A 
Adapted from Chapter One of the novel, THE RIVER
By Tamara Baxter
Mama says if the rain doesn't stop soon we will all be washed down the Nolichucky River. Our little house that sits upon Stone Shoe Island will come loose from its moorings and float down the river like a houseboat.
No, Mama says. We will float a ways, likely, but not too far, and we will spin like a top in the flood, and then we will sink.
I spin myself around and around and fall dizzy headed on the floor.
Do you know how to swim?
Mama shakes her head. No, son. I don't know how to swim.
Mama says the river has risen four feet in one day. More than any day before. She has measured only two feet of space between the river and our house with her yardstick. The Nolichucky River must be one hundred feet deep now. Maybe more. Mr. Fat Doty's tobacco barn is under water. The river has grown a mile wide and all the houses and barns along the river are under water but our house that sits upon Stone Shoe Island. Mama says Stone Shoe Island is called Stone Shoe because it is shaped like a woman's boot, but Daddy says our island is more like a giant granite tooth sticking out of the river and why anybody would live on top of this place is a wonder to him. My daddy is Farless Woods and he works for Fat Doty who owns this house and a river bottom farm of many acres. My mama is Ester Woods, and my name is Karo because I like to eat syrup.
Mama likes living atop Stone Shoe Island because we are like birds high in a nest. We can see to Knoxville on a clear day. We can walk out our front door and see the great wide world, all the way to the Smokey Mountains. We can look over the tops of the highest trees to land way beyond the edge of Fat Doty's farm and see the brown roads crawling in and out of the trees. We can look below and see the brown river splitting around us. But now the flood has come up to our door and the river is swallowing us. Mama says if we wash away in the flood it will be her fault for enjoying the earthly pleasure of such a view.
Who could have known such a tide as this would come, Mama says. We haven't had a flood since the power dam was built. We should have gone days ago, before the boat washed away.
Daddy is not afraid of the flood. He sits at the kitchen table drinking his magic water and eating a can of sardines. Daddy cuts the top off the can with his pocket knife the way he learned to do in the army. The teensy fish smell rotten and float in ketchup that does not taste right. He spears the fish with his pocket knife and eats them off the blade. And then he drinks some more of his magic water out of the jar. I do not like the rotten smelling fish.
Daddy says that when I grow up and go to the great war I will learn to eat many rotten smelling things because I will starve to death if I do not learn to eat whatever I can get my hands on. Even rotten beef if necessary. That is because there will be war and killing and rain, rain, rain.
You are scaring the boy, Mama says. Always scaring him with war talk.
Daddy pokes the tip of his knife at my chin. This rain is nothing like the rain he remembers in the Italian campaign. This rain is puny. What are we complaining about, Daddy says. He has eaten his sardines in rain water that was higher than his boot tops. Look, he says, pointing his knife toward the floor boards. Look. We're still dry here. Wait until the water gets above our knees. Then we will all know what the rain of war is like.
Mama says that Daddy likes to get drunk and feel sorry for himself because he had to go to the army and fight in World War II. Now he is sorry that he had to come home and be like ordinary people and farm the land and take care of a wife and son.
Daddy drinks the last of his magic water and tosses the empty jar out the open door where the river is going fast in bumpy waves. He points his knife at me again. He says I must wait until the water gets up to my knees and my feet are so wet and cold I can not feel them. Then I will know about rain. You think this river mud stinks? Wait till you smell dead men rotting under the water.
Daddy says that when I get to be a man and go to Italy like he did and I am in the rain of war I will see parts of dead men sticking up out of the water. I will be glad to see boots and elbows because I will not want to step on a dead man. I will be glad their faces are under the water because the dead men might be my buddies. Or my enemies. But the rotten smell will be everywhere, so I will not be sure of where to walk. I will hunker down in the rain, cut open my sardines and eat them anyway because I will be tired and starving.
You always bully the boy when you get drunk, Mama says.
Daddy says, The boy is nine years old and he's still a sissy. The day will come when he must act like a man.
Daddy sticks the knife blade into the table top. Then he stumbles back to bed and pulls the quilt to his chin.
Mama lights the kerosene lamp and sets it atop the cook stove. Mama has been holding back the kerosene for three days of the flood while we sit through the nights and listen to the rain pounding on the roof. We smell the river and hear the water rising in the dark. We lie in our beds in the darkness and dream about the river rising so high it will wash us away in our sleep. Mama holds the lamp toward the calendar and draws an X on the ninth day of rain to come unending. If the rain keeps coming this hard we will not make it past tomorrow, she says. There will be no need to draw another mark upon the calendar. There will be no need to save the kerosene.
***
Mama says the brown snake that crawled through a crack in the floor boards is a water snake. The snake wrapped around Mama's hands. She plopped him back into the river. But the snake that fell upon the kitchen table from out of the rafters was a cotton mouth moccasin and that heavy snake thumped the table. He curled himself into a spring and jumped at me like a jack in the box. Mama jerked me away before his white mouth came at my face. I could see inside his cotton throat.
Mama says this snake is agitated by the flood and he is seeking a dry spot. Mama took her hoe from the corner behind the stove and chopped at the snake. He was strong and willful. He jumped off the table at Mama's skirt and hissed. Mama chopped his tail off and he squirmed like a fishing worm and tied himself into a knot. Mama chopped the snake into pieces while it squirmed a bloody mess on our kitchen floor. Mama said, Thank God the lamp is burning now. We could never see in the dark to kill that snake.
But then another cotton mouth crawled in the door and another one fell out of the rafters atop the stove and landed beside the kerosene lamp. And then another snake crawled through a crack in the ceiling and hung down like a rope before it fell on the bed.
Daddy has been laying off to fix the door and jam up the cracks, but he says there are more cracks in our house than he can fix in a lifetime. And why should he spend time fixing up somebody else's property? I like the cracks, though. We have wide cracks around the ceiling where the roof doesn't join the house right. I can put my eyes to the cracks between the planks in the floor and see the ground under the house. I can see dust speckles floating in the air where the sun comes in. I can see the sun shining into the house early of a morning through one big crack that is in the corner over my bed. The cotton mouths have found our cracks of light and they are crawling out of the flood.
Mama says I must stand on a chair in the far corner where no snakes are crawling. I must watch the cracks and I must watch under my feet and up at the ceiling so that snakes do not fall on my head. I must shout if one comes near. Mama chops at the snakes with her hoe. Some curl up and strike and some crawl fast across the floor. I can not watch them all at once.
Mama catches a bucket of rain water out the window and throws it across Daddy's face. Get out of your drunken stupor, Mama says. Cotton mouths are crawling all over the place.
Daddy pulls himself off the bed and hitches his pants. He counts more than a dozen snakes with his finger bobbing like a willow limb. The cotton mouth beside the lamp is still because it is warm and dry. That snake thinks he is lying in the sun, so he has gone to sleep beside the lamp. I have seen snakes sunning beside the river when I am sailing my boats and they take no notice of me playing. But these snakes are crawling out of the flood and darkness. They are troubled.
Daddy tromps over the snakes. He takes down his gun box from the shelf where he keeps the Luger that he took off a dead German. The German was sleeping in a trench when Daddy shot him. Daddy could not find his buddies in the Battle of the Bulge. There was snow on the ground deeper than the snow of Sluder's Gap in the winter. Daddy and his buddies got whooped all to hell that day. I am not to say the hell word out loud, but I say it inside my head because I can not stop it. The snow of the Bulge was after the rains of Italy.
It was dark and past supper time. Daddy did not have a bit of grub, so he crawled through the snow to the Germans because he could smell stew cooking. The Germans cozied around the fire and warmed their feet by the flames. Another one passed the plates and one fat German poured some drinks from a jar. Daddy left his gun in the snow. The gun barrel froze to his hands and the skin of his fingers peeled off on his gun. He stole the sleeping German's Luger and shot him in the ear. Then he shot all the other Germans before they could get their guns pointed. My Daddy sat down among the dead soldiers and drank their whiskey and ate their stew. Daddy took their guns and food. He got saved by killing the Germans.
I'm going to show you how to shoot a German Luger, boy. It's time you learned something, Daddy says. We're going to kill some snakes. Think they own the damned place.
Daddy aims at one snake near the bed and the floor splinters up. Then Daddy shoots the snake on the table and it pops up in the air.
Why is that boy crying? he says to Mama. Daddy stomps through the snakes and them striking his boots. Daddy tucks me under his arm and puts the gun in my hand. The gun is heavy and smells hot like an oil lamp. He puts his big hand over mine and points the gun. I must kill snakes, he says.
Lookie at that big one trying to crawl under the bed. Daddy slides his boot under the bed, and kicks the snake out in the floor. It balls up. Shoot that sumabitch right in the head, boy. I pull the trigger under Daddy's finger and the snake comes apart and the river gurgles up through the floor boards.
Hell, let's blow that bastard away trying to come in the door. I feel the trigger go twice.
Shoot that sumabitch on the stove. Daddy points my hand toward the snake curled up beside the light.
Dear God. Watch out for the lamp, Mama screams. She stands on the chair in the corner with the hoe raised like a flag.
Shoot this one in the ear, Boy. Daddy says. He walks me over to the sleeping snake lying on the stove and we put the gun beside its head and I am scared to death because my hand is right close to the snake's head and we shoot that snake in his ear and its head flies away but its body stays still.
Sumabitch didn't know what hit him, Daddy laughs.
My hand burns on the gun. I slip loose from Daddy and run to the chair where my Mama stands with her hoe reached out.
Well, Boy. That's how you shoot them damned Germans. Right in the ear, Daddy says. He waves his gun in the air and stumbles over the dead snakes and stumbles to his gun box and tries to put the gun in his box but it falls on the floor and then my Daddy tries to pick up the gun but he stumbles backwards out the door and washes away in the flood.
***
This is how Billy Feathers and Giant Joe Jenkins got me and Mama out of the flood. Billy came down river on a barge and bumped into our house in the early light. My Mama was crying and praying and thanking God that the rain had finally stopped pounding on the roof. Everything was still and quiet except the river gurgling and the house creaking and moaning, and the snakes hissing, and my Mama praying, Please God help us. Please God help us. And we were standing on chairs in the corner while the river came running through the cracks and by the middle of the night the water came up to my feet and by morning it was up to my waist. Mama said we must not think about the water swirling around our legs and our feet freezing. We must think about keeping the snakes away.
Mama put the kerosene lamp in my hands and said I must hold the lamp above the water and not drop it. I have the light of the whole world in my hands. Mama held the hoe. The snakes were swimming in the water and climbing up the walls and falling from the rafters into the water. Every time a snake swam toward us Mama knocked it away with her hoe. I must save us by holding the lamp so Mama can see to knock the snakes away. But the lamp got very heavy and my arms hurt bad. Mama told me I must bear the burden. I must hold fast and pray God will help me hold the lamp.
This is the light that Billy Feathers says he could not figure out. Why is that light shining
on Stone Shoe Island after it being dark there for days except they still be inside? Billy Feather's barge hit the corner of our house and the wall tilted in. He shined a flashlight through the kitchen window. Mama says, We're over here. Watch. Snakes everywhere. First, Billy Feathers and then Giant Joe Jenkins came through the window. They wore waist high wading boots and knocked the snakes away with a stick. Giant Joe Jenkins carried my Mama and Billy Feathers carried me. Where is your daddy?He fell into the flood, I tell him. says Giant Joe Jenkins.
Billy says we've got to get out now. The house is going to wash away any minute. Mama and me got threaded through the window and there was Billy Feather's barge swinging and bumping against the house. Billy told us to lie flat and hold to a rope so that we would not bump off in the rapid waves. We bounced down the river. The sun was coming up good but the water was so wide across the earth that I could not figure anything out. Billy Feathers says that Fat Doty's tobacco patch is deep under the river. That is when Mama let out a screech and pointed toward some tree tops just sticking out of the water. The limbs were stripped of their leaves. We could see Daddy caught in the forks of a tree, caught at the waist between two limbs. Daddy lifted his head a little and moved his arm. Mama said, Oh my god. Farless. Mama shouted to Daddy and waved her arm. Billy Feathers said, I'll be durned.
We heard a loud screeching behind us and looked back in time to see our house sliding down the side of Stone Shoe Island into the river. Our house didn't float or spin at all. It gurgled and groaned and then it sunk under the muddy water.
