Moments later: “The water is coming, Atticus! The water is coming!”
Without stopping, we looked out at the open space behind us with awe and terror as the rushing river, littered with cars and roofs and trees raced toward the water tower with violent determination. The beams that held up the massive dome-shaped structure snapped and buckled like four broken legs, and the dome crashed into the Mississippi River like a tiny raft overturned and swallowed by white rapids.
”HURRY!” Atticus roared.
Ditching the sling to free his other arm, Atticus grabbed me around my waist and lifted me into the air, and he threw me onto a ladder that led onto the roof of the store.
“What if the river takes the store, too!” I shouted as we hurried up the ladder, hands gripping the bars above us, feet climbing the ones beneath us.
“Then you hold onto me and don’t let go!”
I will never let go…
We made it onto the roof seconds before a wall of water slammed into the store below; the glass windows exploded, and we could hear the shelves and shopping carts smashing against the walls inside; the ground and the building shook beneath us like an earthquake.
We sat in the center of the roof, huddled together, holding onto to one another with inseparable force as the river battered our only life raft. And we waited, for life or death, or more of the in-between we’d been surviving since we met.
I will never let go of you, Atticus.
66
THAIS
Lying together on the roof of the grocery store, Atticus and I looked up at the sky, we watched the dark clouds drift slowly overhead, and felt the last few drops of rain sprinkle our faces. I listened to the water beneath us churn and swish and move debris around, but now with a lighter hand as the angry river had finally calmed. Birds flew over, their tiny black wings flapping amid the gray clouds. The wailing of a cat I could hear in the distance, probably stuck in a tree or on a rooftop just as Atticus and I were.
The sun was setting, and it covered the flooded landscape in an eerie gray-red light that looked more post-apocalyptic than a peaceful, approaching nightfall.
Only when it was time to leave at dawn the next morning did either of us have the energy to discuss how it should be done.
“Nothing in sight to float on,” Atticus noted, looking out at the water all around us.
“Maybe it’s not too deep to walk through,” I said, standing next to him. I pointed at a cluster of trees and an overturned dumpster and determined: “Waist-deep at the most,” judging the height of the water around the items.
“It’s what’s under the water that worries me,” Atticus said.
“But we can’t stay on this roof. We have to keep moving.”
He squeezed my hand.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice trailing as he succumbed to the harsh reality. “Stay close to me.”
“Always.”
I was right about the water being waist-deep; unfortunately, it was only waist-deep for Atticus though—it went up to my breasts. Atticus tried to talk me into riding him piggyback, and when I refused I did so with anger and disbelief.
“Your ribs are fractured,” I scolded, my eyebrows drawn together harshly. “Atticus, I’m perfectly capable of moving through this water just as you are, so stop sacrificing yourself to lay cloaks over the puddles in front of me. If I step in shit, let me step in shit; if I fall and get my dress dirty, let it be dirty; if I break a leg, let me figure out how to walk on it rather than be pampered and carried.” I regretted the tone of my voice after I’d said everything I’d wanted to say, but I did not regret the words. Until I saw the hurt look on his face, and then I regretted the words. Very much so.
I reached out and touched his arm; water dripped from my used-to-be-white sleeve.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“You did mean it,” he said; he touched my cheek with the back of his fingers. “And it’s okay, really; I understand. And you’re right: I shouldn’t treat you like a child or a damsel in distress or a privileged princess. You are who you are, and I should respect that.” He leaned in closer. “But I am who I am, too, and wanting to protect you, to make life easier for you however I can, to sacrifice myself for you, to choose to step in the shit ahead of you, to keep your dress from getting dirty, and to break my leg in place of yours—I will never stop, Thais. I will never just stop being who I am.” He kissed my forehead, and leaned upright, grimacing from the pain in his ribs. “I don’t do the things I do for you because I believe you can’t do them yourself. I do them because I want to. It’s up to you whether or not it makes you feel like a child, or a damsel in distress—I don’t think of you as either.”
I narrowed my eyes to keep from smiling.
“What about a privileged princess?”
Atticus shrugged, took my hand and pushed through the murky, debris-filled water again. “Well, you’re my privileged princess—as privileged as you can be in our situation—so take it however you want.”
I finally smiled.
It seemed like hours we made our way through the filthy water—thankfully unscathed by the debris, and the invisible dangers beneath it—and when I noticed the water level drop from my breasts to my waist, and then eventually to my knees, we knew that dry land was near.
“There,” Atticus said, pointing ahead. “A paved road.”
Exhausted from the overuse of our muscles pushing through the water for so long, by the time we made it to the road on the horizon we couldn’t walk another minute. We slept in the back of a semi-trailer after I’d re-dressed Atticus’ wounds—(Atticus had carried our few supplies wrapped tightly in his beautician’s smock tied around his neck to keep it dry, but there wasn’t clean water to rinse the river from the wounds.) And after our much-needed rest, we woke while the sun still blazed in the sky, and we pressed on.
Another day passed.
And another.
And another.
We lost track of the number of days we walked, and hadn’t the slightest idea where we were, or even if we were heading in the right direction, until finally, a road sign jutted from the grass out ahead and we were relieved to know we’d been going the right way all along. Keeping to the woods beyond the shoulder, but keeping the highway in sight, we continued southwest until the woods abandoned the highway and we were forced to abandon it, too, so we would not be out in the open.
For days and days we walked, and for days we did not eat, and for days we hardly drank as the sky felt it had given the land enough rain already.