Page 3 of Going Once

Out of nowhere, Tate Benton’s face popped into her mind. She used to love to look at him. From an artist’s perspective he had a most interesting face: a broad forehead, high cheekbones that angled down toward a very stubborn chin, with a nose that was in perfect proportion to his other features—perfect except for that bump from breaking it in the eleventh grade. He’d grown to well over six feet before his sixteenth birthday. It had taken him until his second year in college to grow muscles to fit that height. By then he was a man, both in physical strength and attitude. He’d known from a young age that he wanted to be in law enforcement, and they had planned all the way through college to go back to Queens Crossing to begin their life together.

Then, one night just after they had graduated college, he came to her house in a panic and told her he was leaving. He begged her to go with him but wouldn’t tell her what was wrong. She kept begging him to stay, to explain what had happened, but he wouldn’t. They fought. He walked out, and she never heard from him again. Without an understanding of what was wrong there was nothing to hold them together, and he disappeared from her life.

She wondered if he was married, and if he would feel bad when he heard they’d pulled her body out of the river. Then she told herself it was the fever making her think crazy. Screw Tate Benton. She didn’t want to think about him anymore, but when she closed her eyes, the first thing she saw was his face and the way his eyes crinkled up at the corners when he was laughing. Because he’d lived in town, he’d always loved to come out to her place to go fishing. He had a fishing pole, and she had her sketch pad. He fished while she drew him over and over and over. She still had those sketch pads somewhere.

And then she looked out across the water and remembered she didn’t have anything anymore. The river had taken it away, just like it was trying to take her. She climbed a branch higher, struggling to stay awake by drinking more of the water and eating. She ate another piece of cheese and one of the peanut butter crackers, then had to move because her legs were so numb from hanging down she could no longer feel her feet.

As she was shifting her perch, she began hearing what sounded like a helicopter. She looked up, craning her neck, praying it would fly over this way, but when she finally spotted it, it was so far away she knew they would never see her or the Lewises. After that her fever came back, raging through her body until she was half out of her head.

She began looking at the sight before her with the eyes of an artist, thinking how she would make it come to life on canvas, planning what colors she would mix to get it right.

On the surface, the water just looked black, but it really wasn’t. It made her think of dark brown chocolate with varying shades of umbers and reds. And the sky was streaky—a mixture of pewter-gray, a tinge of marine-blue and just the least bit of titanium-white to muddy the sharpness of the hues. The sharp greens of the treetops seemed out of place in the dismal landscape, as did the incongruity of seeing a bright red pickup being pushed past her location by a pile of debris.

She drank another sip of water and then burst into tears when she caught a glimpse of a dog out in the stream, paddling frantically to stay afloat. This was a nightmare without end.

She closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on something positive.

Favorite food: shrimp and grits.

Favorite color: aquamarine blue.

Favorite holiday: Christmas.

Favorite memory: making love to Tate.

Thinking of Tate again made her sad and, at the same time, angry. Enough of favorite things.

She looked across the way at the Lewis house and thought she could hear singing, or maybe praying. She couldn’t tell what they were saying, but their presence was comforting.

A short while later a big alligator swam into her line of vision, obviously flooded out from its normal habitat. The mere sight of it made her draw her feet up onto the limb, even though she was in the thick of the tree and safely out of reach from a snap from its massive jaws.

The sun was directly overhead when she began hearing an outboard motor, and once again the sound gave her hope. She craned her neck to get a better view upriver, and when a motorboat suddenly came into view, she gasped.

Praise the lord, they were about to be saved!

When Whit Lewis suddenly stood up on the roof and began waving frantically and laughing, she knew he’d seen the boat, as well. When the man in the boat turned in their direction, she felt like cheering.

Even from this distance she could tell he was in uniform but couldn’t tell what kind. She was debating with herself about when to climb lower to get his attention when she saw him suddenly raise his arm, then switch something he was holding from his right hand to his left. She didn’t know it was a gun until she heard the shot.

* * *

Fifty-year-old Whit Lewis and his wife, Candy, had watched daylight break over what looked like a scene from a horror movie, while Candy’s mother, Ruth Andrews, continued to pray aloud for mercy. Bloated carcasses of animals floated past on rushing waters, reminders of what could happen to them if they faltered. Whit knew his neighbor, Nola Landry, had been home the day before because he’d seen her car in the carport. Now her house was completely gone, and he had no idea if she’d gotten out or had already drowned.

One hour passed into another and then another as the water continued to rise and their hopes for rescue grew dimmer. Once they saw a helicopter in the distance, and although Whit stood up and waved and waved, the copter soon disappeared from view.

There was less than two feet of roof left between them and the floodwaters when he heard the sound of an outboard engine. Candy and her mother were praying so loudly he wasn’t sure if he’d imagined it, and then he heard it again.

“Candy! Ruth! Listen! I hear a motor.”

They froze, clutching each other in desperation. “I hear it, too!” Candy cried.

“Praise God,” Ruth added, as they looked upriver.

When they saw the motorboat coming toward them, they began screaming and shouting, waving at the parish policeman manning the motor. When he turned in their direction, they began crying with relief. The policeman angled the boat up close to the roof.

“Praise the Lord. We thought it was over,” Whit said.

“And you were right,” the officer said.

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