Two Degrees Excerpt

Two Degrees - Prologue

Papers were spread over a conference table, where Daniel Lazaro was assessing financial losses if the pipeline bill before Congress wasn’t approved. His associate, Nell, was pouring coffee when she glanced at her phone.

“Isn’t your house on the Guadalupe River?” she said.

“Yeah,” he replied absently. Then he stopped reading and turned to her. “Why?”

“You should look at this.” She handed him her phone.

“Texas Flooding” was the headline. He clicked into the story, but there was only a blurb about heavy rains and rising waters. He rushed to his office.

“What can I do?” Nell called after him.

“Get hold of Howard Kane at Interior. Alice has his number.”

He hurried behind his desk and flipped on his screens. Fox had a breaking story about flash floods across South Texas. A weather front had stalled over the mountains just miles from Daniel’s home. There was video of houses breaking apart and people stranded on rooftops.

On another screen a CNN reporter, shielding from wind and rain, said, “Rainfall over the last twenty-four hours has shattered records here in the Texas Hill Country. The mountainside was denuded of trees from recent wildfires and couldn’t absorb the water, so it pushed down the swollen streams and rivers, carrying coarse debris and destroying earthworks and bridges along the way.”

Daniel tried his wife’s cell phone again, and the landline, but neither call went through. “I have Mr. Kane,” Alice called through the doorway.

“Howard,” Daniel said desperately, “the Guadalupe’s flooding and I can’t reach Bree. What’s happening?”

“I won’t lie, Dan; it looks bad. We’re getting reports of serious damage and fatalities. I’ve got nothing more specific….”

“It’s my family!”

“I know, Dan, and I understand what you’re going through, but I gotta go. I’m headed to Denton to get a chopper to the flood zone.”

“You’ve got to get me on that flight, Howard. Please!”

Daniel reached the tarmac while the FEMA cargo plane was loading. Once they were airborne Howard filled him in. “The Weather Service has been monitoring the area since the Two Valleys Fire last month. The region has suffered unusually high temperatures for more than three weeks. Then a nearly stationary convection along the Balcones Escarpment dumped almost continuous rainfall from San Antonio to Austin for thirty-six hours. By late yesterday afternoon, homes long the Guadalupe River from Kerrville to Seguin were washing off their foundations and the Canyon Lake Dam was in danger of breaching.”

“I’m too late!” Daniel sobbed, wishing someone would slap his face like he deserved.

“We  know nothing for sure,” Howard said. “We’ll get you there as fast as humanly possible, and we’ll see.”

When they neared the river Daniel stared from the helicopter window at the devastation below. The landscape was so altered he wouldn’t have recognized Tanswego if he hadn’t approached from the sky. Where Main Street had crossed the stone bridge, water now rushed over broken shards. One of the original German buildings as old as the village was a tangle of stone. Everywhere were displaced boulders and mangled cars, remnants of furniture and bedding and buildings.

One on the ground Daniel was struck dumb. How could this be the sleepy village that was always so full of smiles?

 At a familiar face he called out, “Sam! Sam Johnson!”

A big man in mud-caked overalls turned with no sign of recognition.

“It’s me, Sam, Dan Lazaro.”

A spark kindled in the man’s eyes, but all he said was, “I don’t…know….”

Daniel looked around for help but everyone was rushing one direction or another. He took the man by the elbow and sat him on a pile of broken concrete. Sam stared blankly and then spoke as if recounting a dream: “We jammed a chair against the door, but something hit, a tree or a boulder. A wave knocked me into the wall. Something stuck in my arm.”

Daniel followed Sam’s gaze to his forearm wrapped in a bloody towel. He again looked up for help as Sam kept talking. “Betsy screamed. It pulled her under. Then her voice was gone; it was so loud. I grabbed hold—must have been part of the wall—but the water sucked me down, and I couldn’t breathe. Then someone pulled my arm. Was it you?”

“No, Sam. I just got here. Look, we’ll get you to a doctor.”

He caught the attention of a Red Cross nurse and waved her over. She squinted at Sam’s face, nodded to Daniel and helped Sam to his feet.

He had to move on. Bree and Annabelle wouldn’t be in the village; he had to get downriver to the house.

The Forest Service pass from Howard got him by the National Guard roadblock keeping people off the river road. He was soon alone stepping over branches and through puddles. The Guadalupe River, in normal times close to forty feet across, had reached into the hills up both banks, tearing trees from the ground and cutting channels in the hillsides.

The only way past a large gap where the road had washed out was through the trees. The air was hot and soaked. He hung his suit jacket on a branch. He had already sweated through his white shirt. It was a relief, at least, that he had brought hiking boots.

He caught hold of a trunk and pulled himself uphill, immediately slipping and tearing his arm on the undergrowth. Rising again he pushed on, fighting the muddy slope and the heavy air, but mostly the horror of what he might find. Sweat stung his eyes, making it hard to see, so he balanced against a tree while he knotted his tie around his forehead.

Crossing a crevasse cut by the flood he slipped and slithered down feet first until he could grab a small tree trunk. Holding tight with both hands he tried to catch his breath but there wasn’t enough oxygen. This couldn’t be the way to find Bree and Annabelle. Could he even get to River House this way?

He pushed to his feet to continue bushwhacking. After a bend in the river he was able to slide back to the road. This stretch was mostly intact, though strewn with branches and pockmarked with puddles. The river lapped over the partially crumbled bank.

He reached what remained of the foot bridge, which would have been the last way over. He had crossed that bridge so many times with Annabelle. His tiny daughter loved looking down at the water with no fear of the height, and that made him proud. But he sometimes worried she trusted too much to the river she knew like a nanny who had overseen her whole life. Now, where a platform and wooden staircase had stood there was only broken concrete footing and ropes and boards tangled in the trees.

Then a splintered telephone poll in the current hit the bank, a kids’ bicycle ensnared in cables dangling from the pole. It lodged against a sycamore at the river’s edge, where a cat severed in half was wedged into a broken branch and swarmed with flies. His stomach erupted. He stumbled to the side of the road and retched.

He wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his torn shirt. What was wrong with him, getting sick about a cat when the valley was ravaged and so many neighbors could be dead? He needed to keep a sense of proportion and focus, and push on.

But how to get across with no bridge? At the river’s normal low for the season he could have waded or swam across but now the raging current would sweep him away. The best might be to signal Bree from a spot across from the house.

Around the last bend there was a vantage point where a friend had taken the photo they reprinted on Bree’s thankyou cards. As he approached this spot, he had to keep his eyes on downed trees and uneven ground. But when he looked up what he saw tore his heart out.

The bank beneath his beautiful house had crumbled into the river. Water had surged as high as the second floor and left only part of the foundation and a brick chimney, looking like some long-abandoned ruin in the deep woods.

He fell to his knees, unable to catch his breath. The Guadalupe had given them such joy; how could it turn so monstrous? And the house…it had been an amazing find, and they had taken such care to make it a showplace and a home. Now it was just broken timbers and stones washing down to the flatlands.

But none of this mattered. Where were his wife and child?

Near the remains of his house there was a colorful patch, clothing maybe or just trash stuck in a splintered pecan tree and showing the shocking height of the flood. The blue and orange color were disturbing, and he stepped as close as he could to the river’s edge and squinted. Then his heart broke again. It was the stuffed alligator his daughter never left behind.