Maurice took the phone from me and was already jotting down notes on a pad as I stepped away. It took almost four hours to get the library situation sorted out, and I helped as much as I could by calling around town to locate tarps and other materials to save all the books. Maurice rustled up volunteers to help.
“Do we need to go pick anything up?” Maurice asked, blinking his brown eyes in my direction. I’d been pacing around his office while I talked to people. My heart warmed the longer I stared at him.
“No. Everything is being delivered to the library.”
I’d barely laid my phone down on his desk when it rang again, and I groaned to see Ewell Smalls’ number pop up once more.
“Yes?” I said as soon as I answered.
“Don’t suppose you want to come over and help us? This is turning critical.” He laughed, but it wasn’t a pleasant sound.
I swallowed hard. St. Loren was my community, and I would hate to see the money the parish had already spent go to waste. “Yes, I’ll be right there.” The line went dead almost immediately.
Maurice glanced at me, eyes wide behind his glasses. “Right where?”
“We’re going over to the elementary school to help with sandbags. They’re desperate for anyone.”
“Damn it,” he muttered, glancing down at his shoes. He was dressed to be here in the office, same as me. “I have boots in my car.”
I shrugged. “This is all I’ve got because I wasn’t planning to be out of the office. I don’t care. I’m going.”
He nodded, jaw jutting. “I’ll go with you.” All the awkwardness from last night faded in the face of a true emergency and he grinned at me. I dumped my suit jacket on his chair, and he did the same before we took off out the door.
We barely spoke on the drive to the construction site because the weather was so bad all my concentration was fixed on the road. When we reached the new building, I didn’t have time to breathe before we were both out and rushing through the pounding rain that whipped and stung my skin toward a flatbed full of sandbags. About thirty other people were already helping, and I immediately hopped up into the bed and started passing down bags. Maurice took two, shocking me with how easily he hefted one hundred pounds, and stomped off toward the line of sandbags about twenty feet away.
“They need to turn the row of bags so the water will hit and go toward the diversion ditch!” I called after him, immediately spotting an issue. “Use physics!”
The backhoe was already out in the large stretch of lawn that was eventually meant to be a soccer field, digging a long line. The machinery wouldn’t be able to get too close to the river, and hopefully there were no hidden gas or power lines we didn’t know about. How Frank had gotten the work started so quickly, I didn’t know, but all he needed to do was coax water out toward a nearby field, which had been left vacant because it was what had been dubbed an actual floodplain. I shook my head. No one should’ve built anywhere near here. I’d told the parish council, but they didn’t listen.
Maurice dumped his bags on the stack that was already quickly being lengthened, and he pointed at an angle, talking to someone over there, so I knew he’d understood me. I had no idea how long we worked, but we unloaded five more trucks of sandbags and my arms, shoulders, and back were burning with overuse. The diversion ditch wasn’t pretty, but it stretched far out into the floodplain where there were no buildings, and I hoped it would keep most of the water, which would likely flood the tributary banks, from ruining the school.
I stared at the frothing brown water, full of mud and branches, and gasped as a small wave lapped over the edge. It wouldn’t be long now. I jumped from the truck bed I stood on and raced, slipping and sliding in my dress shoes, over toward the backhoe, waving my hands. My lungs burned, and my clothes were stuck uncomfortably to my skin.
“You gotta get it out of here!” I yelled, pointing toward the embankment. I shouted again when Frank, an older man with gray hair, glanced up at me and nodded. He raised the bucket of the backhoe, and I stood there catching my breath and shivering until he started for the relative safety of the work site with the heavy equipment. Now it was down to prayers. I started to jog back because another flatbed full of sandbags had arrived, but I slipped, landing hard on my ass with a curse. I got back up and hobbled much more slowly toward the line of sandbags, which were piled higher than my waist now.
Water poured over the embankment nearby with a gush that caught my attention, and I ran faster as terror clawed at my chest. The overflow hit the ditch, but there was too much and it kept coming toward me.
“Wick! Move it!” Maurice shouted, squinting through his watery glasses. How he even knew it was me out here, I didn’t know, but I ran toward him. I jumped over the makeshift sandbag wall and beat the water that slammed against the barrier by seconds. Maurice punched my shoulder and glared at me. “What were you doing?”
“I saw the water was breaking and told Frank to get the backhoe out of there.”
He bared his teeth but nodded while fruitlessly wiping his glasses on the tail of his soaked, filthy shirt. I laughed, and he shook his head at me, and then cheers from the workers and volunteers that lived nearby went up as the sandbags held and did their job. Frank and the backhoe got caught up in the water, but the tread on the heavy equipment kept turning and it wasn’t very deep yet. We all stood around watching his progress until he finally made it clear of the immediate danger; although, if rain kept pelting us, eventually none of this would matter. I hoped it would slow down soon.
“Thank you for your help,” Ewell said, coming up to me. “You were amazing just now, beating the floodwater.” I hadn’t spoken with him since I’d arrived because we were all too busy, but the tall, skinny man blasted me with a warm smile. His blond hair was plastered to his head and he resembled a dunked puppy. Ewell shook my hand, then Maurice’s.
“No worries,” Maurice said, but there was a snap in his tone. I wasn’t sure what that was about.
I wrapped my arm around Maurice’s shoulders, and he leaned against my side. “Well, I think we’ll go back to the office.”
Ewell shook his head. “The lights are out in the whole city, except a few of the areas in the Business District. There’s a couple of hotels I’ve heard still have power.” He gave me an apologetic grin. “Most of the roads in and out of the city aren’t passable at the moment.”
“Want to go to a hotel?” I asked over a rush of wind, glancing into Maurice’s face.
He nodded, and we both gazed skyward. It was darker than it had been a few minutes ago, and I thought that was possibly because the day was over and we’d been too busy to realize it was passing us by. My phone was in the car along with Maurice’s so we didn’t ruin them with the rain, and I wasn’t wearing a watch today. “Yeah, if I can’t get home, I want to at least be able to shower and sleep somewhere dry with a bed.”
“After we clean up, would you join me for dinner? Especially since you stood me up last night. Please?”
He took his glasses off and glared at me, and I couldn’t help but chuckle. His bow tie was drooping, his white shirt was sheer with the water and mud, and only his undershirt kept him decent.
