“A’right, Foster, I ain’ got no right to force you to abandon yore prop’ty, but I done tol’ you the way she’s stacked. The river’s goinf to crest ten, fifteen foot higher’n it is right now, and way yore house’s sitchated, it’ll be at leas’ two foot of water in the top level, even if you don’ get undermined an. come all apart.
“And thishere’s the las’ roun’ the choppuh’s gonna make, an’ yore friggin’ lil boat won’ las’ two hoots in hell in thet river, iffen you change your min’ later. So, you sure you ain’ comin’ with us?”
Foster shook his head forcefully. “No. No thank you, officer, I appreciate it, but no.”
The trooper blew at the water cascading off his nose. “A’right, citizen, it’s yore funeral . . . iffen we evuh fin’ yore body, thet is.”
And he remembered sitting in that same living room now filled with the bitchy sounds of Arbor Collier. He remembered watching the rampant river tear away his small runabout, then his dock, sweeping both downstream along with its other booty—animal, vegetable and mineral.
He remembered thinking that that trooper had been right, he had been a fool to remain, but then he had sunk everything he owned into this, his home, the only real property he had ever been able to call his. And he was damned if he would leave it to the ravages of wind and water or to the unwelcome attentions of the packs of looters sure to follow. Besides, he trusted less the dire pronouncements of “authorities” and “experts” than he did his own unexplainable dead certainty that both he and his house would, somehow, survive the oncoming disaster.
Not that that certainty had not been shaken a bit when, hearing odd noises from above, during a brief lull in the storm, he had discovered all three of his cats in the low attic, clinging tightly to the rafters and mewling feline moans of terror. All three—the huge, rangy black torn, the older, spayed queen, and the younger, silver Persian torn, which had been Carol’s last gift to him—were good hunters, merciless killers, yet they shared the rafters with several flying squirrels plus a couple of small brown house mice . . . peaceably. That had been when he started getting worried and started calling himself a fool, aloud.
That was when he had decided to phone Herb Highgate, who lived a half mile upriver and who had, like Foster, vowed to stay with his house and property; but the phone proved dead. Then the lights went out, so he had dragged a chair over to the picture window, fetched a bottle, and sat, watching the inexorable rise of the angry gray water, reflecting upon the joys and sorrows, the victories and defeats, the wins and losses, which had marked his forty-five years of living. And, as the water level got higher and the bottle level got lower, he thought of Carol, grieved again, briefly, then began to feel that she was very near to him.
The hot, bright sun on his face had awakened him, had blinded him when first he opened his bleary eyes.
“Well, what the hell I was right after all. Christ, my mouth tastes like^used kitty litter. Ughr
Stumbling into the kitchen, he had flicked the wall switch from force of habit. And the light came on!
“Well, good God, those utilities boys are on the ball, for a change . . . either that or I slept a hell of a lot longer than usual. Well, since it’s miracle time, let’s have a go at the phone.”
But the telephone had remained dead. With the coffee merrily perking, Foster had decided to walk out and see just how much damage his property had sustained.
He took two steps outside, looked about him in wondering disbelief, then reeled back inside. Slammed the door, locked it, threw the massive barrel bolt, sank down into the familiar chair, and cradled his head in his shaking hands. Drawing upon his last reserves of courage, he had, at some length, found the guts to look out the window, to see … to see …
It could not be called a castle, not in the accepted sense, although one corner of the U-shaped house incorporated a sixty-foot-tall stone tower, and the entire complex of buildings and grounds was girded by a high and thick wall of dressed stones, pierced with one large and two smaller iron-bound gates.