SEVENTEEN
Beth heard the girls before she saw them, their voices high above the roar of the water, childish and shrill. They clung to the front of a ramshackle cabin, their feet ankle deep in water, and yelling at her, “Miss! Miss!” She tried to recall the family name—McCarthy? McCallister?—and urged her horse across the water, but Scooter, already spooked by the strange electric atmosphere of the air and the dense, punishing rain, had made it partway across the swollen creek, then half reared and spun away so that she almost fell off. She righted herself but he would not be moved, snorting and running backward until his brain was so addled she feared he would do himself an injury.
Cursing, Beth had dismounted, thrown his reins over a pole and waded across the water toward them. They were young, the youngest maybe two at most, and clad in thin cotton dresses that clung to their pale skin. As she approached, they clamored for her, six little anemone arms, reaching, waving. She got to them just before the surge. A rush of black water, so fast and hard that she had to grab the baby around her middle to stop her being carried away. And then there she was, three small children huddled around her, gripping her coat, her voice making reassuring noises even as her brain raced to work out how in hell she was going to make her way out of this one.
“Is anyone in the house?” she yelled at the eldest, trying to be heard above the torrent. The child shook her head. Well, that’s something, she thought, pushing away visions of bedbound grandmothers. Beth’s bad arm ached already, holding the baby tight to her chest. She could see Scooter on the other side, jittering around the pole, no doubt ready to snap his reins and bolt. She had liked the fact that he was part Thoroughbred when Fred offered him to her; he was fast and showy and didn’t need to be pushed to go forward. Now she cursed his tendency to panic, his pea-sized brain. How was she going to get three babies onto him? She looked down as the water lapped around her boots, seeping into her stockings, and her heart sank.
“Miss, are we stuck?”
“No, we ain’t stuck.”
And then she heard it, the whine of a car headed down the road toward her. Mrs. Brady? She squinted to see. The car slowed, stopped, and then, lo and behold, if Izzy Brady didn’t climb out, her hand sheltering her eyes as she tried to work out what she was seeing across the water.
“Izzy? That you? I need help!”
They shouted instructions to each other across the creek, but were unable to hear each other properly amid the noise. Finally Izzy waved her hand, as if to wait, crunched the big glossy car into gear and began to creep forward toward them, its engine roaring.
You can’t drive the damn car across the water, Beth breathed, shaking her head. Did the girl have no sense at all? But Izzy stopped just as the front wheels were almost submerged, then ran lopsidedly to the trunk and hauled it open, pulling out a rope. She ran back to the front of the car, unspooling it, and hurled the end of the rope at Beth, once, twice, and again before Beth was able to catch it. Now Beth understood. At this distance it was just long enough to secure to the post of the porch. Beth put her weight on it and noted with relief that it held firm.
“Your belt,” Izzy was yelling, gesticulating. “Tie your belt around the rope.” She was securing her end of the rope to the car, her hands swift and certain. And then Izzy took hold of the rope and began to make her way toward them, her limp no longer visible as she navigated the water. “You okay?” she said, as she reached them, hauling herself onto the porch. Her hair was flat and under her felt coat her pale, baby-soft sweater sagged with water.
“Take the baby,” Beth answered. She wanted to hug Izzy then, an uncharacteristic feeling, which she smothered in brisk activity. Izzy grasped the child, and gave the little girl a beaming smile, as if they were simply out on a picnic. All the while she was smiling, Izzy pulled her scarf from around her neck and wrapped it around the eldest’s waist, tying it to the rope.
“Now, me and Beth, we’re going to walk across, holding on, and you’re gonna be right between us, tied to the rope. You hear?”
The eldest child, her eyes wide and round, shook her head.
“It’ll only take us a minute to get across. And then we’ll all be nice and dry on the other side and we can get you back to your mama. C’mon, sweetie.”
“I’m scared,” the child mouthed.
“I know, but we still have to get across.”
The child glanced at the water, then took a step backward, as if to disappear inside the cabin.
Beth and Izzy exchanged a look. The water was rising fast.
“How about we sing a song?” Izzy said. She crouched down to the child’s level. “When I’m afeared of anything, I sing me a happy song. Makes me feel better. What songs do you know?”
The child was trembling. But her eyes were on Izzy’s.
“How about ‘Camptown Races’? You know that one, right, Beth?”
“Oh, my favorite,” said Beth, one eye on the water.
“Okay!” said Izzy.
The Camptown ladies sing this song
Doo-da, doo-da.
The Camptown racetrack’s five miles long
Oh, de doo-da day.
She smiled, stepping back into the water, which was now at thigh level. She kept her eye on the child, beckoning her forward, her voice high and cheerful, as if she had not a care in the world.
Going to run all night
Going to run all day
I bet my money on a bob-tailed nag
Somebody bet on the bay.
“That’s it, sweetheart, you follow me. Hold on tight now.”
Beth slid in behind them, the middle child high on her hip. She could feel the force of the current beneath, smell the hint of acrid chemicals infusing it. There was nothing she wanted to do less than forge this water, and she didn’t blame the kid for not wanting to, either. She held the toddler close, and the child plugged in her thumb, closing her eyes, as if removing herself from what she saw around her.
“C’mon, Beth,” came Izzy’s voice from in front, insistent, musical. “You join in too now.”
Oh, the long-tailed filly and the big black horse
Doo-da, doo-da
Come to a mud hole and they all cut across,
Oh, de doo-da day.
And there they were, wading across, Beth’s voice reedy and her breath somewhere in her chest, nudging the child forward. The little girl sang haltingly, her knuckles white on the rope, her face contorted with fear, yelping as she was occasionally lifted off her feet. Izzy kept glancing back, urging Beth to keep on singing, keep on moving.
The water was building in height and speed. She could hear Izzy in front of her, calm and upbeat. “And there, now, aren’t we pretty much through? How about that. ‘Going to run all night, going to run all—’”
Beth looked up as Izzy stopped singing. She thought, distantly, I’m sure the car wasn’t that far in the water. And then Izzy was hauling at the eldest girl’s waistband, her fingers fumbling as she tried to release the knot in her scarf, and Beth suddenly understood why she had stopped singing, her look of panic, and half threw her own charge onto the bank as she grabbed at her belt and tried to release the buckle.
Hurry up, Beth! Undo it!
Her fingers turned to thumbs. Panic rose in her throat. She felt Izzy’s hands grabbing at the belt, lifting it so that it was clear of water, felt the ominous pressure building as it tightened around her waist—and then, just as she felt herself being pulled forward, click, the belt was slipping through her fingers, and Izzy was hauling at her with a strength she’d had no idea she had and suddenly, whoosh, the big green car was half submerged and moving down the river at an unlikely speed, away from them, on the end of its rope.
They scrambled to their feet, stumbling up the hill toward the higher ground, the children’s hands tight in their own, their eyes transfixed by what was unfolding before them. The rope tightened, the car bobbed, briefly tethered, and then, faced with an unstoppable weight, and with an audible fraying sound, the rope, defeated by sheer weight and physics, snapped.
Mrs. Brady’s Oldsmobile, custom-painted in racing green, with a cream-leather interior all the way from Detroit, turned over elegantly, like a giant seal revealing its belly. As the five of them watched, dripping and shivering, it rode away from them, half submerged, on the black tide, turned a corner, and the last of its chrome bumper disappeared around the bend.
Nobody spoke. And then the baby held up her arms and Izzy stooped to pick her up. “Well,” she said, after a minute. “I guess that’s me grounded for the next ten years.”
And Beth, who was not known for great shows of emotion, but suddenly propelled by an impulse she barely understood, reached over and pulled Izzy to her and kissed the side of Izzy’s face, a huge, audible smacker, so that the two of them began the slow walk back to town a little pink and, to the confusion of the small girls, prone to abrupt and seemingly inexplicable bursts of laughter.
Done!
The last of the books were tipped into Fred’s living room. The door was closed and Fred and Alice regarded the mountainous pile that had taken over his once-tidy parlor, then looked up at each other.
“Every single one,” Alice marveled. “We saved every single one.”
“Yup. We’ll be open for business before you know it.”
He set the kettle on the stove, and peered into his larder. He reached in, pulled out some eggs and cheese and put them on the counter. “So . . . I was thinking you could rest here awhile. Maybe have some food. Nobody’ll be going too far today.”
“I guess there’s no point heading back out while it’s like this.” She put her hand to her head, rubbing at her wet hair.
They knew of the dangers, but for that moment, Alice couldn’t help but see the water, running past them down the road below, as her secret ally, halting the normal flow of the world. Nobody could judge her for resting at Fred’s, could they? She had only been moving books, after all.
“If you want to borrow a dry shirt there’s one hanging on the stairs.”
She headed upstairs, peeled off her wet sweater, dried herself with a towel and put on the shirt, feeling the soft flannel against her damp skin as she buttoned it down the front. There was something about sliding into a man’s shirt—Fred’s shirt—that made her breath catch in her throat. She could not rid herself of the feeling of his thumb on her skin, the image of his eyes burning so intently into her own, as if he could see the very core of her. Every movement now seemed loaded with the echo of it, every casual glance or word between them filled with some new intent.
She walked slowly back down the stairs toward the books, feeling the heat rise in her, as it did every time she thought of his skin touching hers. When she looked round for him, he was watching her.
“You look prettier in that shirt than I do.”
She felt herself color and glanced away.
“Here.” He handed her a mug of hot coffee and she closed her hands around it, allowing the heat to seep in, grateful for something to focus on.
Fred moved around her, shifting books, then reaching into the log basket to load the fire. She watched the muscles of his forearms tighten as he worked, the steel in his thighs as he crouched down, checking the flames. How had nobody else in this town noticed the beautiful economy in the way Frederick Guisler moved, the grace with which he used his limbs, the wiry muscles that shifted underneath his skin?
Let the flickering flame of your soul play all about me
That into my limbs may come the keenness of fire . . .
He straightened up and turned to her and she knew he must see it then, the naked truth of everything she felt, writ large upon her face. Today, she thought suddenly, no rules applied. They were in a vortex, a place of their own, away from water and misery and the travails of the world outside. She took a step toward him as if she were magnetized, stepping over the books without looking down, and placed her mug upon the mantel, her eyes still on his. They were inches from each other now, the heat of the blazing fire against their bodies, their eyes locked. She wanted to speak but she didn’t have a clue what to say. She just knew that she wanted him to touch her again, to feel his skin on her lips, under her fingertips. She wanted to know what everyone else seemed to know so casually and easily, secrets whispered in darkened rooms, intimacy that went far beyond words. She felt consumed by it. His eyes searched hers and softened, his breath quickening, and she knew then that she had him. That this time it would be different. He reached down and took her hand and she felt something shoot through her, molten and urgent, and then he raised it, and she heard her breath catch.
And then he said: “I’m going to stop this here, Alice.”
It took a second before she registered what he was saying, and the shock was so great it almost winded her.
Alice, you are too impulsive.
“It’s not that—”
“I need to leave.” She turned, humiliated. How could she have been so foolish? Tears brimmed in her eyes and she stumbled over the books and cursed loudly as she almost lost her footing.
“Alice.”
Where was her coat? Did he hang it somewhere? “My coat. Where’s my coat?”
“Alice.”
“Please leave me alone.” She felt his hand on her arm and she snatched it away and held it up to her chest, as if she had been burned. “Don’t touch me.”
“Don’t leave.”
She felt, embarrassingly, as if she might sob. Her face crumpled and she covered it with her hand.
“Alice. Please. Hear me out.” He swallowed, compressed his mouth, as if it were hard to speak. “Don’t leave. If you had any idea . . . any idea how much I want you here, Alice, that most nights I lie awake half crazy with it . . .” His voice came in low, uncharacteristic bursts. “I love you. Have done since the first day I laid eyes on you. When you’re not around me it feels like I’m just wasting time. When you’re here it’s like . . . the whole world is colored just that little bit brighter. I want to feel your skin against mine. I want to see your smile and hear that laugh of yours when you forget yourself and just let it burst straight out of you . . . I want to make you happy . . . I want to wake up every morning beside you and—and—” he screwed up his face briefly, as if he had gone too far “—and you’re married. And I’m trying real hard to be a good man. So until I can work a way around that, I can’t. I just can’t lay a finger on you. Not how I want to.” He took a deep breath and let it out in a shaky exhalation. “All I can give you, Alice, is . . . words.”
A whirlwind had entered the room and turned the whole thing upside down. Now it settled around Alice, tiny dust motes glittering as they fell.
A few years passed. She waited until she could be sure her voice had returned to normal. “Words.”
He nodded.
She considered this, wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. She held her hand briefly to her chest, waiting for the beating to subside a little, and when he saw it he winced, as if he had caused her pain.
“I suppose I could stay a while longer,” she said.
“Coffee,” he said, after a moment, and handed it to her. He took care that his fingers didn’t brush hers.
“Thank you.”
They exchanged a brief look. She let out a long breath, and then, without saying anything more, they stood side by side and began restacking the books.
It had stopped raining. Mr. and Mrs. Brady picked up their daughter in Mr. Brady’s large Ford, and accepted without protest the additional passengers, three small girls who would be houseguests at least until morning. Mr. Brady listened to the tale of the children, and the rope and Mrs. Brady’s car, and while he said nothing, digesting the loss of the vehicle, his wife swept in and hugged her daughter tightly and uncharacteristically silently for some minutes before releasing her, her eyes brimming. They opened the car doors in silence and began the short drive home, while Beth began to walk the waterlogged upper trail back to her house, her hand raised in good-bye until the car disappeared from view.
Margery woke to feel Sven’s warm hand entwined in hers. She tightened her fingers on it reflexively before creeping consciousness told her all the reasons why she might not. She was half buried under blankets and quilts, the weight of them almost too much, pinning her down. Now she moved each toe speculatively, reassured by the obedience with which her body responded.
She opened her eyes, blinking, and took in the dark, the oil lamp beside the bed. Sven’s gaze flickered toward her and they locked eyes, just as her thoughts coalesced into something that made sense. Her voice, when it emerged, was hoarse.
“How long have I been out?”
“A little over six hours.”
She absorbed this.
“Sophia and William all right?”
“They’re downstairs. Sophia’s fixing some food.”
“The girls?”
“All safely in. Looks like Baileyville lost four houses, and that settlement just below Hoffman was all destroyed, though I’m guessing it could be more by dawn. River’s still up but it stopped raining an hour or two back so we got to hope that that’s the worst of it.”
As he spoke, her body recalled the force of the river against her, the swirling forces that dragged at her, and she shivered involuntarily.
“Charley?”
“All good. I rubbed him down and rewarded him for his bravery with a bucket of carrots and apples. He tried to kick me for it.”
She raised a small smile. “Never knew a mule like him, Sven. I asked so much of him.”
“Word is you helped a lot of people.”
“Anyone would have done it.”
“But they didn’t.”
She lay still, bone-tired, acceding to the pressure of the bedcovers, the soporific warmth. Her hand, deep under the covers, slid across to the swelling of her stomach and, after a minute, she felt the answering flutter that made something in her ease.
“So,” he said. “Were you going to tell me?”
She looked up at him then, at his kind, serious face.
“Had to get you undressed to get you into bed. Finally worked out why you’ve been pushing me away all these weeks.”
“I’m sorry, Sven. I didn’t . . . I couldn’t think what to do.” She blinked back unexpected tears. “Guess I was afraid. Never wanted babies, you know that. Never been the kind cut out to be a mother.” She sniffed. “Couldn’t even protect my own dog, could I?”
“Marge—”
She wiped at her eyes. “Guess I thought if I ignored it, what with my age and all, it might . . .” she shrugged “. . . go away . . .” He winced then, a man who couldn’t bear to see a farmer drown a kitten. “. . . but . . .”
“But?”
She said nothing for a moment. Then her voice lowered to a whisper: “I can feel her. Telling me things. And I realized it out there on the water. It ain’t really a question. She’s here already. Wants to be here.”
“She?”
“I know it.”
He smiled, shook his head. Her hand was still smeared with black and he let his thumb slide over it. Then he rubbed the back of his head. “So we’re going to do this.”
“I guess.”
They sat for a while in the half-dark, each accommodating the prospect of a new and unexpected future. Downstairs she could hear the low murmur of voices, the clatter of pans and plates.
“Sven.”
He turned back to her.
“Do you think—all this business with the floods, all the lifting and pulling and the black water, do you think it will hurt the baby? I had these pains. And I got awful cold. Still don’t feel myself.”
“Any now?”
“Nothing since . . . well, I don’t remember.”
Sven considered his response carefully. “Out of our hands, Marge,” he said. He enfolded her fingers in his. “But she’s part of you. And if she’s part of Margery O’Hare, you can bet she’s made of iron filings. If any baby can make it through a storm like that, it’ll be yours.”
“Ours,” she corrected him. She took his hand then and brought it under the covers so that he could rest his warm palm across her belly, his eyes on hers the whole time. She lay perfectly still for a minute, feeling the deep, deep sense of peace that came with his skin on hers, and then, obligingly, the baby moved again, just the faintest whisper, and their eyes widened in unison, his searching hers for confirmation of what he had just felt.
She nodded.
And Sven Gustavsson, a man not known for high emotion, pulled his free hand down over his face, and had to turn away so that she wouldn’t see the tears in his eyes.
The Bradys were not accustomed to using harsh words; while their union could not be described as the perfect meeting of minds, neither enjoyed conflict within the home, and each held for the other such a healthy respect that they rarely allowed themselves an openly cross exchange, and knew each other’s responses well enough after the best part of thirty years to usually avoid it.
So the evening that followed the floods sent something of a seismic shock through the Brady household. Mrs. Brady, having overseen the feeding and watering of the three children in the guest bedroom, seen Izzy off to bed, and having waited till all the servants had retired, had announced her daughter’s intention to rejoin the Packhorse Library project, using a tone that suggested she would accept no further discussion on the matter. Mr. Brady, having asked her to repeat those words twice just to ensure he had heard correctly, responded uncharacteristically robustly—his temper might have been frayed by the loss of a car, and the frequent telephone calls he had received, detailing flooding in various business enterprises in Louisville. Mrs. Brady responded with no less emphasis, informing her husband that she knew their daughter like she knew herself and that she was never prouder of her than she had been that day. He could sit back and let her end up a dissatisfied, unconfident stay-at-home like his sister had been—and they all knew how that had turned out—or encourage this bold, enterprising and hitherto unseen version of the girl they had known these twenty years and let her do the thing she loved. And, she added, at some pitch, that if he listened to that fool Van Cleve over his own daughter then, why, she was not sure who it was she had been married to all these years.
Those were fighting words. Mr. Brady met them with equal force, and although their house was large, their voices echoed through the wide, wood-paneled corridors and on through the night until dawn broke—unheard by the comatose children, or Izzy, who had fallen abruptly off a cliff of sleep—at which point, having reached an uneasy truce, both exhausted by this unexpected turn in their union, Mr. Brady announced wearily that he needed an hour of shut-eye at least, because there was a big day of cleaning up ahead and Lord only knew how he was supposed to get through it now.
Mrs. Brady, deflated a little in victory, felt a sudden tenderness for her husband and, after a moment, reached out a conciliatory hand. And it was like this, as the light broke, that the maid found them an hour and a half later, still fully dressed, and snoring on the huge mahogany bed, their hands entwined between them.