Page 100 of The Auction
But it was like being in one of those horrible dreams where you were moving your legs as fast as you could but you were barely making progress. My foot got caught on something and I sprawled forward, as the phone flew out of my hand.
Shit. It was in the water! Phones weren’t supposed to go in the water. It had been the most expensive gift I’d ever been given. The most important gift I’d ever been given. What an idiot I’d been to risk it.
Herb was going to kill me.
“Jules!”
I could feel hands trying to wrap around my waist, but I crawled away. I was on my hands and knees now, my body almost fully covered with mud as I tried to search for the phone, with sweeping motions of my hands in front of me. The flashlight was on. I should still be able to see it in the rain. Except I couldn’t. What if it turned off? How was I going to fix this?
Rice. Everyone on the internet said to put the phone in rice if it got wet. I could still save it if I just got my hands on it.
“Where the fuck is it!” I shouted. I had to find it. I needed the light if I was going to get to the chickens. Where the fuck was all this rain coming from?
“Jules!”
This time it was a solid arm around my stomach and I was being hauled up to my feet. Mud slid off the front of me, and for the first time, I could acknowledge I was freezing. It shouldn’t be this cold in the summer.
Another second and I was being lifted over Creed’s shoulder. My body hanging down his back. He was shirtless and I clapped my hands on his lower back, trying to find somewhere to pinch him to get his attention.
“The chickens! They’re shut up inside the coop!”
“I already let them out!” Creed shouted back. “Nothing else to do!”
Except chickens couldn’t really fly. Did they swim? Like ducks? Maybe we should have had ducks instead this whole time.
“My phone!”
He was carrying me back through the rain, the mud. We were beyond wet, beyond dirty, and the pitch black around us felt like we might have been adrift at sea instead of on a farm in Montana.
“It’s gone.”
I kicked and hit at his back. “It can’t be gone! It’s too expensive!”
“Jules,” he shouted, finally setting me down on the porch. “Get it together. Now!”
“It’s too much water,” I said, my lips almost numb now, as my whole body was shivering.
“Listen to me. I need you to focus. I want to see if we can save the trucks. Tractor’s already flooded.”
The drive off the access road to our farm ramped up to the gravel area where we parked our trucks, however, the barn with the tractor and the rest of our farm equipment was built next to the crops, which was lower in the valley.
I couldn’t really see anything now, without my phone, without a star or sliver of moon or any light coming from behind the house. Just the downpour of water as it fell from the eaves off the roof of the house.
I’d seen rain. I’d seen flooding. But I’d never seen this.
“Jules! Is there higher ground?”
I wracked my brain even as I wrapped my arms around my mud soaked body.
Higher ground?
No.
He’d have to wade through the mud and water to even get to the trucks, assuming he could drive them anywhere. Once there, he risked the chance of getting caught in a moving current. Everything could go wrong then. The truck could flip. It could bury him.
“No. There’s nowhere to take them.”
“Fuck!” he shouted. “Okay. Get inside.”
