I used to live in a trailer park off of Richard’s Road. I lived in a blue and white singlewide with a large bay window. My dad had built a nice Cedar wood deck across the side where the entrance door was situated. He stole the wood from a nearby lumberyard. To this day, I don’t know how he got away with most of the things he did. He was a good dad, but an even better thief. He was a strange mix of bible believer and scoundrel. My mom grew tired of his less than stellar behavior, his inconsistencies, and left us. I didn’t see much of her after that, and don’t really care to see much of her now. I know where she lives, but I never make any more attempts to mend our relationship. At some point, both of us quit trying and I’m fine with that.
Our trailer was on the back lot, adjacent to Mill Creek. We may have been poor, but I felt like the richest kid in the world. In my mind, I lived in the most perfect place, a paradise with a creek full of fish. That’s all I really cared to do, that and help my dad work on his project cars.
It was probably a poor decision to build the park so close to the creek. Mill Creek is a monster. It lays dormant for years, and then, she gets angry, swells up and washes everything away. There’s hardly any warning, little time to flee. The county has widened its banks a few times to no avail. There’s something diabolical about it. When it rises, it rises fast, with ill-intent, and cataclysmic results.
I had never experienced it, well, at an age where I could recall the event. My dad told me about the 75’ flood, wherein the middle of the night water was an inch high in our trailer within thirty minutes. I was asleep in my crib. My mom grabbed me and they got out of the house with some of our belongings. Luckily, that flood wasn’t as bad as some of the previous floods. The water subsided without causing severe damage. Earlier floods have floated trailers down the creek. Dad had saw one such spectacle himself. He said it looked like a redneck Navy, cruising into enemy territory. He often chided himself for moving into the park, with what he knew of past floods, but also, he knew that was all he could afford.
There was a curious side note to all of these floods. After each and every flood, there was a dramatic rise in crime. My dad had lived in this town all his life. He knew of every flood; he could rattle off a stream of statistics, detailing the date the flood happened, the extent of the damage, and the most heinous and famous murders that happened after the water subsided.
I remember a night when he was drunk, sitting in the recliner in front of the television, eyes closed, and mumbling to himself. “If there’s ever a flood, get the hell out. Get the hell out.”
On April 15th, 1985, Mill Creek finally introduced me to her madness. I don’t remember any weather forecast, because as a child I didn’t stay glued to the television watching the Weather Channel like I do now as an adult. My father was preoccupied that day. He had found a part for his Chevelle, that he needed to acquire, not through a legal bartering or purchase, but something he was going to get by stealth. He came home late at night, excited about his finding another piece to his car.
“Hey Brady, I got that quarter panel. I am good! Dumb sum bitch left his quarter panel out in the driveway. A whole fricking quarter panel, still in the driveway. Time to celebrate little man. This is a case of beer night. I might even let you have one.”
“That’s alright dad. I don’t want any.” I didn’t like to see him drink. It had gotten worse over the years. He wasn’t a mean drunk, but once he got drunk, he sure as hell didn’t want to come back down. He was a binge drinker, difficult to stop once he got started.
That night he passed out in the recliner, with the quarter panel lying on the floor. When I was sure he was safely unconscious, I went to bed myself. I was falling asleep, in that state between wakefulness and dreaming, imagining what I was going to do on Saturday, when it started to rain. I heard the water battering our metal roof. It was sudden with little build-up. There was no crescendo, just a sudden rush of heavy precipitation. I felt anxious at first, like this was something extraordinary, something to be worried about, but the constant droning of rain beguiled me and put me in a deep sleep.
I was awakened by the sound of streaming water and a constant banging against the trailer walls. There was a smell of damp earth wafting through the air. I opened my eyes to see that there was about a foot of water in my room swaying back and forth, like when you carry a bowl of water. The trailer was rocking, about to be knocked off its foundation. I heard my dad yelling from the living room, getting louder as he approached my door.
“Son, wake up. We got to get out of here!”
Instinctively, I went to change clothes.
“We don’t have time for that. We got to go now. Get on my back.”
He turned his back towards me. I stepped into the water. It was cold and gritty and below its muddy surface, I could see tiny flashes of green light. I was less concerned about the flood, and more worried about what those green lights were. Without any more hesitation, I jumped on his back, hoping that I had avoided being touched by whatever strange chemical was in the water.
Dad sloshed through the water and floating debris. I noticed the quarter panel floating near the couch, trapped in an eddy, unable to get free from the contrary current. I felt a little saddened. We made our way to the front door. Dad had no difficulty getting the front door open, for as he pulled inward the force of the rushing water outside slammed the door open against the wall, cracking the glass in the door lite. More debris floated in, a floating island of trash and lawn decorations.
There was a scream out in the darkness. I could see only as far as our front deck, the railing busted and leaning inward. The lights started to flicker.
“Hold tight. I need to get a flashlight… and my gun.”
He plodded against the current and went into his bedroom. He opened the drawer and got his pistol.
“Why do you need a gun dad?”
“Whatever you do son, don’t swallow the water or get it in your mouth.”
It was a strange answer, but advice I was more than willing to obey.
After he got the flashlight out of the closet, we made our way back to the front door. Outside I could hear more screaming, but it had escalated. It was louder and more frequent. Someone was in trouble; someone was dying.
The lights popped and we were thrust in darkness. Dad immediately turned on the flashlight and pointed outside. Henry, our next-door neighbor, floated by, struggling not to drown, grasping something underwater, refusing to let it go. He reached out with his free hand and grabbed the deck railing.
“Henry,” I said.
“No, leave him be.”
“But dad he needs help.”
“Nothing we can do.”
I heard Henry snarl and I realized that he never screamed, talked, or asked for help. I finally noticed that the Henry I knew was different. His face was mottled with green boils and blisters. His eyes were yellow and there was blood all around his mouth. The object he had in his hand below the water emerged, as he began thrashing to keep afloat. It was his wife, Mary. Her head was hanging by a thread of muscle and tissue, bobbing up and down like a floater indicating that the bait had been bitten. Her stringy wet grey hair exposed her liver-spotted scalp. Her arms had visible bite marks and in various places, she was gnawed all the way down to the bone. Her gawdy orange nightgown was ripped and shredded, the vision of which instilled in me a post-traumatic hatred of the color orange.
Dad raised his pistol and shot Henry in the forehead. Henry’s grip loosened both from the railing and his wife’s body. She immediately sunk, heavy and bloated with copious amounts of creek water. Henry, on the other hand, floated swiftly away.
I started to cry and plead.
“We can’t go out there. Please, don’t take us out there!”
“We can’t stay here. I’ll protect you. I promise.” He pulled me up by the bottom of my legs. “Hold tight.”
Before he plunged us into the water, he shined the flashlight to either side of the trailer. Everything seemed clear, so he made his way down the steps. The water had risen quite a bit and my dad knew he had to swim. He handed me the flashlight and pistol.
“Take these. I got to swim a bit, until I get my footing. Close your mouth tight.”
With every splash of water in my face, I tightened my lips, and there was a flash of panic. I was worried of becoming a flesh-eating zombie like my neighbor. There were multiple screams from every direction. I didn’t know if it was because they were drowning, or being eaten, or maybe both. I was ready to get out of that damn water.
I knew when my dad had found flat footing, because as soon as he did, he started running hard against the water, making his way fast to the newly formed shore. A hand grabbed me by the arm and started pulling me away from my dad.
“Dad, something’s got me!” I lost my grip around his neck and dropped the flashlight, but not the gun. I felt dad turn to grab me, and yanking forward, hoping to loosen the grip on my arm. It worked, but then the monster grabbed my ankle. Dad pivoted all the way around and grabbed me under the arms, but not before my head went underwater for a brief moment. I closed my eyes and mouth tight. He lifted me upward out of the water. I was being pulled in two directions, one toward safety, the other toward certain death.
With dad holding me above water and pulling me toward the shore, I had enough stability to grab the gun with both hands. I couldn’t see the thing that was trying to kill me. It was too dark. There were momentary glimpses of an outline, and a constantly growling, so I aimed the gun where I thought its head would most likely be and pulled the trigger. It was a shot of faith but it worked. The recoil from the gun was too much for me to handle and I lost it in the water. The grip on my ankle was loosened and we were able to make it to dry land.
We walked to the edge of the flood. As we stood up, relaxed and caught our breath, we looked out over the abyss. There was a stark line between the darkness of the sky and the glowing water beneath it. The overflowing creek had crested. It was calm and infused with millions of bright green organic life-forms, wriggling and shining throughout, a sea of emerald gemstones, evoking both a feeling of awe and horror.
“Beautiful. Horrible… but fucking beautiful,” ad said to himself. It is a phrase that has stuck with me. It has colored my perception of life in general.
We went to stay with my grandmother until we were given permission to go and gather what little belongings we had left. All day long we could hear gunfire. The National Guard had moved in to clean up the more dangerous mess. When that was done, it was up to the homeowners and insurance companies to clean up the rest. There was plenty of reporting on the flood, but nothing about what had happened to the people because of the flood.
Dad wasn’t upset about the loss, even the Chevelle. For him it was all about the build. Once he got a car rebuilt, he drove it for a while, then sold it to start on a new project. What really bothered him was that he never found that quarter panel. In his mind, he worked hard to obtain it. It was a shame to lose something so easily, after all that effort. As they say, ‘easy come, easy go,’ or as my dad used to say, ‘fuck it, it all belongs to God anyway.’