Cardomon: Flood and Murder

Flood: the Mud Yard drowned. Heavy storms pummeled the foothills, overwhelmed streams. A diversion ditch starts with the millrace from the Sanchez sawyard, at normal flows up to half of the creek makes the detour loop, irrigates Ruben and Bokassa’s clay mine, runs into a settling pond and empties back via a concrete spillway. A sluice gate is supposed to be closed in extreme weather specifically to prevent a washout.

Ruben was working at the farms that day and Bokassa watched the shop. When the storm came in he went up to shut the sluice. Owen Sanchez greeted him there with an opened whiskey bottle, just a nip to warm up from the rain.

Ducked under the sawdeck to get out of the weather, passed the bottle a few times, Paul Jones sauntered in, it became a carouse.

The clouds opened up, the waters raged, rose quickly in the millrace and the alcoholics scrambled away from the current. They climbed up to the roofed over sawdeck and resumed proceedings.

Bokassa forgot the sluice gate: it washed out in the first hour of the flood.

Two tractors stood in a field with mud to their axles. First the one got stuck, the second tried to tow it out and bogged down in its turn. Water rising from the marsh filled rutted tire tracks and pooled across flat ground. By the time the tractor operators got down it was ankle deep. They splashed and slopped a quarter mile to a berm higher than the flood, ran its length to the row of buildings.

The crew were all inside the lunch shed. It was deafening: rain pounded the metal roof with a nonstop rattle.

Farm Manager Ruben cancelled the day’s work, as the weather evolved that became the week’s work.

Homesteaders had no winter camp, the fire ring hollow was a shallow lake. They sheltered in Community Hall, brewed tea and ate warm snacks. Nobody wanted to hike in the downpour.

Rainy day, rainy night: they slept on the floor and the stage.

It let up while the first pot of tea brewed, sunshine emerged during breakfast. Homesteaders were anxious, worried about flooding in the Vale.

Ruben Lythum and another dozen drove a tractor to the trailhead and hiked.

The path was carefully graded and drained, but minor creeks had leapt their beds and washed away many stretches, mudslides and fallen trees barricaded further reaches. Hikers scrambled, mud slogged, slipped and slid, but they made it to the Vale. Five hours of struggle, two miles of travel.

Overfilled pond covered the trail around to the little mesa, but the way to Branch House followed higher ground, was mostly dry.

Branch House was in the middle of a construction phase, doubling the original ring of six cabins and adding to the existing structures.

Enough roofed space for a night of rest, hot water to sponge away the mud, food and company to rebuild spirits.

Another storm hit overnight, six hours of heavy rain stopped an hour before sunrise.

Ruben set out after breakfast. The trail crosses the lower end of the pond—a marshy run-off stretch—via a causeway of halved logs upon trestles. Usually the deck is four feet above the mud but after the storms there was a heavy stream flowing. The loosely attached logs floated above their footings and rocked under his steps. Mid span a flow of vegetative debris piled against the bridge, weighed it down and water ran over the top. Ruben waded a knee-deep current.

Across to the ground-level trail and another fourteen miles to go.

This route was the Homestead Highway. Ruben, Bokassa and Owen Sanchez had been leaders building it, with help from the iron backbones of Paul and Davey. It was specifically groomed for the handcarts: they had ganged two hundred heavy loads of materials building the sawmill and the Mud Yard, and it stood against the brutal weather.

Ruben ran.

A dozen creeks to cross, waters up to his navel.

Nearing home, the trail rises through the bottom hills and descends to a hollow where the Sanchez sawmill spans an engineered creekbed. There is a wooden bridge high over this creek twenty yards upstream of the millhouse.

The whole works were exposed to view from the bridge, Ruben spotted the open sluice gate and a flood roaring through the diversion.

Thundering water sound filled the whole area.

The trail follows uphill of the ditch, Ruben sprinted the quarter-mile to the Mud Yard gate.

He looked down into his mine: a cascade boomed through the master weir, a second waterfall boiled down the spillway, between was a two hundred yard long cesspool of swirling muddy water, froth and scum heaped in the eddies. All the pits, completely inundated.

His cabin and workshops crowned a bald hill above the mine. Ruben ran up the porch steps, rushed inside without removing muddy boots.

Front room cold, dark, no fire in the hearth. Pikel lay in his crib, he cried.

Light and voices from the kitchen. Ruben went through.

A party around the table drinking mead. Drushina, Bokassa, Owen, Paul: happy as can be. Something in a pan on the stove burned.

Ruben entered, faced his wife: “Pikel is hungry.”

Bleary eyed, Drushina looked at him, then noticed the smoking pan: “Shit!” She rose to her feet, chair tumbled behind as she rushed to the disaster: “I started to boil cereal for him and we sat down waiting… it’s ruined!” She took the burning meal to the sink, a cloud of steam erupted when water hit the scorched pan.

Ruben, to Bokassa: “What happened to the mine?”

The burly drunk stared rudely at his partner, scratched his jaw and faked a rueful smile. “Storm hit too fast, I couldn’t reach the gate in time. Now part of it broke loose and we can’t fix it until the water goes down.”

Owen and Paul each chortled, found amusement in the tale.

Anger and disgust seethed within Ruben, feelings he rarely felt or expressed. He turned away from the table and went to a window that viewed the master weir. A solid wall of brown/green water poured down the face and lapped the top of the abutments. Foam spumed back nearly as high. “If the weir or the levee go, we’ll lose it all. They’re not designed for these conditions.”

Bokassa came to his side: “Let’s go inspect, see how it’s holding.”

Honey-sweet alcohol vapors arrived with the words, made Ruben’s disgust physical: a sour burn in his stomach. Ruben suddenly realized that he hated Bokassa, never wanted to see him again: “You’re right, we should.”

They went to the front door.

Drushina fussed over a fresh pot of cereal. Owen poured drinks for himself and Paul.

Outside, Bokassa sat on a bench, pulled his mud boots from a niche, started lacing.

Ruben: “I’m feeling pretty disappointed right now. We prepared for this situation. You shouldn’t have missed closing the sluice.”

“Sorry.”

“I’m sure we can fix it once the creek recedes but it will take months to bail out the mine. We can’t work at all until then.”

“Yeah, sure. My fault.” Bokassa rose.

A slope off the hill led to the top of the earthen levee. They walked the narrow rim out to the edge of the master weir.

Three feet below the dirt a concrete abutment funneled the water into a chute that dropped a dozen feet to the mine level. The surge in the diversion ditch swirled at the lip, a torrent roared beneath their feet.

Ruben shouted over the noise: “Another thing. I don’t appreciate coming in and seeing my son all neglected while you guys are in the next room all drunk.”

“Are you sure the boy is yours? Drushina thinks he has my eyes.”

“What?”

Bokassa’s right hand lashed out, palm forward, and smashed Ruben’s chin. The potter’s head snapped back. His partner put both hands together and rammed him in the chest.

Ruben stumbled backward, left foot slipped on the edge of the levee and he fell to his right knee.

Bokassa kicked Ruben in the face, then shoved with his boot heel.

Ruben fell, fingers clutched the dirt. Muddy, it melted under the grasp. He tumbled into the raging water and disappeared.

But the winter-stars fade: weather eased, floods receded, the marsh waters ebbed and trails to the camps reopened. The watercourse route was also clear, improvements made over the past year put the path mostly out of the water. Jody and Hildy opened Mel’s Camp, broke the snow over the pass.

And the summer-star advances: two weeks into the spring there was a small party in Taralisa’s sky temple.

Amelia on her shoulder, Suthra attended the astrologer. At the first light of the sun she pulled forth a new girl, Mellisa: seven pounds, three ounces, silver haired, green eyed. Peter, Luenda and Edzelian witnessed for the family.