James Siegel - Deceit

Something else was going on.

I pulled Benjamin’s note out of my bedside drawer.

Happy hundred birthday.

It was grammatically flawed, of course. Odd I hadn’t noticed that before. Happy hundredth birthday was what he should’ve written. How old would the letter writer be if it really were her son? I reached into the drawer for the picture of the two of them-still marred by faint spots of blood.

It must’ve been winter. When the picture was taken.

Not that winters were particularly cold around here. Cold enough to don a tan wool jacket and dress your only child in a brown corduroy coat with five black buttons. She was holding him under his arms and it looked like he was maybe ticklish, had spent the previous minute while the photographer was framing the shot fidgeting in her lap and giggling out loud. He wore this charming bucktoothed grin, as if any second he was going to burst into raucous laughter. They say photographs can’t steal your soul-but every so often they can hold it hostage.

Who was the photographer?

Belinda’s husband? Trying to commemorate this moment for posterity? What moment? They were sitting under the sign for the Littleton Flats Cafe. Maybe they’d celebrated the day with a special lunch? Celebrated what? Benjamin’s graduation from kindergarten? He looked to be about 6 then.

Jimmy’s age.

The disaster must’ve happened soon after the picture was taken. Maybe that’s why the picture was so haunting-because of what was to come.

Those three days of unrelenting rain-unusual for the desert, sure, but sometimes it happened. Mother Nature went on the rag, and all hell broke loose.

Or cement walls did.

Just another Sunday morning in Littleton Flats.

Maybe Benjamin was looking at the funny papers, just learning to read, Jane running and Dick throwing and Spot barking, and maybe wondering why all these walking and running and throwing kids were white, or maybe not-maybe kids were still color-blind at that age. Maybe all he was thinking about that morning was when his mom was finally going to get home and bake some of her peach pie. I don’t know if Belinda baked peach pies-she was probably too busy cleaning that white family’s home in Littleton, what most black people did back then if they wanted to put food on the table. Maybe Belinda was making beds, cooking breakfast, cleaning up the kids she’d been stuck with that weekend when she heard that first rumble, like thunder , only it was a clear day-not a cloud in the sky. How odd , she must’ve thought- all of them must’ve thought-to be hearing thunder when there wasn’t a rain cloud to be seen.

The first thing the water hit was the water tower.

This was according to what I’d read on microfilm.

Kind of ironic, water hitting its own.

When the water finally stopped, they found the tower seven miles away from where it originally stood. Not that far, in fact, from where they found the lone survivor-a 3-year-old girl who’d rode out the flood on a storm-cellar door unhinged in the maelstrom. Buoyant enough for her to ride the wave of destruction like some precocious surfer at Waimea.

The town itself was flattened. News accounts likened it to Hiroshima-most Americans’ image back then of what total destruction looked like.

I’d found a few photos.

They were right.

Here and there, pieces of cement or steel structures still stood, like odd abstract sculptures. You would’ve been hard-pressed to identify what they once were.

The area was roped off due to the threat of disease-all those dead bodies bloating in the rancid water. It had taken them months to clean it up-to recover the bodies, salvage what was recoverable, board up, pull down, and cart the rest away. Then came the hand-wringing, soul-searching, and, eventually and inescapably, the finger-pointing. They formed an independent commission to investigate the building of the Aurora Dam, to painstakingly pore over the contractor’s blueprints, the requisition orders, the…

Ring, ring.

The sound of the phone startled me. I was lost in Littleton Flats of fifty years ago; suddenly the here and now was demanding to be acknowledged.

I picked up.

“Tom Valle?”

“Yes. Who’s this?” The ringing had restarted the pile driver in my head. Pound… pound… pound…

“John Wren. You called me?” he said, in a tone of voice that sounded vaguely accusatory.

“Yes, that’s right. Thank you for getting back to me.”

“No problem,” Wren said.

For a moment, I wasn’t sure how to proceed with the conversation.

How are you feeling these days, John? Still howling at the moon?

He continued the conversation for me. He asked about Hinch.

“He’s fine,” I said, then corrected myself. “Actually, no, he’s not fine. His wife, she’s sick again.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Yeah.”

Silence.

“So, what do you want?” he said.

“The Aurora Dam Flood. Hinch said you tried to do a story on it.”

“The flood ? Uh-huh, that’s right.”

“What happened?”

“Not much.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It was hard to get people to talk about it. Most of the people weren’t even around back then.”

“So you couldn’t find anyone?”

“I didn’t say that. I said it was hard . Why are you doing a story on the Aurora Dam Flood?”

“The same reason you did-893 people died.”

“It was 892. You’re forgetting the little girl.”

“Right. The little girl.”

“I met her,” he said. “She’s still around.”

“In Littleton?”

“San Diego. I tracked her down. She was my first interview.”

“How did it go?”

“Okay. For someone who was 3 years old when it happened, she had an amazing memory.” I heard a match light, the sound of Wren inhaling. “There was a little problem with what she remembered.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean she remembered some very imaginative things about that day.”

“Imaginative?”

“If you think a ship of space robots rescuing her out of the water happens every day, then no, it wasn’t imaginative.”

“Space robots?”

“That’s right. Space robots.”

“Well, you said so yourself. She was 3 years old at the time.”

“Uh-huh. Of course, some of the stuff she remembered was half-believable. It’s the National Enquirer stuff I had a tough time with.”

“You mean, there were things besides the space robots?”

“Right. Beside the space robots. There was a lot about that day…” His voice drifted off.

“Like?”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Tom Valle. You have the same name as that… fraud … you know the one I’m talking about; you must get it all the time. Tough being in the same business, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, tough.”

“Ever think about changing your name?”

“No.”

“Good for you. Why change your name because someone else pissed on it, right?”

“Right.”

“What happened to him? Didn’t that guy go to jail?”

“No, he didn’t.”

“I could’ve sworn he went to jail. He deserved it.”

“I’m Tom Valle,” I said.

“I know.”

“No, the Tom Valle you’re talking about. The one who didn’t go to jail.”

“ I know ,” he repeated. “I checked you out when I got your message. I was wondering if you were going to tell me.”

“Well, I’ve told you.”

“To tell you the truth-we are truth-telling here, right-I’m kind of surprised you haven’t changed your name. I’m more surprised you’re back working for a newspaper. Even if it’s in Mayberry . Hinch knows, I guess?”