Flood

The call from the doctor came late in the evening, a week after my 56th birthday. My blood test results--ordered for a pain in my left side--were back. He wanted me to come in first thing tomorrow. I didn’t sleep well that night. He hadn’t sounded an alarm, but an evening call from a doctor carried alarm bells enough.

In his office the next day, he explained that blood tests had revealed that I had chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). It was a rare form of blood cancer - not inherited; probably a result of some environmental exposure to radiation or chemicals. Had I had any history with x-rays? Jobs that regularly exposed me to chemicals like benzene?

No, I said. My parents had lived ten miles from the 3-mile island nuclear accident which hit in 1979, but I was 30 and living with my wife Sandy in Boston at that time.

Anything else? He said. I hesitated. I could only think of one thing—the flood of June, 1972.

***

It came inland from the Southeast. Torrential rains from Hurricane Agnes, pummeled the Susquehanna River basin. Instead of delivering an intense, but short-lived punch, Agnes came, slowly meandered to the Northwest, circled back around, and stalled. It was as if a burglar broke into your home while you were away on vacation, and decided to hang around for a few days. For three days rain poured down relentlessly, engorging the rivers, saturating the water tables, which then overflowed into fields and valleys.

My wife Sandy and I, 23 years old and married for two years, were spending the summer in Harrisburg with my parents, transitioning from Indiana to Boston. I was about to start graduate school at Boston College in English; she had secured a job in the fall as a nurse in one of the major teaching hospitals. We both had summer jobs in Harrisburg--I worked in a large bread factory on an assembly line; she got a job at a blood bank.

We had stored our meager belongings on the third floor of my parents’ large English-Tudor style home, which was in the uptown section, one block from the Susquehanna River. The house, built by my grandparents in the 1920s, had never left our family. By that summer, my grandfather had died and my grandmother was in a nursing home. My parents and younger brother were now living there.

On Thursday morning, June 22, we heard some warnings about minor flooding in the low laying areas along the river, but none of us were especially concerned. The last big flood that had come over the banks of the river near my grandparents’ home was in 1936, and the city had improved the levees since then. I went to work, as did my wife.

I was eating lunch in the break room when Sandy called the factory. She was alarmed. She worked close to the river. There were new, more dire, flood warnings. Her office was shutting down.

“Joey, you need to come home now and help your parents move things upstairs,” she said. “They’re saying the river could come over the banks by tonight.”

I looked up through the glass door of the office where I had taken her call. The assembly line I’d been on all morning, stacking hot bread pans as they came out of the industrial-sized ovens, was still moving, the mixing machines whirring and grinding at their usual speed.

“I can’t just walk off the line,” I said.

“Have someone else step in for you.” She sounded annoyed. “I’m coming to get you. I’m bringing Mike and Jimmy.”

Mike and Jimmy were two childhood friends. “What do you need them for?” I said.

“I’m too nervous to drive alone,” she said. Then, “I’m not arguing about this.”

I got off the phone, irritated. I needed this job, and Sandy could be an alarmist. Sometimes I felt like her anxieties held me, and us, back. My supervisor was annoyed too. Apparently, I wasn’t the first employee who wanted to leave early to get home. By the time I changed back into my street clothes and went outside, though, the assembly line had stopped. Everyone was standing outside or on their way home. I stood outside in the rain, waiting for the car to pull up.

After parking in the driveway of my parents’ house, the four of us walked one block toward the river. We heard it first – a constant low roar that I had only experienced when my family visited Niagara Falls. Half a block away, we saw it-- a great torrent, moving fast, undulating and muddy, carrying tree limbs and debris. It would crest in places, random explosions of water, pushed up from below, like lava cast up from a volcano. Normally, the river would have been 30 feet below a steep bank - now it was only 4 feet from coming over the edge where we were standing. It was so loud that we had to yell at each other to be heard. I looked at the surging water, unsettled by how the margin between solid ground and safety, and deadly chaos, was so slim.

We hurried back to the house. My parents and my little brother were frantically moving what they could from the first floor to the second. My mom was trying to save as many things as possible, chairs, lamps, dishes. My dad wanted to get everyone out of the house.

He found my mother in the dining room. She was filling a box with her mother’s china. “It’s just stuff Mary; we have to leave now” he said. Her shoulders sagged. Tears filled her eyes. She stopped packing and stepped away from the dining room table. As she passed the sideboard she reached out and took a small Hummel figure. With her free hand she touched the William Morris wallpaper. “Do you think the wallpaper will survive?” “I don’t know,” he said. “But if not, it can be replaced.”

We said goodbye to Mike and Jimmy and put whatever we could into the two cars. The rain was still beating down and an ominous fog had settled in - it was hard to gauge the time of day. A police car with a loudspeaker passed, telling people to leave. I watched from the car window, as my father left the house that he had grown up in, locking the door out of habit, as if that would keep it safe.

We headed across town to an old neighbor’s house, who offered to let us stay with her and her husband. We had no idea how long we would be there, but on that first evening, we were grateful for a roof over our heads, a warm dinner, and a bed to sleep in.

That night, local TV weather reports showed the storm slowing moving away to the East. The worst of the rain was over. It might end completely by morning, but I knew that the worst flooding was yet to come, as all the water for hundreds of miles north of the city arrived. My wife and I were in a small guest room with a double bed – likely intended as a child’s room, even though our neighbors were childless.

“Remember the time in high school when Mrs. Byrd came over to check on us when my parents were away, and we were in bed together?” I said as we lay there.

“Oh my God, I was so embarrassed,” she said.

“And 5 years later, she has invited us to share a bed in her house,” I said.

“We’re married now, it’s legal,” she said, laughing.

We lay there, listening to the rain. An old oak tree outside the window creaked in the wind. Just before falling asleep I thought, whatever happened, we had each other, and in that moment we were safe.

At breakfast the next morning we watched the news.The river had crested at 33 feet, 15 feet above flood stage. Pictures on screen showed water in the first floors of the homes in my parents’ section of town. It would be at least three days before it receded enough to allow us to go back and assess the damage. In the meantime, the Red Cross had set up a shelter at a public high school and was looking for volunteers. Sandy and I called our friends and decided we’d go there and see what we could do to help.

The high school was not far from my parents’ house, but four blocks away from the river and on a higher piece of land. The atmosphere was tense and chaotic. An ambulance exited the parking lot, siren blaring. Two firefighters ran out of the high school, toward the river. We walked past police cars and a fire truck and went into the school and found the gym, where rows of cots were being set up. There seemed to be about 100 residents there, milling around, sitting, or laying down. Volunteers, including our friends Mike and Jimmy, were busy setting up tables and putting snacks and bottles of water on them. A baby was crying and couldn’t be consoled by its mother, who blankly looked straight ahead. Two firemen entered the room, each holding an arm of an older man, who was wet and looked exhausted. A nurse met them, put a blanket over the man and led him to a cot.

One of the firefighters told us that they were doing rescues of people trapped in their homes farther up the river. Their staff was stretched thin, so he wanted to know if any of us were willing to go out in a boat with a fireman.

I volunteered right away. Mike said no, and Jimmy wasn’t sure. “Come on,” I said. “I don’t want to go alone.”

“I don’t know much about boating,” Jimmy said.

“Me either,” I said. I had some boating experience, mostly on lakes. “But we’ll be with an experienced boater.”

“I’ve never been much of a swimmer,” he said.

“I’m sure they wouldn’t send out volunteers if it was too dangerous,” I said.

My wife pulled me aside.

“I don’t think you should go,” she said. “You saw that water yesterday. It’s only going to be worse today.”

But my first instinct was to help, somehow I wasn’t going to give in to Sandy’s fears this time. I looked up and made a sound as if I was blowing out a candle. I had made up my mind and was done talking. I reached out and gently squeezed her forearm. “I’m going,” I said. She pulled away. “You coming Jimmy?” I said. He made a face like he still wasn’t sure about it, but came with me anyway.

We went down to the edge of the water, at a relatively calm flood-created pond where motorboats were going out. My heart was pounding. The river beyond the pond was angrier and faster than it was the day before. I could feel my resolve wavering. I looked over at Jimmy – the blood had drained from his face. But I had too much invested in this decision to quit. I couldn’t back out now, and I knew Jimmy would stick with me.

We spoke to the firefighter who would drive our boat – a sturdy looking 20-foot Boston Whaler. As he loaded gear into the boat, he briefed us as to where we were going and what to expect – then fitted us with life jackets. Jim sat on one side of the stern of the boat and me on the other. A chrome railing was attached to the gunwale on both sides – I gripped it with both hands.

“Hold tight, it could get bumpy when we get into the current,” the captain said.

As we moved away from the shore into the river, the water sped up and the surface got choppy. The boat made a dull thump as it hit each wave. I tightened my grip. We were now between the main part of the river and flooded houses on our right. The river was a chocolate brown and full of stuff that didn’t belong there – boards, a tire, a children’s plastic wading pool. The captain maneuvered the boat side-to-side to miss the objects, as if on an obstacle course.

It happened in an instant. A giant tree limb shot out of the water in front of the boat and hit the bow. The force turned the boat sideways and tilted it 30 degrees. My side of the boat was up in the air. The captain struggled to regain control against the strong current. Jimmy’s side took on water over the railing. The captain swung the boat around. Jimmy lost his grip. Our eyes met for a brief instant - then he went over the edge.

It was so sudden - I almost expected Jimmy to reappear on the boat. But then I could see him in the churning water, arms flailing, trying to swim, but getting rolled over and over by the rushing water. He was quickly moving away from the boat.

“Turn around,” I shouted. “Jimmy’s in the water.”

The captain looked back, the boat now having righted itself.

“Oh my God!” he yelled.

Jimmy was being swept down the river, his head bobbing up and then disappearing again. He was a good 100 yards from us as we got the boat turned and headed in his direction.

Then we lost sight of him.

“Where is he? Where is he?” I screamed.

He was gone.

When we got back to shore, I collapsed on the grass. Someone put a blanket over me. A firefighter ran to the high school and found Sandy and Mike. They managed to get me to my feet, to the car, and drive me back to my neighbors’ house. I was given a warm bath and food I could not bear to eat. I kept asking if they had found Jimmy. Laying in my wife’s arms that night, I could not speak. I wanted to say I was sorry – she had been right to worry – but words failed me. The images, however, kept coming. The bench on the boat, Jimmy there one moment, then gone. There, then gone. Jimmy trying to swim back to us as the boat was pulled farther and farther away.

Jimmy’s body was found the next day, washed up into a downtown street. Three days later the funeral was at our parish church; the same church where me and Jimmy had been altar boys in grade school. The building was filled with his extended family, co-workers, neighbors, and many of our childhood friends. This scene was being repeated up and down the river – 47 people had died in the flood.

I sat in the pew next to my wife and friends and looked straight ahead, as the priest said what priests say in these situations. Jimmy’s older brother Tim spoke for the family, and Mike talked about Jimmy as a dear and loyal childhood friend. I could not bear to look at anyone.

I quit the factory job and decided to spend the last six weeks of my summer doing what I could to help clean my parents’ house. Sandy restarted her job at the blood bank. My dad resumed his job as an insurance salesman—there were lots of claims to process.

My main job was the basement. I shoveled mud, hosed, and mopped. The hot and humid weather only amplified the smell of rot, wet plaster, and bleach. I wore rubber gloves, but no mask or other protective gear. The mud was never tested for chemicals or other toxins.

***

Now, 33 years later, divorced and living back in Harrisburg as an English teacher in my old high school, I am sitting in the doctor’s office. I told him about the basement and the mud. He shrugged and said it was a possible cause. Then he said I was lucky. A revolutionary “gene therapy” treatment had been developed for this particular kind of leukemia. The treatment would not cure me, but could hold the cancer in remission. I would take a daily pill that had manageable side effects. I would not need chemotherapy. I would not lose my hair. If it worked, I would be able to manage this as a chronic disease like hypertension.

I left the doctor’s office and walked five blocks to the river. I sat on a bench, looking out over the slow-moving water, forming little ripples and swirls as it slithered silently around rocks, a great artery nourishing the land, but carrying whatever we put into it. I thought about the blood in my veins hosting a disease that could not be cured, about how the river had poisoned me in two ways—not just with the rot and the mud, but with the grief I still carried that had now turned against me.

I wanted that water to take it all back, to wash away my guilt, sending it out to sea to join Jimmy’s ashes. I wanted to say I was sorry; that I screwed up. What do I do now? I picked up a stone and threw it into the river to let it know that I was there and wanted to talk.