The Upper Basin Chronicles

Chapter 14

A Blister Forming

The upturned wheels on Alexander Murphy's Ford pickup had barely stopped spinning when rising muddy creek waters began bathing his bloodied hair.

The headwaters of Porcupine Creek flowed into the Cedar River, and on to the Mississippi beyond. Much of the five miles of little creek had been several times dredged, ditched, dug out, and straightened as it filled with Iowa topsoil time and again over more than 150 years of farming. Yet, with the hillsides holding almost no moisture in this deluge, even the recent work of the Komatsu excavator did little to keep it in its banks today.

This was the same creek where Alexander had wet his hair many times years ago, where as a boy he had hunted crawdads and frogs, had waged mudball wars, and dug for nuggets of fool's gold in a sandy cutbank.

As he hung head down from the seat belt, the cold water ebbed into his consciousness. In vague images, he saw himself...trying to walk barefoot in the shallow creek, sinking quickly to his knees in the thick, sticky black bottom... His wooden sled flew into the creek when he and Riley Crawford grabbed a low mulberry branch to hang on the bank, cowboy movie-like, their steel-runnered horse gone beneath them.... Walking along the creek watching a milky foam, smelling a tar-like smell when Harold Mundt had poured sheep dip into the creek to kill mosquitoes. Don't drink that creek water, don't drink that creek, don't drink that...

The creek flooded his closed eyes. Alexander blinked. Wash your hair. What? Muddy water. Raining upward. You're a bit damp. He closed his eyes. Cold water.

"Nnghh," Alexander Murphy groaned, "Ahnnnh." He started awake. Out, get out. He pushed back at the steering wheel pressing against his belly. The windshield wipers were stopped in midbeat. He could see the blue hood through the murky water. Ow, my head, my arm. He pushed against the wheel and felt for the seat belt release.

Click. Murphy took the short dive onto the headliner of his overturned Ford. He twisted to clear his legs from the stick shift and lay sideways along the windshield in the shallow water. He smelled gasoline and oil. Get out.

He crawled out through the broken driver's window, over a thousand square crystals of glass. He crawled into the hard rain. He saw his blood drip into the water.

Alexander Murphy's pickup rested upside down on the edge of its hood and the top of the cab. It was in the righthand ditch, forty yards beyond the bridge. He recalled seeing the tail lights of school bus clear the top of the hill, and then fighting for control as the truck skidded right. From hands and knees in the bromegrass of the creekside ditch, Murphy stood up in knee-deep water.

The rain seemed to be slackening some. Thunder sounded off to the north. He pulled himself up the ditch bank to the gravel road. Looking south, he could see the tracks of his skid, where the soft shoulder of the road had given way, where'd he hit the gas to try to pull out. He touched the side of his head with his left hand. It came away bloody.

"Must've hit the window, broke it with my head. Great."

Alexander Murphy began walking north, uphill toward where he'd last seen the school bus. The tilled ground on either side of the road still bubbled and gleamed with water. Clay subsoil showed everywhere. The gullies and flows of disturbed soil made small grand canyons in the fields.

"'T' squared," he said as he walked, "big runoff." A line of bright blue sky pried up the southern horizon. His boots squished with water. Not a good day for staying dry.

Just as Alexander crested the hill, a meadowlark sang. He could feel a blister forming on his left heel. His right arm throbbed. The sweet ozone and wet earth smelled like an exotic perfume. Three-quarters of a mile ahead, the school bus pulled back onto the road from Harold and Irene's place, and headed for town. It glowed bright yellow, resonating with a rim of gold cloud under the dark canopy in the northwest.

The lark sang again. Alexander turned. He walked toward home.

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Next week...Chapter 15, When It Runs Off.

The Upper Basin Chronicles, Chapter 14 was written and edited by John Gabbert.

Upper Mississippi Basin Stakeholder Network and The Upper Basin Chronicles © 2002 Saint Mary's University of Minnesota

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The characters presented here are purely fictional, and neither bear resemblance to persons living or dead, nor represent the views or opinions of Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota.