Brian Freeman - Spilled Blood

They climbed from the first floor to the second floor. Hannah cried as a lifetime of possessions floated and sank, but they had no time to do anything but go higher as the water chased them up the stairs. From there, they climbed one at a time onto the overhang beyond Hannah’s bedroom window. Hannah led. Glenn Magnus helped Johan. Chris carried Olivia piggyback. The minister climbed onto the roof and helped each of them follow, and then the five of them waited at the highest peak, overlooking the remains of the town.

The clouds broke apart into blue sky. Sitting atop the world, they found an oddly beautiful day waiting for them.

Hannah dialed 911. The circuits were jammed, and it took her four tries to reach an operator. She explained the urgency – one teenager shot, one with a broken leg, one man with a possible concussion. She gave their location. There was nothing to do but wait and hope.

Olivia lay next to Johan, keeping pressure on his wound, whispering into his ear. Her ankle had swollen into a multi-colored mango fruit, and even a breath of air made her face scrunch up in pain. Glenn sat next to his son, holding his hand. The boy was pale and feverish, but he was conscious.

They were alive.

Chris straddled the gable. Hannah sat in front of him, leaning her head against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her chest and held her. From where they were, St. Croix looked like a town built in the middle of an ocean, occupied by nothing but treetops and roofs. There were no roads anywhere, not even signs; they were all submerged. Hannah stared across at the steeple of the Lutheran church, and he heard her whisper a prayer under her breath.

Twenty minutes later, they heard the throb of the helicopter.

Chris took off his shirt and waved to attract their attention. The gray behemoth steered from the north, dropping closer and lower, and finally hovering over their heads. He saw the logo of the Minnesota National Guard. The twin rotors of the helicopter were deafening, and he thought he’d never heard a more welcome sound. The whip of the downdraft made giant ripples on the river surrounding the house.

The side door of the helicopter slid open. A Guardsman rode the harness slowly to the roof. He was young, no more than twenty-two, with cropped hair and a huge smile, the fresh-faced image of a soldier. Chris shook his hand, and the man’s confident grip said everything. Help is here. You’re safe.

The young Guardsman checked each of them, and in less than a minute he strapped Johan carefully into the harness and gave the thumbs-up to the pilot overhead. Slowly, twisting in the air, Johan rose off the roof and was gently pulled inside the belly of the chopper waiting above.

The sling came down again, floating in the breeze.

Olivia insisted Glenn Magnus go next, to be with Johan. In less than five minutes, he was aboard too. The sling came down, and Olivia was next. She professed to be scared to ride the sling alone, but Chris suspected she had other motives, like riding the harness strapped to the young Guardsman. The two of them left together.

Chris and Hannah were alone, watching Olivia’s hair blow, seeing their daughter smile. She was young. This was an adventure. He looked at Hannah and saw her hands over her mouth, tears streaming down her face. He put an arm around her shoulder and pulled her against him.

‘You next,’ he said.

‘No, you go.’

‘Forget it, Hannah.’

She looked at him and smiled through her tears. They glanced at the sky. Olivia was halfway to freedom.

Under their feet, the house growled and moved.

‘What was that?’ Hannah asked.

The ground shifted beneath them like an earthquake, and they both toppled onto the roof. Hannah rolled away on the wet tiles, and he jumped and caught her leg as her torso spilled past the edge of the house over the water. She screamed, but he pulled her back and pinched his fingers against the gable, trying to hold on. He looked down at the river and knew it was eating away the soft land under the foundation, hollowing out the earth and filling it with water, creating stresses on the wooden frame that would rip the structure apart and pull it down piece by piece.

The house was dying.

‘It’s going to go soon,’ he said.

They looked toward the sky. Olivia was being pulled to safety inside the helicopter. Chris made a frantic downward motion with his hand. They needed the sling back on the roof. Fast.

The house belched out an awful grinding noise. It lurched downward, and he lost his grip. He clung to Hannah and dug in his heels on the slippery roof as gravity worked against them, forcing them down the sharp angle of the frame. There was no way to stand, no way to keep his balance. He heard wood and metal tearing.

Overhead, through the perfect sky, the harness descended inch by inch, foot by foot. He watched it come and willed it to come faster. The wind spun the sling like a pinwheel, dancing in hypnotic circles. He reached for it, and it teased him, blowing out of his grasp. It swung away and began to swing back. Below him, he heard windows shattering. The house sank.

He reached again. This time, the wind swept the harness into his hands.

He felt as if he were in a fun house, with the steep angle of the roof tilting under their feet. Awkwardly, like a clown, he stepped into one leg hole of the sling, then the other, and leaned into the harness. The red strap dangling from the helicopter was heavy and thick.

Hannah lay next to him, clinging to the roof. He reached for her.

‘Take my hand,’ he said.

Take my hand.

In that moment, his life rewound. He took Hannah’s hand and led her to bed in his college dorm and made love to her. He took Hannah’s hand and lifted her veil and watched the face of the woman who made his life worth living. He took Hannah’s hand and heard the cry of their daughter for the first time as she made her way into the world.

He took her hand. He didn’t need to say it, but he said it anyway.

‘I love you.’

She came into his arms. He lifted her up, slid her into the sling, facing him, and held on with a grip that said, I’ll never let go . The cable above them went taut, and their legs hung free, and they were airborne, flying, rising. Below them, with a lion’s roar, the house split apart. Where they had been sitting, the roof opened up, beams breaking, floors caving, walls crashing. Hannah heard it, but she couldn’t look down. She couldn’t watch the river dismember generations of her past and wash it away. She buried her face in his chest. He witnessed the wreckage growing smaller as they rose, watched all the fragments fall, and by the time the strong hands of the helicopter crew pulled them inside, the house was gone, and there was nothing to see below them but the river, rampaging over the valley like an uncaged animal.

55

Chris sat in a folding chair near the wall of the high-school auditorium. He drank a paper cup filled with Red Cross lemonade and ate a dry butter cookie. Cots and sleeping bags lined the glossy floor of the gym in neat rows. The school smelled of rescue. Vats of pasta and red sauce simmered on food trucks. Portable lavatories lined up like cheerleaders on the football field. He smelled the body odor and sweat of people crammed together in close quarters. No one cared; no one protested. Barron and St. Croix had become a single town of survivors. The feud was over.

It had been three days since the flood. The waters were slowly receding. He expected to see a dove carrying an olive branch, signaling that they could find land again. In its wake, though, the real scope of the devastation became clear: homes and buildings reduced to rubble or erased from the landscape; highways six inches deep in mud; hundreds of displaced families. Despite the loss, he’d heard not a word from anyone about giving up or walking away. In the Midwest, you prayed, you shrugged, and then you got to work.