He couldn’t take his eyes from the wriggling mass between us. “You think it has something to do with the weather?”
“Reckon so. My theory is that the rain’s forcing them topside.”
Carl had always had a gift for stating the obvious. In mid-July, when the temperature soared to ninety-nine degrees and the fields turned brown, Carl greeted customers to his combination post office and feed store with, “Boy, it sure is hot out there, ain’t it?”
Now he said, “Boy, that sure is a lot of worms.”
I cleared my throat and changed the subject to something more pressing. “Don’t suppose you’d have a dip on you now, would you, Carl? Or maybe some Mail Pouch or a cigarette or cigar?”
His big moon face turned sympathetic. “I sure don’t, Teddy. You out of Skoal?”
Like I said, Carl had a knack for summing things up.
“Yep,” I answered. “Ran out a few weeks back. Got me a craving for some nicotine. I’d kill for a dip right now.”
“I heard that. Wish I could help you out, Teddy. Been hankering for some caffeine myself. I run out of coffee a few days back.”
“Well, come on in.” I held the screen door open. “I’ve still got plenty of coffee left. It’s the freeze-dried stuff, but you’re welcome to have some.”
His face lit up at the news of hot coffee. He climbed out of the cab and splashed through the puddles towards the carport. Water dripped from his nose and chin. Then he skidded to a stop, looking at the worms.
“I ain’t wading through
He ran around to the back of the truck and opened the tailgate. Carl had a camper topper, so the bed itself was dry. He reached inside and pulled out a broom, holding it up like a triumphant deer hunter would hold his rifle.
“I reckon this’ll work.”
“Carl Seaton, the mighty worm slayer,” I quipped. “See that really long one over there, by the picnic table? Maybe you could mount it on your wall, right next to the black bear and twenty-four-point buck.”
Ignoring my ribbing, he cleared a path toward the door. The sluggish worms were scooped more than they were swept. The straw bristles speared some and squashed even more. Half worms, severed in the middle but still alive, squirmed and thrashed in his wake. By the time Carl reached my door, he was a bit paler than normal. But his face had a broad grin as he shook my hand. His palms were wet and cold.
“By God, it’s good to see you, Teddy.” He shook water from his head. “I’ve been awful lonely. Thought maybe I was the last one left on the mountain.”
“I was thinking the same thing.” I smiled. “It’s good to see you too.”
And it was good to see him. Damn good. I’d figured Carl was dead or long gone with the National Guardsmen and the rest of Punkin’ Center.
Carl shook a few squished worms off his galoshes. Already, they were closing ranks in his wake, crawling back over the path he’d cleared. He came inside, and I hung up his coat and rain hat, and set his galoshes by the kerosene heater to dry. Then, as I’ve done more and more in recent years, I slapped my forehead in frustration at my fading memory.
“Damn it, I’d forget my own head if it weren’t attached. Carl, make yourself comfortable. I’ve got to go back outside.”
“What’s wrong? You’ll catch a cold if you stay out there for very long.”
“I need to check on something out back. My woodpile and my fuel barrels fell over.”
“Shoot.” He stood back up and put on his boots. “I’ll give you a hand with the barrels. Besides, that ain’t nothing. My whole damned place
“What? I saw your house on my way home about a week ago. It looked all right to me then.”
“I swear it’s true. And by the way, I saw you that day. I was sitting in the house, eating some beef jerky and listening to the rain, when I heard a motor outside. I ran to the window and saw youdrive past. That’s how I knew youwere alive. What were youdoing out, anyway?”
“Trying to get to Renick—but it ain’t there no more.”
“Flooded?”
I nodded. “Yeah, you could say that. The church steeple and the top of Old Man Laudermilk’s silo are still above water, but that’s about it.”
“Well, I’ll be damned. Any survivors?”
“Not that I saw. I reckon the National Guard evacuated everybody before the waters got too high.”
Carl shook his head sadly. “I hope so.”
“Me too. So why didn’t youflag me down that day?”
“I did,” Carl said, lacing up his boots. “But you must not have seen me on account of the rain and fog. I hollered as loud as I could. Thought I was going to pop a blood vessel. But I didn’t want to leave Macy and her pups alone for too long.”
Macy was Carl’s beagle, a mangy old rabbit dog that I swear he loved more than any human being on earth.
“That why you hadn’t come to see if I was around before now?”
He nodded. “I figured you’d gone with the National Guard until I saw you in the truck. Then after that, I was gonna come check, but I didn’t want to leave her alone. Macy and her litter are all I have left. It’d be a shame to just abandon them like that. What if something had happened while I was gone?”
I shrugged. “What could happen?”
Carl’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I don’t know, Teddy. But sometimes…sometimes I heard things at night. Outside, in the rain. Macy heard them as well, and it set her to growling and barking.”
For some reason, the Bible verse ran through my head.
“What kind of things?” I asked.
“I don’t rightly know how to describe it. Like a sloshing sound, maybe.”
“That’s just the rain.” I put my hand on the doorknob.
Carl finished with his boots. “No sir, I don’t think it was. There was something else—a sort of whistling sound. Gave me the chills when I heard it.”
I stared at him. I’d seen Alzheimer’s and dementia take some of my closest friends, but Carl didn’t seem to be suffering from it. Nor did he seem to have cracked from the strain yet. He seemed like his normal self.
Plus, I’d heard something myself that very morning. Seen it, too.
Something that looked like a dog-sized version of the worms wriggling on my carport.
“All I can say,” he continued, “is that it weren’t natural.”
“Well, I reckon you’d know. Come on and give me a hand, if you’re gonna.”
We stepped out onto the carport again. As we waded through the worms and slogged through the swamp that had replaced my backyard, Carl told me what happened next.
He hadn’t wanted to leave the house because Macy had just given birth and the puppies’ eyes weren’t even opened yet. He didn’t want to leave them alone, not even for the few minutes it would have taken to come find me. Carl had a heart like a big old marshmallow when it came to that mutt.
Carl’s house, post office, and feed store were all part of one big, ramshackle building. By the end of the second week, the dirt cellar was flooded, and by Day Thirty, the foundations had begun to creak and groan. Still, he refused to leave, wanting to be there for his hound and her newborn litter.
He’d woken up this morning at dawn; probably around the same time as what happened to the bird.
“What got you up?” I asked as we walked across the muddy yard.
“Macy was barking and howling enough to wake the dead,” Carl said. “Nothing would quiet her. And the puppies were all whining too.”
“Well, what had them so stirred up?”
“The house started shaking. I didn’t notice it at first, but the dogs did. They said on the Discovery Channel that animals know about earthquakes before they happen. I reckon this was something like that.”
“An earthquake?”
