Flood by Claire Sandrin
Frothing brown water carried another tree branch past the hood of her car. Seated in the driver seat, Sara looked at him and, quite possibly, saw him for the first time in the month since they’d met. She really didn’t know him and it wasn’t until they were stranded between two flooded arroyos that she realized this.
Sara had relished the power his attention gave her. He liked her. He asked her to stay after class to discuss her paper. He invited himself to her dorm room to drink whiskey, listen to Neil Young, make love, tell her about his latest project and she took this to mean she was exceptional rather than young and willing. He’d engulfed her life as this storm did the desert.
Sitting on a small patch of high ground, watching the flash flood they both should have been smart enough to avoid, he looked old. He was old. He was her father’s age and she’d pretended that didn’t matter. She insisted their connection was different and that they were somehow exempt from the worn out professor-student cliche. But, with his grey beard, totems hanging on leather strips around his neck, and worn shorts, she was reminded of some of her parents’ friends, those who were stuck in the 60’s of their youth, those who’d forgotten to move on and keep up.
Why had she agreed to come to a secluded ranch with him, somewhere they could “be alone,” or really remain unseen? Why hadn’t they stayed in the room and waited out the storm? Both from the desert, they knew how quickly dry riverbeds turned into raging rivers and how easily a car could become nature’s yellow rubber ducky. They’d been on this hill for four hours and the rain showed no sign of letting up. With an arroyo in front and one behind, there was nothing to do but wait.
She was suddenly thirstier than she could remember being. They had no water, no food, no flashlight, and a quarter tank of gas. Her scarf began to itch, making her oddly claustrophobic, and she ripped it off her neck. She wanted to get out of the car, away from him, back to the life she’d let go for the past month. Seeing the travel coffee mug that had been in her cup holder for weeks, she dumped the curdled coffee and put it on the roof to catch the rain, aware of how dramatic and desperate this looked.
She was mad at him for their predicament. Shouldn’t he have known better?
“When I was twenty three I lived on a boat in the Gulf for a year,” he said. “Didn’t feel like going to Canada like my friends did, trying to stay out of Vietnam, you know? Lived on that boat, caught fish and water, read poetry. Wish you’d been there with me.” He winked at her.
“I wasn’t born until 1993,” she replied. “When I’m 23 I’m going to be a writer and live in New York and get paid to travel and write.”
Sara turned away from him and watched as angry, unrelenting water swept months of debris and drought into its wake, rushing it toward an unseen river downstream.
And then, just as suddenly, there was a break in the clouds and a pink light lit up the prairie in all directions. The desert glowed and dripped like the inside of a Texas snow globe. Stepping out of the car, her chipped red toenails sank into the mud and her flip-flops disappeared. The desert air was cool and wet and smelled like camping. They got out of the car and walked towards the bank to see how far the water had to recede before they could make it across.
“Before I got rid of my car, I used to live in a cabin and had to cross a stream every morning. You want me to drive your car? Might get across sooner than if you drive.”
Without answering, she walked back towards the car to check on her coffee mug. It held about an inch of water, which she drank without offering any to him.
Sara knew they would eventually make it across and back to their room. She knew they would eat potato chips for dinner and that he would drink too much whiskey and conclude everything was fine. And she knew she would never call him again, that he would call for two weeks before giving up, and that she had been wrong about their connection. As clearly as the pink light that shone through the clouds that evening, she saw that, like a man drowning in his own life, he clung to her as one does a dream upon waking. Her life, her friends, her dorm room, her papers and ideas and optimism all seemed like a prized piece of high ground to her now, not something to let a stranger pull under.
____________________________
Claire Sandrin lives in Albuquerque, NM, where she writes, reads, cooks, and dances when not working as a set costumer on films. She graduated from UNM with a Bachelor’s Degree in American Studies.
Frothing brown water carried another tree branch past the hood of her car. Seated in the driver seat, Sara looked at him and, quite possibly, saw him for the first time in the month since they’d met. She really didn’t know him and it wasn’t until they were stranded between two flooded arroyos that she realized this.
Sara had relished the power his attention gave her. He liked her. He asked her to stay after class to discuss her paper. He invited himself to her dorm room to drink whiskey, listen to Neil Young, make love, tell her about his latest project and she took this to mean she was exceptional rather than young and willing. He’d engulfed her life as this storm did the desert.
Sitting on a small patch of high ground, watching the flash flood they both should have been smart enough to avoid, he looked old. He was old. He was her father’s age and she’d pretended that didn’t matter. She insisted their connection was different and that they were somehow exempt from the worn out professor-student cliche. But, with his grey beard, totems hanging on leather strips around his neck, and worn shorts, she was reminded of some of her parents’ friends, those who were stuck in the 60’s of their youth, those who’d forgotten to move on and keep up.
Why had she agreed to come to a secluded ranch with him, somewhere they could “be alone,” or really remain unseen? Why hadn’t they stayed in the room and waited out the storm? Both from the desert, they knew how quickly dry riverbeds turned into raging rivers and how easily a car could become nature’s yellow rubber ducky. They’d been on this hill for four hours and the rain showed no sign of letting up. With an arroyo in front and one behind, there was nothing to do but wait.
She was suddenly thirstier than she could remember being. They had no water, no food, no flashlight, and a quarter tank of gas. Her scarf began to itch, making her oddly claustrophobic, and she ripped it off her neck. She wanted to get out of the car, away from him, back to the life she’d let go for the past month. Seeing the travel coffee mug that had been in her cup holder for weeks, she dumped the curdled coffee and put it on the roof to catch the rain, aware of how dramatic and desperate this looked.
She was mad at him for their predicament. Shouldn’t he have known better?
“When I was twenty three I lived on a boat in the Gulf for a year,” he said. “Didn’t feel like going to Canada like my friends did, trying to stay out of Vietnam, you know? Lived on that boat, caught fish and water, read poetry. Wish you’d been there with me.” He winked at her.
“I wasn’t born until 1993,” she replied. “When I’m 23 I’m going to be a writer and live in New York and get paid to travel and write.”
Sara turned away from him and watched as angry, unrelenting water swept months of debris and drought into its wake, rushing it toward an unseen river downstream.
And then, just as suddenly, there was a break in the clouds and a pink light lit up the prairie in all directions. The desert glowed and dripped like the inside of a Texas snow globe. Stepping out of the car, her chipped red toenails sank into the mud and her flip-flops disappeared. The desert air was cool and wet and smelled like camping. They got out of the car and walked towards the bank to see how far the water had to recede before they could make it across.
“Before I got rid of my car, I used to live in a cabin and had to cross a stream every morning. You want me to drive your car? Might get across sooner than if you drive.”
Without answering, she walked back towards the car to check on her coffee mug. It held about an inch of water, which she drank without offering any to him.
Sara knew they would eventually make it across and back to their room. She knew they would eat potato chips for dinner and that he would drink too much whiskey and conclude everything was fine. And she knew she would never call him again, that he would call for two weeks before giving up, and that she had been wrong about their connection. As clearly as the pink light that shone through the clouds that evening, she saw that, like a man drowning in his own life, he clung to her as one does a dream upon waking. Her life, her friends, her dorm room, her papers and ideas and optimism all seemed like a prized piece of high ground to her now, not something to let a stranger pull under.
____________________________
Claire Sandrin lives in Albuquerque, NM, where she writes, reads, cooks, and dances when not working as a set costumer on films. She graduated from UNM with a Bachelor’s Degree in American Studies.
