Black Water I: The Flood by The Flood v1.1

Author:The Flood v1.1
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-01-12T21:54:51.097000+00:00

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The road to Atmore went northeast from Perdido, past the sawmills and through a few hundred acres of pine owned by Tom DeBordenave. It skirted the cypress swamp in which the Blackwater River had its marshy source, then emerged into the vast, flat potato and cotton fields of Escambia County. Atmore was the nearest place to catch the train, though it was such a small town that the trains would stop for passengers only if alerted by a signal from the station-master.

Bray drove along this road rather more quickly than was his wont. He had been warned that Miss Genevieve had to be at the L & N station by five-thirty in order to get her ticket and prepare the sta-tionmaster to stop the Hummingbird. James Cas-key's automobile was a small touring car he had purchased in 1917, a handsome Packard with a metal top and a glass windscreen that Bray drove with much pleasure.

The waning afternoon was still very bright and oppressively warm. Genevieve Caskey sat silently, did not look at Bray or take any apparent notice of the countryside as they passed through it. Zaddie sat apprehensively in the back seat. Bray, Zaddie knew, had been sent on this errand because Elinor had not wanted to allow Genevieve the opportunity during the ride to "explain things" to James; to excuse her temper on account of the heat or the dullness of the town. And Zaddie knew that she had been sent along to prevent Bray's giving in to any temptation offered by Genevieve not to see her onto that train to Nashville. But Genevieve might as well have been a dummy in the front window of Berta Hamilton's dress shop, for all the explanations or bribes that she proffered.

By the time they reached the cypress swamp, the heat in the automobile had sent Zaddie nearly over into sleep. She sat with her head far back, her eyes closed against the glaring sun in the empty Alabama sky. It burned patterns on her eyelids and she forgot everything but the intense yellow and red that swirled in her brain. But suddenly that yellow and red faded out, and a coolness settled over Zaddie's upturned face. She opened her eyes. A single dark gray cloud had blown across the sun. It wasn't large—probably no bigger than the plot of land on which the Caskey houses were built, Zaddie thought— but it looked very much out of place. Zaddie was certain that five minutes before it hadn't been visible anywhere. And there was another peculiar thing, she realized: solitary clouds were usually much higher in the sky and tended to be wispy, frozen, white. This one was dark, roiling, and it hung low.

She couldn't take her eyes from it. It seemed to be flying directly toward them. Zaddie cowered in the corner of the seat.

Bray had reduced the Packard's speed. Zaddie looked to the front. Not far ahead of them was a great logging truck lumbering slowly along with a full load.

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