1 00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:05,440 Speaker 1: There's land in this part of California that sits below 2 00:00:05,519 --> 00:00:09,279 the water beside it. People don't believe me when I 3 00:00:09,320 --> 00:00:13,160 tell them that. They picture rivers running downhill to the sea, 4 00:00:13,800 --> 00:00:16,480 and they can't make it fit that You can stand 5 00:00:16,519 --> 00:00:19,559 on a road on Tyler Island and look up at 6 00:00:19,559 --> 00:00:22,679 a boat going by, and the slough, the hole riding 7 00:00:22,719 --> 00:00:25,920 higher than your head, separated from you by nothing but 8 00:00:26,000 --> 00:00:28,800 a dirt levee and a pomp that's been running since 9 00:00:28,839 --> 00:00:33,719 before you were born. That's the delta, A thousand miles 10 00:00:33,719 --> 00:00:36,880 of sloughs and channels braided through islands that used to 11 00:00:36,920 --> 00:00:40,079 be tidal marsh, drained and farmed one hundred and fifty 12 00:00:40,159 --> 00:00:43,920 years ago, the peat soil shrinking every year since until 13 00:00:43,960 --> 00:00:47,759 the islands settled into bowls. Some of them are twenty 14 00:00:47,799 --> 00:00:50,679 feet down now below the rivers. The tide has been 15 00:00:50,719 --> 00:00:54,000 wanting back in the whole time, and the only things 16 00:00:54,039 --> 00:00:57,159 telling it no are the levees holding the sides and 17 00:00:57,200 --> 00:01:02,320 the pomps emptying the bottom. Power walk away and an 18 00:01:02,320 --> 00:01:05,319 island goes back to being a lake inside a year. 19 00:01:07,359 --> 00:01:11,000 I keep one of those pumps running twenty two years 20 00:01:11,040 --> 00:01:14,799 for the Reclamation District. The last nine of them, mostly alone. 21 00:01:14,959 --> 00:01:17,959 Out on Prospect Island, which is one of the lower 22 00:01:18,000 --> 00:01:22,680 and lonelier ones, a long dropped rectangle of farmland with 23 00:01:22,799 --> 00:01:26,000 a two lane levee road in a pompouse at the 24 00:01:26,000 --> 00:01:29,120 bottom of the ball where all the island drainage collects 25 00:01:29,319 --> 00:01:31,959 before we lift it back up over the levee into 26 00:01:32,000 --> 00:01:37,840 the slough. The district has four operators for nine islands. Officially, 27 00:01:38,000 --> 00:01:41,840 we work in pairs on a storm. Unofficially, when it's 28 00:01:41,879 --> 00:01:45,480 bad everywhere at once, there's one man to a station, 29 00:01:47,400 --> 00:01:50,040 and it was going to be bad everywhere at once. 30 00:01:51,239 --> 00:01:53,760 That's why I drove out a dusk with a storm 31 00:01:53,840 --> 00:01:57,359 already visible from the causeway, the gray wall coming in 32 00:01:57,439 --> 00:02:02,079 off the Pacific, an atmospheric river the Weather Service had 33 00:02:02,159 --> 00:02:06,280 named and capitalized it the warm Wake conveyor that rides 34 00:02:06,359 --> 00:02:09,520 up from near Hawaii and parks itself of a northern 35 00:02:09,520 --> 00:02:14,520 California stacked on top of it, a king tide, the 36 00:02:14,639 --> 00:02:17,520 highest of the season, when the sun and moon line 37 00:02:17,599 --> 00:02:20,039 up and pulled the whole estuary a foot and a 38 00:02:20,120 --> 00:02:24,919 half higher than ordinary ar storm. On a king tide, 39 00:02:25,520 --> 00:02:29,759 the two things that fill the data. Arriving together at night, 40 00:02:31,240 --> 00:02:35,360 I'd done bad nights before. Not this exact pairing, but 41 00:02:35,439 --> 00:02:38,360 close enough that I knew the shape of it. You 42 00:02:38,560 --> 00:02:42,159 and the machinery against the water until the tide turns 43 00:02:42,159 --> 00:02:45,360 and lets you win. There's a rhythm to that kind 44 00:02:45,400 --> 00:02:48,879 of work. Most of the year the job is grease 45 00:02:48,919 --> 00:02:52,960 and paperwork. A real storm is the only time it's 46 00:02:52,960 --> 00:02:56,879 what is supposed to be. I let myself in and 47 00:02:56,960 --> 00:03:01,520 ran the start up prospect station old with two large 48 00:03:01,560 --> 00:03:05,280 electrical drainage pumps with vertical shafts that drop into the 49 00:03:05,280 --> 00:03:08,199 four bay, a concrete sum by the lowest point of 50 00:03:08,240 --> 00:03:11,759 the island. The pumps draw from it and lift the 51 00:03:11,800 --> 00:03:15,479 water up the discharge pipes over the levee out through 52 00:03:15,479 --> 00:03:18,080 the flat gates into minor slough on the other side. 53 00:03:19,120 --> 00:03:24,240 Simple a hundred years of the same idea. I check 54 00:03:24,280 --> 00:03:28,960 the gauge's four bay level normal slough level already high 55 00:03:29,080 --> 00:03:33,080 and climbing toward the King tide high water predicted for 56 00:03:33,159 --> 00:03:36,479 two fifty one a m. I wrote it in the 57 00:03:36,520 --> 00:03:39,879 log book by hand, because the district's computer logging goes 58 00:03:40,000 --> 00:03:44,400 down every time the power flickers. Tide tables taped to 59 00:03:44,439 --> 00:03:47,319 the wall above the desk, the radio base unit to 60 00:03:47,400 --> 00:03:52,000 the district office, squelch, hissing my phone, sitting face down 61 00:03:52,039 --> 00:03:54,800 on the desk, which out here gets one bar and 62 00:03:54,879 --> 00:03:59,599 a good night, and tonight wouldn't find any there was 63 00:03:59,639 --> 00:04:02,719 no by to check for it. I'll say it that 64 00:04:02,759 --> 00:04:05,840 way because it isn't a sad story, and I'm not 65 00:04:05,879 --> 00:04:09,520 telling it for sympathy. My wife and I came apart 66 00:04:09,599 --> 00:04:13,159 slowly years back, the way a levee does. Not a 67 00:04:13,159 --> 00:04:17,399 big blowout. Just see pitch, a softening. You don't notice 68 00:04:17,720 --> 00:04:23,560 until the ground won't hold. She's in Sacramento, now we're civil. 69 00:04:24,199 --> 00:04:27,199 My daughter's grown and gone to Portland. We talk on 70 00:04:27,240 --> 00:04:31,079 a birthday of mine. I took the Lonely Island because 71 00:04:31,120 --> 00:04:34,759 it was open and nobody else wanted it. I told 72 00:04:34,800 --> 00:04:38,319 myself it was because I liked the quiet, which was true, 73 00:04:38,879 --> 00:04:42,319 and underneath that was another thing I never said out loud. 74 00:04:42,879 --> 00:04:45,920 There was nothing at home to drive back to, so 75 00:04:46,040 --> 00:04:49,279 it didn't matter much where I spent the night. A 76 00:04:49,360 --> 00:04:52,600 man can run and routine a long time, longer than 77 00:04:52,680 --> 00:04:56,879 you think. You wake, you work, you sleep, and not 78 00:04:57,000 --> 00:05:00,879 minding becomes its own kind of comfortable. You don't go 79 00:05:00,959 --> 00:05:04,279 looking at it too hard, because what would be the 80 00:05:04,319 --> 00:05:11,360 point I started. The pumps both came up smooth, that 81 00:05:11,519 --> 00:05:14,120 deep building hum you feel in the soles your boots 82 00:05:14,160 --> 00:05:17,000 before you hear it. The shafts spinning down in the 83 00:05:17,120 --> 00:05:20,600 dark of the forebay, the discharge pipes thudding as the 84 00:05:20,639 --> 00:05:24,839 water hit them, The needles and the gages settled. The 85 00:05:24,879 --> 00:05:29,319 station was doing its one job. The rain started maybe 86 00:05:29,360 --> 00:05:33,720 twenty minutes later, drumming the metal roof, so I poured 87 00:05:33,720 --> 00:05:36,439 the first cup from the thermos and settled in to 88 00:05:36,519 --> 00:05:40,759 watch the levels. The forebay had a tress screen across 89 00:05:40,759 --> 00:05:44,199 the intake, a steel grating that kept big debris out 90 00:05:44,199 --> 00:05:49,000 of the pumps branches, mostly trash that blows into the ditches. 91 00:05:50,199 --> 00:05:53,800 Now and then something dead, a possum, a feral cat, 92 00:05:54,480 --> 00:05:56,759 once a whole hog that must have gone into the 93 00:05:56,800 --> 00:06:00,600 ditch up stream and floated down. There was a bad 94 00:06:00,639 --> 00:06:04,120 hour with a pike pole. The screen clogs in a 95 00:06:04,160 --> 00:06:08,199 storm because the rain washes everything into the drains, and 96 00:06:08,240 --> 00:06:11,639 the drains bring it all here to the low point. 97 00:06:12,160 --> 00:06:15,720 To me, clearing the screen is half the job. On 98 00:06:15,759 --> 00:06:19,360 a wet night, you rake it, the level drops, you 99 00:06:19,439 --> 00:06:24,439 go back to the desk. Around eleven, the four bay 100 00:06:24,560 --> 00:06:27,519 started backing up faster than the pumps could pull it down, 101 00:06:28,000 --> 00:06:32,879 which meant the screen was loading normal. I took the 102 00:06:32,959 --> 00:06:36,160 rake and a big flashlight and went down the steel 103 00:06:36,199 --> 00:06:40,040 stairs to the forebay deck to clear it. The screen 104 00:06:40,160 --> 00:06:43,199 was loaded all right. I raked half a matt of 105 00:06:43,199 --> 00:06:47,319 tool reeds, a fertilizer sack, something soft I didn't look at, 106 00:06:47,879 --> 00:06:51,600 and the level started dropping. I was turning to go 107 00:06:51,680 --> 00:06:56,199 back up when the flashlight beam crossed the grating and 108 00:06:56,360 --> 00:07:00,800 I stopped. The debris i'd raked off had been on 109 00:07:00,839 --> 00:07:05,439 the upstream face, the land side. Everything the drains bring 110 00:07:05,600 --> 00:07:08,680 down hits the upstream face as the whole point of 111 00:07:08,680 --> 00:07:12,879 the screen. It catches what's coming toward the pumps. That's 112 00:07:12,959 --> 00:07:17,279 where you rake. There was a second mat caught on 113 00:07:17,319 --> 00:07:22,279 the downstream face, the pump side, tool weed and dark 114 00:07:22,399 --> 00:07:25,800 matter packed against the grating from the side when nothing 115 00:07:25,800 --> 00:07:29,560 should be but clean water moving through the pumps, as 116 00:07:29,639 --> 00:07:33,759 if it had come up from the forebay. I stood 117 00:07:33,800 --> 00:07:36,920 there with the rain coming down the open stairwell and 118 00:07:36,959 --> 00:07:40,519 looked at it longer than it deserved. Then I told 119 00:07:40,560 --> 00:07:44,279 myself what a man tells himself. A flat gate, hung 120 00:07:44,319 --> 00:07:47,759 open serge pushed the sludge of slow water back down 121 00:07:47,759 --> 00:07:51,199 the discharge before the pump caught it brought some trash 122 00:07:51,240 --> 00:07:55,399 with it. No mystery. Write it up and tell maintenance 123 00:07:55,439 --> 00:07:59,000 the gate needs checking when the storm's done. I raked 124 00:07:59,040 --> 00:08:03,439 the downstream matter off too awkward reaching around the screen, 125 00:08:04,000 --> 00:08:06,759 and it came away heavier than it should have. And 126 00:08:06,800 --> 00:08:10,680 I didn't look at that either. I went back up 127 00:08:10,680 --> 00:08:15,720 the stairs. I logged it twenty three ten, cleared screen, 128 00:08:15,959 --> 00:08:20,959 both faces. Possible flap gate fowling on discharge, advised inspection. 129 00:08:22,680 --> 00:08:27,879 I poured another cup. The rain came harder. High water 130 00:08:28,079 --> 00:08:32,519 was at two fifty one. I had hours. I sat 131 00:08:32,559 --> 00:08:37,039 and watched the needles, and somewhere below me, the second 132 00:08:37,039 --> 00:08:41,159 pump changed this note for just a second, a stutter 133 00:08:42,039 --> 00:08:44,759 the sound of pump makes when something passes through it 134 00:08:45,000 --> 00:08:49,159 that isn't water, and then smoothed out again before I'd 135 00:08:49,200 --> 00:08:54,440 finished turning my head. I wrote nothing down for that one. 136 00:08:55,159 --> 00:09:02,279 There was nothing to write. The storm came in hard 137 00:09:02,399 --> 00:09:06,120 a little after midnight. The metal roof went from drumming 138 00:09:06,200 --> 00:09:09,000 to a roar, and then the wind found the building 139 00:09:09,360 --> 00:09:12,919 and the whole station leaned into it. I went to 140 00:09:13,000 --> 00:09:17,440 the gages. The sloughside was climbing fast, faster than the 141 00:09:17,480 --> 00:09:21,159 tide table said it should searge running ahead of prediction, 142 00:09:21,879 --> 00:09:25,440 the atmospheric river dumping its rain into every creek and 143 00:09:25,559 --> 00:09:29,759 channel upstream, all of it arriving at once and stacking 144 00:09:29,799 --> 00:09:32,720 on top of the king tied. The number on the 145 00:09:32,720 --> 00:09:36,039 slough gauge was one I'd seen maybe twice in twenty 146 00:09:36,080 --> 00:09:41,279 two years, and it wasn't slowing. When the slough comes 147 00:09:41,360 --> 00:09:44,840 up like that, the land water can't get out. The 148 00:09:44,919 --> 00:09:48,200 discharge pipes lift it over the levee. But if the 149 00:09:48,279 --> 00:09:50,600 slough on the far side rises to meet the top 150 00:09:50,639 --> 00:09:53,960 of the pipe, you're pumping against the head that gets 151 00:09:53,960 --> 00:09:58,039 steeper every minute. The pumps work harder for less than 152 00:09:58,080 --> 00:10:02,320 the forebay behind you starts the fill. There's a camera 153 00:10:02,440 --> 00:10:05,320 on the road in the two lane highway on top 154 00:10:05,360 --> 00:10:08,039 of the levee that is the only way off Prospect 155 00:10:08,080 --> 00:10:12,519 Island on a normal night, it shows ashphalt and the 156 00:10:12,559 --> 00:10:17,000 reflector posts on the shoulder. Now I saw water sheeting 157 00:10:17,039 --> 00:10:20,279 across it, the posts standing out like markers on a 158 00:10:20,279 --> 00:10:25,960 boat channel. The road had overtopped hours early, which meant 159 00:10:26,000 --> 00:10:28,519 the slough was already above the levee. Crown at the 160 00:10:28,559 --> 00:10:32,759 low spot by the gate. You don't drive that. I 161 00:10:32,799 --> 00:10:35,960 want to be clear because people hear these stories and 162 00:10:36,080 --> 00:10:39,320 think the man was a fool to stay. You do 163 00:10:39,480 --> 00:10:41,879 not drive a flooded levee road at night in a 164 00:10:41,960 --> 00:10:46,279 rising sarge. The water's moving, you can't see the edge, 165 00:10:46,679 --> 00:10:50,440 and the edge isn't where it was that afternoon. People 166 00:10:50,519 --> 00:10:54,440 die every year in this state doing exactly that, finding 167 00:10:54,480 --> 00:10:57,440 the soft spot at speed, going off the side into 168 00:10:57,519 --> 00:11:02,080 water that's twenty feet deep on the island's and running hard. 169 00:11:02,679 --> 00:11:06,200 The smart thing. The only thing is to stay with 170 00:11:06,320 --> 00:11:10,039 the station. The station is built to survive the night 171 00:11:12,080 --> 00:11:17,639 HIKEI the radio district, Prospect roads over top to the gate. 172 00:11:18,039 --> 00:11:21,360 I'm staying with the station. Sloughs running ahead of the table. 173 00:11:21,720 --> 00:11:27,360 I'm losing head on the discharge. Copy a pause. Then 174 00:11:27,360 --> 00:11:31,240 the dispatcher, a kidnamed Rays, who I figured was running 175 00:11:31,240 --> 00:11:35,879 the whole border alone tonight, Copy Prospect, You're not the 176 00:11:35,879 --> 00:11:40,639 only one. His voice was thin and fast. We got 177 00:11:40,679 --> 00:11:44,799 overtopping on three islands, a slide on. Sherman Tyler's calling 178 00:11:44,840 --> 00:11:47,679 for a second operator. They're not gonna get hold what 179 00:11:47,759 --> 00:11:50,519 you got. Soon as the hebb drops, the road we'll 180 00:11:50,519 --> 00:11:54,840 get a crew to you. You're okay out there, I'm fine, 181 00:11:55,360 --> 00:11:59,759 I said, it was true at the time. I went 182 00:11:59,799 --> 00:12:03,919 back to work, both pumps running flat out, the forebay 183 00:12:03,960 --> 00:12:07,159 holding more or less level. I pour the last of 184 00:12:07,159 --> 00:12:11,480 the thermos and watched the rain come sideways through the worklights. 185 00:12:11,519 --> 00:12:16,879 Something close to contend. This is the job, this is 186 00:12:16,919 --> 00:12:20,120 the only thing I'm good at, just me and the 187 00:12:20,159 --> 00:12:26,080 water and the machinery. And the machinery was holding. Then 188 00:12:27,279 --> 00:12:31,759 number two quit. The motor up on the desk started 189 00:12:31,799 --> 00:12:35,480 the labor pulling against the load. It couldn't move. The 190 00:12:35,519 --> 00:12:39,679 antmeter swung into the red and stuck down in the forebay. 191 00:12:39,960 --> 00:12:42,600 I felt the shaft shudder through the steel of the deck, 192 00:12:43,240 --> 00:12:45,759 and then the thermal overload did its job and cut 193 00:12:45,799 --> 00:12:50,679 the motor before it burned. The knocking stopped. Half my 194 00:12:50,759 --> 00:12:55,600 capacity was gone. The forepay needle lifted the moment the 195 00:12:55,639 --> 00:12:58,799 pump died. One pump can't hold this island in a 196 00:12:58,840 --> 00:13:02,200 storm like this. I had maybe an hour before the 197 00:13:02,240 --> 00:13:05,440 water topped the deck, and after that it would be 198 00:13:05,480 --> 00:13:08,519 in the lower works of the building. I had to 199 00:13:08,559 --> 00:13:12,480 clear the pump. You kill the power. The panel pulled 200 00:13:12,480 --> 00:13:15,679 the inspection hatch on the discharge column and reach down 201 00:13:15,720 --> 00:13:17,799 into the throat to the pipe with a pike pole 202 00:13:18,200 --> 00:13:22,320 to free whatever's wedge in the impeller. You hate doing 203 00:13:22,360 --> 00:13:25,519 it because the column drops blind into the forbay below, 204 00:13:25,919 --> 00:13:29,799 and you're working by feel. I locked out number two 205 00:13:29,799 --> 00:13:31,960 at the panel, got down on my knees on the 206 00:13:31,960 --> 00:13:36,240 wet deck work the inspection hatch off, and the smell 207 00:13:36,320 --> 00:13:38,639 that came up out of the pipe was in the 208 00:13:38,679 --> 00:13:43,879 green rot of slough water. It was something else, the 209 00:13:43,960 --> 00:13:48,320 inside of something. I put the flashlight into the opening. 210 00:13:49,320 --> 00:13:52,399 The column was full of black water, and below the 211 00:13:52,440 --> 00:13:58,639 black water something moved against the current, not with it 212 00:13:59,519 --> 00:14:01,679 the flash I caught it for less than a second. 213 00:14:02,639 --> 00:14:05,559 A pale surface down in the pipe with a light 214 00:14:05,720 --> 00:14:09,600 hit it, and dark everywhere else, with a texture like 215 00:14:09,720 --> 00:14:13,320 nothing that grows on a branch. It slid down and 216 00:14:13,399 --> 00:14:17,000 away from the light, toward the impeller and the forbay below, 217 00:14:17,759 --> 00:14:20,039 and the water in the pipe surged up with the 218 00:14:20,080 --> 00:14:23,480 displacement of it and slopped over the hatch, slip onto 219 00:14:23,480 --> 00:14:27,039 my knees, warmer than floodwater has any right to be. 220 00:14:28,919 --> 00:14:34,000 Then it was gone into the dark under the deck, 221 00:14:34,240 --> 00:14:38,399 where both pumps fed. I knelt there with a pipe 222 00:14:38,399 --> 00:14:42,799 pole in my hands and the flashlight shaking. There was 223 00:14:42,840 --> 00:14:46,480 nothing wedged in the impeller anymore. Whatever had stopped that 224 00:14:46,600 --> 00:14:50,080 pomp had let it go and taken itself back down 225 00:14:50,159 --> 00:14:53,159 into the bottom of the island, the body of water 226 00:14:53,360 --> 00:14:57,120 I was sealed in with. I've reset number two from 227 00:14:57,159 --> 00:15:00,240 the panel with my hand not quite steady, and the 228 00:15:00,240 --> 00:15:05,559 motor came up clean the four bay leveling. It wasn't 229 00:15:05,600 --> 00:15:08,639 an animal that had pulled its way down that pipe. 230 00:15:08,960 --> 00:15:11,519 Animals go with the current when they're caught in a pump, 231 00:15:12,080 --> 00:15:21,799 and they don't reach back from the light. The thing 232 00:15:21,840 --> 00:15:24,879 about a crisis is that the work doesn't stop to 233 00:15:24,960 --> 00:15:27,919 let you have it. I had a dead road, a 234 00:15:27,960 --> 00:15:31,480 busy radio, and something in the water under my feet, 235 00:15:32,080 --> 00:15:34,639 and none of it changed the only number that mattered, 236 00:15:35,159 --> 00:15:37,840 which was the four bay level climbing toward the top 237 00:15:37,879 --> 00:15:41,639 of its deck. So I did what I've always done. 238 00:15:41,879 --> 00:15:46,159 The next thing in front of me, both pumps were running. 239 00:15:46,840 --> 00:15:49,519 I work the math in the log. Two pumps that 240 00:15:49,639 --> 00:15:53,240 reduced output. The forebay holding a hair under its deck, 241 00:15:53,679 --> 00:15:56,759 the tide turning at two point fifty one and starting 242 00:15:56,799 --> 00:16:00,519 to fall after If I could keep both pump alive 243 00:16:00,639 --> 00:16:05,120 until the EBB, I'd make it. If I lost one again, 244 00:16:05,919 --> 00:16:09,919 I wouldn't. The whole night came down to keeping two 245 00:16:10,080 --> 00:16:14,200 old motors spinning for two more hours. I keep the 246 00:16:14,279 --> 00:16:21,240 radio district Prospect a long pause and Rayers more ragged 247 00:16:21,279 --> 00:16:26,120 than before. Go Prospect lost number two POMP for a 248 00:16:26,159 --> 00:16:30,159 few minutes, got it back. Something fouled it. I'm running both, 249 00:16:30,240 --> 00:16:33,679 but i'm losing head. Slow's still coming up. What's my 250 00:16:33,759 --> 00:16:38,519 window and a crew prospect. I'm going to be straight 251 00:16:38,559 --> 00:16:43,919 with you. Static chudored the edges of his voice. Sherman 252 00:16:44,000 --> 00:16:47,440 Slide took out their access We got two other operators stuck, 253 00:16:47,480 --> 00:16:50,240 and one of them's hurt. Sheriff's running boats for the 254 00:16:50,279 --> 00:16:55,240 residential islands. You're a single operator. Structure's sound. You're holding. 255 00:16:56,200 --> 00:17:00,440 You're at the bottom of the list. I'm sorry. Earliest 256 00:17:00,440 --> 00:17:03,360 crew is the EBB when the road drops, and that's 257 00:17:03,440 --> 00:17:06,559 if I can pull bodies off the worst jobs. You 258 00:17:06,599 --> 00:17:11,200 hold what you got? Can you hold? I can hold? 259 00:17:11,720 --> 00:17:16,599 I said, say again, your status you're breaking up, I said, 260 00:17:16,799 --> 00:17:21,759 I can hold. I looked at the four bay needle rayes, 261 00:17:21,920 --> 00:17:24,880 the fouling a number two. Has anyone else called in 262 00:17:24,960 --> 00:17:28,359 anything in the system coming up the discharge, anything in 263 00:17:28,440 --> 00:17:33,160 the pumps that is in debris. The static kissed a 264 00:17:33,279 --> 00:17:37,519 second past where I thought I'd lost him. Say again, 265 00:17:37,640 --> 00:17:42,400 prospect something in the pumps. I stood there with the 266 00:17:42,480 --> 00:17:46,440 hand said against my mouth, and found I couldn't say it. 267 00:17:47,200 --> 00:17:50,880 Something pulled itself down the discharge column away from my flashlight. 268 00:17:51,799 --> 00:17:54,960 There's no box for that on the incident form. And 269 00:17:55,000 --> 00:17:57,599 what would it get me saying it out loud? Or 270 00:17:57,599 --> 00:18:00,359 a twenty five year old running aboard alone on the 271 00:18:00,400 --> 00:18:03,079 worst night of the year, a crew to a road 272 00:18:03,200 --> 00:18:11,400 still underwater. Now negative, I said, just debris, heavy debris, yar, 273 00:18:12,000 --> 00:18:18,559 prospect out copy hang in there. The radio went back 274 00:18:18,599 --> 00:18:24,519 to its hiss. I went to look down. The water 275 00:18:24,720 --> 00:18:27,480 in the forebay was higher than I'd ever seen it 276 00:18:27,640 --> 00:18:30,599 risen most of the way up the walls, turning slow 277 00:18:30,680 --> 00:18:33,599 with the two intakes pulled at it. I put the 278 00:18:33,599 --> 00:18:36,799 flashlight on the water and walked the deck along the edge, 279 00:18:37,039 --> 00:18:42,680 looking nothing broke the surface. The phone turned and along 280 00:18:42,720 --> 00:18:45,240 the concrete of the far wall with a level had 281 00:18:45,279 --> 00:18:48,039 dropped an inch or two. When I'd gotten both pumps running, 282 00:18:49,279 --> 00:18:53,359 there were gouges, scratches in the concrete below the old 283 00:18:53,400 --> 00:18:57,759 water line, just above the new one. They ran in sets, 284 00:18:58,319 --> 00:19:01,480 four or five at a time, dragged downward the way 285 00:19:01,519 --> 00:19:04,000 you'd claw at something that gave you nothing to hold. 286 00:19:05,119 --> 00:19:08,119 They went down into the water, and I knew they 287 00:19:08,160 --> 00:19:12,519 continued under it. Something had been working the walls of 288 00:19:12,599 --> 00:19:15,559 the forebay, trying to get up out of the tank. 289 00:19:16,680 --> 00:19:19,319 The concrete of that forebay is older than my father. 290 00:19:20,079 --> 00:19:24,279 Whatever had raked it hadn't done it tonight. The gougers 291 00:19:24,400 --> 00:19:27,519 had the soft, pale look of old brakes, weathered by 292 00:19:27,640 --> 00:19:33,240 years of standing water, other storms, other high water. Something 293 00:19:33,400 --> 00:19:36,319 came up the discharge when the slough rose high enough, 294 00:19:36,920 --> 00:19:41,039 worked at the walls and went back down year after year, 295 00:19:41,720 --> 00:19:49,160 not once making it out. Yet it wanted out. The 296 00:19:49,240 --> 00:19:52,400 gouges weren't reaching for a man. They were reaching for 297 00:19:52,519 --> 00:19:55,759 air out of a concrete tank. It had been flushed 298 00:19:55,759 --> 00:19:59,359 into by rising water, trapped the same way I was. 299 00:20:00,559 --> 00:20:03,400 I should have made it less frightening. And I stood 300 00:20:03,440 --> 00:20:08,000 there and turned it over, waiting for that to be true. 301 00:20:08,279 --> 00:20:12,400 And it wasn't a thing that just once out will 302 00:20:12,440 --> 00:20:16,160 go through whatever's between it and to night between it 303 00:20:16,519 --> 00:20:19,559 and the dry deck of the island was the rising water. 304 00:20:19,759 --> 00:20:26,720 It was riding higher every minute, and me I went 305 00:20:26,799 --> 00:20:30,119 back up the stairs faster than I came down. The 306 00:20:30,200 --> 00:20:34,240 forebay needle had climbed, not by much, but it was 307 00:20:34,319 --> 00:20:38,519 over the line now, and the pumps hadn't stopped. I 308 00:20:38,559 --> 00:20:41,119 stood at the desk and logged at the number, and 309 00:20:41,240 --> 00:20:43,039 ran through it the way I'd run through it a 310 00:20:43,119 --> 00:20:47,720 hundred times in twenty two years. Water in equals water 311 00:20:47,839 --> 00:20:52,039 out the drains feeding the forebay against the pumps emptying it. 312 00:20:52,920 --> 00:20:56,559 I knew both halves of that equation. The drains couldn't 313 00:20:56,559 --> 00:20:59,880 bring in more than they were bringing unless something was 314 00:21:00,039 --> 00:21:03,440 adding water to the forebay that didn't come down the trains, 315 00:21:04,240 --> 00:21:07,480 or something was choking the discharge. So the pumps were 316 00:21:07,559 --> 00:21:10,680 lifting and the water was falling back down the pipe 317 00:21:10,799 --> 00:21:14,359 as fast as they were being pushed up. Something at 318 00:21:14,400 --> 00:21:16,680 the top of the pipe, where the door had been 319 00:21:16,759 --> 00:21:21,119 left open. The level climbed another quarter inch while I 320 00:21:21,200 --> 00:21:28,480 watched it. You can't fix a choked discharge from inside 321 00:21:28,519 --> 00:21:31,680 the building. The problem was up the pipes at the 322 00:21:31,720 --> 00:21:34,640 flat gate. So I put on my coat and went 323 00:21:34,720 --> 00:21:38,200 out into the storm. The slough side of the levee 324 00:21:38,480 --> 00:21:41,440 is a different world from the island side. On the 325 00:21:41,480 --> 00:21:45,359 island side you're sheltered up. On the crown, you're exposed, 326 00:21:45,799 --> 00:21:48,440 and the wind off the water hit me the moment 327 00:21:48,519 --> 00:21:51,480 I cleared the top hard enough that I had to 328 00:21:51,559 --> 00:21:55,079 lean into it to stay upright. The rain came hard 329 00:21:55,200 --> 00:21:58,960 enough to sting through my hood. Below me, where there 330 00:21:58,960 --> 00:22:02,079 should have been six feet drop to the discharge headwall 331 00:22:02,160 --> 00:22:05,759 and the flat gate, there was black water risen almost 332 00:22:05,799 --> 00:22:09,000 to the crown. The king tied and the surge had 333 00:22:09,000 --> 00:22:12,680 filled the slough to the brim. The discharge headwall as 334 00:22:12,720 --> 00:22:15,920 a concrete apron where the two big pipes come out 335 00:22:15,920 --> 00:22:18,880 of the levee and the flap gates hang on their hinges. 336 00:22:19,839 --> 00:22:22,720 On a working night, you'd hear the gates banging as 337 00:22:22,759 --> 00:22:26,480 the pumps pushed slugs of water out. I got my 338 00:22:26,559 --> 00:22:30,519 flashlight on them. The number one gate was doing its job, 339 00:22:31,079 --> 00:22:34,039 water surging out of it into the slough in pulses. 340 00:22:34,960 --> 00:22:38,319 The number two gate hung open, held against the current 341 00:22:38,720 --> 00:22:41,640 that should have been slamming it shut, and the open 342 00:22:41,720 --> 00:22:44,440 mouth of that pipe was where my pumped water was 343 00:22:44,519 --> 00:22:48,519 running straight back down into the island. I worked my 344 00:22:48,640 --> 00:22:50,880 way down the wet face of the headwall with a 345 00:22:50,920 --> 00:22:54,640 flashlight in my teeth, telling myself it was debris, a 346 00:22:54,759 --> 00:22:58,039 log jammed under the hinge. That's all A hung gate 347 00:22:58,079 --> 00:23:01,680 ever is. Got down to where I could reach and 348 00:23:01,720 --> 00:23:05,160 put the light on the gap it was holding the 349 00:23:05,240 --> 00:23:10,519 gate open. From the inside. I saw a part of it. 350 00:23:10,680 --> 00:23:13,000 Something had come part way out of the pipe mouth 351 00:23:13,240 --> 00:23:16,319 into the gap of the gate, hooked around the steel, 352 00:23:16,599 --> 00:23:19,400 working at it the way a hand works a stuck draw. 353 00:23:20,319 --> 00:23:22,279 And what I had the light on was a length 354 00:23:22,279 --> 00:23:24,680 of it that ran from the pipe mouth to the 355 00:23:24,759 --> 00:23:28,680 hinge bracket pale where the beam caught it, and wrong, 356 00:23:28,799 --> 00:23:32,759 the way deep water things are wrong, banded, moving in 357 00:23:32,799 --> 00:23:35,480 the wrong place. When it moved too long for the 358 00:23:35,559 --> 00:23:39,279 diameter of the pipe it was threading out of the 359 00:23:39,359 --> 00:23:42,680 light didn't hold on it cleanly. It had no edge 360 00:23:42,759 --> 00:23:45,680 I could fix on where it gripped the gate. The 361 00:23:45,720 --> 00:23:49,799 steel groaned, the hinge screaming with a full slow weight 362 00:23:49,880 --> 00:23:54,039 of it, the whole heavy door giving way one degree 363 00:23:54,039 --> 00:23:59,920 at a time. Then it felt the light the part 364 00:24:00,079 --> 00:24:03,440 of it and the gap went still, and then it 365 00:24:03,519 --> 00:24:07,519 came toward me along the gate. I got back up 366 00:24:07,519 --> 00:24:11,799 the headwall fast. I don't remember the climb. I remember 367 00:24:11,880 --> 00:24:14,279 being on the crown again with the wind trying to 368 00:24:14,319 --> 00:24:17,799 take me off it, and the gate was empty. The 369 00:24:17,839 --> 00:24:21,079 thing had gone back down, and the slough water poured 370 00:24:21,079 --> 00:24:24,200 into the open pipe and ran down into my island. 371 00:24:25,359 --> 00:24:28,400 I couldn't close that gate. It would take a crane 372 00:24:28,400 --> 00:24:33,200 and a crew, and I had neither. The discharge was lost, 373 00:24:33,799 --> 00:24:36,920 one pumps worth of lift gone, and the other pump 374 00:24:37,000 --> 00:24:40,920 now feeding the island its own water back. I went 375 00:24:40,960 --> 00:24:44,079 back down the island side to the building. I'd hold 376 00:24:44,119 --> 00:24:46,799 inside with a one good pump and keep the level 377 00:24:46,839 --> 00:24:50,200 as long as the motor lived. The four by deck 378 00:24:50,319 --> 00:24:53,400 was underwater when I got to the stairs, the working 379 00:24:53,440 --> 00:24:56,799 floor where i'd stood an hour ago, black water over 380 00:24:56,839 --> 00:25:00,160 the lip and spreading across the concrete and climb, I 381 00:25:00,160 --> 00:25:04,160 mean the steel stairs toward me. The caged worklight was 382 00:25:04,240 --> 00:25:09,319 under it, glowing green. Number two was dead again. Number 383 00:25:09,359 --> 00:25:13,279 one was still running. I could hear it laboring somewhere 384 00:25:13,279 --> 00:25:16,640 below the surface, and while I stood on the stairs 385 00:25:17,680 --> 00:25:21,519 the sound of it changed. The shaft fighting against something 386 00:25:21,519 --> 00:25:26,359 in the column, and the thermal cut it. Both motors stopped, 387 00:25:26,920 --> 00:25:29,839 and the last sound went out of the building except 388 00:25:29,920 --> 00:25:32,960 the storm and the water coming up the stairs toward me. 389 00:25:34,319 --> 00:25:39,279 I keep the radio at the desk district prospect. I've 390 00:25:39,319 --> 00:25:42,200 lost both pumps in the discharge. I'm taking on water 391 00:25:42,279 --> 00:25:44,920 in the building. I need a boat. I need anybody, 392 00:25:46,599 --> 00:25:50,880 dead air. I keyed it three more times, said Raya's 393 00:25:50,960 --> 00:25:55,319 name into it, said anybody, and the dead air took 394 00:25:55,359 --> 00:25:58,920 all of it. The water was at the top of 395 00:25:58,960 --> 00:26:01,759 the four bay stairs and starting under the floor of 396 00:26:01,799 --> 00:26:04,960 the level I was on. There was one way left, 397 00:26:05,400 --> 00:26:08,480 and it was up. The control room sit a half 398 00:26:08,519 --> 00:26:11,759 flight above the pump floor. A short steel stair to 399 00:26:11,839 --> 00:26:14,680 the platform with a panel and the desk are the 400 00:26:14,799 --> 00:26:18,400 highest dry place in the building. I took the log 401 00:26:18,440 --> 00:26:21,920 bok and the flashlight and went up. I stood there 402 00:26:22,200 --> 00:26:24,880 and watched the black water climb the steps behind me. 403 00:26:25,400 --> 00:26:30,839 One had a time unhurried somewhere under it. I knew 404 00:26:30,839 --> 00:26:34,519 the thing was rising too. The water was its road. 405 00:26:35,519 --> 00:26:38,480 Every inch the flood came up was another inch of 406 00:26:38,480 --> 00:26:41,720 the building it could reach, And the building was down 407 00:26:41,720 --> 00:26:46,240 to one platform. I'd run out of things to do next. 408 00:26:47,200 --> 00:26:50,119 There'd been a problem and an action for every hour 409 00:26:50,160 --> 00:26:53,880 of the night. Clear the screen reset the pump key, 410 00:26:53,960 --> 00:26:59,400 the radio, climb the head wall. Now there wasn't The 411 00:26:59,519 --> 00:27:03,119 road was twenty feet under, the radio was dead, the 412 00:27:03,200 --> 00:27:06,920 pumps were drowned, the discharge was open and feeding the 413 00:27:06,960 --> 00:27:12,559 water higher. So for the first time all night, I 414 00:27:12,640 --> 00:27:16,799 stood still, and in that stillness, the question came up 415 00:27:16,960 --> 00:27:19,640 out of the dark, the same way the water had. 416 00:27:21,279 --> 00:27:27,079 Who would even know? Rayers would notice the station go 417 00:27:27,200 --> 00:27:30,759 dark before he noticed me, would log the prospect offline 418 00:27:31,039 --> 00:27:34,440 and dispatch a crew to the equipment, and somewhere down 419 00:27:34,440 --> 00:27:37,039 the list of the night's damage there'd be a line 420 00:27:37,079 --> 00:27:41,039 about the operator. My ex wife in Sacramento wouldn't know 421 00:27:41,119 --> 00:27:44,400 for days, and when she did, she'd feel sorry for 422 00:27:44,440 --> 00:27:47,480 a man she used to be married to. My daughter 423 00:27:47,519 --> 00:27:51,640 in Portland, who had spoken to twice this year. There 424 00:27:51,680 --> 00:27:53,920 was no one sitting up tonight with a phone in 425 00:27:53,960 --> 00:27:56,759 their hand waiting to hear my truck in the drive. 426 00:27:57,920 --> 00:28:00,440 I built it that way a little bit of time, 427 00:28:00,960 --> 00:28:04,640 Like how the islands sank, a slow settling you don't 428 00:28:04,680 --> 00:28:08,319 notice until you're twenty feet down and the water once in. 429 00:28:10,000 --> 00:28:13,480 The Thing that frightened me wasn't the dying, It was 430 00:28:13,559 --> 00:28:17,680 how little the dying bothered me. I pressed it the 431 00:28:17,680 --> 00:28:20,839 way you press a bad tooth, waiting for the flinch. 432 00:28:22,160 --> 00:28:25,519 You could just sit down, let it come up, stop climbing. 433 00:28:26,799 --> 00:28:29,839 And no part of me rose up against it. No 434 00:28:29,920 --> 00:28:36,200 white's face, no child, no reason with a name. I 435 00:28:36,240 --> 00:28:39,680 didn't sit down. I want to be clear about that. 436 00:28:40,680 --> 00:28:44,119 I kept my feet and I kept my flashlight on 437 00:28:44,200 --> 00:28:52,359 the stairs. There was one thing left in the building 438 00:28:52,400 --> 00:28:56,079 that could move water, and I'd forgotten it because nobody 439 00:28:56,119 --> 00:29:01,319 ever uses it on a flood, the gravity gate. Most 440 00:29:01,359 --> 00:29:04,680 of these old stations have one. A colvert through the 441 00:29:04,680 --> 00:29:08,640 bottom of the levee, separated from the pump discharge, a 442 00:29:08,759 --> 00:29:12,319 hand craked pen stock on the inside end a steel 443 00:29:12,359 --> 00:29:14,559 plate in a frame that you raise and lower on 444 00:29:14,640 --> 00:29:17,920 a threaded stem with a wheel. When the slough drops 445 00:29:17,920 --> 00:29:21,119 below the level inside the island, you crank it up 446 00:29:21,319 --> 00:29:25,240 and the island drains itself out through the colvert. No pumps, 447 00:29:25,279 --> 00:29:29,640 no power, just water finding lower ground. You keep it 448 00:29:29,720 --> 00:29:32,279 shut the rest of the time, because when the slough 449 00:29:32,359 --> 00:29:35,599 is high, it runs the wrong way on a king 450 00:29:35,720 --> 00:29:38,920 tied with a surge. You keep it shut and bolted, 451 00:29:39,279 --> 00:29:43,279 and you don't think about it. But the tide turns 452 00:29:44,119 --> 00:29:48,279 high water at two fifty one. After that, a slough 453 00:29:48,279 --> 00:29:52,000 would fall, and somewhere in the falling it would drop 454 00:29:52,000 --> 00:29:55,119 below the level of the water now standing in my building. 455 00:29:56,480 --> 00:29:58,839 When it did, the gate was a drain I could 456 00:29:58,880 --> 00:30:02,519 open by hand. It wouldn't save the island, but it 457 00:30:02,519 --> 00:30:05,359 would pull the level down off this platform and buy 458 00:30:05,359 --> 00:30:08,079 me the hours until the ebb dropped the road and 459 00:30:08,160 --> 00:30:11,240 a boat could reach me. The gate was in the 460 00:30:11,279 --> 00:30:14,640 lower works, under the water, in the dark, where the 461 00:30:14,640 --> 00:30:17,960 thing was. I sat with that for a minute on 462 00:30:18,000 --> 00:30:23,119 the platform with a flood, climbing up the stairs. I'll 463 00:30:23,160 --> 00:30:26,480 tell you honestly, I didn't go down because I'd found 464 00:30:26,519 --> 00:30:31,319 some reason to live. I hadn't. That question was still 465 00:30:31,359 --> 00:30:35,400 sitting at the bottom of me unanswered. I went down 466 00:30:35,759 --> 00:30:38,440 because there was a wheel to crank, and cranking it 467 00:30:38,559 --> 00:30:41,519 was the next thing. I am a man who is 468 00:30:41,599 --> 00:30:44,920 run on the next thing for twenty two years. My 469 00:30:45,039 --> 00:30:48,519 hands wanted the wheel. The rest of me came along. 470 00:30:50,359 --> 00:30:52,480 I tied the flashlight to my wrist with a boot 471 00:30:52,519 --> 00:30:55,839 lace and went down the steel stairs into the black water. 472 00:30:56,960 --> 00:30:59,480 The cold of it closed over my legs and then 473 00:30:59,519 --> 00:31:02,000 my chest, and drove the breath out of me in 474 00:31:02,039 --> 00:31:06,240 a way I hadn't expected, my body making this objection plain, 475 00:31:06,839 --> 00:31:10,640 even if the rest of me wasn't. I waded out 476 00:31:10,680 --> 00:31:13,599 across the drowned pump floor, toward the corner where the 477 00:31:13,640 --> 00:31:17,720 gate stem comes up. The water was chest deep and rising, 478 00:31:18,240 --> 00:31:21,880 carrying everything. The flood had lifted off the floor at 479 00:31:21,960 --> 00:31:25,279 Jerry kan the desk chair rolling slowly on its side, 480 00:31:25,640 --> 00:31:29,559 paper turning to pulp. The flashlight threw a cone to 481 00:31:29,680 --> 00:31:32,640 the MRK and I found the wall by feel and 482 00:31:32,680 --> 00:31:37,359 working along it toward the gate, and that was when 483 00:31:37,400 --> 00:31:42,240 the water changed. You feel a thing move in the 484 00:31:42,279 --> 00:31:45,720 water before you see it, a pressure against your body 485 00:31:45,759 --> 00:31:49,799 from a direction the current isn't coming from. The whole 486 00:31:49,839 --> 00:31:54,880 flooded floor shifted around me, a slow, heavy displacement, the 487 00:31:54,960 --> 00:31:59,480 water bulging with something large moved through it. I froze 488 00:31:59,480 --> 00:32:01,640 with my hand on the wall and put the light 489 00:32:01,680 --> 00:32:04,680 out across the surface and saw the wake of it, 490 00:32:05,440 --> 00:32:08,680 a slow line peeling away from the dark beyond my beam, 491 00:32:09,359 --> 00:32:15,079 moving across the room, unhurried, curving around behind me. It 492 00:32:15,160 --> 00:32:18,559 knew where I was in the pipe. It had drawn 493 00:32:18,640 --> 00:32:22,559 back from the light and now in the water with 494 00:32:22,720 --> 00:32:26,160 me standing chest deep in it. The light meant nothing 495 00:32:26,200 --> 00:32:29,839 to it at all. I got to the gate stem. 496 00:32:30,160 --> 00:32:33,960 The wheel was there, rush stiff, with threaded stem, dropping 497 00:32:34,039 --> 00:32:37,559 down into the black, toward the penstock plate six feet below. 498 00:32:38,519 --> 00:32:41,079 No good to me yet, not with the slough still 499 00:32:41,119 --> 00:32:44,359 of the crown. Crank it now, and I'd only let 500 00:32:44,400 --> 00:32:47,880 the flood in faster. I put both hands on the 501 00:32:47,880 --> 00:32:53,519 wheel and I waited for the ebb. The wake came back. 502 00:32:54,480 --> 00:32:57,240 It came fast this time, and from the side, and 503 00:32:57,279 --> 00:33:00,759 the displacement hit me before I saw it coming, put 504 00:33:00,799 --> 00:33:04,200 me under the flashlight on my wrists, swinging wild through 505 00:33:04,240 --> 00:33:07,640 the murk. It lit A length of it, close enough 506 00:33:07,680 --> 00:33:12,079 to touch, a paleness, the surface of it sliding past 507 00:33:12,160 --> 00:33:16,599 my face, slick and cold, going on too long, no 508 00:33:16,799 --> 00:33:19,920 head I could find, just the endless middle of it, 509 00:33:20,119 --> 00:33:26,200 pressing me down into the pomp floor. Then it took 510 00:33:26,240 --> 00:33:30,759 my arm a grip. It wrapped my right arm the 511 00:33:30,799 --> 00:33:33,440 way a hand wrapped a stick, and it was strong 512 00:33:33,480 --> 00:33:35,480 in a way that it had no ceiling to it, 513 00:33:36,039 --> 00:33:39,519 a strength that didn't feel like it was trying. It 514 00:33:39,640 --> 00:33:42,720 pulled and I felt my shoulder go, and then I 515 00:33:42,720 --> 00:33:45,519 felt the skin of my forearm begin to tear as 516 00:33:45,559 --> 00:33:48,839 I hauled the other way against it with everything I had. 517 00:33:49,759 --> 00:33:52,319 My left hand was on the gate stem. I held 518 00:33:52,359 --> 00:33:54,400 the stem and pulled my arm out of its grip, 519 00:33:54,440 --> 00:33:57,160 through the tearing, through the white nothing where the pain 520 00:33:57,200 --> 00:34:00,279 should have been, and it came free in a cut 521 00:34:00,319 --> 00:34:03,960 of my own blood gone black in the flashlight. I 522 00:34:04,000 --> 00:34:07,279 got my feet under me and drove for the stairs. 523 00:34:08,239 --> 00:34:11,239 I don't remember the stairs. I came up out of 524 00:34:11,280 --> 00:34:14,719 the water onto the platform on my knees, right arm 525 00:34:14,760 --> 00:34:18,039 hanging before arm opened to the bone in the flashlight 526 00:34:18,159 --> 00:34:24,199 spill behind me. The wake settled and was still. I 527 00:34:24,239 --> 00:34:26,960 got my back against the panel, got my belt off 528 00:34:27,000 --> 00:34:30,280 one handed, and sinched it above the elbow until the 529 00:34:30,320 --> 00:34:34,199 bleeding slowed to a welling. The flashlight still hung on 530 00:34:34,280 --> 00:34:37,400 my wrist, throwing its cone at the ceiling, and I 531 00:34:37,480 --> 00:34:40,920 sat in the spilled light and shook and looked at 532 00:34:40,920 --> 00:34:44,880 what I had. A gate that would flush the island 533 00:34:44,920 --> 00:34:48,480 when the EBB came. One arm, a tide table that 534 00:34:48,559 --> 00:34:51,599 said the EBB was hours off, and the thing in 535 00:34:51,679 --> 00:34:55,079 the water below me between me and that wheel in 536 00:34:55,159 --> 00:34:58,800 no hurry at all, waiting out the tide same as 537 00:34:58,840 --> 00:35:03,880 I was, because it wanted what I wanted, the gatep 538 00:35:04,079 --> 00:35:08,400 and the water running. The only difference between us was 539 00:35:08,440 --> 00:35:11,000 that I had to survive for long enough to open it, 540 00:35:11,960 --> 00:35:16,119 and it only had to survive long enough for me 541 00:35:16,239 --> 00:35:24,519 to try. Eventually, the tide turned at two fifty one, 542 00:35:25,159 --> 00:35:27,199 the way the table on the wall had always said 543 00:35:27,199 --> 00:35:31,559 it would. Nothing announced it, But I'd watched these waters 544 00:35:31,559 --> 00:35:34,320 for twenty two years, and I could reap the slough 545 00:35:34,360 --> 00:35:37,840 through the gage still running off the battery backer. The 546 00:35:37,960 --> 00:35:42,880 number stopped climbing, sat and began by a hare to fall. 547 00:35:44,119 --> 00:35:48,199 The King tide had crested out past the levee in 548 00:35:48,280 --> 00:35:51,880 the dark Minuslough was starting the long drop toward the 549 00:35:51,920 --> 00:35:55,599 low water, and every inch it fell brought the outside 550 00:35:55,719 --> 00:35:59,400 closer to the inside, closer to the moment the culvert 551 00:35:59,440 --> 00:36:01,960 through the bottom of the levee became what it was 552 00:36:02,000 --> 00:36:07,400 always built to be, a drain. The flood standing in 553 00:36:07,440 --> 00:36:10,800 the lower works wouldn't move on its own. The discharged 554 00:36:10,840 --> 00:36:14,440 flap gates would seal themselves shut against the falling water outside, 555 00:36:15,039 --> 00:36:18,039 and the water inside would see it exactly where it 556 00:36:18,199 --> 00:36:22,199 was going Nowhere until I cranked that gravity gate up 557 00:36:22,239 --> 00:36:26,440 by hand and gave it somewhere downhill to go. There 558 00:36:26,480 --> 00:36:30,320 was the only road out of here, a wheel, one arm, 559 00:36:30,760 --> 00:36:35,440 and whatever was waiting between me and it. I sat 560 00:36:35,480 --> 00:36:38,159 against the panel with my arm belted to my chest 561 00:36:38,559 --> 00:36:43,119 and did the math half an hour maybe less, before 562 00:36:43,159 --> 00:36:46,920 the outside dropped below the inside, and the wheel meant something. 563 00:36:48,000 --> 00:36:51,480 I thought about not going. I could stay on the platform. 564 00:36:51,920 --> 00:36:54,559 The water would hold just below the steel I sat on, 565 00:36:55,159 --> 00:36:57,119 and I could wait for the EBB to drop the road, 566 00:36:57,440 --> 00:37:00,599 wait for a boat, and maybe it would in time, 567 00:37:01,599 --> 00:37:05,199 and maybe it wouldn't. It would have been the easier thing, 568 00:37:06,039 --> 00:37:08,239 And some part of me said, let it be the 569 00:37:08,320 --> 00:37:12,360 easier thing. What are you saving exactly? I found I 570 00:37:12,400 --> 00:37:16,480 had an answer, and it surprised me. I had not, 571 00:37:16,920 --> 00:37:19,960 at any point in twenty two years walked off a 572 00:37:20,039 --> 00:37:24,440 station while it was still drowning. I did not start tonight. 573 00:37:25,480 --> 00:37:28,679 Whatever was or wasn't waiting for me at home. The 574 00:37:28,760 --> 00:37:31,400 man who didn't leave the water was the one thing 575 00:37:31,559 --> 00:37:34,880 I'd ever been all the way through, and I was 576 00:37:34,920 --> 00:37:37,400 not going to sit on a platform with the one 577 00:37:37,480 --> 00:37:41,440 gate and the building still shut. I went down the 578 00:37:41,480 --> 00:37:46,039 stairs into the black water. The belt held my right 579 00:37:46,159 --> 00:37:49,079 arm against my chest, and I only had my left. 580 00:37:50,039 --> 00:37:53,320 The wake found me before I reached the wheel, that slow, 581 00:37:53,519 --> 00:37:57,559 heavy push against my legs, the surface peeling open somewhere 582 00:37:57,599 --> 00:38:01,599 past my light. But he didn't come at me. It 583 00:38:01,719 --> 00:38:05,280 hung off in the dark and circled. I could feel 584 00:38:05,320 --> 00:38:07,440 the tide the same way I could read it on 585 00:38:07,480 --> 00:38:10,679 the gage, and it wasn't going to spend itself on me. 586 00:38:10,840 --> 00:38:14,880 Before the gate opened, we were waiting on the same thing. 587 00:38:16,599 --> 00:38:19,920 I got my feet braced on the drowned floor, gripped 588 00:38:19,920 --> 00:38:24,440 the wheel left handed, and turned it. The gate fought 589 00:38:24,480 --> 00:38:28,880 me the way, something that hasn't moved in years rus stiff, 590 00:38:29,280 --> 00:38:32,280 the weight of water standing on the plate, and I 591 00:38:32,280 --> 00:38:35,800 had one arm and no purchase, my feet sliding on 592 00:38:35,880 --> 00:38:41,039 the slick concrete. A quarter turn stop, I hung my 593 00:38:41,159 --> 00:38:44,599 whole weight off the wheel. Something in my torn shoulder 594 00:38:44,719 --> 00:38:47,239 let go, and I made a sound into the cold 595 00:38:47,280 --> 00:38:51,239 and dark, but I kept turning and down at the 596 00:38:51,280 --> 00:38:54,760 corvert mouth six feet under, I felt the steel plate 597 00:38:54,960 --> 00:38:58,360 lift off its seat, the first thin thread of current 598 00:38:58,480 --> 00:39:02,159 finding the gap the flooded room, leaning a degree toward 599 00:39:02,239 --> 00:39:08,960 the corner, and then the wheel stopped. I hauled on 600 00:39:09,039 --> 00:39:12,639 it and it didn't give dead against my one arm 601 00:39:12,760 --> 00:39:16,760 and my full weight. The stem jammed somewhere in its travel, 602 00:39:17,400 --> 00:39:20,480 debris in the frame or the plate fouled, and it 603 00:39:20,519 --> 00:39:24,039 didn't matter which, because a third open is not a drain, 604 00:39:25,079 --> 00:39:28,760 it's a trickle. It would empty the building in a week. 605 00:39:30,119 --> 00:39:32,719 I pulled until the white nothing came up behind my 606 00:39:32,760 --> 00:39:36,719 eyes and the wheel did not move. My left arm 607 00:39:36,760 --> 00:39:42,039 alone was never going to be enough. That was when 608 00:39:42,039 --> 00:39:46,440 the water changed. The trickle through the cracked gate was 609 00:39:46,480 --> 00:39:49,760 what it had been waiting for. The wake came off 610 00:39:49,800 --> 00:39:53,079 the far wall and turned toward the corner, toward me, 611 00:39:54,280 --> 00:39:57,719 and it was not circling now. It came straight for 612 00:39:57,840 --> 00:40:02,400 the only door where I was standing. I had a breath, 613 00:40:02,679 --> 00:40:07,960 maybe less. I did not brace, there was nothing to 614 00:40:07,960 --> 00:40:12,000 brace with. Instead, I tore the belt off my right 615 00:40:12,119 --> 00:40:15,039 arm with my left hand, and I hugged that dead weight, 616 00:40:15,559 --> 00:40:18,559 the open forearm, and hugged it through the wheel from 617 00:40:18,599 --> 00:40:21,880 the right side, jammed it through the spokes to the elbow, 618 00:40:22,119 --> 00:40:24,639 so the rim sat in the crock of it, and 619 00:40:24,719 --> 00:40:27,320 I put the whole red length of it square in 620 00:40:27,360 --> 00:40:30,800 the path of the thing coming for the gap. I 621 00:40:30,920 --> 00:40:34,079 gave it the arm. I put my body to the 622 00:40:34,159 --> 00:40:36,559 side and I gave it the one part of me 623 00:40:36,639 --> 00:40:39,920 that was already gone. Hooked through the wheel on the 624 00:40:40,039 --> 00:40:42,840 side where I pulled toward the culvert, would drag the 625 00:40:42,920 --> 00:40:48,239 rim counterclockwise open. It took the arm the way it 626 00:40:48,320 --> 00:40:51,199 had taken it the first time, that grip, with no 627 00:40:51,360 --> 00:40:56,079 ceiling to its strength, and it pulled, lunging past me 628 00:40:56,159 --> 00:40:59,599 for the gap and the moving water beyond it. Crawling 629 00:40:59,679 --> 00:41:02,719 on the arm, hooked through the wheel with every pound 630 00:41:02,760 --> 00:41:06,079 of that long, pale weight, the whole current of it 631 00:41:06,360 --> 00:41:11,039 building behind the pole, and the wheel turned. The jam 632 00:41:11,119 --> 00:41:13,960 broke under a force no man could put on a wheel, 633 00:41:14,599 --> 00:41:17,880 the stems screaming up out of its threads, the plate 634 00:41:18,119 --> 00:41:21,480 tearing the rest of the way off its seat. It 635 00:41:21,599 --> 00:41:24,599 cranked its own door open. In half a second of 636 00:41:24,719 --> 00:41:29,480 blind animal want, the gate went full open, and the 637 00:41:29,519 --> 00:41:33,360 building went down it. The flush took the creature first, 638 00:41:33,760 --> 00:41:36,800 ripping it off the arm and into the hole, a 639 00:41:36,840 --> 00:41:39,760 long pale rush, folding into the dark of the colvert, 640 00:41:40,039 --> 00:41:42,880 and then gone. It tried to take me with it, 641 00:41:43,360 --> 00:41:46,559 the current grabbing my body and streaming me flat toward 642 00:41:46,639 --> 00:41:49,559 the throat, But the arm was still hogged through the 643 00:41:49,599 --> 00:41:52,440 wheel to the elbow, and when the flush hauled me 644 00:41:52,519 --> 00:41:55,840 toward the colvert, the rim caught in the hook and held. 645 00:41:56,840 --> 00:41:59,800 That was the only thing between me and the culvert. 646 00:42:00,599 --> 00:42:04,119 The arm grinding against the rim, shredding what the creature 647 00:42:04,199 --> 00:42:07,559 hadn't already torn. And I hung there off the ruin 648 00:42:07,639 --> 00:42:12,639 off it while the water ran, the current eased, the 649 00:42:12,760 --> 00:42:17,440 head equalized. The level dropped past my chest, then my waist, 650 00:42:18,000 --> 00:42:21,000 the drowned floor coming back up slick into the cone 651 00:42:21,000 --> 00:42:24,880 of the flashlight. I got my knees under me. My 652 00:42:25,039 --> 00:42:28,199 right arm came off the wheel when I moved. I 653 00:42:28,239 --> 00:42:32,159 looked it at once, and then I didn't again. A 654 00:42:32,199 --> 00:42:34,920 thing hanging from my shoulder that the wheel and the 655 00:42:34,960 --> 00:42:38,480 creature had finished between them, kept attached by less than 656 00:42:38,519 --> 00:42:44,400 i'll describe here, useless past any saving Above me. The 657 00:42:44,400 --> 00:42:49,280 wheel stood open on its bent stem. The station was straining, 658 00:42:49,960 --> 00:42:53,960 The thing was out. I sat in the receding water 659 00:42:54,480 --> 00:42:58,519 and took stark of what remained. The slough was falling. 660 00:42:59,039 --> 00:43:02,760 In six hours it would turn and rise again the 661 00:43:02,760 --> 00:43:06,519 next tide, lower than the King tide, but rising all 662 00:43:06,559 --> 00:43:10,039 the same. The number two flap gate was still out 663 00:43:10,079 --> 00:43:13,480 there on its bent hinge, hanging open the door I 664 00:43:13,519 --> 00:43:17,559 couldn't close without a crane and a crew. I'd flushed 665 00:43:17,559 --> 00:43:20,239 it on this ebb. I had not fixed the door. 666 00:43:20,760 --> 00:43:23,400 The route it came in by was still standing open, 667 00:43:24,239 --> 00:43:30,280 and the water always comes back. But I'd won the night. 668 00:43:31,639 --> 00:43:34,800 I sat in the wreck of my station and understood 669 00:43:35,079 --> 00:43:38,000 that the night was all anybody ever wins out here. 670 00:43:39,159 --> 00:43:42,639 You hold the water back until the tide turns, and 671 00:43:42,719 --> 00:43:47,599 then you do it again. The flashlight burned toward nothing 672 00:43:47,639 --> 00:43:50,519 on my wrist. I held what was left of my 673 00:43:50,679 --> 00:43:53,800 arm and watched the black water run out of my island, 674 00:43:54,920 --> 00:43:58,159 and waited to find out whether the morning would reach 675 00:43:58,239 --> 00:44:06,400 me before the next time tied. Did morning came. The 676 00:44:06,400 --> 00:44:09,639 boat came at gray first light, two men from the 677 00:44:09,679 --> 00:44:13,320 district and a sheriff's deputy running the slough as the 678 00:44:13,360 --> 00:44:16,239 ebb bottomed out and the road still lay under a 679 00:44:16,280 --> 00:44:19,920 foot of falling water. They found me on the platform, 680 00:44:20,039 --> 00:44:22,800 with the building drained below me and what was left, 681 00:44:22,800 --> 00:44:26,039 and my right arm wrapped in my coat, the belt 682 00:44:26,079 --> 00:44:29,039 cinched so tight above the elbow my skin had gone 683 00:44:29,079 --> 00:44:33,639 black hours back. The deputy said later he thought I 684 00:44:33,719 --> 00:44:36,159 was dead from the lock of me until I told 685 00:44:36,199 --> 00:44:38,239 him to mind the open gate stem on his way 686 00:44:38,280 --> 00:44:42,599 across the floor. Rayers had locked prospects dark and half 687 00:44:42,639 --> 00:44:45,519 past two and put it on the list, and the 688 00:44:45,599 --> 00:44:49,480 list had finally come around to me. They got me 689 00:44:49,519 --> 00:44:52,440 to a hospital and Sacramento and took the arm the 690 00:44:52,519 --> 00:44:55,199 rest of the way off at the elbow because there 691 00:44:55,239 --> 00:44:59,039 was nothing below it worth saving. The surgeon used the 692 00:44:59,039 --> 00:45:02,960 word mangle, which is a clinical term and not just 693 00:45:03,039 --> 00:45:07,320 the thing you say, caught in the pump machinery, they wrote, 694 00:45:08,079 --> 00:45:10,559 and I let them write it because it fits a 695 00:45:10,679 --> 00:45:14,239 form in a way the truth never would. I gave 696 00:45:14,280 --> 00:45:18,400 the district the version that held together surge ahead of prediction. 697 00:45:18,960 --> 00:45:24,119 Both pumps fouled and lost discharge gate. Failed operator opened 698 00:45:24,119 --> 00:45:27,360 the gravity culvert by hand to drain the island and 699 00:45:27,480 --> 00:45:32,079 lost the arm doing it. Every word of it true, 700 00:45:32,280 --> 00:45:36,440 the shape of it a lie. There is nothing on 701 00:45:36,480 --> 00:45:39,320 the incident report for the thing that took the arm, 702 00:45:39,559 --> 00:45:41,960 and no tone of voice there would have carried it 703 00:45:42,000 --> 00:45:45,400 to any one who needed to sign a form. They 704 00:45:45,440 --> 00:45:49,440 listed the number two flap gate for repair. I don't 705 00:45:49,440 --> 00:45:52,360 know if it got repaired. I didn't go back to 706 00:45:52,400 --> 00:45:56,400 find out. I took the medical retirement. They offered, and 707 00:45:56,480 --> 00:46:01,719 I let Prospect Island pass to whoever wanted it. Some 708 00:46:01,920 --> 00:46:05,639 nights I think about that, about a man I've never met, 709 00:46:05,840 --> 00:46:09,159 manning that station on the next King tide, raking the 710 00:46:09,239 --> 00:46:12,000 screen and never once putting a light on the wall 711 00:46:12,039 --> 00:46:16,599 below the water line. I thought about warning him. I 712 00:46:16,679 --> 00:46:20,320 think about it still, but there's nothing to say that 713 00:46:20,400 --> 00:46:23,960 he'd believe. And I know that because there was a 714 00:46:24,000 --> 00:46:29,880 time I wouldn't have believed it either. I'm not a 715 00:46:29,960 --> 00:46:33,400 haunted man. Nothing followed me up out of that water. 716 00:46:34,559 --> 00:46:38,599 I sleep fine, mostly, But I went into that station, 717 00:46:39,039 --> 00:46:42,119 a man who stopped minding what happened to him, who'd 718 00:46:42,119 --> 00:46:45,119 taken the lonely island because there was nothing to drive 719 00:46:45,159 --> 00:46:48,920 home to, and somewhere in the bottom of it holding 720 00:46:48,960 --> 00:46:51,360 a wheel with one arm, or the flood tried to 721 00:46:51,400 --> 00:46:55,880 take me. I found out I wanted to come up, 722 00:46:57,440 --> 00:47:01,320 not for anyone, just the plain one of it, which 723 00:47:01,360 --> 00:47:04,480 I'd buried so long under the routine of not minding 724 00:47:05,280 --> 00:47:11,239 that I'd forgotten it was mine. So I called my 725 00:47:11,320 --> 00:47:15,800 daughter in Portland, not on her birthday and a Tuesday 726 00:47:15,840 --> 00:47:19,840 in November for no reason, and she was so surprised 727 00:47:20,039 --> 00:47:23,559 she thought someone had died. We talked for an hour. 728 00:47:24,360 --> 00:47:27,760 We talk most weeks now. I drove up in the spring, 729 00:47:28,320 --> 00:47:30,880 learning the one handed way of everything as I went. 730 00:47:31,920 --> 00:47:33,960 She put me in the spare room and we had 731 00:47:34,000 --> 00:47:37,960 three days of small things, coffee and a walk. Nothing 732 00:47:38,079 --> 00:47:41,800 said that needed saying out loud, and it was more 733 00:47:41,880 --> 00:47:47,079 than I'd let myself have in years. I don't tell why. 734 00:47:48,000 --> 00:47:51,960 I can't tell anyone why I was drowning and found 735 00:47:51,960 --> 00:47:54,840 out I didn't want to be his close. But it 736 00:47:54,920 --> 00:47:58,000 leaves out the thing in the water, and without that, 737 00:47:58,880 --> 00:48:01,760 it's just a man being sentimental about a bad night 738 00:48:01,800 --> 00:48:08,280 at work. I live differently now, smaller and more. I 739 00:48:08,440 --> 00:48:11,599 answer the phone. The arm that isn't there aches in 740 00:48:11,639 --> 00:48:15,960 the cold, and I don't begrudge it. They tell you 741 00:48:16,000 --> 00:48:20,840 the missing part does that, and the right Some night 742 00:48:20,920 --> 00:48:23,039 it aches in a way that feels less like a 743 00:48:23,079 --> 00:48:26,079 nerve and more like the arm is still down there 744 00:48:26,400 --> 00:48:31,360 in the cold water, reaching for the wheel. It cost 745 00:48:31,440 --> 00:48:34,559 me an arm and a knight. I can't tell anyone about, 746 00:48:35,840 --> 00:48:38,440 but I'd be lying more if I said I wanted 747 00:48:38,440 --> 00:48:41,920 to go back to the man I was before