As soon as she heard the roar, Charlotte instinctively knew what had happened. She had always been dubious of that dam, although she had always imagined that it would leak its way into uselessness rather than collapse. Yet here it came, the great rush of water that could only have happened from such a thing, and she watched in horror as it rounded the bend at the head of the valley.
Her home, at the far south end of Daybreak, stood on higher ground than most, yet fear still gripped her as she saw the wave approach. Houses, sheds, fences, and a tangle of trees and bushes all rolled toward her. For a moment she froze, then without hesitation she scrambled out the back door and up the slope where she planted her vegetable garden, pausing only when she passed through the back gate. From this elevation, she could see that her house would be safe.
But what about Newton, and Adam and Penelope? Charlotte followed the hillside toward the center of the village, as she strained to see. She crossed paths with Josephine Mercadier, the face of Panic itself, running down the slope from the Temple. Josephine pointed wordlessly to the jumble of houses at the upper end of the village.
“Don’t go that way yet,” Charlotte called. “One task for safety, and then we’ll come at them.”
She led Josephine back to the Temple. From that vantage point, Charlotte could see that the great surge of water, though devastating, was but one wave. The river would soon return to its former level. And they needed to be ready when it did.
“Is there any rope in here?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Josephine said, still frantic. “Yes, wait. Yes. Some clothesline.”
“Fetch it, please. We’ll tie ourselves together.”
Josephine dashed to the storeroom for the rope, and Charlotte took advantage of the moment to stoke the fire in the big woodstove. They would need a place to bring the injured, and that place would need to be warm.
They walked to the water’s edge and tied the rope around their waists. Charlotte had no confidence that it would hold them, but the cinch gave her a sense of reassurance anyway. They waded into the current.
The shockingly cold water numbed her legs almost immediately, and the slick clay mud, washed in from the upstream banks, made for treacherous footing. Could this slimy slosh underfoot really have been their prime farmland, just minutes ago? And now, unrecognizable. An oblivious muskrat swam by.
“Step lightly,” Charlotte said. “The water’s likely full of nails.”
They reached the first house, more a pile of lumber than a house at this point, and looked inside. Empty. Either those inside had escaped, or they had been swept away.
“Hello!” Charlotte shouted. “Anyone?”
A man’s voice came from ten yards down. “Over here.” They glanced at each other. It was J.M. Bridges’ voice. “On our way,” she said.
The current still tugged at them, but ebbed a little with each minute. Charlotte wondered why Bridges hadn’t come out to meet them, until they worked their way around to Josephine’s house.
It had been torn away from its chimney and spun around three-quarters of a turn before catching on the trunk of a tree. The impact had tilted it into the soft dirt, with the door sill about three feet off the ground. Debris wedged underneath the floor to keep it at this crazy angle as the water receded. Charlotte sloshed to the door frame and looked inside: A jumble of furniture heaped along the wall. Bridges and Marie, pinned behind it, Bridges’ head peeking out of the top of the pile, a wan smile on his face. Nothing visible of Marie but her unmoving arm, draped around his neck.
“We were doing all right until the house tipped up,” he said. “Then the room came down on us.” Josephine joined her at the door. “Your mama’s out cold,” Bridges said to her. “I kept the furniture off her as best I could, but we got roughed up a bit.”
The two of them climbed into the house and pushed aside tables and chests to reach Bridges and Marie. They laid her on the tilted floor, where Charlotte leaned close to listen. Marie’s breath came in shallow, ragged bursts.
“She’s alive, but we need to get her up to the Temple to dry off and warm up,” she said. “Help us carry her, Mr. Bridges.”
“No,” Bridges said. Charlotte turned in surprise. With the furniture off him, Bridges had sunk to a squat, his back against the wall. “I can’t move my arm.”
In a glance she saw that his shoulder hung at a strange angle, dislocated at least and probably broken. “Come up here and lie on the floor,” she said. “Get your feet out of the water. We’ll be back for you as soon as we’ve got Marie out.”
Bridges complied, and without another word Charlotte and Josephine linked arms to carry Marie out of the house. Though she was a slight woman, the weight of her unconscious body bore heavily on them. They stopped every few feet to catch their breath as they slogged toward the Temple, until they came into view and more townspeople rushed to help. “We’re fine,” Charlotte said to the two Pettibone boys who arrived first. “Get Mr. Bridges out of that house.” Then more people arrived, and Charlotte and Josephine plopped to the ground to rest, gasping from their exertions.
“The damn fool,” Josephine said. “He could have drowned himself.” “But he didn’t, and your mother’s alive,” said Charlotte. “Be grateful for life’s occasional favors.”
“Oh, I’m grateful.” And Josephine, without warning and without restraint, began to cry.
When Newton Turner heard the rush of water, he ran out of his house and looked up the street. The wave from the dam looked like a rolling hedge from where he stood, three feet high and roaring like a tornado. He dashed down the street to Adam’s house and burst through the door. “Run out the back!” he shouted. “Now!”
The urgency in his voice compelled them out the door. But they had only taken a few steps when the water reached them. Newton and Adam boosted Penelope into a maple tree behind their house and then scrambled up as the water pulled at their feet. They sat in the lower branches, feeling the tree shake as the flood rushed past.
“If this thing goes over, we’re done for,” Adam said. “They’ll find us down at French Mills.”
Newton couldn’t answer. His mind had been taken over by unreasoning terror, and all he could do was cling to the trunk of the tree and pray that it would hold. As a child, he had been caught out on the river once and nearly drowned. He had survived by clinging to the mill wheel until rescue came, but he had never forgotten the desperate sensation, the loneliness, the feeling that all was lost and hopeless, and now as they gripped the branches of the maple tree, that feeling returned as powerful and stomach-chilling as before. He was embarrassed but paralyzed by his fright.
“Don’t know what kind of root system these trees have,” Adam said.
“Adam, please,” said Penelope. “Don’t talk.” Newton whispered a silent vow of thanks to her.
He had wasted his life and he knew it, chasing after dreams, people, ideas, that he knew to be foolish and false, not even his own ideas ultimately, but the ideas of the Newton Turner that everyone imagined him to be, and that he himself had imagined, the Newton Turner who was president, son of the founder, the know-it-all leader with a great froth of importance spouting from the top of his head. Did he really want that? Had he ever wanted that? He no longer knew, and there was nothing more useless than a deathbed repentance. All he knew at the moment was that he wanted to live, not die.
Newton closed his eyes and waited. Shouts and cries came from the distance. He sought to settle his breath as his life tipped in the balance.
Then he felt the tree move and resigned himself to death.
But it was only Adam, stepping on his branch as he descended. “Come on!” Adam said. “The water’s going down. People need our help.”
Newton opened his eyes. The water had receded almost as quickly as it came, and now stood a foot deep at the base of the tree. He climbed down, feeling foolish at his panic. But at the same time, a calm had come over him, leaving him with a refreshing sense of clarity about himself and his place in this little world.
He saw his mother and Josephine limping toward the Temple. So they were safe. Adam took Penelope in that direction as well. Newton looked back at his house. Still standing.
So was the home of John Wesley and Sarah Wickman, where Newton found them standing on his bedframe along with Wilhelmina, their windows broken out by the water’s force and a coating of slushy mud over everything. Newton waded to them through floating debris.
“What happened?” Wickman said. His face was a map of confusion and fear.
“The dam upstream broke,” said Newton. “Just too much water, I guess.” He turned his back and crouched down. “Climb on my back and I’ll get you out of here.”
Wickman looked dubious but leaned over him and wrapped his arms around his neck. “My books,” he said to Sarah. “Bring my books.”
“All right, Papa,” she said. “I’ll bring all I can carry and come back for the rest.”
Slowly they trudged out of the house and up the slick wet path to the Temple. “Is Penelope all right?” Sarah asked.
“Yes. I was with her. They’re up ahead.”
Sarah ran ahead, leaving Newton and Wilhelmina to make their own way, but Newton didn’t mind. The present family was safe; she needed to tend to the family of the future.
In a few minutes he reached the Temple and found a place near the stove for Wickman. The pews had been arranged into makeshift family circles. Charley Pettibone’s doing, he guessed. Sure enough, Charley came up to him a few minutes later.
“Trying to get a head count,” he said. “See who’s missing, if anybody.”
“What do you know so far?”
“Can’t locate the Miller boy. But his neighbors think he went out hunting this morning.”
“We should look anyway.” Charley nodded and walked off.
The warmth of the Temple restored Newton’s strength, and he realized for the first time how chilled and worn he felt. He had fled his house without a coat. In a minute, he needed to get up and join the search, but for one moment more, he would rest and warm up.
Sarah brought a cup of coffee from the stove. “I need to thank you,” she said. “I don’t know how long we could have stayed up there before Papa lost his composure.” Her glance darted to Wickman, who sat in one of the pews caressing the pile of books she had brought.
“You don’t need to thank me,” Newton said.
“Just doing your duty as president, eh.”
“No.” Newton took a breath. “Sarah, I have been unfair to you over the years. I’ve been foolish and blind, and I have underestimated you in every way. I hope that we could blot the page and start fresh.”
“Newton, we’re not children anymore,” she said. “We can’t go back to being the kind of confidants we were then.”
He took her hand. “I don’t want to return to childhood. I want to start from where we are and see what happens between us. I don’t know what that will be, but I’d like to find out.”
“Oh, go on,” she said. Her voice had a scoffing tone as she turned away, but there were tears in her eyes.
Josephine stood by as Charlotte laid her hand against her mother’s cheek. They had wrapped Marie in a wool blanket and propped her head with a pillow, but she had not regained consciousness. Charlotte turned away and bent close to Josephine.
“We don’t know how much of a beating she took,” Charlotte whispered. “I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you how this is going to turn out.”
“Will she live?” Josephine asked.
“Keep your voice down!” Charlotte said. “You’d be surprised what the unconscious can hear. I’ve seen it before.” She pulled her farther away. “I’m telling you, I don’t know. I can’t tell how badly she’s hurt. All we can do it wait, keep her warm, and watch for changes. I’m sorry.”
Josephine knew she shouldn’t have asked, shouldn’t have let her frustrations take voice. She felt short of breath and fought back an overwhelming desire to run from the building. But she knew she couldn’t run and ultimately didn’t want to. So she sat at a table by herself for a moment, with the flurry of villagers around her, and waited for the panic to subside.
J.M. Bridges sat propped against the back wall of the building, his shoulder tightly bound with a makeshift sling and an ill-concealed look of pain on his face. Josephine walked over and sat on the floor facing him.
“How is it?” she said.
He grimaced. “Mrs. Turner says she can feel a broken bone, maybe more than one. She wants me to go up to town and see a doctor once the roads are passable.”
“That sawbones? I’d trust Charlotte Turner a long way before I’d call on him.”
“I know.” Bridges forced a smile. “But I have my instructions.”
Josephine studied his face, still boyish and open despite his recent tribulations. “Ever since I was a girl, I cared for my mother,” she said. “There have been days when I hated it. Hated it more than I could say. It seemed my whole life was being spoiled, wasted. And here I am today, and there’s nothing I wish more on earth than to be allowed to care for her one more day.”
“I understand,” Bridges said. “Our worst fears and our greatest hopes look an awful lot alike sometimes.”
“Don’t they, though.” Josephine suddenly felt shy. “Listen,” she said.
“I’m listening.”
“You don’t have to go back East. Not if you don’t want to.”
“Oh, but I already quit my job. Didn’t want to wait to be fired. And from what I can tell, Mr. Crecelius doesn’t forgive.”
“I didn’t mean going back to work for the company.”
The silence hung between them for a long minute. Then Josephine found the courage to speak.
“There’s so much to do. We will have to rebuild our house, only better this time. The fields will be a mess, with God knows what washed up in them. And then we’ll have the community work—the streets, the ferry—”
“So you’ll need a hired hand.”
She blushed. “No. That’s not what I meant.” She smiled.
Bridges finally caught onto what she was too embarrassed to say aloud. “Miss Mercadier, I think you love me after all.”
Two hours later, a group of men from the mine came down the hill path and made their way to the Temple, asking for Bridges. Charlotte led them inside to Bridges’ resting spot.
“Hey, boss. Thought you all might use some help,” he said.
“Thank you. But I’m a spectator here.” He gestured to his shoulder. “Mrs. Turner can direct you. How are things at the mine?”
The foreman shrugged. “Your whirligig is about twenty yards downstream, stuck between some boulders. I think we’re about done for.”
Charley Pettibone joined them. “This’ll cheer you up,” he said to Charlotte. “I think we’ve found everyone. Last bunch was on their roof, snagged in some bushes downstream. Didn’t get carried into the main channel, thank God.”
Charlotte was relieved but also immensely fatigued, unable to properly register the news. “Charley, these men have come to help,” she said. She left them and walked to the front door of the Temple.
From its high spot on the hillside, the Temple overlooked the entire community, as they had planned. Had it really been thirty years since they had built this grandiose structure, out of proportion to the actual settlement, a testament to the size of their imaginations? Evidently so.
She stood on the landing with her back to the door. The ferry washed out, the fields with great ruts in some places and mounds of sand in others. The upper third of houses demolished or damaged beyond repair, the middle third awash in mud. Daybreak looked less like a utopia than ever, more like a slow-rolling catastrophe. Maybe it was time to admit defeat and be done with it.
Far to the south, she could see Ambrose Gardner picking his way up the road, George behind him. He stopped every few feet to throw debris to the side. Soon enough, surely, he would figure out that they had regrouped at the Temple, and that she was still alive. The town dogs came out to sniff at George, tails held high.
She turned inside and walked through the clusters of devastated families who spoke in quiet murmurs among themselves about homes lost, treasured possessions swept away, futures uncertain. Of course she was not going to admit defeat. She was the banker of their hope, and the banker must never appear bankrupt.
Charlotte climbed onto the dais. “Everyone,” she said, and waited. The room became quiet.
“A little over a year ago we sat in this very place and celebrated the courage of our founders. I was lucky to be among those founders, and I’m lucky today to be among you. They say opportunity dresses as disaster sometimes, and I think that’s true.”
She let the silence hang a minute before continuing. “When John Wesley Wickman, and Marie Mercadier, and Charley Pettibone, and my husband and I came out here, along with the scores of others, we weren’t leaving easy lives to come to the wilderness. We were a mixed lot, comfortable, desperate, most of us in between. So don’t believe all our old-time stories about our tribulations. We had hard times, but we had good times too. But we had one thing in common. We didn’t know what the future would bring.”
She didn’t know what she was going to say next, but the only choice was to speak or fall silent. So she opened her mouth in hopes that words would find their way out.
“I’m not sure today if I believe in all the ideals that led us out here. But here is where we are. I have no other life to live than this one. And now just as much as then, I don’t know what the future will bring.”
Ambrose Gardner entered and stood quietly in the back.
“We have a town to rebuild, fields to prepare, wells to repair, roads to clear. We have people to care for. I have no idea if we will succeed, but I do know we are hard workers. That’s what we do. So … let’s get to work.”
Charlotte stepped down from the dais and walked to the circle of chairs where John Wesley and his family huddled. “How are you?” she said to him, but he didn’t answer, lost in himself.
“He’s banged up,” Sarah said. “But we’ll be all right.”
They nodded to each other in silent understanding of how far “all right” would extend in their current situation. All right was not that good, but it was good enough for now, and it would have to do.
John Wesley paid them no mind. His gaze was fixed out the window, and for a moment Charlotte allowed herself to join him, staring out the window with an empty mind at the ravaged town below. It had once been an Indian village, and then a plantation with enslaved people crowded into cabins along the hillside, and then their grand experiment in communal living, and now it was to be—what? A mere town, a cluster of houses along one main street, with a church and a school and rich land surrounding it. A sleepy village with nothing to distinguish it from the ones down the road. But ultimately, a place to make a life. What other choice was there? You made your life wherever you found it. And all the while, a river ran alongside them, and a forest stretched out in front of them as far as the eye could penetrate, and behind them, always, the shadow of the mountain.