AS JESSE DROVE Hannah and Brandon home from emergency, the rain still fell so hard the wipers couldn’t keep up, and he had to peer out the truck window to see the road in front of him. A passing car threw a wash of water over them. Lightning hit the fields on either side, and static crashed into the music on the Chevy’s radio with each strike. Jesse clicked off the radio. “Christ,” he said. “When is this going to let up?”
“Not until it’s done,” said Brandon.
Jesse laughed, thinking he had stated the obvious.
“Until what is done?” Hannah asked him.
The set of Brandon’s mouth was grim. “We shouldn’t go back home,” he said. “Not yet.”
“Where do you suggest we go?” Jesse asked him. Brandon didn’t answer. He looked straight ahead, at the wash of water pouring down the windshield, obscuring the landscape around them.
They drove on. Trees along the side of the road thrashed back and forth. Jesse dodged one that fell in front of them, then struggled to control the truck in the raging wind. The driver of an approaching truck flashed his lights and honked as they met, apparently trying to tell him something, but Jesse kept going, driving through the stream of water that covered the road. The rain fell faster than it could drain.
Alex was standing at the red kitchen door under the roof overhang when they finally arrived in the farmyard. He held his jacket over his head as he sloshed towards them through the pool that covered the lane. Large drops pelted the water around him as if he was under fire. Hannah opened the truck door.
“We’ve got to go now,” he said.
“What are you doing here?”
“I couldn’t get back across—the river was too swollen. I waited inside. Hope you don’t mind.” He looked at Jesse.
Jesse leaned over Bran to talk to Alex. “Thank you for helping to find Brandon—and for saving my daughter’s life.” He paused. “I’m sorry about the things I said to you in the past.”
“We can worry about all that later,” said Alex. “Right now we’ve got to go.”
“Go where?” Hannah asked.
“Doesn’t matter. Anywhere on higher ground. The hall.” He pointed at the community hall on the hillside above them. “Grant’s going from house to house, warning people in the valley to leave. The logjam at the narrows has started to collapse. It isn’t going to hold much longer.”
Above the remains of the burned bridge, muddied stormwater had broken the banks and threatened to burst the log dam completely. Water already churned muddy and thick with debris into Gina’s pasture and had begun to flow into Stew’s fields as well. “Shit,” said Hannah. “Spice.” The mare was struggling to maintain her footing in the rushing water within her small pasture at river’s edge. “We’ve got to get that horse out of there.”
“Where’s Gina?” Alex asked. “Can’t she take care of it?”
Jesse said, “After she followed us into emergency, she headed back to her apartment.”
“I’ve got to get Spice,” Hannah said. She got out of the truck and ran through rain to the gate. Across the road, Spice had fallen and was now sliding backwards along the fenceline as the current tugged her along.
“Hannah,” Alex called. “It’s too dangerous.”
“She’ll die if I don’t help her,” Hannah called back.
Alex splashed through the water behind Hannah for a few yards, then stopped. “Hannah, don’t. There’s no time. Look.” The torrent had undercut the bank at the entrance to the burned bridge and a chunk of gravel road slid into the water. The river was about to overwhelm the logjam at the narrows, threatening to flood the valley.
Hannah turned back to Alex. “Go!” she shouted. She nodded at the yard of the farmhouse. “Get Abby into the truck and head up to the hall with Jesse and Brandon. I’ll ride Spice there.”
“I’ll give you a hand.”
“No. Spice doesn’t know you. There’s nothing you can do.” When she saw Alex hesitate, she called out again. “Go!”
Hannah climbed through the fence and waded to the horse. The mare was still down, backed into the corner of the fence where the ground had given way. Her back legs were stuck. She was without a halter and Hannah had no rope. She looked around in desperation. By the time she got to the barn and back, the horse would be swept into the river.
Hannah slid her belt from her jeans and looped it around the horse’s neck, fastening it. Then she pulled with all her strength. “Come on, Spice, you can do this. Let’s go!” At Hannah’s urging, the horse struggled to her feet but then slid and fell again. The water was rising so quickly, Hannah thought Spice was lost, but then the horse hurtled forward onto more stable ground.
Hannah waited a moment as the horse recovered, patting her neck, then jogged with her through the water-filled pasture. As they reached the gate, Hannah heard a boom like that of an explosion and turned to the river. The thundering water had pushed through the dam, lifting the logs from the narrows. Water rushed out in all directions, surging into the pastures, flooding the reserve road, and pulling a soup of logs and debris in its wake that travelled downriver as a mass. On the far shore, trees toppled and power poles fell one after the other, the lines sparking and sizzling as they hit water. Cars were lifted and turned by the current. One flipped on its side, exposing its undercarriage. The people from the reserve had already scrambled to higher ground. Many of them now stood in front of the grave tent, staring down on the chaos below. The water was rolling across the orchard towards the Robertson farmhouse.
“Jesus, come on, Spice, let’s go.” Hannah jumped on the horse, grabbing her mane, and slapped the mare’s rump. “Go!” she shouted. “Git!” The horse galloped up the road with Hannah struggling to stay astride. She hadn’t ridden since the day of her mother’s funeral. Jesse had waited with Brandon, Alex and Abby in the truck at the gate to make sure Hannah was okay. As Hannah charged past on the horse, Jesse revved out of the yard, fishtailing in a spray of water onto the road. Following Hannah, they raced the floodwaters up the hill to the hall. As Jesse parked the truck, Hannah remained on the horse as Spice cooled down, and she saw the swollen river swallow the valley floor. The development at the mouth of the river was completely destroyed. Only the cabs of the machinery were visible on the construction site. A pickup truck slid sideways towards the lake, dragged along by the rush of water. A half-finished house had been torn from its foundation and floated on the current.
Soon her grandfather’s outbuildings, the ancient granaries, the machine shed and, finally, the barn were engulfed. One by one, the buildings slid sideways before collapsing into the waters. “Not the house,” Hannah said under her breath. “Please not the house.” But the river ate the farmhouse, too, lifting and then shifting the old building from its foundation. The rush of water dragged the building forward, and the house that Eugene Robertson had built floated like a boat over the drowned pasturelands, then downriver and around Dead Man’s Bend.