Thick Bodies

One by one, the families on the street moved away for good. Or, more accurately, with each new evacuation, one more family did not return. Like clockwork. She knew most of them by name and waved when they left.

The house was built on stilts so it could withstand the high waters. It was the only one on the street perched up in the air like that, but there were others in town. The builder was a religious man and was raised to prepare for hard times, but he left town mysteriously. No one seemed to notice his absence. His father was an inland minister.

At first the young girl who lived there felt strange about being in such a tall house. High up in the air, they stood out. The staircase out front had 25 steps. She counted them in her head whenever she climbed them.

In the back of the house was a ladder as if they lived on a dock. Cars were parked under the shade of the house. Later she became used to the place. Even grew to like it. It was like living on a ship.

From her bedroom window, she saw the rooftops of all the other houses on the street. She saw where birds nested on unused chimneys. Her father said the other homes were built in a simpler time. Cinder block and brick one-story homes with screened-in porches. They weren’t identical but they all followed the same game plan. Her house, in contrast, had retractable storm windows made of steel and an aluminum roof.

From her front porch, she looked downward at the street as if the ground itself were a danger. Her few remaining neighbors had to look up to wave. The land was flat as far as she should see. Pine trees appeared in sparse clusters. Not a hill in sight.

In the summer it got hot and damp and the bugs swarmed the porch lights at night. Clouds of thick bodies and soft wings. The insects thrummed like birds, and the birds feasted on them. That had always been true.

Sounds of the ocean were always close by. Waves and lapping tides and throaty motor boats. When the wind was down and the surface like glass, water skiers appeared and cut smooth curves that vanished behind them, jumped the boat wake and sometimes performed tricks. She could see them from the kitchen windows. Several pair of binoculars always stood upright on the wide sill.

When the storms came at high tide the water crept up the sidewalks and driveways. It lapped harmlessly against the pillars of the house. The other houses on the street were sometimes stained waist high by salt waters. There were dead fish in the gutters when the storm tides receded. Raccoons and Fish Crows ate them.

At some point no one else lived on their street. The father said that he would never leave. They would ride it out. He had a good job working inland for the power company. He drove a big truck and was gone during storms. He loved the hard weather. He bought a boat and a shiny trailer that sat next to the ladder in the back. The world is changing, he said to her. We must change too.

She would often climb down the ladder in the evening and spend time in the boat imaging places she could go. One time she imagined going all the way to California where her mother lived, but then she turned around and came back. Her father had planted cucumbers, pole beans and watermelons in raised beds.

There was a pond past the end of the street where a spring welled up close to the house and frogs spawned in that clear water. Their croaking would rise to a collective roar at night and she would sit as close as she could get and listen for timeless stretches.

A storm arrived that lasted for days. It was during the summer, the hottest months. At first the rain was welcome and it cooled everything down. You could breathe again. But the rain continued coming down for days with no let up. Her father left earlier than usual one morning for work and said he might not be back until late. He told her not to wait up for him, showed her how to use the generator if they lost power to the house. Remember, he said, don’t run the water or flush the toilets if the water comes up.

The tides welled up again and this time the water was at the twelfth stair. The empty houses across the street were halfway under water. After about an hour, she noticed that the twelfth stair was under water and water was lapping on the thirteenth. At one point she climbed down the ladder and stepped into the boat that was floating gently above the trailer. She worried about the frogs in the pond. She wondered how her father would be able to get back. She had the boat key in her pocket.

The girl had learned how to start the boat and she knew how to drive it. There was the throttle and there was no brake. She wondered where she would go if she took the boat. Would she go toward the ocean or toward the inland streams? She climbed back up the ladder and went into the house.

After another hour, the water had gone back down to the eleventh stair. There had been plenty of room to spare. Twelve more steps at least. When her father came back it was late and he fell asleep on the couch. He had been able to drive the utility truck to a higher ground spot close to the house. He left his soaking wet clothes in the kitchen sink.

About two weeks later, the calm weather returned, and so did the water skiers. There were fewer of them now, but they were the exceptional ones. They performed tricks with what seemed like no effort. They were magicians.

It was getting hot again and the air conditioning was a blessing.