Deliver Us from Evie (14 page)

“I hope that phone’s stopped ringing finally!”

We shut off the radio.

I whispered in the darkness, “What do you think Duff will do next?”

I couldn’t get excited about the weather the way Doug did. I believed it was the farmer in him. Dad was the same way. They were always watching the sky, listening to weather reports, talking with other farmers about signs of hard winters to come—hornets building bigger nests, caterpillars furrier than usual … They reminisced about old storms the way other people remembered their high school days or highlights of some years-ago World Series.

“What
can
Duff do?” Doug answered me. “He doesn’t even know for sure Patsy’s on her way to New York.”

“My money says she is.”

“Anyway, Patsy’s eighteen now.”

“I wish I was.”

“Yeah, well you’re sixteen going on twelve. You didn’t come right home, did you? … We had another call I didn’t tell anyone about. Spots Starr said you and Angel were still parked behind the gym when he left, and he left late.”

“Living in a small town sucks!” I said.

“I hope you’re packing condoms, little brother!”

“I am, but they’re just for show.”

“You better keep it that way.”

“Something tells me I don’t have a choice, anymore.”

I said it, but I didn’t believe it was over between Angel and me.

The rest of that early morning I dozed and woke up, dreaming I was with Angel, then blinking awake and trying to think of things to say or do to make Mr. Kidder change his mind.

When daylight came, more rain came with it.

N
EXT MORNING AFTER WE
finished our chores, Cord came up to the house with Dad and Doug and me.

The radio and local TV were calling for volunteers to help with the levee. There was talk of bringing in inmates from a boot camp out past King’s Corners. The county jail had already sent over their prisoners.

“We should do some sandbagging ourselves,” said Dad.

Cord said, “What we got to do is get the hogs to market.”

“Hogs, pigs, the whole bunch of ’em,” Dad agreed.

“The pigs have to be destroyed,” said Doug.

“Not all of them!”

“All of them!” Doug said.

“Then we got to go fast,” Cord said. “The roads are already clogged with farmers doing the same thing.”

Without needing to be told, Mom was making coffee with Dad’s contraband supply. “We’re going to be all right here, aren’t we? Douglas, I want some warning if we’re not.”

“I hope we are,” Dad said. “The house is insured. The crops and livestock aren’t!”

“The sheriff took Atlee’s bulldozer to the levee first thing this morning,” Cord said, “and
it
got stuck halfway there. This is
big
!”

“Thanks for telling us,” said Dad.

While Dad and Cord were loading up the livestock to sell, Mom began making a meat loaf and some macaroni and cheese, in case we lost power later.

“What’s going to happen to Melvin?” she said.

“Tomorrow we’ll take him and the cows up to Yardley’s.”

I was changing into dry boots, planning on helping Doug with Atlee’s livestock after Dad and Cord took off. They were being moved to higher ground over past Floodtown.

Later, I was thinking, we could go by Sunflower Park, see if there was anything we could do for the Kidders. I didn’t think they’d refuse help, even if it was me. I’d heard over the radio some of the mobile homes were being hauled off, but most couldn’t afford to pay the steep prices being charged: two and three thousand dollars—no way the Kidders could afford that.

Evie’s Pontiac was still down on the side of the road.

I stood up and put on my poncho.

We heard a gunshot and Mom jumped.

“What was
that
?”

“Doug killing the pigs,” I said.

She kept wincing while the shots kept sounding.

“That’s all of them,” she said, finally. She’d been counting. I hadn’t.

“He had to,” I said. “They were all sick.”

Then an announcer’s voice on the radio told us the fireworks displays and picnics planned throughout the area for the Fourth of July were all canceled.

F
OURTH OF JULY MORNING.

“Parr, are you all all right?”

“We’re all right. How about you, Evie?”

“Never mind me. Is the farm okay?”

“We’re hanging in there,” I said. “I just came in the door. Mom’s down by the barn picking strawberries in the pouring rain, and Dad and Doug are sandbagging at the levee. A levee upstream gave way, so the river’s rise has slowed some.”

“
Picking strawberries
?”

“For freezing. What we can save.”

I told her about selling the hogs and boarding Melvin and the cows up at Yardley’s, and that Mom had some of our valuables packed just in case.

I said, “Maybe the river will hold off. They got a hundred thousand bags on the levee. I was working up there last night. They had convicts up there with us: drug dealers, thieves right alongside farmers, forming a human chain—it’s something else, Evie!”

I’d never gotten over to Sunflower Park. Anything personal was on hold. That had finally registered with me after I’d called Angel’s number and heard Mr. Kidder bark at me to stop bothering people who had more on their minds than their own asses. I’d never heard him use the language he had, never imagined him calling me what he did: “selfish” being about the only word that wasn’t obscene.

I hoped Evie wouldn’t ask me about her car. The road where I’d left it was underwater now.

“What a time to be away!” she said.

“Well, you can always come home,” I said.

“No, we can’t,” she said.

It was the first time she said “we.”

I said, “How’d she get there so fast?”

“She flew from St. Louis on the first.”

“Everyone was out looking for the Porsche.”

“It’s in a St. Louis parking garage now.”

“Did you expect her?” I asked.

“It’s been planned for a long time, Parr. The only good thing about your weather is it’s got Mr. Duff’s mind off us. She just talked to him, so word will get out now where we are.”

“In New York,” I said.

“You’re not going to believe this, Parr. I wanted to tell Mom myself. I’ll call again tonight.”

“Believe what?”

“We just flew out of Kennedy airport. We’re on our way to France. I don’t even believe I’m on this plane! Everything’s happening so fast.”

I said, “Evie? Good for you!”

“Do you mean it? I’m sorry about what you’re going through there. I feel that I left you in the lurch.”

“Don’t worry about us, big sister. We’ll handle it!”

“Parr? Thanks for saying that.”

W
HERE I SAW ANGEL
next was in a Salvation Army aid center in Dufftown, rummaging through a box of donated sweaters in search of one for her mother.

Sunflower Park was under ten feet of water. They’d lost everything and were staying in the V.F.W. hall at King’s Corners.

We’d held out until the tenth, then moved over to the basement at St. Luke’s church.

Angel’s face didn’t look glad to see me, so my own smile faded fast as I said, “Can we talk, Angel?”

“As soon as I find something here for Mama.”

“I just picked up some sandwiches.”

“When God gets you, He gets you good.”

“It’s the river, not God.”

“Maybe it’s God using the river.” She found a pink cardigan and put it over her arm. We started walking toward the tent flap. She said, “Daddy says maybe this is to teach us something.”

“I thought he believed sometimes things happen God just doesn’t interfere with.”

“For a reason, maybe,” Angel said. “To warn us.”

“Warn us what? That levees don’t hold?”

“It doesn’t have to do with levees. It’s what people think they can get away with, and we get to thinking along with ’em they can.”

It was raining outside. When wasn’t it? We stood just inside the tent, out of the way of people coming and going. Angel had an old raincoat on, jeans and muddy sneakers. Her long black hair was held back by a red bandanna.

“Can we talk about us?” I asked her.

“I
was
talking about us…. Daddy’s right, Parr. You should have been more responsible back that night of the dance.”

“You wouldn’t let me leave. Don’t you remember?”

“I was just
with
you. I wasn’t the one in charge, or driving the car. Maybe I didn’t know better, but
you
should have. You’re the boy.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I was trying to think up something to answer when she put in, “Of course, who’s the boy and who’s the girl is all mixed up in some people’s thinking. Some people think there’s no difference, and I guess I got to thinking all kinds of crazy things myself, since I was actually cheering on your sister and Patsy Duff. I remember
that.
That was my own faulty thinking.”

I put my hand on her shoulder. “Angel, you don’t even sound like yourself. I know this has been awful, but don’t start blaming it on things like Evie and Patsy and sin and bad thoughts. If you live in Florida, you get hit by a hurricane. If you live in California, it’s an earthquake does you in. Here, it’s the rivers. It’s geography, not morality. Do you think
I’m
immoral?”

“That sign you put up wasn’t moral, Parr, and it had to do with your own sister!”

“That’s the thanks I get for putting my trust in you!” I said. “I never had to tell you I did that!”

“Daddy put his trust in
you.
A lot of good it did him!”

She’d stopped me cold.

I didn’t want to argue with her. I was due back at St. Luke’s with the sandwiches. Then Doug, Dad, and I were taking a joboat over to see if we could get into the house through the top-floor windows.

I said, “You’re right about me not being responsible, and you’re right about it being wrong to put up that sign. I just don’t think it’s right to blame this flood on God. All these people aren’t sinners.”

She said, “Not yet, maybe. But we were all heading in that direction. I’m not the only one saying it, Parr. A lot of people are asking, How come this happened?”

“This happened because we tried to turn the Mississippi into a canal, and it’s a river!”

She was looking out toward the street, no expression on her face—until suddenly it brightened, but not because of what I was saying. She’d seen someone. She was waving her hand, smiling, finally, that old great smile of hers, like she was back to being her old self.

I saw Spots Starr heading toward the tent. He was grinning and waving, too. He looked the way I used to when I’d see Angel ahead of me.

“I should have known,” I said.

Angel said, “You should have known to be more responsible.”

“That, too,” I said. “Definitely!”

That was the last time we talked.

It wasn’t a time for talking, anyway, days that followed.

Things spoke for us.

Levees turned to Jell-O. Whole towns swallowed up. Dogs, cats, pigs, and deer clinging to rooftops. Corpses floating by, set loose from graveyards. People living in tents, attics, cellars, cars.

In the midst of it all, Will Atlee died.

“He was too late,” said Dad. “He waited too long to go down to Florida.”

“Do it now, whatever you’ve got to do,” Mom said. “You’ll never do it any younger.”

“I’ve been doing it until this.” From Dad.

Mom hooked her arm in his and said, “Me, too.”

“Excuse me,” I said, “I’m in the wrong movie. Where’s the one about the rich advertising guy?”

“That must be a coming attraction,” said Dad.

When we finally did get back inside our place, it looked like a shipwreck. We pumped water out for days, the odor of sewage and muck making us gag, everything we owned sodden, our walls covered with colonies of black, green, and purple mold and fungus.

“This is it!” Doug said. “This
does
it! Good-bye to this place forever!”

Nobody gave him an argument.

E
VIE CAME BACK FOR
a visit in late fall.

“I wouldn’t know this place,” she said.

“You should have seen it a month ago,” said Mom, “before Parr and Dad put on the new siding and Sheetrock.”

“
And
Cord,” I said.

Evie said, “Good old Cord.”

“
He
hasn’t deserted us,” Dad said.

Doug was back at the university. Evie and Patsy were driving over to see him the next day, on their way to visit Mrs. Duff.

Evie brought Dad and me back black berets from Paris, and Dad was wearing his, eating lunch at the kitchen table. We hadn’t laid new linoleum. The floor was scarred with marks left from mold and water damage. We’d nailed it back, what we could find of it, and we’d added planks from what was once our barn.

Evie’d let her hair grow down to her shirt collar. She had on tight black pants, Doc Martens, and a white canvas shell she’d bought in Rome.

She’d dropped Patsy off at Duffarm, one of the few places still intact after the floods. The Buick they’d rented in St. Louis was parked in what was left of our driveway.

Dad said, “How come you didn’t bring us back a video of your travels? I think at least we deserve a travelog, being as we’re never going to see Paris or Rome.”

“Or Florence and Madrid,” said Evie, “or even New Orleans, Miami, or Denver, Colorado, if you keep insisting on being farmers.”

Evie couldn’t believe we were rebuilding in exactly the same spot.

“What can travel around the world and still stay in one corner?” Dad asked her.

“You and your
National Geographics
?”

“A postage stamp,” said Dad.

“That’s about the size of it,” said Evie. “How are you going to manage, Dad?”

It was the first time she called him anything. They’d been talking without him saying Evie or her saying Dad, even though I was Parr and Mom was Mom.

“Part of our deal was for Atlee to will us his prize breeders,” said Dad, “and we got them to high ground okay. Eventually those hogs will buy a barn for more.”

Sometimes I thought life was about trade-offs. A levee breaking would ease some lands, but drown others. A good neighbor’s death would save our necks. A flood with all its hard lessons would soften our ways of looking at things.