Out of the Woods: Stories

High Water Everywhere

Zules drove slowly, the headlights of his eighteen-wheeler dull against the fog. He’d driven in rain for two days, and it was hard to know where the road left off and the land began. The moon and stars were gone. He was running heavy through Oregon, following the Lower Callapooya River to avoid weigh stations on the interstate.

Over the trucker’s channel came a report that a dike had broken. Zules switched to the local police band and heard a cop’s voice telling emergency workers to evacuate immediately. The river wasn’t just spilling over the top of the dike. Pressure had torn a hole through a weak spot and water was surging across the bottomland.

Zules steered to the shoulder and stepped out of the truck. Blown rain stung his face and arms. He cranked down the trailer legs and unscrewed the hoses that held the brake and electric lines. He worked fast, smashing a finger in the darkness, paying no more attention than if he’d nicked the handle of a tool. He didn’t feel right about leaving his load, but without its extra weight he could beat the coming water. He climbed into his truck and pushed hard through the gears. The land reminded him of a tabletop, and he was heading for its edge.

When he reached a roadblock manned by a state trooper, he knew he’d outrun the river gushing through the dike. Zules slipped his hand into his shirt pocket and touched the small gourd his mother had given him for luck. It was dry.

He drove to Crawfordsville, got a room, and reported his abandoned trailer to the county sheriff. Zules was so tired he was wide awake. At the motel lounge he ordered bourbon and branch. The only customer was a woman slumped at the bar with her eyes closed, both hands around an empty glass. She lifted her head.

“Don’t mean to bother you,” Zules said.

“You didn’t,” she said. “I was just testing my eyelids for light leaks.”

Zules told her about losing his trailer. She listened as if his story were common. Her clothes were wet and muddy.

“It rained every day for two months,” she said. “Then started raining twice a day. The clear-cut let water run off the mountain. This whole town’s on one slow drown. I’m sick to death of it. My store’s got four feet of water in it.”

“What kind of store?”

“Frame shop. The wallboard leached the water to the ceiling till it fell in. The light fixtures electrocuted the water snakes. They’re still floating on top.”

She laughed without changing her eyes or her mouth. It was just a sound coming from her head.

“I cut through here to dodge the flooding,” Zules said. “All I had to do was make California and I’d be safe.”

“Water runs south.”

“I damn sure wish I never.”

“I got wishes, too.”

“Who don’t.”

“Not like mine,” she said. “I wish I was somebody else. I’m not a good person anymore.”

“Maybe you’re a little drunk’s all.”

“I can hold my liquor.”

“I ain’t saying you can’t.”

“It’s the water,” she said. “We don’t have anywhere to put it. It won’t pile up like snow. It just stays and then it goes bad. Same as me.”

“Maybe you should have some coffee.”

She stood and leaned against the table.

“I’m not drunk,” she said. “I’m sober as a judge.”

“That ain’t saying much where I’m from.”

“Maybe you should go back there.”

The woman walked slowly to the door, taking each step in a careful manner, resting her hand on bar stools for support. Zules wished he was the kind of guy who’d follow her home. He ordered another shot. He couldn’t quite believe that he’d abandoned a full trailer in Oregon. He felt like a turtle who’d run off and left his shell.

In the morning his head hurt. He turned on the TV and learned that a four-foot wave of water had ripped across the valley. The water had spread over the land like batter in a skillet, covering everything, moving on its own. The phone rang and Zules hoped it was the woman from the night before.

“This is Deputy Terry,” a hurried voice said. “We got us a trailer. You’ll have to describe yours.”

“It’s a Peterbilt. Grey and white with Kentucky plates. Mud flaps got chrome bulldogs on them.”

“Son of a bitch. We got somebody else’s rig.”

“Regular yard sale out there, ain’t it.”

The deputy hung up and Zules went to the lounge, suddenly homesick for Kentucky. The hillsides were so steep it was like living in a maze, but it wasn’t a place where you could lose a truck trailer. When Zules was home he stayed with his mother, who was seventy-four. As the youngest child, he was supposed to take care of her, but after a few days he’d be restless, ready for straight roads and flat land. His mother said he was like a cat that hadn’t been neutered. He said she had a heart like railroad steel.

The TV in the bar requested volunteers to help sandbag the town, and the bartender offered Zules a lift. They drove through streets of water past floating propane tanks tied to trees. Sandbags made walls around buildings — the fancier the business, the higher the wall.

A dull grey sky covered the sun. Zules waded to a line of people passing sandbags. He found a shovel and someone squatted before him with an open bag and he filled it with sand. The damp air was heavy in his lungs. Shrubs were dead from too much rain. A man carrying a video camera with a number three on it stepped around the pile of sand. Beside him was a young man with makeup on his face who wore a fly-fishing vest and a duck hunting cap. He was talking into a microphone.

When the sand ran out, Zules walked through drizzle to a water cooler on the back of a National Guard truck. Soldiers in camouflage held walkie-talkies and damp cigarettes. The deputy sheriff was with them and Zules asked about his trailer.

“Nothing,” the deputy said. He spat between his teeth, using a technique that Zules remembered practicing as a boy. “You didn’t see anybody by that dike last night, did you? No hitchhikers or nothing?”

“It was hard to see,” Zules said. “Why?”

“Somebody went up there last night and blew that stinking dike open.”

“How come?”

“Give that water somewhere to go. It flooded ten thousand acres of cropland. Whoever it was didn’t want that river to bust through down here.”

“Hell, that’s probably everybody, ain’t it.”

“You’re the only man I know by the dike last night.”

Zules laughed until he saw the man’s face harden.

“A farmer drowned,” the deputy said. “You’re the only man I know thinks that funny.”

“I wasn’t laughing at him,” Zules said. “I was laughing at you thinking I’d flood my own rig. Ask your state trooper where I come on him. Here I bust my hind end moving sand for your town and you say I’m flooding it. I don’t see you doing any shovel work. Your boots ain’t even wet.”

“Keep it up, son,” the deputy said. “Run that mouth and see where you end up at.”

“You can’t lock a man up for talking. This is America if you didn’t know it.”

“It’s Oregon and I’m the law.”

“Damn good thing crime’s low.”

The deputy’s face turned red. The National Guard glanced at each other, trying to hold back grins. The deputy reached for his handcuffs.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”

“I ain’t done a thing,” Zules said.

The deputy stepped behind him and slid the cuffs over each wrist, squeezing them hard against the bone. He moved Zules through ankle-deep water to a patrol car.

“Hey!” Zules yelled. “Hey, channel three! Here’s some news!”

“Shut the hell up,” the deputy said.

The camera man began to trot toward Zules and the deputy. Behind him came the man in the fly-fishing vest, holding the microphone over his head like a pistol. A ring of people stood quietly in the flood-water. Zules saw the woman from the bar. She had her hands on her hips, glaring at the deputy. She looked better in the day, the opposite of most women Zules had met in a tavern.

“Officer,” the reporter said. “What exactly—”

“Yes,” the woman from the bar said. “Just what in the hell do you think you’re doing, Kenneth?”

The deputy began moving Zules to the police car. The backseat was bare metal with no door handle, and Zules slumped low to avoid leaning on his cuffed hands. He hoped the video footage stayed on local stations. He’d hate for his mother to see it.

Half an hour later, Zules was sitting in the county jail’s common room, watching a television bolted high on the wall. Below it was a pay phone that didn’t work. The other prisoner had the TV remote in his shirt pocket and a toothbrush in his mouth. He introduced himself as Sheetrock James, kin to Jesse. His hands were small, with the shortest fingers Zules had ever seen. The ends were chewed so badly that the nails were tiny spots surrounded by raw skin. His crime was wrecking a dump truck at a landfill.

“Best thing was me getting arrested,” he said around the toothbrush. “I’m staying right here till the flood’s over. How high’s that water getting to be? You ain’t in here on murder, are you?”

Zules shook his head. A soap opera was playing on TV, what his mother called “the stories.” His mother never talked about neighbors, but gossiped about TV characters in an intimate way.

“Hey,” Zules said to Sheetrock. “Your mama watch TV shows like this?”

“Ain’t got one.”

“No TV?”

“Mama,” Sheetrock said. “I mean I was born from one. Just that she died when I was two. My daddy shot her. She was holding me on the porch, and he shot her twice. They say she set down easy to not let me fall. Daddy, he got twelve years over it. Then he went back to Oklahoma.”

Zules regretted that he’d started talking. He’d been in jail before and the best way to get through it was with silence, same as at his mother’s house.

“Wake me up when the news comes on,” he said.

“Sure thing, man. No problem. You must be one of those people who can take naps. I wish I was. I’m up half the night. It’s like I can hear myself talk in my own head.”

“Hush, now.”

“Yeah, man. Sure. If anyone else comes in, I’ll tell them to be quiet.”

Zules closed his eyes. When Sheetrock started yelling, Zules knew he’d been asleep. For a few seconds he was disoriented, until the slow realization that he had awakened in a cage. It was a terrible feeling.

“Hey man, it’s you!” Sheetrock was pointing at the TV. “You’re a goddamn star. Look.”

The reporter said that a trucker had been arrested for blowing the dike. There was a final shot of Zules in the police car. Zules had never seen himself on camera and didn’t care for his appearance. He looked rough, like someone from the worst hollows at home, a man who belonged in the back of a police car.

“Just think of it,” Sheetrock said. “Me celling with a hardcase. I never knew nobody on TV before.” He offered Zules the remote. “Here, wish I had more to give.”

Zules waved it away and fought down the urge to pace. He didn’t mind getting locked up and he didn’t really blame the sheriff. Cops were just guys doing a job. Zules couldn’t think of much worse work except maybe driving a truck.

The jailer brought two trays of food into the common room. He gave Zules a hard stare and left. Zules ate the sandwich of baloney on white bread. He gave his cake to Sheetrock.

“Thanks, man,” Sheetrock said. “Guess you’re watching your weight, huh. What I wouldn’t give for a pork chop right now. The water done jumped through this town, man. Worst flooding ever. TV preacher said God did it on account of Portland’s porn shops.”

The jailer came back with his mouth tight. Sheetrock started eating faster.

“Take your time,” the jailer said. “Your cellie here’s out. Somebody paid his damn bail.”

Zules looked at Sheetrock as if seeing him for the first time. His clothes didn’t fit and he needed a haircut. The toothbrush stuck out of his mouth like a handle as he ate.

“Want me to see about you getting out?” Zules said. “Bail can’t be all that high on a car wreck.”

“Nope. I’m a stayer. That water is bad for my nerves. It won’t get in here, either. These cells are on the second floor up. Best place to be just now.”

“I could bring you something.”

“I got everything I want right here, man. You ought to stay, too. Lot to be said for a man who stays put.”

The jailer led Zules to an office where he signed a form to get his wallet, keys, and the gourd. He figured the news had gone national and somebody at home had seen it. He was surprised they’d got him out so fast.

“Who paid my bail?” he said.

“Somebody went through a town lawyer.” The jailer opened the main door. “Come back now,” he said.

Outside it was dusk and raining again. The water table was above the ground with nowhere to go and Zules felt caught in a crossfire from above and below. He’d heard that there was no new water in the world, that it was all a million years old, evaporating and coming back as rain. He wondered where the hole was that was left by the storms. Maybe the oceans were lower.

A car slowed behind him. The woman from the bar opened the passenger door and he got into the car. She wore a long vinyl poncho. Her bare legs ran into heavy galoshes.

“Are you hungry?” she said.

“Yes, but I don’t much feel like eating.”

“How was it?”

“Not bad. They got cable in there. They had that at home, half the boys would get locked up just to watch their shows.”

“Where’s home?”

“Kentucky.”

“What part?”

“The part people leave. You from herebouts?”

“Born and bred, except for five years in school at Corvallis. Halfway through I changed my major from science to art. My whole worldview went from the left hemisphere of my brain to the right, just like that.”

Zules nodded. He didn’t know what she was talking about.

“Sometimes I feel like an English novel translated into Chinese. It’s backwards and upside down, and you read it in the opposite direction. Know what I mean?”

He nodded again. People who’d gone to college made him nervous. He always felt as if they looked down on him, were waiting for a chance to make him sound stupid. He’d learned to be quiet around them, and eventually he discovered that his silence made them nervous.

She pulled into a driveway and shut off the engine and got out of the car. Zules followed her. The small house was jammed with boxes stacked on furniture. Everything was off the floor. She pulled a bottle of vodka from a cabinet and poured two shots.

“Mi casa es tu casa,” she said.

She swallowed the vodka and filled the glass again. Zules sipped his drink, wondering if what she’d said was from that backward Chinese book.

She opened a door and went down wooden steps and Zules followed. Water was seeping along cracks in the basement walls. An arched stream spouted from the corner like a fountain. Several inches of water ran steadily across the floor toward a hole in the corner. She shoved a stick into the opening. There was a dull click and the sound of a motor.

“Sump pump’s got a short,” she said.

“Kindly risky in all this wet.”

“It’s what I’m down to for risks. I have to start a bad habit just to have one to quit.”

“I gave up smokes.”

“Me, too. Plus pot, the dog track, and demolition derbies. The older I get, the harder it is not to be bored. Travel does it for you, I guess.”

“Well, I’m in new places pretty regular.”

“Must be nice.”

“Don’t reckon,” he said. “Once you leave a place, you’re sort of plowed under for living there again. I don’t stay nowhere but the truck mostly.”

“I shouldn’t have come back here after school. I guess that’s what ruined me.”

“You don’t look all that mint.”

“I figure guys like you have every kind of connection.”

“Well, I got cousins all through Ohio.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Zules nodded, glad that the basement was dark and she couldn’t see his face turning red. She stepped close to him.

“You know why I wear a wedding ring?” she said.

“No.”

“To remind me not to sleep with married men.”

“I ain’t married.”

She kissed him and he could taste the vodka. Her poncho squeaked. She went up stone steps to a tornado hatch and pushed it open. Warm air blew into the cellar. Zules climbed the steps to a backyard where lilac bushes grew lush from three months of rain. The storm hid the stars. The sound of thunder spread across the night.

A quick gust jerked the woman’s poncho and he could see the pale flash of skin. She took his hand and tugged him to the middle of the yard and kissed him. He smelled the lilacs and the rain. She began to unbuckle his belt. He slid his hands beneath her poncho and was astonished to realize that she was naked. Her skin was wet. The storm pelted them with water. Wind lifted the poncho and she tugged it over her head and it disappeared into the darkness as if yanked by a rope. Very slowly they sank to the ground. The earth was soft. She rolled him on his back.

Rain ran into Zules’s mouth and his eyes and his nose. He no longer knew where the water ended and the earth began. The storm crossed overhead, rain flying in all directions, the bellow of thunder within each drop. From a long ways away he could hear someone moaning. The sky was black and the air was warm. The moaning voice became his own. In a quick flash of lightning he saw her above him, her arched body streaming water, her face aimed at the sky, the veins straining in her neck. She resembled someone fighting not to drown.

The storm moved rapidly east, leaving a drizzle that tapered away. High in the night, a speck soon became one of many stars. He felt her breathing become normal. His mind relaxed, moving in various directions at once. He thought of her basement, which reminded him of jail, and he realized that she’d been waiting for him on the street.

“Was it you who bailed me out?” he said.

“You guessed.”

“How much it run you?”

“Six.”

“I can’t pay you back anywhere soon.”

“That’s not important.”

“What’d you do it for?”

She didn’t say anything.

“Not for this,” he said. “You didn’t get me out just to bring me here, did you?”

“No. I’m not that hard up.”

“Well, why then?”

“That deputy hasn’t slept in three days. The flood’s just too big for him. Sort of over his head. You’re the first person he saw all summer that he didn’t have a history with. He’s not really that mean.”

“Sounds like you know him pretty good.”

“He’s my brother.”

Zules became tense, aware that the air had turned chilly and he was lying in mud. Kentucky had high ground, woods to hide in, and thousands of creeks to drain the water. When he was home, he felt smothered by hills. Now he was trapped by flood. He’d been safer in jail. A part of him envied Sheetrock for knowing exactly what he wanted. Zules chuckled.

“What?” she said.

“Nothing. Just a guy in jail.”

“It should be me.”

“You wouldn’t like it.”

“Maybe not,” she said. “But I’m guilty.”

“Everyone is of something.”

“I mean really guilty.”

“You don’t have to tell me nothing.”

“It was me who blew that dike.”

She began to cry and he held her.

“I thought it would take the pressure off down here,” she said. “You know, save the town from getting flooded out. I wanted to help people, but that man died. It’s the same as if I killed him.”

Zules gave the woman a long, tight hug and gently lifted her off him. She was shivering. Her wet hair made her head look small. He led her into the house and poured vodka, which seemed to revive her. Water pooled on the floor where they stood. Zules closed his pants and buckled his belt, feeling awkward since she was naked. A mosquito hummed past his ear. He wanted to say something but didn’t know what. She spoke instead.

“You just go around living however you want. Must be nice to be that free.”

“Except for going to jail.”

“That’s all this town is. One big jail of water.”

Zules slid his hand in his pocket and offered her the little gourd. The seeds rattled. She held it in cupped hands, dripping water.

“For luck,” he said.

“I hurt all over.”

“I know.”

“There’s no need to stay,” she said, “or go.”

He wondered what she wanted but didn’t know how to find out. He moved to the door, still looking at her. Mud ran up her legs past her knees, reminding him of old-fashioned stockings. She was holding the gourd. As he left he realized how lovely her shoulders were.

Zules began walking, unsure of direction and not really caring. The night sky had temporarily cleared to a black sheen filled with stars. He could feel the water in his boots, the weight of mud on his back. He shut down his mind and walked, glad for the necessity of motion. From everywhere came the steady sound of dripping water.

A police car slowed in a crossroads and stopped beside him. The deputy was driving. He wasn’t wearing his uniform, and Zules felt as if a hellhound had finally found his trail. As the water rose, he was sinking. He was going to be killed and lost in the flood and he didn’t really care. He was tired. For his mother’s sake, he hoped that someone would find his body. It occurred to him that dying on a cold wet night was no worse than a fine autumn day.

“How’s she doing?” the deputy said.

“My mother? They’ll knock her in the head on Judgment Day.”

“You know who I mean,” the deputy said. “Is she all right?”

“Not exactly.”

“Get in.”

“I’m pretty bad muddy.”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s a county car.”

“I don’t really need a lift.”

“Just get in the stinking car. I’ll run you by your motel.”

Zules slid in the front seat and the deputy made a U-turn. He drove past blinking yellow lights on sawhorses that blocked flooded streets. All the houses were dark. People sat on the porches holding flashlights and rifles.

The deputy stopped at the motel. A maple by the door had been hit by lightning and the lot was covered with wood chips and twigs. Zules could smell the fresh scent of the tree’s inner meat. The burn mark ran to the ground.

“Charges are dropped,” the deputy said.

“That state trooper clear me?”

“No. We got a witness. An old man saw a car leaving the scene. He can put the driver in it, too.”

The deputy sighed. He shifted his body toward Zules. His voice was low and sad, defeated.

“I know who did it.”

“Anyone else know?” Zules said.

“Not unless you do.”

“What about the witness?”

“He’s an old river rat,” the deputy said. “Long as he don’t get busted for running trotlines, he won’t say nothing.”

“And if he did, nobody’d believe him.”

“About like you.”

“In that case,” Zules said, “I best be leaving.”

A shower came over the car, the drops rapid as if a squirrel ran along the roof. The rain moved down the street. The motel’s neon sign abruptly went out. Lightning flashed on the horizon and Zules realized that he’d been hearing the dull rumble of thunder for a long time. It was coming from everywhere, like the rain.

He opened the car door but the deputy’s voice stopped him. “I don’t know what to do. I thought I did but I’m not sure anymore. You ever get that way?”

“That’s why I left home.”

“I’ve never lived anywhere but this place.”

“How come you to be a cop?”

“Just like to see things run smooth, I guess. I know everybody here, who their folks are and their kids. Every little thing they do. I know who steals and who looks in windows and who sleeps with who. I’m tired of it, too. But the knowing keeps me here.”

“Same thing drove me off my home hill.”

The deputy grinned, a thin expression that was gone fast. “Real reason is, ten years ago I couldn’t afford a car. I let the county give me one.”

“That’s why I took my first driving job.”

“But you can move on.”

“I’d rather be a stayer.”

Zules walked to his truck and climbed into the cab. He let the engine warm up, feeling its power vibrate through his body, relaxing him. He felt safe. It was the highest above ground he’d been since leaving jail. Sheetrock was right about the safety of the cell. Zules decided to give him a call in a few days, same as he would his mother.

Zules opened his map and stared at the red and blue highway lines until they blurred like veins under skin. He was pretty close to the edge of the country, with nowhere to go. He sat in the truck for a long time, looking into the darkness. The wet land was flat as tin. He decided to head home for good. He was thirty-one, with no ex-wife and a little money. There’d be someone to marry him. He could get his own place then. He’d sell the truck and apply for work, maybe as a cop. He thought he’d make a good one.

Rain fell in waves and his headlights were dull against the fog. He put the truck in gear and headed home, moving into second and third carefully. It was dangerous to drive fast without a trailer behind him. He needed a heavy load to keep him stable.