and turning from her nightmares. Yet it was somewhat odd for her to go literally the entire day without a peep.

Joe thought about heading upstairs to check on her, but turned instead to the front door. Before opening it, he paused with his head cocked forward and listened.

On maps, the small branch of the river that ran by town was a little over a mile away. Yet over the sound of the steady rain, Joe could almost imagine that he heard the damn thing roaring and rushing. Intrigued, not a little scared, he opened the door.

The world outside seemed to have changed colors.

Through the ragged downpour, everything looked blurred, out of focus, and run together. Even the leaves — it was late spring after all — seemed to have dulled and washed out. They were still green, but an ugly, dead-colored green, patches of whitish fungus crouching on them.

The stretch of farmyard immediately in front of their house, filled with grass only three days before, now seemed to have turned mainly to mud. Huge patches of brown, tending to black, were encroaching on and surrounding the few areas of green left, as if the ugly bare ground sought to overcome and smother what was left of the green.

And as Joe stood there, looking out through the screen door on his world as it washed away, the rain stopped.

Only for a moment, of course. It did that periodically, as if God, or the Devil, or whoever, had to occasionally pause to refill the buckets before dumping them on the earth below. It wasn’t uncommon at all for anywhere from a few seconds to five minutes of total cessation before the sky opened up again.

And in that few minutes of sudden stoppage, with the sound of the constant rain halted, Joe craned forward, for the first time becoming worried.

With the river only a mile away, in the early Missouri evening he could actually hear it.

Coming for them.



On the fourth morning, Joe went up to check on her. The stairs on the house usually creaked and groaned like crazy, but they were a lot quieter today. An indication, Joe assumed, of just how damp the air had become.

Pausing halfway up, he gripped the bannister and waited for the slight twinges from his knee to stop. Then he yawned and rubbed his hand across his face. He’d hardly gotten any sleep the night before. All through the night-time, the roaring, rushing sound of the river, clearly audible even through the continuing rain, had tormented him.

It had been a tough sleeping night. As the air became more and more humid, all the slight aches and pains he’d lived with for so many years came to life. He twisted and turned in bed, wondering how it would be to live as a normal person, without the constant reminders of his childhood transgressions.

He realized, upon waking up, that they really should have gotten out.

He stopped at the threshold to his mother’s room and looked in on her.

She was awake, though quiet. These days she hardly ever spoke, could move even less, but one look in her eyes told you that the old gal was as mentally sharp as ever.

Joe hesitated. Ordinarily, he could read her moods just by looking in those eyes. Today, he wasn’t sure what she was feeling.

“How are you, Mom?”

The lips moved, more like they wobbled a bit, but nothing came out except a fine, barely visible trail of spittle.

The eyes, however, held their usual mixture of emotions: anger, worry and a hint of fear.

He took another step, all the way into the room this time, then paused.

It had been like this for the longest time. He could approach her when he had to. To clean her, feed her, stuff like that. But unless completely necessary he preferred to keep his distance, as if by staying apart he could remove himself from her condition.

“It’s been raining quite a bit,” he said.

He didn’t have to tell her that. As far as anyone could tell, her senses were as sharp as ever, and because he always kept her curtains pinned open, he knew she could see and hear what was happening outside, even if she could never actually go out.

“They say it’s going to be as bad, or worse, as back in ‘93,” Joe continued.

The old gal’s eyes shifted a bit at that. She locked her gaze with Joe’s for a minute, and he could see in them the fierce determination that had made her such a terror to him as a kid.

‘93, of course, had been the bad year. The year that had finally changed their respective roles in the family.

“But don’t worry,” he said, deliberately making his voice warm and patronizing, “I told them you wouldn’t dream of leaving our loving home, no matter what. We’re going to stick it out. Together.”

Her eyes shifted away from his then, back to the window with its ceaseless cascade, ugly grey worms of water continually trailing themselves down the pane.

But she hadn’t managed to look away quickly enough for Joe to miss seeing the terror in those eyes.

Chuckling, he turned and left the room.

As usual, after a visit to his mother and seeing her pain, his aching bones didn’t feel so bad.



Sometime during the fourth night, Joe heard movement from the upper floor. He’d spent the last several hours plopped on the couch, keeping the TV on low volume, waiting for any word of the flood. It had gotten to the point where the news channels were breaking in with updates every hour or so, and judging by the reporting, Joe figured that he and his mother were the only people left within quite a distance.

Even the babe who’d been doing the live shots yesterday had moved a good ten miles down the road.

In the middle of one of the updates, around eleven, Joe heard the movement upstairs.

He stood up, stretched, and yawned. No real reason not to take his time. Although Mom was practically incapable of movement, there had been times in the past when she’d somehow managed to flop and wriggle around enough to fall out of bed. But that was about as far as she could get, so it didn’t really matter when Joe got up there. She’d be crimped around on the floor, her mouth open and mewling in pain, her eyes tearing over with the sheer terror of her position.

Terror.

Joe knew, oh how well he knew, that if any word could sum up the atmosphere of this house, for as long as his family had owned it, it was that word.

Only for the last several years had the tables finally been turned.

Eventually, Joe made his way upstairs. He stopped at the corner, just around from his mother’s open door, and cocked his head.

Smiling, he walked into the room.

Just as he’d expected, the old gal was lying half in and half out of her bed. Her back and shoulders on the floor and her waist, with the legs twisted, still on the bed.

She was asleep, as Joe had known from listening at the door. Often, if he didn’t get up there in time to help her back into bed, her body would lapse into unconsciousness, as if cushioning her from the reality of her situation.

Seeing her in that position, then crouching over her and jerking her awake, formed one of Joe’s greatest pleasures. The look in her eyes when she woke up to see him grinning over her, a near complete reversal of their earlier roles, was priceless.

This time was no exception.

It took a couple of jerks on her bony shoulders for the old lady to come around. Her eyelids fluttered a bit, then they locked in awareness of Joe hovering over her.

If she could have screamed, she would have, matching in her own way those other screams from so long ago.

But, of course, she couldn’t.



On the fifth morning, Joe became a bit concerned. The electricity had gone out at some time during the night. He’d gone to sleep on the couch, as usual, after seeing Mom tucked safely away in bed. He’d thought about feeding her, something he did on average every other night, but decided he was too tired to bother. Because she moved hardly at all, he always figured she didn’t need that much in the way of nutrition.

Funny that he should feel so tired. He’d done no work for days, accomplished nothing in fact except sitting around downstairs and listening to the rain and river. Maybe that complete inactivity was beginning to get to him.

He woke up at some time, the TV screen blank and grey. He struggled up on the couch, his limbs dull and leaden, and looked at the clock over on the far wall.

It was only then that he realized the electricity had gone out.

Standing up, he wrinkled his nose at the smell. Five days of nothing but water all around was taking its toll, giving the house a musty, almost nauseating odor. Gagging slightly, Joe headed to the front door for some fresh air.

Throwing the door open, he lurched back, his heart almost stopping.

The river had taken over their front yard.

A free strip of grass and mud still stood for about five feet in front of the porch, but beyond that Joe could see nothing but roiling, brownish, thick water swirling its way down the road.

And the river didn’t roll smooth. It lurched and eddied, humped up and flattened out, all the time sweeping its way across the landscape.

And it carried things with it.

As Joe stood there, a large tree trunk, completely shorn of branches and leaves, whisked past. A moment later, struggling and bleating for all it was worth, a sheep, its white coat now completely brown, floated by. A sudden current came out of nowhere to whip it around the corner of the house, and after a few moments, its bleats faded in the distance.

Shivering, Joe looked up at the sky. The clouds hung low and motionless, their color almost reflecting the ugly brown color of the waters below it.

As he stepped back in the door, he heard the telltale thump from upstairs.

The goddamned old bitch had fallen out of bed again.



Sometime in the middle of the fifth night, the phone rang. Joe, who had pulled a chair up to the front window in order to keep tabs on the flood, looked over at the coffee table where the phone sat.

It rang a second time, and he thought about whether to answer it.

A third time, and he decided to hell with it.

He turned back to the window.

With the power off, he hadn’t been able to watch the TV all day, but he’d brought an old battery radio down from the attic, and although the reception was weak, he’d occasionally gotten snatches of news.

Practically the entire county had been evacuated, and nearly every broadcast had made a mention of the Great Flood of ‘93. This was even worse, they all said, and there was at least another day or so of rain on its way.

By now, there was only about three feet of somewhat recognizable ground left in front of the porch. Of course, the porch was raised off the ground, and a solid foundation lay underneath, but Joe was beginning to think he should have responded differently to Helen’s call.

That was a piece of useless hindsight, though, because he could never have allowed his Mom to leave the house. There was simply too much chance that, even as broken as she was, she could somehow find a way to communicate with someone.

He felt clammy, flushed. For what seemed like the hundredth time that night, he reached up and wiped his brow with his forearm. The stiff cotton scratched the flesh of his forehead. Another of the legacies of his childhood, the need to always wear long-sleeved shirts. Of course, with no one around, he could take his shirt off, but then he’d find himself, in stray moments, looking down at the faded, white scars that covered his arms.

No, better to keep the memories covered up as much as possible.

As Joe looked out the window, he saw some sort of lump in the rushing water, a congealed mass of mud that seemed to be moving slower than the rest of the current.

Instinctively shielding his eyes with his hand to his forehead, a useless move since there was no sunlight outside, he peered closer at the lump.

In the next instant, a huge log came rushing across the expanse of water and smashed into the lump. It was only then, with the keening scream that burst forth, that Joe recognized the lump as a person.

He couldn’t make out who it was, no doubt some neighbor from down the road. Probably some other cantankerous old person who would be damned if he (or she) would be run out of their house.

As Joe watched closer, he saw the person attempt to stand up. The figure staggered, slipped a few times, then finally managed to rear itself up against the currents.

Unfortunately, just at that moment, another stray current whipped the tree trunk around again, and it came up and smashed right into the stranger’s back.

Another strangled cry, a shuddering of the upper body, and the trembling, mud-draped form slipped below the waters.

And didn’t come up.

Joe waited to see if it reappeared.

Nearly fifteen minutes later, he decided that the person, whoever it was, had gone down and wasn’t coming back. He stood up from his chair and stretched, the rain continuing to drum and patter against the window.

The flood of ‘93 had claimed several lives, and this year’s deluge had now taken at least one. Probably more, when the reports from all the affected counties came in.

He thought briefly about his mother, always struggling to get away from him.

Joe stretched again, doing his best to work out of his system the kinks brought on by days of inactivity.

A thump, and the slightest of pitiful moans, came from upstairs.

Joe smiled at the mental image of his mother doing her best to flail around up there.

Much as she had made him flail as a child.

His smile grew even bigger as he realized that her bed sat right next to the large window that now looked out only onto a hideous, swirling glop of overrun river water.

Deciding it was time to check on her, he headed up the stairs.

It was now late in the fifth night.



On the sixth day, the rain stopped and for a while the clouds parted enough to let the sun through.

On the seventh morning, the electricity came back on, and Joe called someone for help. An alert was put out for his mother, who had somehow, in her fright at watching the rising waters from her window, despite her infirmity from the stroke so many years before, managed to fall through the window.

Finally, on the ninth morning, the waters had gone down enough that Joe could step out and inspect the damage and begin making plans to put the family home, his own home now, back in shape.