In The Falling Light (6 page)

The temperature dropped further and they
were all shivering, the wind whipping their clothes and buffeting
them, trying to push them off. Rain streamed off their bodies, down
their cheeks, into their eyes and noses, and the volume of the
torrent around them raised, more and more debris cracking off the
edges of the roof. Out front, the branches of the big oak were
whipping madly, and once in a while a larger limb would snap off
with a sound like a gunshot, falling to be pulled away. Abruptly
there was a great tearing noise, like a deck of giant cards being
shuffled, and an entire section of shingles was ripped away, one
after another in mere seconds, each spinning away into the sky.

Dell scanned the horizon as best he could.
He had been through tornados, most Texans had, and twisters were
famous for teaming up with hurricanes to add their own flavor of
death and destruction. In this low light and masked by the constant
shrieking, one could be upon them before they knew it. And there
would simply be no way to hide from it.

He palmed the water off his face, rubbing it
out of his eyes, squinting into the storm. The sheep shed was gone
now, completely submerged and for all he knew, torn away
completely. The coyote was gone as well, and no one had witnessed
her passing.

The water had risen to within four feet of
the peak and his family.

The crunching of another floating tree
bumping and brushing against the house made him snap his head to
the left, and for an instant he saw the oncoming arms of a hundred
black branches, reaching to tear his family away, and then the tree
rolled and swept past. Dell let out a gasp, realizing that it was
only a matter of time before another tree arrived, floating higher,
one that didn’t turn away and brushed them off as casually as a man
sweeping toast crumbs off a table.

A cracking of branches made him look right
again, towards the front yard oak, and he saw his capsized pickup
was still firmly wedged against it. Something else had floated up
onto it and become stuck. Something wide and silver. Construction
site material? It was hard to tell through the gray curtain of
rain. After a full minute of staring he realized what it was.

Arlene saw it at the same moment and knew
immediately. “My God, is that a boat?”

A wave rocked the silver object, turning it
slightly and showing it to be the aluminum hull of a capsized
fishing boat, the black prop of an outboard motor jutting out of
the water. A red stripe ran down one side, and big, upside-down
reflective letters read LEESVILLE FIRE RESCUE.

Arlene gripped her husband’s knee in a
fierce clench. “Ray Hammond.”

Dell stared at the inverted hull. Ray
Hammond was chief of the Leesville Volunteer Fire Department, and
the crew leader of the town’s swift water rescue team.

“What happened?”

Dell shook his head. “Nothing good.”
People’s lives in small towns are hopelessly intertwined, everyone
knowing everyone’s business and all the little details of their
lives. But that was also what made that sort of life so wonderful.
Ray, his crew, their families were not strangers, and to the
McCall’s, were extensions of their own family. The sight of that
empty boat shook them, because they both knew it hadn’t floated off
a trailer somewhere. Ray and his boys would have been aboard, out
in the thick of the nightmare as soon as the water started rising,
doing their duty and trying to help their friends in the
community.

But Dell was thinking more about the
boat.

He judged the distance, about twenty yards
directly in front of the house, fast moving water in between. Water
filled with debris that could sweep him away, providing the current
didn’t do it first. He could get a head start on it by going off
the far end of the roof, buying maybe fifty feet of upstream
advantage. Then swim like hell.

A tangle of barbed wire and fence posts
rushed past.

Arlene was a better swimmer, no doubt about
that, but she wouldn’t have the strength to turn the boat upright
once she made it. He wondered if he would. Dell was not an
impressive swimmer, but twenty years of ranching had kept him fit.
It would have to be enough. The current would fight against the
boat, and despite his strength it might take it away before the job
was finished. Even if he flipped it and held on, could he get the
motor started? It was underwater now. Would it crank? He realized
there was a time not so long ago when his biggest problem was
lambing, a month-long season of labor and midwiving. He had always
thought his life depended upon its success. Funny how quickly
things changed.

Dell noticed Arlene was staring at him, and
turned to look at her. She raised her voice over the wind. “How am
I going to handle three children up here if you drown, Dell
McCall?”

“What choice do I have?”

“You can stay alive. You can stay here with
your family and hope for rescue.”

He pointed at the boat. “Ray and his crew
were the only rescue we were going to get. Bailey was right, they
can’t send up helicopters in this, and the water’s going to be up
here in two hours, probably less. No one is coming.”

His wife pushed wet hair aside and stared at
him, but it fell right back into her eyes. Then a gust hit them,
making them both hunch, the force of it ripping away more shingles
and creating whitecaps on the water’s surface, howling across the
rooftop, adding spray to the downpour.

He kissed her long and hard, then turned on
the peak and started scooting towards the opposite end of the
house. Bailey and Ricky saw him going, and cries of “Daddy!” came
to him from behind, distant in the wind as he fixed his eyes on the
edge ahead of him. Though it seemed longer, it took only minutes
before he had crossed the rain-washed roof to where it dropped off
at the end, turbulent waves spinning only a few feet below,
smashing against the side of the house before flowing around it. He
stared down at the turning current and wondered about whirlpools.
Ahead, out over the stormy flats, all manner of debris was floating
their direction, mostly trees, but also something big and flat and
dark. He watched, entranced by the sight as it slowly rolled over
in the water, wheels up.

A boxcar.

Dear Jesus. If that thing hit the house it
would take it right out from under them.

He stood, one foot on either side of the
peak, arms outstretched as he balanced against the wind,
straightening slowly. A forceful gust drove him back into a crouch,
but when it passed he straightened again. He didn’t dare look back
at his family, knowing that if he did he would lose his nerve and
crawl back to them. He took several quick breaths and dove.

The sea welcomed him like an expectant
killer.

The water was cold, faster than he had
anticipated, and no sooner did his head break the surface that he
slammed back against the wall of his house, instantly losing
whatever distance the dive had given him. He heard a hollow,
sucking gurgle and felt it carrying him to the corner, where it
would pull him under and around, sending him speeding past his
family in seconds.

Dell kicked out against the house and
started swimming, pulling hard against the current, straight into
it. The draft at the corner tore at him from behind, dragging, and
he kicked to get away, to get distance from the suction before he
tried turning towards the boat.

Rain and wind beat at his eyes, and he
sputtered in the brown water. It was so damn strong, and he felt
like he was swimming in place, going nowhere, like he was in one of
those fancy motorized lap pools rich folks installed in their
houses. Only here there was no switch to shut off the current. This
was nothing like swimming in still Texas lakes or slow moving
rivers. He tried to remember the lessons of his youth, swimming in
the heavily chlorinated pool at the ‘Y’ in Brownsville. Face down,
stroke, turn to the side and breathe, stroke, face down, stroke,
breathe, kicking, kicking all the time, never stop kicking. Fight
the urge to dog paddle.

He had moved only a few yards from the
house, and still it sucked him back.

Dell began angling to get away from that
deadly corner of the house, still into the current, stroke, stroke,
kick, breathe. Something caught at his pants leg and tugged hard, a
branch maybe, please, God, not more fencing, he would be like a
fish in a net. The object pulled free. Stroke, stroke, kick,
breathe, stroke
STROKE SWIM LIKE A MAN GODDAMIT!

He lost track of where he was, didn’t dare
look. Had he already been carried past the house? Was he struggling
towards nothing while his family watched him flailing away into the
distance? Stroke, stroke, pulling harder, kick, kick, muscles
burning,
oh my God why didn’t I take off my boots?
Stupid!
Kicking harder still, turning his face to the right for a breath.
The long dark shape of the boxcar was closer, tall white letters
down one rusting side reading SOO LINE. It was heading for the
house. Couldn’t think about that, swimming, pulling hard, hard,
HARDER!

His shirt caught on debris, jerking him
back, and Dell cried out, thrashing at the surface, coughing as
water and leaves tried to choke him. He kicked and pulled, but it
had him and his rhythm was broken. He curled up and reached back to
free himself, knowing he was going to drown now, his head smacking
against something, more debris.

He hoped Arlene and the kids wouldn’t see
him die.

Dell’s knuckles rapped against metal and he
tried to keep his head above the surface, shaking to clear his
eyes. A big black shape was inches away.

A tire.

His shirt was hooked on the bumper of his
submerged pickup.

Dell let out a thankful cry and ripped the
shirt away, scrambling up onto the undercarriage, feeling the
capsized vehicle bob under his feet. Ray Hammond’s boat was close
enough to touch, hung up on another tire. Branches cracked
overhead, and he stood in a balanced, half-crouch in water up to
his knees, seeing that the Chevy had lodged in the oak’s main
fork.

He didn’t look for the boxcar, didn’t want
to. If it hit him, he’d never know it, and would prefer that to a
miss, to seeing it tear his house and his family apart upon impact.
He moved as quickly as the water allowed, examining the aluminum
boat, seeing that the current had already put it on a helpful
angle. He wouldn’t have to flip it completely over, only about
three-quarters.

And then what? Have the water rip it from
his hands?

He moved along the truck’s undercarriage to
where the boat was actually sticking into the air a little,
creating a dark, watery gap. Dell held his breath and ducked under,
pulling himself up into the boat like a turtle in a shell.
Darkness. No, not completely, a bit of gray light coming in through
the gap. Flat seats now overhead, nothing else, all washed away. He
felt the boat shift above him, the pickup shudder beneath him, and
tensed.

It all held.

He pulled himself into the darkness towards
the back, the space between the water and air narrowing. Dell had
never been in Ray Hammond’s boat before, but he had been in plenty
similar. There, the center seat, more than just an aluminum plank
across the hull, this one a storage box. Kneeling in the darkness,
he felt for the latches, found the one on the left, flipped it,
cold hands slapping in the other direction. Found the second
latch.

The lid spilled open, gear falling out as if
from a ruptured piñata, dumping into the water. Dell’s hands
scrambled through it until they felt rope, a tightly rolled coil.
He quickly wound one end around his waist several times, knotting
it tightly. Then he crawled on his knees back towards the light and
tied the other end to the front bench seat. Had there been a
flashlight in the box? Probably, the kind that floated. He would
need it to examine the outboard motor. He started back to look.

Tucked inside the turtled boat, Dell didn’t
see it coming.

A forest green dumpster, half filled with
water, heavy and floating like a boat itself, washed into the rear
of the Chevy, striking hard and dislodging it from the tree. The
pickup slid away from the oak as the dumpster turned over, hitting
the rear of the rescue boat before it sank, knocking it loose from
the tire which had held it in place. The current caught the
aluminum hull and sent it spinning away. Dell, trapped inside the
capsized hull, was pulled with it, his head and shoulder slamming
into a metal wall, casting him into deep water as the boat moved
off, the rope dragging him along the bottom behind it.

Arlene and the kids screamed as they saw the
dumpster break both the boat and the pickup free, and she shouted
her husband’s name into the storm as the current carried the
aluminum shape away from the house and out of sight. Dell’s head
didn’t appear.

Two feet below the family, the surface
washed against the shingles as the hurricane sent waves of spray
over their huddled figures. Arlene heard a metallic groan and
looked over her shoulder to see the boxcar moving in the current, a
rusting behemoth turning slowly on the surface, creaking as it
moved past the house with only feet to spare. It rotated and then
drove into the barn like a great torpedo, and in a splintering
crash the structure was torn apart, the roof collapsing, a whole
piece floating for a moment, then breaking up and slipping under.
Hay and shattered planks vanished quickly downstream.

Arlene stared into the storm, the shock of
seeing the barn torn away quickly replaced with grief for her
husband, for the children she would not be able to save, for the
life they would never know. Her tears were lost in the rain.

An hour passed, and the water was now
touching their feet, the spray a relentless whipping, and all three
kids were crying now. Arlene reached out to pull them to herself,
and got them started with a prayer. Above them, around them, the
storm closed in to finish the killing. In the end, the wind became
the sound of a ripping chainsaw.