Buffalo Gal

Buffalo Gal February 26, 2006 Under the tin roof shielding the trash compactor, Macy, a hospital housekeeper, sneaks a smoke and squints at the horizon. Collusive clouds, dark as flood waters, scuttle the sun. When frozen rain pings the metal like BB's, Macy cowers, cries, and chides herself, Scared ofa little water, little girl? February 26, 1972 Lundale, WV, Saturday, 8:00 a.m. Lulled by the soft-shoe of raindrops on thirty-year shingles, Macy drowses. She dreams of summer, swimming in the dam water, clear, calm, then abrupt turbulence, like white water dragging her under. She wakes breathless, the portent of danger shaken off, disregarded like the procurator who doesn't believe in premonition but trusts in the power of water and its ability to wash away. To the smell of fried bacon, Macy rouses. The screen door slams, Dad home from the hoot owl shift at the tipple, his lunch pail plunk down on the table. His voice booms, repeating talk of how the dam was ready for goin', how he believes it's just another cry wolf. From her bedroom window, Macy counts cars honking their horns like a wedding convoy. She races to the kitchen where Mom, her long hair crowned by a bright red ribbon, peers from the sink-window at Buffalo Creek. The phone dings once the way it does when the line goes dead after a car strikes the pole. At 8:15 the electric goes off. A neighbor boy yells, Runfor your lives! Macy dashes onto the porch, coming toward her a wall of timber, high as the house, roaring like a roundhouse choked with a hundred locomotives. When her dad joins her, he barks, Hit the hill! Not 'til he uses his ass-whippin' voice does Macy move. Halfway up hill, she looks back like Lot's wife, and sees her parents, bobbing rag dolls in the dark arms of boiling, coal-black water. They struggle to hold on to one another, but the greedy, swift current tears them apart. When a propane tank explodes, Macy drops to her knees. After rising, they're gone. Macy gallops to the hilltop. Perched on a stump she sees homes rush by, people on roofs, their mouths moving, their screams unheard over the noise. She hears the crack of houses busting and the crackle and buzz of electric wires. Numb, she gazes at the holler: water from mountain to mountain. A red Vega maneuvers the narrow mining road behind Macy. It stops. The driver tells Macy to get in. She refuses until he promises to her demand, Take me to Mom and Dad. Spending the day in front of a fire, feeling the lonesomest, Macy huddles with the children as their parents wander, dazed, asking, you seen so-and-so? Rumor of another dam break feeds hysteria. Under a pall of falling snow, Macy sleeps. Next morning, Macy wakes, startled by a bullhorn loud as God, telling everyone to do this-and-that. Wanting to find her parents, she sneaks away just before they carry in her dad's body, alive, but cut up like he wrestled a briar patch. Macy hikes back to hell. Quiet. Nary a sound. Except for Buffalo Creek, gurgling a death rattle. From the muck, steam rises, the ground scraped flat like a mad mob of bulldozers. Not a footprint in sight. Macy touches cars crushed the size of refrigerators. Beforehand, the railroad passed by her home so close the conductor could share supper. Now, twisted rails litter the land like tic-tac-toe. Down road, jutting out from a grave-like mound of mud, Macy discovers a thick strand of hair, maybe a doll baby's. She cries as her fingers wipe away the sludge to reveal a bowed ribbon, once red, once bright, once mother. —Don Narkevic 87 ...