Eighteen Hours in the Hold

… running the bilges. 

The sky really lit up when this storm was rolling in. I was up top, watching it come on. First the the soot-colored clouds tried to blot out of sunset. The horizon swept that battle from my sight. I think it must have continued for some time after I lost sight of that orb, because the air was soon full of flashes.

I was up top. Not on watch, but watching. Thinking, mostly. These are the sort of nights I used to shout at God. Now I seek stories that I might write. I have been granted one, I think. This isn't it.  

One loop around the deck, where it seemed feet stood on short waves and the tall waves came up to my waist just inches away. If there was a moon or a star or a sun, the soot above blocked them so completely I could not know it. Yet it was daylight every third second. Dry, motionless, and unmeasurable heavy with potential violence. 

Perhaps I looked comical, in gear for a downpour, hat in hand and hood back, watching the heavens as the first drops fell. I wanted it to be beautiful, but it was just rain. 

Soon enough I retreated below decks. It was a little before midnight, I think. The storm hit with a fury that would give hurricanes something to talk about. The power failed, but I didn't think it was significant at first. The storm room, our bunker, was leaking. Not a lot of water mind you, but a dozen steady trickles from the doorway to the floor. Were there calcium in abundance and ten years to wait, there would be a magnificent curtain flowing there, or soda straws stretching to the floor. As it was, I decided there should be buckets instead. 

My Father realized the danger first. Such a storm wasn't forcing water into the storm room only, but the deck was awash. More than that, our keel, our sump, was rapidly filling. Very rapidly.
 
During a damp day, that little pit at the bottom of our home might fill once an hour. An average storm might double that frequency, but usually the rain has a delay of at least an hour to seep in. In far less than that, the sump was full. And there was no where else for the water to go. No power. That's the bottom of every hill, the lowest point in a little dirt-tarp that catches rain for us. Strange, to be without electricity. Even examining that back corner of the hold required batteries. 

So we filled a bucket. Dad made a dipper, while I tried to believe our bilge wouldn't really need to be pumped out. At the same time (rather ironically), I was afraid to pour the water down the drain, because sometimes in heavy rain the drain will back up. When water is rising, it must go somewhere. 

I carried it upstairs. Water is really quite dense. Opened a door, and I was on deck. I gave a bucketfull of water back to the storm. I gave me some on my head and my feet. For a moment there was daylight. It showed a world of waist-tall breakers pounding at the hull. There are always lights in the distance, to the north and the south. Our friendly convoy ships in the night, but the storm had blotted them out. My mouth ached already from holding the flashlight in my teeth, but there was no other way to see what I was about. 

By the time Dad and I returned to the basement, the sump was fuller than it had been when we started. Maybe three minutes round trip, tops.

I took the first shift. There was no choice, really. Dad believed or hoped that bailing would be intermittent, but the storm did not bear that out. A half dozen trips before One AM. Everything hurt, and everything was wet. I brought three towels up, laying them at each entrance. Out at the front, we have four tiny solar powered LED lights. They're encased in many-faceted glass globes, and normally quite attractive. Now, in the darkness, they were even more beautiful. I thought they might light my steps, so I would not need to bite a light to carry the bucket with one hand. 

The sump was lapping its upper edge when I returned to it. I had to dip very carefully (and slowly, the fear!), to keep the overflow minimal. The powder room and ship's library are better dry. I gave up on dumping the bilge on deck, and decided to take my chances with the drain. In sheer numbers, I would pour less than a hundred gallons an hour into it. Pittance compared to the storm. Yet what a fool it is who drops the straw that breaks the camel's back!

Quicker work causes greater aches, but granted a moment of respite. Back on the wooden library floor, eyes to the ceiling. Little lights from the globes sparkle. Are they stars or fireflies? I listen carefully to the steady flow of water. Two trickles, I think, maybe more. If that sound fails, my respite is over because the pipes have gone under. Shelves would follow soon; books and powder. But it feels so good to straighten my back, and the ceiling is beautiful even through closed eyes, and I am greatly sleepy, and everything it peaceful, and quiet and ready for a rest well-enough earned. And quiet! 

The rest was enough, and I am not too late. I can barely see the sump, though. The batteries are dying. Five flashlights and three globes around the house, and all of them dying.

Dip and pour and carry, and soon it is two thirty. Nothing has changed, except my shift is over. I thought at first I would take a longer turn, grant a better rest to my father. In the end, I feel rather less like being a hero. “... your shift....”
“how often do you have to bail it?”
“continuously. But I've gone to using the drain, and that grants a moment's rest...every third trip or so.”

I'm asleep for five minutes and it's four thirty. Or quarter of five, I think; Back to bailing. This time, with tennis shoes. River shoes, I call them. A pair so old, I remember buying them for band camp. Freshman year. Somehow, they are perfectly comfortable just then. I had been barefoot my first shift, and my toes cramped up for a moment. Do you know how hard it is to walk without using your big toe? And carry?
I found my little Mp3 player. Genius instrument. The “skip forward” button doesn't work. That serves as the “continue/next/expand” key in all menus, so I can't navigate at all. It's stuck on shuffle, but at least it gives me something to think about. Better than trying to remember the lyrics to “give me all of it,” like I had been. Dad rigged a nice lantern in the powder room. A streetlamp, he called it. It must have been the old kind that buzzed like it was trying to shock insects, because it's glow was rather dingy and yellow. Five lights were now three, and one globe left. 

Sometime during the night the storm must have moved on. I don't believe it quit. Storms like that don't just quit or fail or fade, they just pass on to someone else. The morning broke pretty brightly. After so much darkness, anything outside of Tom Sawyer's cave might have seemed bright. I fill a little yellow cup with cereal, and munch a bit between trips. The flow has slacked some, I can pause almost every trip now. 

The freezers are dripping. Meats inside must be defrosting. The sun comes up, something like seven thirty, and Dad goes out to see if we can mechanize our bilge pump. The route might wear a groove in the concrete and carpet, but its not as painful or tiring anymore. I listen to Creep five times, because the “skip back” button works just fine. Every song sounds wonderful, beautiful, inspiring. Why am I most inspired when I'm most tired? It's five minutes before midnight, as I'm writing these words, and I was too exhausted to stand at 6pm today. 

My mother's willow, her gift-tree, has broken right in half. That same poor trunk twice-smashed by cows is once again snapped. I'm bailing still, and Dad bandages it. I bail some more. Black Hole Sun twice, for reasons I can't explain. I even listen to the entire Shoots and Ladders (miserable music!). My hands hurt, but at least my toes aren't complaining. Nap from about 10:30 to noon, then try to install Dad's bilge pump.

It's a simple plastic housing that hooks into two garden hoses. A hand drill should chuck around it, spin the pump and move water from sump to drain without quite so much back pain. There is frustration enough in this story to be a saga unto itself. Three houses, four cuts, two buckets, and we finally conclude it will not work. I keep bailing.

By three in the afternoon, the rate is down by half again. Two minutes for a fill, and two minutes off. Just time enough to jot the stories that are trying to get out of my head. I'm ok with water, but I'm drowning in stories. My heels hurt. River shoes do have their limitations.  

At three fifty eight in the afternoon, everything comes back. The lights are up. You'd think it was V-E day, for the joy. Somewhere on the road out there, a crew from KCPL... no, a lot of crews.... have the power lines standing again. They had fallen on the road, apparently, and 13 had to be closed.

I am lying in bed, doing a final recount of the storm. Its only real casualty was that much-abused willow. And some sleep (apparently two night's worth). Aches don't really count as injuries, do they? My feet all cold, so I flip the switch to go find another blanket. How great it is to turn on a light.