T. Parker - Full Measure

They huddled in the truck with the heater going on full and ate the sandwiches and drank the coffee that Caroline had made. Their heat condensed on the windows and the world outside was a dark roar. Archie started laughing — an accusatory, low-down laugh that had more defiance than joy in it. Patrick understood this sound and felt what his father felt and he laughed, just before Caroline started up too.

They stood on the road where it passed over a large galvanized culvert that marked the narrows of Big Gorge. From here Patrick looked uphill to see the runoff overflowing the sandbags, rushing down into the gorge, filling the culvert below. Sandbags broke away and fell into the dark current and vanished. An uprooted avocado tree tumbled over the falls and the water swept it across the gorge, pinning it against the culvert. “The pipe is twelve feet in diameter,” yelled Archie, though Patrick could hardly hear him.

“About two feet to go!” called Patrick. He knew that if the torrent overflowed the culvert it would take the road with it.

“If the water gets one foot from the top, you two get out of here,” said Archie. “Promise me. One foot!”

“I’m prepared to die with a shovel in my hand,” said Caroline, her shovel held fast between her legs as she rearranged her drenched hair.

“Get me to the tractor, son!”

The tires spun and the truck slid on the downhill slope but Patrick kept it on the road. He glanced up to see a raven pinwheeling across the sky before them, bouncing wing to wing as if on something solid. They passed another section of the bunkhouse roof lying in the grove nearby, the metal sheared violently away from its beam, some of the rivets still in place. “That bunkhouse was eighty years old,” said Archie. “I shall not be defeated. I utterly shall not.”

“God bless you, Archie,” said Caroline.

“I defy Him to bless me. Caroline? I love you very much. You too, son.”

Patrick slid to a stop. Archie pressed through the door and staggered into the wind. The tractor shed had been blown away leaving nothing but a concrete pad and two six-by-six uprights. But the Ford was there, staunch in the rain, the blue paint faded and touched by rust. Archie climbed on and started it up. Diesel smoke billowed black at first and struggled up through the solid rainfall. Patrick picked up his phone and sent a text to Iris: Bad storm we fight I love you. He dropped the phone back into the center console, glanced at his mother and aimed the truck up the hill.

At the culvert they bent to their shovels but they could lift little more than slurry to fortify the upslope bank. It was like using teaspoons of sand to hold back an ocean. Patrick saw that the water had risen since they’d dropped off Archie at the tractor. He stopped shoveling long enough to look at his watch: 2:44 P.M. Almost eight straight hours of rain, he thought, and what — six, eight inches? Did it matter? He squinted up into the silver darts hurtling down from a black infinity.

“Another six inches in this culvert and we’ll be swimming,” said Caroline. She stopped working and handed Patrick her shovel and gloves. Standing straight, shoulders back and head erect she pulled back the hood of her poncho and straightened her bandana, which was soaking wet like the rest of her. Her fingers patiently loosened and retied the knot, then she slid the whole thing fashionably over to one side. Her hair clung like black plaster but she smoothed it down anyway. “In a true and awful way, the world is better off without Ted. But I’ll love him until my heart’s last beat.”

“You gave him every chance, Mom.”

“I didn’t know what to give him.”

The clank and groan of the tractor sounded downslope and Patrick turned to see his father guiding the old machine up the road. The front-loader was up and the tractor’s front tires skittered in the mud but the big, heavily treaded rear tires dug in deep and pushed the contraption forward while the diesel clattered and growled and belched smoke into the storm.

“Are you going to be okay, Pat?”

“Soon as we get through this storm.”

“Hurricane Harley is nothing.” Caroline yanked her hood back over her drenched head, slid the toggle tight, and took back her gloves and shovel.

Archie dumped the first load of tractor mud on the bank and tamped it down with the bottom of bucket. Patrick and his mother packed the earth down harder with their shovels but still the new rain washed away the berm almost as fast as they built it. Patrick, panting deeply, saw that the Big Gorge culvert was now only inches from being full and that their wall and their road, and everything below them, would soon be swallowed by the deluge.

Patrick watched his father bring another raised bucket load of dripping mud up the road, the front tires of the Ford gliding on the downpour, Archie up like a jockey in a crouch with his face raised. “You can take my son and trees! But you can’t beat me down! You don’t have the balls!”

Suddenly from uphill came a thunderous crack . It sounded to Patrick like some violent thing had thrown its shoulders up through the earth. He saw the hillside shudder and break away and start downhill toward them, leaving behind a raw dry crater. The detached hillside gained speed. Even in combat Patrick had never seen death written so clearly. He looked at his father, still crouching in the tractor, speechless in the face of this. Patrick took his mother’s arm and pulled her away from Big Gorge, up the slick road. They slipped and fell and struggled up again.

Then Patrick was down without having fallen, swept swiftly away without leaving his feet. He clutched Caroline close and rode down, down, down on the great escalator of mud. Where they had been just seconds ago was far above them now. Below them he saw the blue tractor spinning downhill, Archie clenching the wheel his body midair, legs bicycling frantically. Then Patrick heard another sharp crack and he watched a second section of mud break off, roar down, and bury the culvert and the road finally and completely.

Surging downhill, he felt the clench of the mud around his legs and saw that he was waist-deep in it. Caroline’s slicker tore away, leaving nothing in his hands but rubber. She lunged and caught his jacket and they continued their rush downhill, locked in mud. They shot past avocado trees, black and sharp. Patrick sunk to his chest and his breath was cut to almost nothing. He struggled. Caroline gasped and flailed and Patrick saw the tree that they would hit. With a wild scream he pulled his arms free and when they crashed into the branches Patrick grabbed a heavy limb with both hands and held on with all the strength he knew. Somehow his mother got her arms around his middle and Patrick felt her weight and told himself yes, I can hold on to this branch forever if I need to, forever not a problem, hold, just hold...

Then, as if bored, the earth let go of him. Patrick looked downhill and saw the tractor on its side, moving with heavy, mud-bound momentum. It came upright and the seat was empty. Patrick’s heart dropped and he looked down at his mother, staring at the tractor, shock on her face. The tractor pitched upside-down again, surging away. Then Patrick heard faint words against the roar of earth and rain. He saw movement in one of the uphill trees, and then his father splayed awkwardly in the branches.

Patrick looked down and watched the wall of mud rushing past them just a few inches below his dangling boots. Archie clambered higher into the tree. He looked like a bug in a spiderweb. The mud blundered past beneath him. Patrick scanned the grove for the next earth slide but saw only the rain pounding down on the black windblown trees and on the wounded, treeless ground.