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And I joined them, these stupid, swearing people who pushed themselves against the water. I saw people with small kids on their shoulders, sopping wet and getting wetter; I saw people carrying dogs. I saw cats, some with collars and some without, charging up the hills, dashing between legs and climbing trees. I worried for the dogs, but the cats—I figured the cats would be all right, left to their own devices.
And I saw the rats. They live down by the river, a pestilence on tiny clawed feet. By the hundreds they were fleeing the river. Rats, for God’s sake. Even the rats had better sense than the people did.
Than I did.
But I was in too deep now. I’d missed my date with Jamie, but I was as stuck as everybody else and I wasn’t leaving Christ to drown beneath the city. And I wasn’t answering my phone either, though I could feel it throbbing on vibrate against my ribcage, through the sides of the leather purse.
I wasn’t going back. I’d gotten this far.
But Frasier Avenue fought me. It was mobbed and packed, and there was no moving. Glass was breaking everywhere and at first I didn’t know why or what was causing it; and then I saw people throwing things into the store windows—and people being pushed and crowded into the stores, through the windows, through the doors.
From street level I couldn’t see the river, and it was a blessing. I didn’t want to see it. From the top of the hill with the church, I’d looked down and seen it creeping up and out, saturating Coolidge Park and working its way up to enfold the carousel. The river was only yards away and rising fast, and people were still fighting to get to the bridges.
I wasn’t the only one with the idea of hitting the pedestrian bridge, either. Police had blocked it off with their cars, but people were climbing around them, on them, and over them. Someone had a Taser out, and I imagined that it was probably a bad idea to fire one off in the middle of a flood, so I did my best to stay clear.
Up came the water.
Behind me, I heard a dog barking and I saw the poor thing, chained to a parking meter and apparently abandoned. I shoved my way back to him, and I clung to the meter like it could anchor me in the sea of people.
He wasn’t a big fellow, twenty pounds of a little boxer mutt-mix. He was shaking, and cold, and I didn’t know what to do for him except let him off his chain. I reached down and unclasped it, my hands slipping all over it because I was shaking too.
The dog strained against my hand and against his collar and against the meter pole. Between the pair of us, he got loose. He head-butted me like a cat and barked frantically, and I didn’t know what to do, or what to tell him.
“Go on!” I said.
With a yap and a kick, he took a dive into the forest of legs and wove through them with a speed I envied.
That done, I tried to go back across the street. Somebody was still sitting in a car and trying to honk his way through. He was pinned by people on all sides, and on the verge of gassing it anyway. Before he could do this, I climbed up on his hood, slipping and sliding, but getting high enough to see—for a few seconds before I fell—how close we all were to real trouble.
The Walnut Street Bridge is a metal frame stacked on old stone pillars that have risen out of the water for over a century. I’d never seen those pillars look so short.
Over the park grounds where thirty years ago there’d been an armory, the water slipped up and swallowed the fountains with their lions and elephant statues that squirted water at tourists. The water was gray and rougher than I’d ever seen it, even as it pooled up in that insidious way.
It was eating at the bridge’s ground supports, too. The water bases were stone, but over land the bridge was supported by huge blue metal supports with rivets the size of soda cans.
Already people were in the water, swimming in one direction or another—hanging on to whatever unmoving things they could grasp. I didn’t know if they’d been caught midstream in the rising current or they’d been dumb enough to jump for it.
The man driving the car I was standing on hit the brakes and the gas at nearly the same time. I fell, but not hard. I caught myself on someone else, who pushed me away, causing me to fall again, into another person who treated me similarly.
But in that glance from the car, seeing folks grasp at the underpinnings of the bridge had given me an idea. It wasn’t a great idea, but it was the only one I had.
I slam-danced my way through to the far curb, closest to the river. Police were starting to back up on the bridges, forced that way by the crowd and the water. As people pressed forward and the river gushed higher, there was no other way to get up and out.
I almost didn’t notice when the water first reached my ankles, I was so wet anyway. Everything was wet and horrible and I could hardly see for my hair hanging in my face. I wiped it back and wiped my eyes and looked down; and what gathered to hold my legs was not rainwater. Rain doesn’t usually bring driftwood and dead rats. It doesn’t often bring the floating carcasses of fish.
By then it was less crowded, but only by a bit. As the water climbed and crawled its slow, unstoppable way up from the riverbed, people were getting the hint—for all the good it did them. Retreat was almost as hard as a forward march. The panic each caused was a different kind, but no less urgent and no less difficult to navigate.
Here it comes.
I tried to hold my ground and failed. Forward, backward, or in circles—yes. But there was no holding still.
Someone hit me in the eye with a sharp body part—an elbow, maybe. It hurt, and I yelped, but no one heard me. Everything was getting hit anyway, so I couldn’t stay still. The water was coming up hard and I was wondering about all these people behind me and around me.
The hills that line the river, they’re technically part of the river valley gorge, I think. They’re high hills and they would surely offer safety, even in the rain, and even from the water. It could only rise so high, so fast.
But these people around me, the ones trying to retreat—would they make it? This was no tsunami, but the basin was filling and the good citizens of Chattanooga were too disorganized and terrified to make practical preparations—they weren’t even heading for higher ground in any significant numbers.
It was getting hard to run. The water on the street was up to my knees and it was thick and filled with detritus. The rain would not relent and everything was slippery. Everything was hard to grab and hold, so it was with great difficulty that I hauled myself up onto a street lamp stand and tried to find something else to reach for, something to climb for and crawl for.
