Gryphon_ New and Selected Stories - Charles Baxter [125]
It is midday in downtown Five Oaks, Michigan, the time for lunch and rest and conversation, and for a remnant, a lucky few, it may be a time for love, but here before us is Harry Edmonds, an officer in the trust department at Southeastern Michigan Bank and Trust, standing on a street corner in a strong spring wind. The wind pulls at his tie and musses his hair. Nearby, a recycling container appears to have overturned, and sheets of paper, hundreds of them, papers covered with drawings and illustrations and words, have scattered. Like a flock of birds, they have achieved flight. All around Harry Edmonds they are gripped in this whirlwind and flap and snap in circles. Some stick to him. There are glossy papers with perfumed inserts, and there are yellowing papers with four-color superheroes, and there are the papers with attractive unclothed airbrushed bodies, and there are the papers with bills and announcements and loans. Here are the personals, swirling past, and there a flyer for a home theater big-screen TV. Harry Edmonds, a man uncertain of the value of his own life, who at this moment does not know whether his life has, in fact, any importance at all, or any future, lifts his head in the wind, increasing in volume and intensity, and for a moment he imagines himself being blown away. From across the street, the way he raises his head might appear, to an observer, as a posture of prayer. God, it is said, resides in the whirlwind, and certainly Harry Edmonds’s eyes are closed and now his head is bowed. He does not move forward or backward, and it is unclear from the expression on his face whether he is making any sort of wish. He remains stationary, on this street corner, while all about him the papers fly first toward him, and then away.
A moment later he is gone from the spot where he stood. No doubt he has returned to his job at the bank, and that is where we must leave him.
Flood Show
IN LATE MARCH, at its low flood stage, the Chaska River rises up to the benches and the picnic areas in the Eurekaville city park. No one pays much attention to it anymore. Three years ago, Conor and Janet organized a flood lunch for themselves and their three kids. They started their meal perched cross-legged on an oilcloth they had draped over the picnic table. The two adults sat at the ends, and the kids sat in the middle, crowding the food. They had had to walk through water to get there. The water was flowing across the grass directly under the table, past the charcoal grills and the bandstand. It had soaked the swing seats. It had reached the second rung of the ladder on the slide.
After a few minutes, they all took off their shoes, which were wet anyway, and they sat down on the benches. The waters slurred over their feet pleasantly, while the deviled eggs and mustard-ham sandwiches stayed safe in their waxed paper and Tupperware. It was a sunny day, and the flood had a peaceable aspect. The twins yelled and threw some of their food into the water and smiled when it floated off downriver. The picnic tables, bolted into cement, served as anchors and observation platforms. Jeremy, who was thirteen that spring, drew a picture, a pencil sketch, the water suggested by curlicues and subtle smearings of spit.
Every three years or so, Eurekaville gets floods like this. It’s the sort of town where floods are welcome. They spill over the top banks, submerge the baseball diamond and the soccer field, soak a basement or two along Island Drive, and then recede. Usually the waters pass by lethargically. On the weekends, people wade out into them and play flood-volleyball and flood-softball.