A River Ran Through It

April was the cruelest month for many Illinois residents. At least eight counties have been declared disaster areas, eligible for emergency funds. My humble abode, a basement apartment in a brick two-flat, is not too far from the Des Plaines River. But last week, it was not the Des Plaines I had to contend with. No indeed, my nemesis arrived in the form of a super without boots.

I had called Dave in panic, after I opened the door to my front storage room and saw moving boxes with masking tape floating in the creek that as now swallowing my front room. Before Dave arrived, I slipped on my daughter’s red vinyl boots, looking like a high fashion angler heading for the trout streams. One by one, I rescued the dripping boxes, depositing them on my dry living room floor. Only the bottoms were wet.

I had moved into the apartment over a year ago, when my youngest, Aster, had left for college. By now I had forgotten what I had stored inside. I opened one box and began unpacking my kids’ childhoods– one carton held favorite picture books I had saved for my kids so they could read aloud to their kids, pronouncing words from dogeared pages we had looked at together. Dr. Seuss and favorite bedtime stories, The Mitten, the Turnip (which I would read aloud with a Russian accent.) Luckily, most were salvageable, but I had to toss The Polar Express.

I had opened a box of photos and had begun peeling the photos off each other when Dave finally arrived. And none too soon. The river in my front room had crested, its swirls lapping at my living room rug. Dave wedged himself into my doorway, so he could peer across the flooded storage room. I noticed he was not wearing boots.

“Ah, your sump pump is unploogged,” he said in his thick Eastern European accent which I couldn’t quite place. I said I hadn’t noticed. Honestly, I didn’t even know there was a sump pump buried bebeath the gray concrete. He asked me to look for the plug– I tugged on the cord and freed it from under a plastic bin of garden tools. I held up the plug like a prize, the copper prongs glinting against the white walls.

“Good,” he said. He then directed me to find a towel, wipe off the prong, and plug it in. I shook my head. I was not exactly an electrical engineer, but I knew this was not a good idea. “Are you crazy?” I shot back.

“You American women are so afraid of electreec,”Dave countered. “I don’t have boots, so you must plug in.”

I asked what size boots he wore, and went off in search of size 12 boots. It was all for show; I was stalling for effect. I walked to the kitchen and came back emptyhanded. But I would not give in. Oh no, I wanted to live to see my grandbabies look at those books.

I stood my soggy ground.

‘You will have to do it. I can’t.” I folded my arms.

Dave knew he was licked. Finally, He went back to his truck and produced two buckets. He slipped one foot inside each and clomped over to the outlet. It was over in a second. The whirring started, and presto! The water was gurgling out of my room and into pipes.

I thanked Dave, who sped away to fix his own mess back home. As for me, I kept peeling apart those photos, setting them out to dry on end tables and windowsills, proof that we all had survived the flood.