Eric Dimbleby - White Out

Annie reached one hand out, for the closest limb (which also happened to look sturdier than all the rest), wrapping her fingers around it and inching her body forward. She hesitated to look down at the flotsam of icy melt that was swirling about her side yard now, certain that the sight of it would make her vomit or at the very least make her lose all her nerve. Without thinking it over much, Annie thrust her upper body forward, putting all of her weight on to the branch that she was gripping. She swung her legs and feet out, begging the tree branch not to snap on her. Before she could realize what she’d done, her feet were wedged between two of the large offshoots of the oak’s sturdy trunk.

She pulled her feet out of the wedge. Her left foot almost didn’t budge, but with the final tug, it came loose. Annie looked up at the expanse of the tree branches above her, scanning the branches in case they needed to go higher. Something inside of her said that they would, insisted that the water was only going to get deeper. Judging by the amount of snow that had accumulated (she’d lost count- twenty-five feet? thirty? ), the water level would be something shorter than that height, but perhaps not by much.

Sweat trickled down Annie’s forehead. Up until she woke up with a flood outside their door, she was convinced that she would never sweat like this again. She missed the sticky, moist sweat that now clung to her armpits. The warm air felt good on her body.

“Come on. Your turn,” she said, reaching out her hand to Paulie. He grabbed her hand, his feet shuffling to keep steady on the steep roof. The kid was four years old. He could barely put his pants on without assistance, and now she was challenging him to sling himself across a rushing gap of icy water, on to a tree. He hadn’t even attempted tree climbing at the most rudimentary level yet, so she’d have to climb for the both of them. But they wouldn’t be climbing anywhere if he didn’t make his move soon.

“I’s scared,” he said and a truer sentiment Annie could not recall.

“I know you are, honey. But I have your hand. I’m going to hold on tight and you’re going to swing over to me. I won’t drop you, baby. I would never drop you, not in a million years.”

He couldn’t look up at her because he was transfixed by the vertigo-inducing water below. It was getting closer to the edge of the roof. A clunky mass of ice drifted by just then, creating a terrible shriek against the metal gutter. If it got high enough that it started pulling at his feet, her baby might be lost.

“Now, Paulie. Do it right now . Then we’re going to climb, you and me. You remember how Daddy used to talk about climbing trees when he was a little boy?”

Paulie nodded, tears welling up in his eyes. He shuffled a little closer to the edge, centimeter by centimeter. If he went one more inch, Annie might be able to reach his other hand. If she could get that hand, then she would pull him across whether he wanted to go or not.

“It was his favorite thing. You want to climb the tree like your Daddy when he was a little boy?”

Paulie nodded again. Annie wasn’t sure if he knew what had happened to his father. That was a discussion for another day—if there was another day to be had, of course—when their lives were not in peril. His father was dead, so she might have been better off not mentioning it, just in case. Paulie didn’t seem to react though, so she assumed he had no idea what had transpired between Christian and Edgar.

“I’m going to take you on your first climb. Your father will be so proud of you.”

Paulie moved right to the edge and Annie snatched at his opposite hand before he could second-guess himself and back up again. She had both of his tiny mitts now, but she didn’t need to tug against his will. With careful precision, he put one foot out, in the direction of the tree’s trunk. Her brave little boy was a marvel to her.

He dangled for only a millisecond, Annie putting all of her strength into her back and arms, refusing to lose her grip on his trembling, wet hands. He swung across, so monkey-like and desperate that she almost laughed at the silly sight.

And then she had him, clutched at her side. He was heavier than he looked. The boy had grown a bit before she’d returned to him, if that was even possible. Other parents had always told her, “ they grow up so fast ,” but she never truly realized it until this moment. He wasn’t a four-year-old boy. In fact, he was now what some might label a “young man.” Annie almost burst into tears, but resisted the urge. There would be time for soppy motherly moments later on.

Paulie struggled to get his footing on the wet tree trunk, a nervous worry overtaking his face. Annie would not let his miniscule hand go, not for anything. If she let him go, then she’d let herself go just as well. There was no reason to go on if something happened to him.

The water was rushing up against the side of the house now, rising higher and higher with every minute, now overtaking the roof of the garage. Flashbacks to the flooding from Hurricane Katrina surfaced in Annie’s mind, but that was nothing compared to this. That was devastating, but it moved slow, undulating through the parishes of Louisiana. This was a different kind of beast; violent, quaking, apocalyptic ( there it is, just admit it, thank you much ), and reckless in nature.

The shingles on the side of their house were ripping off from the sheer force of the water.

“I won’t let you go,” she said to her son, staring into his face, trying to dictate the severity of their situation without scaring him.

“We need to go higher. Are you ready for your first tree-climbing lesson?” she asked, trying to feign a smile.

It must have worked because her son glowed back at her. Perhaps, she thought, he was thinking of his father. Perhaps he was happy to be here, with her, climbing the hell out of this oak tree. Perhaps he was even braver than she thought.

“Climba tree, mammah. Climb all the way!”

With the sound of rushing water beneath her, growing louder by the minute, Annie reached for the next branch above them, wrestling Paulie near the crook of her arm. Hoisting herself, she found an unimaginable strength inside of her, like when she’d forced her way through the bulkhead, like when she’d killed off the posse of carnivorous pursuers.

Annie climbed like an expert, though she’d never gone any higher than the first branch on her granddad’s old sycamore tree.

She’d climb all the way to heaven if she had to.

The mailman’s bloated corpse, purple and swollen like a tick that had gorged on too much blood, floated by the window casually, butting up against the windowpane. The water line was up above the window now, so it looked like the mailman was a fish in an aquarium. The image made Edgar chuckle. He’d looked after a goldfish when he was a little boy. Who would have ever thought that the whole world would turn into a fish tank? The best part about seeing Skipperoo, was that now, he hadn’t any need to retrieve the corpse and hide it away from the judging eyes of his neighbors. The water was rising. The son of a bitch would be gone in the torrent of water, and in no time at all.

None of that mattered.

Jesus was coming.

He’d been waiting for, ever since his mother had dropped him out her lady-hole this moment. Edgar couldn’t resist smiling, tapping at the leaking window, goading the mailman’s cadaver through the glass, ignoring the water that was spilling into the house through the edges of the swelling window frame. “See there. Time for a reck-a-nin ! Fuckin’ aye right!”

Ever since he was a boy and discovered the love and power of Jesus H. Christ, he’d been awaiting his second coming. His days of wanderin’ from one part of the world to the next, like the great carpenter himself, was nothing more than a waiting game. Life, he had always believed, was nothing but a precursor to the next world. “Heaven’s Waitin’ Room” like his mother called it. It was every reason to be good, and at the same time, every reason to be bad to the bone. Edgar had tasted a bit of both, but mostly the latter.