The Three Marys

A second weather alert convinces Mary Carruci, the executive director of Camp Rapture, to shine her flashlight at the rain pelting the river.  Crossing a puddle in sneakers, shorts and a tank top, she tilts her umbrella toward the wind and heads from her office to the road, where lightning reveals the river’s steady flow.  She follows the asphalt up to the bridge and stops breathing when a sheet of water rounds the bend and skirts the river’s surface.  Rumbling shakes the raillery as the current quickens, shifting yellow foam toward rocks thirty feet below.  A rapid whitens the water’s advance and froth laps exposed roots and shrubbery between overhanging trees.  The river dips and sways, expanding, carrying branches and an upturned car.

Mary lowers her umbrella, such that its hooked handle slips free and blue-and-white canopy flies toward the dam.  She backtracks to the start of the bridge, slides down the embankment and speeds along a gravel path to the cabin where the youngest campers sleep.  Behind her, a trailer clears the bridge, bobbing and rotating, and a tree disappears, the river rising and roaring, and, at its periphery, gulping and spitting mud and twigs.

She opens the door and illuminates sixteen girls recoiled in their bunks.  The roof drums with the deluge as window screens and frames rattle.

“It’s flooding!” says Annabel, a counselor holding a towel.

A girl screams, prompting others to scream.

“This way!  Right now!” says Mary.

A girl asks, “Are we gonna die?”

“No one’s dying!” shouts Mary.  “Out!  Everyone out!  Up to the gym!  Now!  Now!”  Waving her flashlight, she loses count of their long-haired heads amid blankets and plushies.  Out the door, splashing along the patio, jumping down from cinderblocks to knee-high water, she leads them uphill, when a girl falls and Annabel helps her up.

“Don’t stop!” cries Mary.

Soaked, the girls dislodge pebbles and grass scaling the incline, pause on the stoop to look back at the river and scream.

“Stop screaming!” shouts Mary.

She directs them through the gym to a rear staircase and counts fourteen plus Annabel as they rush up to the balcony suspended twenty feet above the fitness floor.  Lightning blears the space as the windows shake and the girls scream.

“Stop it!” shouts Mary.  “Everyone’s safe!  Don’t make things worse!”

Annabel prays: “Lord, you are our refuge and fortress, and we will not fear the dangers around us.”

Someone says, “Deliver us from evil.”

A few girls say, “Amen.”

Mary returns to the porch and spots a girl struggling in chest-high water.

“Keep your arms up!”

Dropping her flashlight on a chair, she wades into the swirl, grabs a wrist and elbow, pulls the girl into a hug and back peddles, veers downstream and gains a foothold on a boulder amid bunched branches and debris, and presses her mouth against the girl’s ear.

“Everyone’s in the gym.”

The girl replies, but the rain and roar distort her words.

Mary turns and steps, gasps, floating in the current and treading water, swings her arm until she feels grass, and climbs toward a flagpole as lightning closes her eyes and thunder jolts her shoulders.  At the gym, she drops off the girl and returns to the porch, points her flashlight at the cabin, nearly submerged and barely diverting the current, and spots an arm in a blue shirt trailing a leafy branch.  The flashlight drops to her feet as she walks into waist-high water, follows the arm and reaches, goes under, pushes off and pulls up a limp girl.  Water slaps their heads as they turn toward the gym and go under.

The girls cry and sing amid darkness lit by Annabel’s cell phone, its service lost, some girls seated with their backs against the wall, none standing, all holding hands.  The rain’s still hard and loud, but the wind’s gone elsewhere.  Annabel, clearing her throat, turns from a window as a girl wipes her nose and raises her chin.

“Can we pray?” asks the girl.

“Of course,” says Annabel.

Her prayer mentions Mary and the missing girl, thanks their god for sparing them, and asks for help, for the rain to stop and the river to slow down, so they can go back to their cabin and sleep.

Lighting pulls color from the balcony.

“Oh, my God.  Oh, my God,” says a girl.

“This is crazy,” says a girl.

The thunder, however, is softer than before.  Annabel points her cell phone at the roof, casting a circle, and prays for the people living along the river, for those at home and the rescuers who’ve left their homes to save everyone, and for good news.

*

Annabel rests against the balustrade, exhausted, whereas the girls sleep on their sides as dawn reveals the gym’s emptiness and sharpens the flood’s scent.  She stands, facing the entrance, its discolored doors open, raises her arms and yawns, her neck and back cracking.  Following the staircase down to the floor, she gauges the flood’s residue at less than a foot.  The soft planks are slippery, warped and dark.

Outside, the rain has slowed and the water receded; the wind blows downstream and the rapids are nearly flat.  A blue croc, crayons and a whiteboard eraser are among the scattered belongings where the cabin was, a green pencil and plastic cup, a sneaker, a canoe and table lamp, and a soccer ball wedged between branches resting on saturated twigs.  Multicolored blankets and trunks, water bottles, stuffed animals, a deflated beach ball and Target bag, a thin mattresses and white cords map the destruction.

The gravel path leading to the bridge is gone, the bridge battered and its raillery twisted; the field comprising the lowlands is stony and obstructed by upturned trees stripped of leaves.  Sand buries a dented car and a puddle ends at the pier’s remnant, where Annabel stands mortified, searching the cavities between roots and tufts for a body.

“Lord, give me your eyes,” she says.  “Help me find Sophia.”

She walks downstream, over rocks and sections of road, careful not to fall, following the onrush, as lines of frothy water disappear in the brown flow, the current too swift to spot anything small.

The bank swings inward where a toppled tree rests.  Stripped bare, the tree’s branches entangle a pendant suspending a flower embellishment.  Stooping, Annabel undoes its clasp, but can’t free its chain.  Returning to the gym, she finds a wet copy of The Hunt for the Whooping Cranes by J. J. McCoy, its spine eroded and second half gone.  Straightening its pages, and brushing off its cover, which depicts two cranes flying across blue sky, she realizes the book is Mary’s, and hopes Mary and Sophia have been flown to safety.

She passes a leather chair separated from its swivel, column and base and enters the gym, where the girls are signing; and when she reaches the balcony, she joins them:

 

The Lord has promised good to me

His word my hope secures;

He will my shield and portion be,

As long as life endures.

Wearing boots and a red hat, Mr. Malvasia retrieves a sneaker bearing a red heart.  The sneaker belongs to a girl, but not his daughter, who remains missing.  Behind him, along the riverbank, rescuers and dogs walk in groups and stop, looking for an arm or foot, small shoulders or the back of a head, a knee, a hand, as they move debris and mark areas in orange paint, wearing belts with whistles, flashlights, radios and spare batteries, having recovered two adult bodies upstream.

Hoping for a miracle, Mr. Malvasia calls his daughter’s name, and spots, beside a house carried downstream from somewhere, a mannequin clinging to a branch.  The mannequin, he determines, kneeling beside a broken fence, is a boy between eight and ten.

“I got ya,” he says.  “I’m not gonna leave ya.”

Waiting for a red helicopter to pass, he coughs and wipes his nose, drops his chin and thanks his god for leading him to the boy.  Then he stands, waves over the rescuers, and, pacing, steps on a black compass, which he pries from the mud, cleans off and reads: “act justly,” “love mercy” and “walk humbly.”

The Reunification Center commandeers the parking lot and student lounge of the local high school.  Rescuers photograph the children, who’ve been stranded all day at camps along the river, before doctors examine and release them to their families.  Survivors from the downstream RV Park receive first aid at a medical station and commiserate about the loss of their pets and property.  Land owners such as Mr. Kerr lost his store, operated by his family since 1967, where diesel fuel, beer and groceries were sold and community news relayed at the counter and beside the fireplace.  His neighbor, Mr. Hunt, lost sixty bales of hay at his ranch, and measured four feet of water covering his property once the rain had stopped.  Overall, the river rose twenty-five feet.

Mrs. Bonaparte and her husband Luke stack bottled water in their 4 x 4 truck, also boxed chainsaws, garbage bags, dollies, hand trucks and bungee cords, premixed engine fuel and sharp-edged shovels.  Other volunteers at the church organize crates of necessities, such as canned foods, socks and baby wipes.

“Distribution takes determination and time,” says Frank Albani, a reporter for the local news, “just like rebuilding.”

He lowers his microphone and asks Mrs. Bonaparte if she wants to be interviewed.

“Sure,” says Mrs. Bonaparte.

“What’s the most important thing to keep in mind today?”

“We have to stay focused on the living,” she says.  “Jesus is taking care of the dead.  Most of the survivors don’t have homes anymore, not if they lived along the river.  Their possessions are gone, they probably don’t have any insurance, and some have lost family members.  A few weeks from now, the media will be gone.  We have to be committed to helping out for the long term.  We have to be.  All of us.  It’s a small town.”

On Instagram, Sonny Filomarino posts a public service announcement:

“I want to tell you about the GoFundMe page I set up to help the families that’ve lost loved ones at Camp Rapture.  It’s only two families, but every penny counts.  You know me because of the pain I’ve been suffering this year battling stomach cancer.  I want you to know that I’m not doing this so you’ll think better of me.  I just want to help the people of my state.  None of this money will come to me.  Not a cent.  I can’t live with myself if I don’t do something.  So, I’m donating today and I hope you’ll donate, too.  As you can see, it’s difficult for me to express my feelings because, as a father who’s going to lose his children, and his wife, and who knows they’re going to lose me, there’s a lot of fear inside me, but when I compare that to what that girl must’ve felt swimming in the dark, not knowing what was happening or where she was going, being carried off, and the woman who tried to save her, the camp director, I just can’t imagine experiencing anything like that, and the pain their families are feeling right now is unbelievable.  So, go to the link in my bio and support them if you can.  God bless.”

The Governor arrives at Camp Rapture led by a rescuer wearing green rubber boots and flanked by security guards.  He pauses beside a hand truck and cart, listens, nodding yes-yes, shields his eyes from the sun and asks a question.  The man points at damage on the riverbank, where excavators remove debris.

“There aren’t many lights,” says the man, “and there aren’t many access points.”

A woman joins them, walking across saturated grass.

“I just saw a water moccasin,” she says.

They move toward the gym; then the Governor shakes the man’s hand and hugs the woman.  Later, he announces the death toll and lowers the number of missing, promises to search by land, sea and air until everyone’s found, thanks the community for its support, prayers and understanding, and warns that more rain’s coming.

“So, if you live nearby, move to higher ground,” he says.  “And don’t go to the flooded areas.”

A news anchor reads a letter from a camper written before the flood:

“‘Hi Mom.  I’m painting today.  Yesterday I went swimming.  Tomorrow I’m playing soccer.  I’ll call you on Tuesday.  I wish you were here.  God bless you and Stacy and Daddy.’

“She didn’t sign her name,” says the anchor, “but this child survived and is home with her family.  One child from Camp Rapture is still unaccounted for.”

At the capitol, Mrs. Pasqualini lowers her microphone.

“I wish to speak on behalf of the Camp Safety Bill.  The first thing I’d like to say is that this tragedy was preventable.  My daughter didn’t have to die.  I’m glad to see that you’re requiring steps be taken to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again.  Sophia was our second child, pesky and very self-assured.  She wanted to be a counselor someday, because I was a counselor at Camp Rapture when I was a teenager.

“Camp Rapture was a place to learn, to grow strong in your faith and meet girls and have fun.  It was not a place to be swept away.  No one should lose her life at summer camp.  Higher ground was close by.  Easily, someone could have led Sophia up the hill and into the gym, where a balcony protected her friends.  She had nothing to hold on to and no one to help her.  Her friends saw her climb up a tree.  That was the last time they saw her.  She was all alone when she lost her life and she wasn’t found for three days and hardly looked like herself, or anyone.  If not for the DNA sample my husband gave, and the fact that she’d told me the day before she’d painted her fingernails pink, I wouldn’t have believed it was her.

“Sophia’s life was stolen because men whom I entrusted with her life let me down.  They were asleep, despite the flash flood warning, despite the emergency they knew existed and the rain they knew was coming.  More rain than we see in months, all in a few hours.  Our other children don’t understand what happened to their sister and why so many girls survived and she didn’t.  They’re beginning to ask me what’s going to happen to them when they go to sleep at night.”

A six-year-old and her father tie a blue ribbon around a pecan tree, return to their house and practice sight words in the living room.  The last word is dream.

“I had a dream,” says the child.  “There was a thunderstorm just like the thunderstorm last week.  And there was this big thing and it dropped on somebody’s house.  It was like pitch-black and the thing itself was the color of your shirt.  And then these teeny-tiny things came out of it, like an explosion.  I was so surprised.  I was like, ‘Oh!  Damn!  I wish that happened to our house!’”

“Why would you want something to fall on our house and destroy it?” asks her father.

“I don’t know.  I was like, ‘I wanna see what that looks like!’”

“Then we wouldn’t have a home.  What would we do?”

“Yeah, that was the dumb part.”  She laughs.  “And then Mommy was like, ‘C’mon, we’re getting on the train!’”

“What train?”

“We were getting on a train to get away from the thing, and on the train it was going so much faster than a car, like so much faster, and it didn’t have a roof, and I was the first one in the seat.  My friend was there.  Her name’s Holly.  She was sitting behind me, then you and then Mommy.  And since we were going so fast – wait!  And we were on the road!  We weren’t on the train tracks.  We were on the highway, and we were zooming past so many people that when there was a red light we couldn’t even see it!”

“That’s dangerous,” says her father.

“I know.  And then we got back home and there was so much thunder that we had to go on the train again!”  She laughs.  “And then Mommy woke me up and I wasn’t scared at all.  I was actually having the best time ever.”

“I don’t know why,” says her father.  “I’m scared just listening to you.”

II

Lightning whitens the camp.  Thunder awakens sixteen girls in the cabin by the river, aged eight to ten, and their counselor, Annabel, who can’t get service on her phone as rain pelts the roof and wind rattles the windows.  The lights don’t work.  The storm’s sizzle and hum, loud and constant, prevents the girls from getting back to sleep, so Annabel sings their favorite songs, Sixteen Going on Seventeen by Rogers and Hammerstein, about sharing heartfelt love, and Lord, Prepare Me to be a Sanctuary, by Randy Scruggs and John W. Thompson, about spiritual purity.

Mary Carruci, the camp director, opens the door and shines her flashlight.  “Out!  Everyone out!  Now!  Now!”

“Oh, Jesus,” says a girl.

Mary directs her beam.  “Take a blanket and one stuffed animal and line up on the porch.  Everyone!  Now!”

The girls roll their blankets and reach under their bunk beds, taking too much time, such that Mary screams, “Stop talking and get out now!”

Annabel helps four girls out to the porch, where water rises above its stoop.  They step into three feet of smelly overflow and wade toward the gym.  Mary, on the porch, helps four more girls back down, turn and swim as a tree topples, smashes into the cabin and heads downstream.  The river rushes through the cabin’s windows as the current carries trunks and water bottles, stuffed animals and plastic cups toward the dam.  Lightning reveals the torrent as the girls spin away from the cabin.

A girl hits a tree and disappears.  Thunder cracks and her friend, thrown into the tree’s branches, coughs and climbs higher.  Wires pop and branches bunch up, pushed by debris.

The river absorbs the rain’s impact and the rapids redouble the roar’s terror as black water flows along lightless terrain wiping out residences, restaurants and campsites.

Under a stretch of dark spotlights, a trailer bobs and rotates through rapids roughened by the water’s advance, froth laps exposed roots and shrubbery between overhanging trees, the river sways, roaring and expanding, carrying branches and an upturned car, gulping, spitting mud and twigs.

Downstream, a ranch house spins slowly, the man in its doorway shining a flashlight, his wife and kids on the kitchen counter, the frame supported by the swirl, carrying filth and pavement toward rapids generated by a turn and drop.  Overflow at the dam pounds the channel beside a utilities lab, creating a waterfall so fierce two speechless men shining flashlights from the roadside watch stunned and fearful.

Foam swirls between the posts of a chain-link fence, its gate ripped off.  A house hits a house, causing a wall to give way and the roof to collapse, the battered remnant pushing a half-submerged car, bending a lamppost and felling a tree, followed by a blue kayak.

Where the river forks, a woman covers her mouth watching water back up a black car, which bobs until its axle snags the roots of an upended tree.

“Oh, my God,” says the woman.  “Oh, no.  Oh, my God.”

Beside her, a man shining a flashlight shouts, “Get out!  Get out!”

The family in the car momentarily disappears behind the windshield’s opacity.

“Get out of your car!” says the man.

“Oh, my God!” says the woman.

At five in the morning, the river’s three times its original width, its central section rapid, bracketed by churning flanks.  At a restaurant, small waves break backwards due to the parking lot’s declivity and current’s velocity.

“Y’all look at this,” says a woman, under an umbrella.  “Oh, my God.  Crazy.”

“This is a major flood,” says a man shining a flashlight.  “Unbelievable.”

*

Fence posts clear bridge pylons heading downstream toward trees with broken bases.

“Good God,” says a man.

“Everyone, move downstream,” says a woman.  “Save your lives.”

A roadside witness utters, “Oh, my God.  Oh, my God.”

“Oh, my gosh,” says a woman as water approaches a green house.

At dawn, black water appears blue, until full daylight reveals brown water sectioned by debris and connected to foam.  An upended car teeters on a guardrail beside a bucket, barbecue grille and cinderblock.  Pools of runoff lap asphalt with double yellow lines as the current flattens and aligns with a row of trees.  The roar convinces a rooftop survivor that boats and jet skies don’t stand a chance.

During a pod cast, a meteorologist explains that water can move boulders and trees, and if enough rain falls on mountains and hills, in a short enough time, and the water can’t be absorbed, it can move anything.

At home, Mrs. Pasqualini watches two brothers describe clinging to rafters and swimming to safety at Camp Victory, a mile downriver from Camp Rapture.

An hour later, when a county official calls, she retells the story.

“I hadn’t heard that,” says the official, who explains that her daughter’s missing despite the ongoing search.

Mrs. Pasqualini drops her chin.  “Oh, Jesus, please . . .”

A Coast Guard helicopter flies through terrible weather and lands at a flood site.  Children run hunched across wet grass trailed by a guardsman carrying a girl.

“You’re so brave,” says the guardsman.  “I don’t know how you got to be so brave.”

Meanwhile, above the riverbank, a felled tree with a splintered trunk and hollow base, bearing an orange spray-painted arrow, directs rescuers to a restaurant, where an encrusted table cluttered with cans of glass cleaner, bottles of wine and blue dish soap, attests to the devastation.

Outside, blue barrels head downstream, and a reporter on the embankment, describing the miracle stage of search and rescue, says the word “discovery” instead of recovery.

A man wipes his eyes and fits his glasses.

“I’m looking for my girls.  Merry’s ten and Abby’s eight.”

“How long have you been here?” asks a reporter.

“Since the morning,” he says.  “I’ve been helped by a lot of people.  I tell them why I’m here and they just help.  They got chainsaws and bulldozers, dogs.  There’s military here, the police.  People are hard to find.  This is going to be a hard day.”  He gestures to the water.  “I found a man down by the pier, a young man.  My heart never felt so heavy.  But God saw fit to let me find him.”

“Do you know his name?”

“No, I don’t, but I’d like to do a memorial to him here as soon as the water goes down.”

*

A man quarters a 4 x 8 sheet of plywood and saws along penciled lines.  He works on the long sides, coughs, blows away sawdust and sips bottled water, caulks and tacks the seams, and admits, “I never thought I’d be building a coffin.”

“It’s the only thing we can do,” says his wife.

They lay the body and fit the lid.

Despite flash flood warnings issued throughout multiple counties, forty-three people are dead and thirty-one missing, including Mary, Annabel and the girls at Camp Rapture.

County officials reject assertions that the death toll could’ve been avoided.  The flash flood happened too fast, radar couldn’t have predicted it, and resources now are focused on the rescue.

The Governor deems “blame” a word for “losers.” Morale among first responders, he adds, is high, and poor word choice shouldn’t depress that morale.

Journalists, however, report that FEMA’s maps don’t show the flood risks, and when the country asked for sirens, the state said no.

Yellow flowers are sewn to a green stalk and blue bow, stapled to a cross and zip-tied to a fence along the riverbank.

*

At the capitol, Mrs. Pasqualini lowers her microphone.

“I wish to speak on behalf of the Camp Safety Bill.  The first thing I’d like to say is that this tragedy was preventable.  My daughter didn’t have to die.  I’m glad to see that this bill requires steps be taken to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again.  Sophia wanted to be a counselor, but washed away in the flood.  I was a counselor at Camp Rapture.  It was a place to learn, to grown strong in your faith and meet girls and have fun.  It was not a place to be swept away.  No one should lose her life at summer camp.  The first emergency alert came the day before.  Four hours passed between the last alert and the river overflowing.  Easily, someone could’ve saved Sophia and her friends, but the girls were all alone when they died.  Sophia wasn’t found for three days and hardly looked like herself, or anyone.  If not for the DNA sample my husband gave, and the fact that she’d told me the day before she’d had her fingernails painted pink, I wouldn’t have believed it was her.

“Her life was stolen because men whom I entrusted with her life were home asleep, despite the flash flood warning, despite the emergency they knew existed and the rain they knew was coming.  More rain than we see in months, all in two hours.  Our other children don’t understand what happened to their sister and why so many girls survived and she didn’t.  They’re beginning to ask me what’s going to happen to them when they go to sleep at night. And I want to know why the Secretary of Homeland Security didn’t approve the rescue teams until three days after the flood.  Why did she wait so long?  What was she doing?  What was she thinking?  I know this much is true.  She wasn’t thinking about the girls at Camp Rapture.  She wasn’t thinking about their counselor and the camp director.”

III

Rain soaks the hiking trail, rushes down the hill to the tennis courts, garden, archery field and canoe landing, and swells the river.  Mary Carruci, the director of Camp Rapture, prompted by two emergency alerts, moves the youngest campers from a lowland cabin to the gym, where their counselor, Annabel, sings, prays and counts heads, while the older campers stay put across the river on higher ground.  But when the river overruns the bridge and approaches the gym, she moves the girls up to Rapture Hill, where the camp sign lights up every night.

Four girls step into a foot of smelly overflow and walk toward the hiking trail.  Mary, on the porch, directs another four as a tree topples, smashes into a cabin and heads downstream.  The girls scream as the river rushes through the cabin’s windows.

“Stop that,” says Mary.  “The current’s nowhere near us.”

Lightning reveals the torrent and the remaining eight girls rush from the porch to the trail, splashing and encouraging one another, until thunder cracks and they scream.

“Stop screaming!” says Mary, redirecting her flashlight.  “Look how far away the current is.  In ten minutes, we’ll be up so high, we won’t even hear it.”

Quietly, the girls climb the trail in twos and threes, led by Annabel and followed by Mary, while the current carries trunks and water bottles, stuffed animals and plastic cups toward the dam.  A trailer clears the bridge, bobbing and rotating, and a tree disappears, the river rising and roaring, and, at its periphery, gulping and spitting mud and twigs.

The girls pause at a boulder.

“I should’ve told you to bring your blankets,” says Mary.  “I don’t know why I didn’t.”

Annabel yawns.  “It’s gonna be okay.  God’s got this.”

“You’re all going to get home safely,” says Mary, “but we can’t stay here.”

The girls slip on rocks as they skirt a ridge of flora and trees protected by a ranch rail.  They cut across a clearing and head up to an open-air pavilion, where they sit on a wraparound bench and wipe their eyes.  At the edge of the plateau, beside the sign – seven letters defined by dark bulbs and supported by a metal frame – Mary shines her flashlight down at the camp.  Lightning strikes, illuminating the water passing the trees.  The buildings withstand the current, all except for one cabin.  Thunder makes her return to the pavilion, where Annabel and the girls sing:

 

“Friends and family last forever

The ones we keep by our side

The ones we meet at Camp Rapture

The ones Jesus saves when we die.

 

We’ll help them and hug them

Trust them and love them

To say otherwise is a lie

 

Praise them and play with them

Pray for them and cherish them

And never say goodbye.

 

And never say goodbye.”