The weather kept many farm families away from town. This was evident when the four o’clock matinee began at the Dixie theater. Half the seats were empty, a sure sign that it was not a normal Saturday. Halfway through the first show the aisle lights flickered, then the screen went blank. We sat in the darkness, ready to panic and bolt, and listened to the thunder.

“Power’s out,” said an official voice in the rear. “Please leave slowly.”

We huddled into the cramped lobby and watched the rain fall in sheets along Main Street. The sky was dark gray, and the few cars that passed by used their headlights.

Even as kids we knew that there was too much rain, too many storms, too many rumors of rising waters. Floods happened in the spring, rarely during the harvest. In a world where everyone either farmed or traded with farmers, a wet season in mid-October was quite depressing.

When it slacked off a little, we ran down the sidewalk to find our parents. Heavy rains meant muddy roads, and the town would soon be empty as the farm families left for home before dark. My father had mentioned buying a saw blade, so I ducked into the hardware store in hopes of finding him. It was crowded with people waiting and watching the weather outside. In little pockets of conversation, old men were telling stories of ancient floods. Women were talking about how much rain there’d been in other towns-Paragould, Lepanto, and Manila. The aisles were filled with people who were just talking, not buying or looking for merchandise.

I worked my way through the crowd, looking for my father. The hardware store was ancient, and toward the rear it became darker and cavern-like. The wooden floors were wet from the traffic and sagged from years of use. At the end of an aisle, I turned and came face-to-face with Tally and Trot. She was holding a gallon of white paint. Trot was holding a quart. They were loitering like everybody else, waiting for the storm to pass. Trot saw me and tried to hide behind Tally. “Hello, Luke,” she said with a smile.

“Howdy,” I said, looking at the paint bucket. She set it on the floor beside her. “What’s the paint for?”

“Oh, it’s nothin’,” she said, smiling again. Once again I was reminded that Tally was the prettiest girl I’d ever met, and when she smiled at me my mind went blank. Once you’ve seen a pretty girl naked, you feel a certain attachment to her.

Trot wedged himself tightly behind her, like a toddler hiding behind his mother. She and I talked about the storm, and I relayed the exciting news about the power going out in the middle of the matinee. She listened with interest, and the more I talked the more I wanted to talk. I told her about the rumors of rising waters and about the gauge Pappy and I had set at the river. She asked about Ricky, and we talked about him for a long time.

Of course I forgot about the paint.

The lights flickered, and the power returned. It was still raining, though, and no one left the store.

“How’s that Latcher girl?” she asked, her eyes darting around as if someone might hear her. It was one of our great secrets.

I was about to say something, when it suddenly hit me that Tally’s brother was dead, and she knew nothing about it. The Spruills probably thought Hank was home by now, back in Eureka Springs, back in their nice little painted house. They’d see him in a few weeks, sooner if it kept raining. I looked at her and tried to speak, but all I could think about was how shocked she’d be if I said what I was thinking.

I adored Tally, in spite of her moods and her secrets, in spite of her funny business with Cowboy. I couldn’t help but adore her, and I certainly didn’t want to hurt her. The very thought of blurting out that Hank was dead made me weak in the knees.

I stuttered and stammered and looked at the floor. I was suddenly cold and scared. “See you later,” I managed to say, then turned and backtracked to the front.

During a break in the rain, the stores emptied and folks scurried along the sidewalks, heading for the cars and trucks. The clouds were still dark, and we wanted to get home before the showers hit again.

Sunday was gray and overcast, and my father didn’t care for the notion of getting wet while riding in the back of the truck on the way to church. Plus, our truck was not exactly waterproof, and the women usually got dripped on while riding in the cab during a good shower. We rarely missed a Sunday worship, but the threat of rain occasionally kept us at home. We hadn’t missed a service in months, and so when Gran suggested we eat a late breakfast and listen to the radio we quickly agreed. Bellevue Baptist was the largest church in Memphis, and its services were broadcast on station WHBQ. Pappy didn’t like the preacher, said he was too liberal, but we enjoyed hearing him nonetheless. And the choir had a hundred voices, which was about eighty more than the one at the Black Oak Baptist Church.

Long after breakfast, we sat at the kitchen table, sipping coffee (myself included), listening to a sermon being delivered to a congregation of three thousand members, and worrying about the drastic change in the weather. The adults were worrying; I was only pretending.

Bellevue Baptist had an orchestra, of all things, and when it played the benediction, Memphis seemed a million miles away. An orchestra in a church. Gran’s older daughter, my aunt Betty, lived in Memphis, and though she didn’t worship at Bellevue she knew someone who did. All the men wore suits. All the families drove nice cars. It was indeed a different world.

Pappy and I drove to the river to check our gauge. The rains were taking a toll on Otis’s recent grade work. The shallow ditches beside the road were full, gullies were forming from the runoff, and mud holes were holding water. We stopped in the middle of the bridge and studied the river on both sides. Even I could tell the water was up. The sandbars and gravel bars were covered. The water was thicker and a lighter shade of brown, evidence of drainage from the creeks that ran through the fields. The current swirled and was moving faster. Debris-driftwood and logs and even a green branch or twofloated atop the water.

Our gauge was still standing, but barely. Just a few inches remained above the water. Pappy had to get his boots wet to retrieve the stick. He pulled it up, examined it as if it had done something wrong, and said, almost to himself, “Up ‘bout ten inches in twenty-four hours.” He squatted and tapped the stick on a rock. Watching him, I became aware of the noise of the river. It wasn’t loud, but the water was rushing by and streaming over the gravel bars and against the bridge piers. The current splashed through the thick shrubs hanging over the banks and pecked away at the roots of a nearby willow tree. It was a menacing noise. One I’d never heard.

Pappy was hearing it all too well. With the stick he pointed at the bend in the river, far to the right, and said, “It’ll get the Latchers first. They’re on low ground.”

“When?” I asked.

“Depends on the rain. If it stops, then it might not flood at all. Keeps rainin’ though, and it’ll be over the banks in a week.”

“When’s the last time it flooded?”

“Three years ago, but that was in the spring. Last fall flood was a long time ago.”

I had plenty of questions about floods, but it was not a subject Pappy liked to dwell on. We studied the river for a while, and listened to it, then we walked back to the truck and drove home.

“Let’s go to Siler’s Creek,” he said. The field roads were too muddy for the truck, so Pappy fired up the John Deere, and we pulled out of the farmyard with most of the Spruills and all of the Mexicans watching us with great curiosity. The tractor was never operated on Sunday. Surely Eli Chandler was not about to work on the Sabbath.