Sam, Alice, and the Flood

         

Sam, Alice, and the Flood

Day one

Sam sometimes felt like the last remaining refuge of God in a great apathetic sea. The pastor of St. Paul's sighed sitting at his office desk, not noticing the first sprinkles kissing the glass of his window. Who notes such commonplace things as rain drops on an early spring day, especially with the life of a declining rural church demanding so much attention? One-by-one, the faithful were departing each year. The elderly stalwarts were joining the great congregation in the sky. Middle-aged folks were getting divorced, moving from the area, or staying home to watch sports on Sundays. As for kids, Sam stayed up nights conceiving ways to reach kids. Most of his schemes failed. So, the sudden storm didn't draw his attention from planning a Bible study.
The downpour picked up in the afternoon, rattling the stained-glass windows in the sanctuary as he said a prayer in an oak pew below the pulpit. Having just read the week's lesson, asking for guidance was his usual practice before beginning work on his sermon. It'd be another day before he put pen to paper for his first draft. He paused in his prayers to give thanks for providing his wife, Alice, the wisdom of handing him a jacket with a hood when he left home this morning
He locked the church's door behind him by mid-afternoon, determined to make it to three shut-ins before dark. At the edges of the parking lot, snow mounds from plowing were the last remnants of winter. Those hard conglomerations of snow, ice, gravel, dirt and grass always survived the longest, but the steady rain would drive them to extinction for this year by sundown. Sam pulled up his hood, saying one more blessing for the cover. The rain, blowing sideways in thick sheets, pelted his body. The stinging slaps of water had long, cold tendrils that sent shivers down his spine, but the hood protected his head, and he was glad. The last thing he needed was to catch something.
He drove east on the county road that ran in front of St. Paul's with the screech of his wipers keeping beat with the Rolling Stones' song playing on the radio. There were at least three parishioners that would have him ex-communicated for listening to such music, but he didn't care. Rock 'n' Roll picked him up during such dreary days.

***

Sam and Alice rented a five-acre farmette placed atop a hill about ten miles away from the church. His calling was to the church, but his hobby was getting his hands dirty. The beauty of the farmette was that it allowed him a glimpse into the agrarian lifestyle without the bills of actually owning land. Later in the spring, he and Alice would begin preparing two large gardens. One would be filled with carrots, tomatoes, lettuce, potatoes, and whatever other vegetables they could fit. Any excess could either be canned or donated to the local shelters. The other garden was for flowers. Alice doted on the flowers, especially the big sunflowers. In the summer, Sam would sit among the vibrant colors and write sermons and prayers. He liked to think about the scene from Field of Dreams, where the ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson asks, "Is this heaven?". Sam always got emotional at the end of the movie when Kevin Costner's character realizes that maybe his field, his home, and his family was indeed heaven and not just Iowa.
The rent included use of the old barn, where Sam kept a roost for a handful of hens, a healthy stock of barn cats, and a mutt named Herod. The dog's name came from their nephew, who was visiting when they adopted the pup three years earlier from a neighbor.
"Pick one name from the Bible," Sam had told the boy, who was ten at the time. The boy spent an hour searching the pages and then came back with Herod. The name stuck.
Fat drops pelted the recently frozen turf of his yard, as he pulled his car into the garage. The grass, so long stagnant under the snow, was growing pregnant from the extended shower and singing with that fresh, earthy smell for a bit of sunlight to fully spring it to life. He hadn't heard a forecast, but he hoped some warm days were coming.
The ranch house had an old root cellar with limestone walls that always took in water in the spring, so he'd need to hook up the sump pump soon to keep it from getting too out of hand. After all, they kept some of their canned goods down there on the higher shelves of a couple cabinets that he built with some salvaged OSB from the local hardware store. His craftsmanship was just good enough to be showcased in a dingy cellar.
Alice stood before the stove in a purple blouse and blue jeans when he entered the house. Her bare feet patted off the linoleum to the refrigerator, and her long dark hair was damp, as she always showered after coming home from the hospital. She had a sturdy build, a useful trait for a registered nurse. Sneaking up from behind, he hugged her around the waist, taking in the smells of shampoos and lotions.
Maybe this is heaven, he thought.
Sam and Alice ate hamburgers and fried potatoes between snippets of conversation. Outside it rained, but they paid it no mind.

***

Later they made love. The warm, considerate love of two people married long enough to know each other's likes, yet still passionate enough to not feel like routine. At the climax, Alice squeezed her eyes shut, and Sam considered the beauty in the faint wrinkles spreading out like rays of sun down the sides of her face. Afterward, they giggled like school kids and whispered about having children of their own.
"We'd pick names from the Bible, of course," she said.
"Like Uzziah."
"Uzziah?" She rolled her eyes.
"Sure, or how about Barnabas?"
"Not bad."
"Maybe Bathsheba, if it's a girl."
"Nice, let's just give our children complexes."
"Complexes? Maybe if we went with Hagar or Judas."
"Ha. I was thinking of something a little less foreign to the ears." She put two fingers to her lips. The expression was a slip. Alice was fighting the urge to smoke. Even with all her years as a nurse, she still smoked on occasion.
"I always liked Noah for a boy. Maybe Ruth for a girl."
He considered the names and harkened back to the lessons from seminary. No need, he thought, overthinking the origins of names. He certainly didn't spend much time thinking about Samuel when he signed the rent checks.
Both Sam and Alice drifted off to sleep right before a bolt of lightning shot above their home, followed a few seconds later by a giant crack of thunder. Neither Sam nor Alice stirred from their happy sleeps.

Day Seven

The church service began at 10:30 A.M., a perfect time for the sun to blaze through the bright designs of the windows and paint the seated congregates in so many of the glorious colors provided by the Lord. Sam choked back tears so many times from his pulpit, as he was assaulted by the beauty of the scene. On the seventh day, a strange fog suffocated the world and a persistent drizzle fell. The bleakness bled into the sanctuary, as the pale congregation slumped below the orange hue cast from the bulbs above. He delivered the day's message, one of the many lessons leading toward Easter, but he could tell other things weighed on their minds. Even Alice, who usually sat attentively while he spoke in order to discuss his message later over a nice Sunday meal at one local restaurant or another, barely acknowledged his presence. She spent much of the service glaring over at the windows, which did at least mask that it was still raining behind their colored panes.
"Go in peace. To serve the Lord." Sam said as enthusiastically as possible without sounding hokey at the conclusion of the service.
"Thanks be to God." The congregation responded with voices that sounded recorded.
Parishioners whispered greetings and well wishes as they exited. Alice remained seated in her front pew, and he caught glimpses of her slumped shoulders past the faces of his congregates. He longed to run to her, to comfort her, but he knew he should wait.
Thomas Gunderson, an eccentric bachelor in his sixties who managed the church's books with tedious precision, made sure to be the last through the procession. Thomas put great stock in the doomsday portions of the Bible, and Sam considered it a personal challenge to get Thomas to look on the brighter side of things when it came to faith.
"I've never seen a week straight of rain," Thomas started in, adjusting his glasses which rested uneasily on a thin set of nostrils. "No stops. I can't believe it. The news says it's raining everywhere. Everywhere! What do you suppose it means?"
"Well, Thomas, the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Perhaps, he's just in a giving mood just this moment in terms of precipitation."
"Do you suppose it's the global warming like all the liberals have been spewing?"
"Might be. The earth is ours to take care of, and we haven't always done a good job tending to it."
"What if it's another great flood?" Thomas shifted on his feet. He seemed to be teetering on the edge of his nerves.
"Well, He doth taketh away, also." Sam regretted the words as they slipped out. Thomas's face turned a ghostly white and aged a decade or more right before Sam. "Look Thomas, it's a week of rain. We don't worry much when we go a full week without any rain, do we? Go home, tend to your business, say your prayers, and trust that the Lord has a plan for us all."

***

Alice pushed a cucumber slice with her fork around her plate, smearing it through lettuce and French dressing. Sam watched, wondering if she'd finish the salad before the main course came. The two sat in a booth facing the soggy parking lot at Marty's Diner, one of their favorite Sunday lunch haunts. The storm sewer in town had filled to the brim, and now water pooled in low areas like Marty's lot and in dips in the road. Thankfully, while the rain was persistent, it was not always a torrent. For a while, it would fall in a mist. An hour later, it'd whip sideways. Perhaps then it'd give way to a hard downpour. The alternatives gave parts of the day some slight sense of variety, considering the sun's constant residence behind the clouds.
"Thomas Gunderson seemed a bit worked up about the weather." Sam wiped his mouth with his napkin, hoping his fried chicken would come soon. Preaching always left him hungry, and he thought it was likely a common malady of the clergy, considering the waist line of so many of his peers of all faiths.
"Shouldn't he be?"
"Concerned maybe, but he's worked up that this is the reckoning."
"Well, it's raining all over the place," Alice fidgeted and reached for her purse. He knew she was going for a cigarette. She noticed him observing her and put the purse down. "Folks on the Mississippi are flooded out with the rain and the snow melt up north hitting them all at once. It's something to worry about. We're not that far from some big rivers."
"I know that, Alice, but we can't panic. The government will step in if things become an emergency, and we just have to trust in the Lord."
"Hmm, I know, I know." She lifted the cucumber slice off the plate with her fork, but dropped it before letting it reach her mouth.
A few minutes later, the waitress brought their chicken dinners. Sam sank his teeth into a leg as the grease covered his fingertips. After studying her plate a minute, Alice pushed it away.
"I can't eat this now."

***

Driving home, Sam navigated around Lincoln, avoiding places where culverts had clogged, ditches overflowed, and water spewed over the blacktop. For the first time, he admitted to himself that maybe he was being a bit flip about the weather. Folks in the area were starting to be adversely effected with flooded basements and backed up sewers. Living in the rural area where water had places to run made it easy to forget how quickly things can turn south in more populace areas.
As the town gave way to a patchwork of farms and subdivisions, he noted more often how irrigation ditches and creeks were creeping over their banks and spilling into fields. Three miles west of town, the highway became like a bridge between two newly formed dirty brown seas.
Even the creek near their home that flowed under the road a few hundred feet from their gravel driveway was rising and overtaking the surrounding pastures. Whenever he noticed any signs of the flooding, he pointed toward it to try and gain Alice's attention.
She kept her eyes forward, watching the drops hitting the windshield before being wiped away.

Day Ten

Groundwater seeping through the church basement's aging foundation filled the gathering room and the kitchen. Thomas, looking like he'd lost ten pounds that his frail frame didn't have the luxury of losing, waded through the dirty water in his knee-high rubber boots. His lips were shaking, his mind likely dwelling on the possibility that the church's cash reserves wouldn't cover the repairs and renovations the growing water was racking up. The hope for insurance paying out slimmed with each passing rain-filled day. The catastrophe facing the insurance industry when this ended and millions of claims started filing in would likely doom the entire system with the only possible respite being some sort of all-encompassing federal government action. Even Sam, who's financial mind wasn't strong enough to complete his and Alice's taxes, knew that would mean small payouts to everyone that wouldn't nearly cover everything.
He and Thomas worked all morning, trying to save anything of value from the basement and storing it in plastic tubs. The two men did the same upstairs in the sanctuary. Other than water seeping under the exterior doors, the main floor of the church remained dry. Sam gave thanks for that, but the rising water in the parking lot didn't encourage him that the church would remain that way much longer. Alice remained in the sanctuary throughout the entire process, never volunteering to help. She only came because he promised to stop at the grocery store afterward. She begged for him to get sand bags from Lincoln Hardware, but he informed her that those were already gone. Thomas had told him so the day before.
"I stopped at the Wendler and the Beck farms, but there was no one there," Thomas said, carrying the final load up the stairs. "I suppose they went to higher ground. Matthew Beck has a brother that lives in Colorado. Perhaps, they made it there."
"We'll pray they made it safely," Sam said. "The last report I heard was that mountain areas were suffering greatly from mudslides. There's more water everywhere than the soil can handle. Will you stay in Lincoln?"
"An old bachelor like me has nowhere to go. I guess I am going down with this ship. Will you and Alice go anywhere? You're mighty isolated out there."
"I am not sure where we'd go."
"His master plan is to pray it away," Alice said, walking up from behind. "That's all he knows to do."
Thomas shuffled his feet and kept his eyes down like a child stuck between feuding parents. The last thing a bachelor like Thomas Gunderson wanted was to be a bystander to a marital spat between his pastor and his pastor's wife.
"That is what I'll do, Alice. It's the best thing that any of us can do at this point."
As if God were listening, the electricity flickered out.
It never came back on.

Day Twelve

Water rushed in gullies a foot wide and a foot deep down their gravel driveway, flowing into the newly formed river at the bottom that once was Highway 15. Herod left Sam and Alice's side, gingerly pawing his way toward the edge of the river, sniffing, and then sticking his jaw out far enough to wet his tongue. Alice wildly and dispassionately threw pieces of gravel in the river. Sam was reminded of words from Hamlet's famous soliloquy, "Take arms against a sea of troubles." Alice's throwing of rocks displayed the uselessness of such an effort. Her face receded so far back in the hood of her slicker that he couldn't make out if it showed any emotion.
Leaving their home never crossed his mind, and he knew that Alice resented him for it. He didn't know where she expected them to go. The rain continued here, there, and everywhere. She spent the night before spinning theories about the navy building floating cities or NASA launching shuttles and building space stations on the fly. Science had great possibilities, but he doubted anything would work against this. He wasn't sure yet that this was the will of God, but it certainly was some sort of climatic event that was probably already claiming the lives of millions of people.
That wasn't to say that his faith was shaken. He held firm to the belief that every morning a man of faith wakes up searching for God, and the faithful inevitably finds God in something every day. Sam still found God in things big and small. He found God in his love for Alice, knowing that part of his calling was to guide her through this crisis.
None of that changed the fact that they were stranded. The roadway was flooded. Their position on the hill saved their home so far from flooding, but the waters were pooling at the edges of their yard atop the hill. The gradual creeping of the pool was a slower process than being washed away in the river, but if the rain didn't stop, those waters would reach their front door sooner or later.
Herod, losing interest in the river, scrambled back up the hill, wet gravel and dirt kicked up behind him.
"I don't suppose you've been granted any of those parting of the water skills?" Alice tossed one last hunk of gravel toward the river.
"Don't be like that."
"Like what?"
"Well, you've been downright blasphemous of late."
"Hmmm." She started back up the hill. "I just heard you talk about the power of prayer for years and years, and now when we need it most, where is your God?"
"In our hearts, Alice. Just where he always has been."
She kept walking up the lane, struggling to lift her sodden boots out of the gooey slop. He thought she'd given up the argument, but then she called back.
"God is dead. That's what I believe. Soon we'll be dead too."

Day Fifteen

Sam kept busy, at least as busy as he could without electricity and an ever-shrinking area of visible land encircling their home. He moved the chicken coop to the hay mow, covering the holes in the roof above with tarps he found in the garage. He surrounded the chickens in old, moldy hay, trying to keep them as warm as possible.
The main floor of the barn was covered in an inch of rain water. The resident cats balanced on beams and lounged in the windowsills, while Herod splattered about, searching for any sort of morsel that might have floated up from some ancient crevice. Sam adjusted his routine of chores to the rising torrent, and despite the fact that doom seemed to be dripping from every corner, he refused to let it dampen his spirits.
Alice was the opposite. She watched the sky from inside the house, focused so intently that it was like she was counting the drops to measure the accumulation to calculate the exact arrival of their demise.
He tried everything to veer her mind away from the rain. He read aloud from the Bible or any other book or magazine he could find and offered to play games, but she shrugged away his advances.
Mostly, she stood at the window, taking breaks to stand out under the overhang of the porch to smoke a cigarette. She'd bought several cartons the last time they'd ventured to the store. He didn't approve, but generally her mood lightened after a smoke or two.

Night Fifteen

Sam woke. It was raining. He was alone, but there had been a noise. It was the sound of something trying not to be a sound. A squeak. A fortnight earlier, his mind would have concluded a mouse rummaging in the closet or some other critter patrolling outside. Those days were gone.
There it was again. A squeak.
Where was Alice?
He tossed back the covers, knowing his eyes would never adjust fully to the impossible dark of a world with no more lights. He fumbled for the lantern he kept on his nightstand and found the book of matches. After striking the match and lighting the lantern, a small glow circled around him.
Down the hall he hurried, calling for Alice. His voice echoed in the emptiness.
Sam found Alice slumped against the refrigerator. Blood dripped off a knife in her left hand. Her right hand was a crimson orb. The rich purple-red fluid gushed from her right wrist.
"Oh Alice, no."
"My Sam."
Oh, the blood. Everywhere the blood. She fought him weakly for a few seconds, but the little strength left in her drained out with every heartbeat. He prayed like a lunatic, gathering her in his arms and working to stop the bleeding.
Every night after, he woke from terrifying nightmares where he watched the scene unfold in the tiny golden glow of light shed by the lantern. Her nearly opaque skin contrasted by wild splashes of blood. Him repeating ancient prayers driven into in his mind during seminary, while the rest of the world loomed in a thick, heavy silence. The nightmare went on and on, his prayers and her blood spilling out into the vacuum of dark space.

Day Sixteen

Sam tended to the wounds, stitched shut by his shaking hands the night before. He washed them with rainwater collected in pots. He feared infection.
Alice slept, and he never left her side.
Still it rained.

Day Seventeen

Alice moaned twice in the morning and then whispered some delirious song for the briefest of moments in the afternoon.
Alice slept, and Sam left only to tend to the animals and make a peanut butter sandwich.
Still it rained.

Day Eighteen

Not much yard left. Sam let Herod stay in the house after drying the mutt's paws with some rags.
Alice's eyes fluttered open, but she did not speak. Her wounds were a puffy red, and only she would know if that was good or not.
Still it rained.

Day Twenty

She laughed weakly watching him Alice-proof the house.
When you start worrying about suicide, everything becomes a potential tool of destruction. Glass dishes. Mirrors. Bottles of aspirin - well he kept those and fed them to Alice mashed up in bits of food to dull her pain - but other prescription or over-the-counter drugs were tossed away. He emptied drawers in the kitchen and tossed out batteries. He removed every lamp and any other thing with a long chord. He tossed all the belts other than the one holding up his jeans. As long as he didn't take it off, he'd be fine. He worried about the windows, about Alice breaking them and using the glass, but he couldn't very well remove them.
In all, he made two dozen trips down the lane to toss their things into the passing river, counting the steps there and back to occupy his mind. On the last trip, he realized he hadn't thought about scripture once during the day's work. He couldn't recall a day like that.

Instead, he thought about that John Lennon song "Imagine." The lyric "Imagine no possessions" ran through his mind. He grinned realizing he was approaching such a reality. The artists always pondered the sanctity of such states. He supposed the philosophers did also. He certainly had preached the evils of possessions more than once from his pulpit.
Until you get there though, you don't have any idea what it means. He heaved the last load, and it splashed loudly and heavily, sinking immediately from view. Nothing floated.
"It means nothing else to lose," Sam sang. He knew that came from somewhere too, but his muscles were too tired, his nerves frazzled, and his heart ached, so he had no interest in racking his brain for the source of the line.
Herod brought back a dead mouse, showing it to him briefly before taking it away to no doubt devour.
The rain continued, and Sam returned to Alice. The next day she started talking, and he would long for the quiet.

Day Twenty-One

"Did it stop?" Her first words dripped with bitterness despite coming from a tiny, tired voice.
"Not yet," He handed her a plastic solo cup filled with water. She accepted it, drank once and grimaced, as if it were filled with lemon juice.
"It's never going to stop."
"You can't think that way. It's all about having faith. The Lord..."
"Has abandoned us." She threw the solo cup. "And it's not even a new thing. He made us in his likeness and couldn't stand to see what he made."
"Alice, you don't mean that."
She waved her bandaged hand and refused to meet his gaze.
"It's a test. The road of faith isn't always easy." He couldn't believe the words coming from her mouth, and assumed it was the result of the rain and her trauma. She couldn't believe God had abandoned them, could she? He shivered.
"This isn't a test, Sam. This is annihilation."
"Alice, it's not..."
"It's the end, and you're just too stubborn to realize it."
"We can't just give up."
"Yes, we can. I want to give up. Let me give up."
"I won't have it, Alice. I won't."
She turned lewd then, denouncing God and emasculating Sam. Sometimes, she screamed obscenities at the top of her lungs. At other times, she hurled insults in a lifeless drone. She went on this way for three days before finally stopping when she found the strength to stand again.
Her mobility eased her mouth some, except that she followed him around in an attempt to refuse him any sort of peace. His only respite was outside, lurching through what little remained of the muddy house yard to the barn. She never left the house, almost as if she feared to let the rain touch her.

Day Twenty-Four

Sam intertwined his fingers, which were caked with dirt in the dry cracks, above the red-and-white checkered metal plate with a small pile of scrambled eggs that had specks of brown interrupting the gold. Next to the eggs was a piece of wheat bread toasted nearly black. He hadn't got a hang of toasting bread with a pan on the oven burner yet. The fingernail on his thumb was a brilliant purple and throbbed anytime he bumped it. Alice had grown fond the last day or two of swatting at it and watching him fight back the pain. This whole ordeal had made Alice terribly sick.
"Our father, who art in heaven," Sam began.
"Why the hell are you doing that?"
"Please don't interrupt me."
Alice pushed her chair away from the table, the rubber stoppers at the bottom of the legs thudded against the linoleum.
"Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come..."
"Yeah, we'll see about that."
"Alice."
She picked up her plate of untouched food and flung it across the kitchen, hitting the wall on the opposite side and leaving a wide gouge in the blue paint. The plate clanked to the floor, and eggs scattered in all directions. The toast landed as hard as the plate and seemed equally unharmed.
"I can't stand this anymore," Alice said, rubbing at the thickly wrapped gauze on her right wrist. He didn't think she had any more tears inside her, but one found its way out of her bloodshot right eye and streaked down her dirty, pale face.
"I know. It won't be long."
"Hmmm." She turned away, looking out the window above the sink. Alice had a constant shake, a fidget that never stopped. Where was the strong woman he loved?
Alice fumbled with the wood drawer next to the sink, the few remaining contents inside rattled. The humidity made everything swell, including the wood of the drawer, and it stuck in place as she pulled. She swore words that a month ago he would have thought she didn't know. Finally, the drawer opened, and she pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.
"Please don't smoke in here."
Alice gave a throaty sound before walking out of the kitchen. Sam waited before starting again.
"Thy will be done. On earth as it is in heaven..."
"Yeah, we'll see about that, too." Alice mumbled from the front door. Her voice didn't even sound the same. All the joy, all the spring of it was replaced with a cold, raspy edge that bordered between cruel and desperate.
He heard Alice open the door; the sound of rain striking the porch roof came in. It had been raining too long for him to care if it had picked up or slowed down.

Day Twenty-Eight

Taking a tablet and a pen, Sam escaped to the barn. Working without the aid of theological sources, he intended to write a sermon. He planned to deliver it to Alice, as his final Hail-Mary attempt to spark her spirit. With the bottom floor covered in several inches of water, he climbed the rickety ladder up to the mow. The chickens roused and clucked seeing him, expecting feed that he no longer had to give.
He dropped down on a bale and started to write. His intentions were to write a sermon, but the pen flowed over the paper without much thought, and when he finished, he realized he had an account of the flood. Upon rereading it, he wept.
"Lord, can you hear me?" He screamed, and then waited for a response. The only sound was the rain pelting the walls of the barn, and Herod splashing through the water below. Herod didn't pay the scream much mind, the humans were behaving wildly lately, he had noticed.
"Spare her, Lord. That's all I ask. I can't bear anymore of this without her. Fill her with your spirit and guide her back to your path."
God said nothing back, and Sam slumped into the hay. The chickens cooed from their increasingly soggy roost, and Sam slipped into sleep.
He dreamt of Alice, and her blood, and his prayers. He woke with a startle. Herod was gone below. He didn't need to look to know it; the barn felt empty. The solitude didn't dampen a sudden inspiration, looking at the notebook, he scribbled down a couple more lines.
"The Lord brought the rain without warning for man no longer listened to his Word. The rain fell and the water overcame the earth. All that remained was a void waiting for the light and the Word."
Excited, he hurried down the ladder and out of the barn, wanting to show Alice his work. He doubted she would care, but he needed her to hear it. The words weren't his; he was sure of it. The Lord had spoken through him. This wasn't the end. It was a new beginning.
"Alice!" He kicked off his muddy boots and soaked rain coat when he entered the house. "Alice!" He called again.
He could sense the emptiness of the house, just as he sensed that Herod had left the barn. Where was the dog? Where was Alice?
Barking broke the silence.

***

Herod stood at the edge of the river, the banks of which now extended halfway up their driveway. The black mutt with matted hair barked out toward the advancing sea, his tail and hackles raised. A neatly folded pile of clothes and a pair of muddy sneakers laid beside his paws.
Sam advanced waist deep into the icy cold waters, wading slowly, knowing that the angle of the lane meant that the depth of water increased exponentially. Big drops of rain plopped on the surface of the river, sending out long, lazy ripples. Out farther, he could see how the current picked up, flowing southwest down the former Highway 15.
Herod barked more, and Sam shouted for him to shut up. He watched for any sign of Alice in the waters, searching everywhere and sensing her nowhere.
He couldn't say how long he remained waist deep in the water, long enough for his legs to lose feeling and the sky to start to darken. Herod whined, sniffing the discarded clothing.
"Why God?" Sam still clutched the notebook that only minutes before seemed so important. He winged it into the river as far as he could. Raising his arms to the sky, he pleaded one last time. "Why God?"
The notebook sank below the waves.

The Night

The remaining daylight was escaping behind the thick cover of clouds in the west. He'd discovered in the days since losing Alice - he'd lost count of the days - that the nights were the worst. Water approached ever closer to the house, and he never knew if once the light went completely out, if the water would rage forth at any moment. He rarely slept, instead he rocked in a chair on the porch, listening to water flowing down the lane and the rain splattering everywhere.
One night, he thought he heard voices, but concluded it was the chickens from the barn. The water had cut him off from them, and he regretted being stranded in the house rather than the barn. Clearly the barn was taller, giving him a better chance to outlast the rain, but mostly he loved the earthy smell and the natural, rustic feel. The house felt so silly, so devoid of purpose.
He knelt at the edge of the cement slab of the porch at dusk. This was at least three days since the food gave out, and a day after he had to kill Herod, who had started to suffer the dog-equivalent of the depression that had inflicted Alice. In the end, Herod became mean, and Sam feared to keep him around.
The creeping water was to the edge of the porch, another night of rain and it would sweep over and into the house. It might be a day or two before the house would be completely flooded, but really anything could shift in the great deluge and sweep him away. He wondered who still lived out there. Maybe he was the last man alive, maybe the last being alive other than the birds and the fish.
He folded his stiff, tired fingers. Dirt had turned his nails black. As the world turned dark, he began, "Our Father, who art in heaven..."
He stopped, still expecting to be interrupted. He studied his folded hands, then the sea before him, and finally the cloud filled sky above before continuing his prayer to the great void.