Page 88 of Sheltering Instinct

Another wave righted the floating school, and Levi released the child’s leg as he followed Tess’s lead and bear-crawled to her side. Draping his weight over her thighs to give her added weight, he peered over the edge.

Tess had shoved her hand through the handle on the back of Mojo’s tactical vest.

Mojo was dangling off the side of the school. The child was in the water, clutching the handles of the floatation jugs.

Mojo held the rope from the child’s make-do life vest in his teeth.

Bracing one hand on the lip that formed the roof's tray top, Levi prayed the decorative embellishment would hold.

Calling, “Good boy, Mojo. Hold,” Levi saw the determination of the locked jaw and bulging muscles of Mojo’s jowl.

Levi had no idea how they were going to get out of this. Tess couldn’t release Mojo because there wasn’t enough space on the handle for their hands to grip side by side.

With a single hand, Tess held about a hundred and twenty pounds between the child and Mojo’s weight.

While Levi could wrap his hand around hers, moving a good amount of that weight to his own shoulders, bunching up like that meant that if the building tipped again, the child, Mojo, Tess, and he would end up in the flash flood waters.

As the school bobbled and shimmied, the water crept up the sides. All Levi could do at that moment was hold on. This felt very much like the rodeos when he had been a teen riding a bucking bronco.

Tess was taking the brunt of this. The roof apron was grinding into her hips.

“Tess, here we go. I’m going to lift my body. You need to slither backward. Every inch is a win. You can do it.” He bent his arm to give her limbs the slack it needed for her to move.

If the school popped and slammed the way it had been, and she was between joints, she could easily break her arm.

Losing her limb capacity could be the difference between surviving or not. It was up to him to keep the weight off her so she was safe. “Keep going, Tess. Get the edge at the crook of your elbow.”

“Oh, yes, that’s right.” Once she was there, Levi wished he could reach for the child and fling him up onto the roof. But his grip and body position wouldn’t allow it.

“Okay, Tess, on the count of three, you’re going to move to get your hand on this side of the apron. One. Two. Three.” He lifted his weight onto his toes into a plank. One hand on the apron, the other lifting the rescue.

“I can’t. I … my body won’t move that way. You’re still too heavy.” But then she yelled her surprise. Levi felt her sliding toward the center of the roof.

Glancing over his shoulder to make sure the new angle of the school wasn’t making Tess slide over the other side, he saw that the children had Tess by the legs and were heaving her backward, their bare heels pressing into the gravel as they scrambled.

The child in the water hugged the empty bottles to himself. It was his one possible lifeline should the grips of strangers fail him.

As Tess slid to the center, Levi dragged Mojo over the edge, the rope still tight in his teeth. “Hold Mojo, good boy! Good boy! Hold!” Levi released Mojo’s handle, reached for the child’s elbow, and flung the boy back onto the roof.

Still clinging to the jug handles, the child scrambled into the circle, where the other students surrounded him protectively, petting and patting him to calm his nerves, his eyes wide and unblinking.

Levi looked over to see blood flowing from the grazes on Tess’s legs. There was no point in first aid. Everything was wet.

For the moment, though, the rain had stopped.

Would it hold?

There was nothing else to prepare. There was no action to take other than to keep an eye out for some possible point of safety up ahead.

So far, miraculously, they’d stayed afloat.

Levi had been on boats that hadn’t traveled as fast as this schoolhouse had.

Tess’s assessment at the very beginning was accurate. The cement that was sealed with paint might be what allowed this structure to be so buoyant. But in short order, the unpainted cement would absorb too much water, and it would sink.

With nothing else to do to secure the roof, this was the part of the fight that Levi always hated—hunkering down.

That was when his life didn’t exactly flash before his eyes, but it was certainly a time for introspection. Possibly even some self-condemnation. If this was the end of his life, had he spent his time wisely? Was he doing what he could to add something good to the world?

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