took a step backward, as if to disappear inside the cabin.
Beth and Izzy exchanged a look. The water was rising fast.
“How about we sing a song?” Izzy said. She crouched down to the child’s level. “When I’m afeared of anything, I sing me a happy song. Makes me feel better. What songs do you know?”
The child was trembling. But her eyes were on Izzy’s.
“How about ‘Camptown Races’? You know that one, right, Beth?”
“Oh, my favorite,” said Beth, one eye on the water.
“Okay!” said Izzy.
The Camptown ladies sing this song
Doo-da, doo-da.
The Camptown racetrack’s five miles long
Oh, de doo-da day.
She smiled, stepping back into the water, which was now at thigh level. She kept her eye on the child, beckoning her forward, her voice high and cheerful, as if she had not a care in the world.
Going to run all night
Going to run all day
I bet my money on a bob-tailed nag
Somebody bet on the bay.
“That’s it, sweetheart, you follow me. Hold on tight now.”
Beth slid in behind them, the middle child high on her hip. She could feel the force of the current beneath, smell the hint of acrid chemicals infusing it. There was nothing she wanted to do less than forge this water, and she didn’t blame the kid for not wanting to, either. She held the toddler close, and the child plugged in her thumb, closing her eyes, as if removing herself from what she saw around her.
“C’mon, Beth,” came Izzy’s voice from in front, insistent, musical. “You join in too now.”
Oh, the long-tailed filly and the big black horse
Doo-da, doo-da
Come to a mud hole and they all cut across,
Oh, de doo-da day.
And there they were, wading across, Beth’s voice reedy and her breath somewhere in her chest, nudging the child forward. The little girl sang haltingly, her knuckles white on the rope, her face contorted with fear, yelping as she was occasionally lifted off her feet. Izzy kept glancing back, urging Beth to keep on singing, keep on moving.
The water was building in height and speed. She could hear Izzy in front of her, calm and upbeat. “And there, now, aren’t we pretty much through? How about that. ‘Going to run all night, going to run all—’”
Beth looked up as Izzy stopped singing. She thought, distantly, I’m sure the car wasn’t that far in the water. And then Izzy was hauling at the eldest girl’s waistband, her fingers fumbling as she tried to release the knot in her scarf, and Beth suddenly understood why she had stopped singing, her look of panic, and half threw her own charge onto the bank as she grabbed at her belt and tried to release the buckle.
Hurry up, Beth! Undo it!
Her fingers turned to thumbs. Panic rose in her throat. She felt Izzy’s hands grabbing at the belt, lifting it so that it was clear of water, felt the ominous pressure building as it tightened around her waist—and then, just as she felt herself being pulled forward, click, the belt was slipping through her fingers, and Izzy was hauling at her with a strength she’d had no idea she had and suddenly, whoosh, the big green car was half submerged and moving down the river at an unlikely speed, away from them, on the end of its rope.
They scrambled to their feet, stumbling up the hill toward the higher ground, the children’s hands tight in their own, their eyes transfixed by what was unfolding before them. The rope tightened, the car bobbed, briefly tethered, and then, faced with an unstoppable weight, and with an audible fraying sound, the rope, defeated by sheer weight and physics, snapped.
Mrs. Brady’s Oldsmobile, custom-painted in racing green, with a cream-leather interior all the way from Detroit, turned over elegantly, like a giant seal revealing its belly. As the five of them watched, dripping and shivering, it rode away from them, half submerged, on the black tide, turned a corner, and the last of its chrome bumper disappeared around the bend.
Nobody spoke. And then the baby held up her arms and Izzy stooped to pick her up. “Well,” she said, after a minute. “I guess that’s me grounded for the next ten years.”
And Beth, who was not known for great shows of emotion, but suddenly propelled by an impulse she barely understood, reached over and pulled Izzy to her and kissed the side of Izzy’s face, a huge, audible smacker, so that the two of them began the slow walk back to town a little