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He looked familiar. I thought I placed him, so I asked, “Don’t you work down at Greyfriar’s?”
“Yeah. I did. ”
“Did?”
He turned to face me and he looked as tired as I felt. He was a tall guy with a long, lean torso and a shock of red hair that matched his beard. “It’s probably under water by now. ”
“Nah,” I said, unwilling to even consider the possibility. “No way. TVA will get its act together and—”
“Are you kidding?” He took a deep drag, then gestured as he exhaled. “TVA. It’s bullshit. On the radio they were talking about a problem at the dam. The locks are broken or something. Can’t let any water in or out. They’re working on it, sure, but it won’t get fixed in time to undo any of this. We’re all fucked. Look around, sister. Or, hell, just ask Brian over there. He knows how fucked we are. ”
The other smoker rubbed his cigarette butt against the building wall and slipped back inside as if he didn’t know we were talking about him—or he didn’t care.
“Why? What would he know?”
“You know he moved here from New Orleans, right?”
“This isn’t New Orleans. And the water’s got to go down someday,”
I said. “The river’s got to run regular eventually. ”
“You keep telling yourself that,” he said, as he stubbed out his own butt and went back inside.
I didn’t see where the security boy ran off to, so I took this as my cue to leave while the leaving was good. I walked fast around the cars in the traffic circle, past a fire engine, and out into Market Street, where more cars were parked and abandoned.
Inside some of them I saw people sleeping or sitting up talking. Made sense. There was no point in crushing inside the Choo-Choo with the rest of the masses if you had an enclosed space of your own.
Across the street from the old train station there’s a strip of abandoned stores and an old hotel that saw better days fifty years ago. Most of the boards had been pulled off the windows and a lot of them were broken. People were camping inside, burning fires in steel construction drums. The firelight sent weird shadows sprouting from the broken windows, cutting themselves into orange rainbows on the glass.
At least it wasn’t raining anymore. But as soon as I began to feel a chilly sort of happiness over that fact, a distant growl of thunder promised more water to come. God. How much more could there be?
I didn’t break out my little flashlight because I didn’t really need it. Most of the streetlamps were still lit and I didn’t need to draw extra attention to myself. No one paid me any mind and I liked it that way. I was just one more person on the sidewalk.
I tucked my hands under my armpits to warm them up and walked with my head down, mentally daring anybody to stop me or bother me, or say one word in my general direction.
I knew the area and I walked it fast. Everywhere people were talking, sometimes loud, sometimes crying, sometimes whispering and worried. Everybody was scared, not least of all because rumors were flying quickly from the river to the outlying areas, and to the deeper corners downtown.
And I was going towards the river, not away from it. But just to the Read House. I’d make it in a few minutes, and it wouldn’t be so bad. Nick would be waiting for me, and I would be happy to see him, in a complicated sort of way that I didn’t want to think about too hard.
I kept my head so low that I almost didn’t see Pat. But he stepped in front of me and I could either walk through him or stop, so I stopped. I looked over and out, and there he was—wet and angry looking, like something bad had happened but there was nothing to be done about it now.
He looked just like he had the last time I saw him, big pants and big shirt on a frame that was skinny like a coatrack.
He’s right, you know. About the church.
“What?” I said, and I said it softly. People could see me, there on the sidewalk, through the wet and across the train tracks.
The church. It all started there.
I hesitated, unsure of what to ask. “Then, um. Where’s the church? Should I go there, if that’s where all this started?”
Naw. It’s been gone for years, Nick told you. Burned to the ground. Starting at the beginning won’t get you shit. It ended at the river. You’ll have better luck starting there.
“Why? I don’t get it—I don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking for, or what I’m supposed to do when I find it!”
They’re coming back. Don’t worry. You’re headed the right way.
“Hey lady, you coming from the Choo-Choo?”
