Like Grits

She never finished her sentence; a swell of water built up behind the trailer, forcing it to keel over, door-side down. Joseph did not see the woman surface. He was struck by her calm use of the word, "Please" to start her last breath before she was sucked under the current.

In the throbbing gray light, he sat folded up in a clump of soaked clothes, his mind had detached from his body, very surreal and not at all a part of himself. He thought, this is death.

Joseph pulled his head up off of his battered knees, even though he didn't want to look at anything. He was surprised to see a man standing next to him. The unexpected survivor reached out and placed his warm, dry hand upon Joseph's forehead, and said, "Good news. Your son is waiting for you at the iron bridge."

His words were accepted by Joseph as undeniably true. The warm touch of his hand felt electric. The man's touch sent a glowing warmth of peace that spread through Joseph's body.

He sprang to his feet. He sprinted along the road, high enough above the stream to have avoided being flooded. There were standing puddles of mud covering much of the road; he dashed through them all in his joyous race toward Victor waiting for him at the iron bridge. He covered the three-quarters of a mile at a quick pace, feeling great relief at the good news he had received from the survivor. He had been given good news; he had been assured that his son was alive and waiting for him.

He wasn't dead. Victor wasn't dead. They were both alive.

A hundred yards from the bridge, Joseph began shouting as he ran, "Victor! I'm coming! Victor!" He strained to hear his son's voice in reply as he splashed through each mud puddle.

While still far off, he could see his son rise from atop a large stone on the edge of the road and slowly wave his hands over his head. With a burst, Joseph bounded across the last stretch of graveled road, leapt up to his boy sitting on top of the rock, slamming into his lost son. Joseph engulfed the boy, pressing a crushing embrace upon him. Joseph smothered the kid, wanting to press their two hearts together in affirmation of a life that had been stolen in the night and returned to him with the words, "Good news," this morning. The father had forfeited his son's life to the clutches of a watery grave. But it wasn't true - he had gotten good news.

Victor shivered as he pressed back tightly into his dad's chest.

"Victor, how did you make it here? Did you swim?"

Victor looked up and said nothing as he began to relive the last hour, not sure how to answer his dad's question. "No. No I did not swim too much...I mostly floated...floated with a sycamore tree that was in the middle of the flood with me. I felt a big branch hit me right after I got washed away from you at the steps, so I grabbed it and hung on as I bounced over boulders and cars and stuff."

"Are you hurt? How did you get out of the water? Do you think anything is broken?"

Victor shook his head, "I was holding on to some branches, but I kept being rammed into rocks, especially my legs, and I was afraid the branches were going to trap me under the water, so I pulled up and kind of sat on the trunk. The tree then got kind of stuck in front of this bridge. Then the root end just kind of sunk into the water and the top part that I was holding onto lifted up out of the water right at the bridge. So I thought this was a chance being offered to me. I then reached up and grabbed onto the bottom of the bridge and got off the tree and climbed onto the bridge. I crawled as fast as I could to the top of a rock as far above the flood as I could get. Dad, I was pretty glad to hear your voice."

Again, father and son forcefully embraced. Joseph could smell a rank, muddy earth smell as he pressed his nose into Victor's hair. Lifting his eyes above his son's head, he could see a man in uniform trotting across the bridge toward them. "Hey! You guys all right?"

Joseph let loose of his son at the sight of official help. "Yeah, I do think so. But we're lucky."

The sheriff deputy began to look them over carefully, "We've got some more help on the way. County Search & Rescue and some EMS medical folks are right behind me. Do you know if there is anybody else on this side of the creek?"

Joseph reported, "No, we were the only ones camping on this side of the creek last night. But there were maybe eight to ten vehicles on that side," he pointed across Moses Creek and upstream toward the trailer campsites. "I think they got hit pretty hard by this flash flood."

As Joseph finished telling the deputy the situation, they all turned to see a couple of other county emergency vehicles slowing on the far side of the bridge. The deputy waved his arm, motioning to the Search & Rescue team to proceed up the road to the trailer campsites, indicating that he had the situation with Joseph and Victor under control.

The deputy looked at Joseph, "Is this your son?"

"Uh huh, we were camping in the primitive camp upstream, when we felt the creek rising into our tent. By the time we were awake, our tent was already about to be washed away with us in it. I ripped open the door flap and pulled Victor here out. But the current was really strong and we were trying real hard to get up to higher ground. The water kept coming, higher and stronger. We almost made it when my son slipped out of my arms and was swept into the flood. To be honest, I thought he was dead, but one of your guys - or the ranger, came by and told me he was safe and waiting for me at the bridge. Damn! Those were the best words a father can ever hear -- almost beyond incredible luck, actually way beyond. Indescribable relief and comfort, really."

"Sir, you said that you were the only two on this side of the bridge, is that right?"

"Yes. We were the only ones camping on this side. Like I said, one of your guys or the ranger came and told me the good news he had seen Victor and he was safe at the bridge. This was not too long after I had gotten up out of the flood; but I did not know what had happened to my son. Honestly, I wasn't thinking too well, but if I let myself think, I was thinking my boy had drowned."

"That's truly good news, sir. But, well - I am the first one to respond to this scene. I am the first one here once we got reports that this campground may be in danger. Sir, you say you spoke with a Park Ranger or a sheriff's deputy; can you describe this person you spoke with who told you that he had seen your son?"

"Well, I was pretty wiped out, I don't recall real well, but I was just sitting on the ground, feeling really numb and surreal, and when I looked up, I saw a man. I guess I was kind of surprised to see somebody.

"Sir, were his clothes dry?"

"Yes. I remember his hand felt warm, not cold, dry, not wet."

Can you describe what he was wearing or what he looked like?

When he touched me it was like a glowing shock that pulled me out of despair and filled me with hope. I had life put back into my emptiness. The image of him is kind of seared into my mind right now. He put his hand on my head and said to me, "Good news. Your son is waiting for you at the iron bridge."

Joseph continued his story with the sheriff deputy, "So, I felt a warm surge of relief wash over me and I ran down the road and found my son -- just as he said."

"Can you then describe him for me?"

"He had a beard, maybe he was around mid-forties. Like I said, I assumed he was a ranger or a lawman, so maybe I saw a uniform -- though I was really wiped out. Maybe I don't remember that part so well."

The deputy turned to Victor, "Victor, did you see this man your father described?"

With earnest honesty, he answered the officer, "No, I only saw my dad running to get me just before you came. I never saw another man."

The deputy drew a deep breath, wondering if he could or should try and reason with those who had just survived a turbulent trauma. The officer pulled out a pad and began writing; he then looked up and asked again, "You say his clothes were dry? So, he was not in the flash flood. Is that right?"

"That seems true. That is maybe why I thought he was with your department or a ranger. And his hand was warm when he touched my head. I remember that feel. His touch changed everything at that moment."

"Have you seen him come by here, either of you?" Both Joseph and Victor shook their heads.

"So, I'm going to put you in my car across the bridge and I've got some blankets for the both of you to warm up with until we can get some of the EMS folks to look you over." The officer finished taking notes and looked up, "But, I need to go up this road and look for your bearded bearer of good news. I am not going to drive my car across this old bridge after the beating it took in last night's flood. You two stay safe and warm in my car and I'll go up the road on foot. I'll be back as soon as I can."

The deputy pulled out several blankets from the trunk, told them they'd probably feel a lot more comfortable if they stripped out of their wet clothes, which they did. He then suggested that Victor sit in the driver's seat (he thought the kid might like that) and asked Joseph to take the passenger's seat, allowing that the plastic seats in the rear of his patrol car were installed for the purpose of transporting the unruly, and vomiting drunks; they would be more comfortable up front. They thanked the officer after he radioed that he had found two survivors that were wet and cold, appeared to have bruised and cut legs, but otherwise not seriously injured. He then went on foot to investigate the possibility of a third man in the primitive camps above the Moses Creek iron bridge.

Father and son sat hunched in front of the car's heater and began to doze from physical and emotional exhaustion. They could hear the radio chatter as officials began to coordinate and recover the dead and search for survivors as the morning's light began to unfurl through the thinning clouds.

The radio talk they overheard was grim. In their fitful, semi-conscious state in the idling patrol car they half-caught reports of the missing, confirmation of the dead, calls for medical care for the few who survived the onslaught of water, mud, stones and up-rooted timber. It was suspected that entire families were probably still missing.

The deputy returned from surveying the road across the bridge. "Is that Jeep up the way yours?"

Joseph nodded his head. "That's the only sign of anybody on that road," confirmed the deputy. "Another thing, walking all the way back up the road to where your jeep is, I saw only one set of bare footprints in the mud and they were coming this way. I gotta think those were your footprints and yours alone." The deputy wanted to merely explain the plain facts but had no interest in contradicting Joseph's report. The man was not in a good frame of mind after all he had just been through.

Joseph sat pensively for a moment, and then began to ask a question, but the deputy interrupted him; "Look, there is no one over there. I called and shouted. No one in the Sheriff's department wears a beard, as you described him; and I can assure you sir that I was the first one on the scene this morning -- there was no park ranger here before me."

Joseph stiffened a bit at being flat out contradicted, and then drew a breath and asked, "Then who did I see, if he wasn't a ranger, lawman or a surviving camper?"

"I can't say." And with that they both were ready to let that mystery go.

Joseph looked back at the officer, "Listening to your radio it sounds pretty bad. I mean the way we were all caught so quickly in this flash flood. I think we should feel we are pretty lucky. Luck was with me and Victor last night."

The deputy leaned on top of the car roof as he dropped his head to the rolled down window; "You say it was luck. I'd flat out call it a miracle. It's pure grace -- the fact that you two survived this flood in this narrow canyon. In my book, it's the definition of grace."

The lawman paused to think before his next words, "You know sir; I've been enforcing the law for a career for twenty-four years. I can explain the law, but there's been a few times in my twenty-four years I've seen some things, things I can't explain. I'd say by the laws of nature you and your son should have been swept to your death last night. I'd say it was grace that saved you from that fate. It is a mystery. And it is also a mystery as to who gave you the good news about your son. Sometimes it ain't nothing but grace. Pure grace."

Joseph felt stunned by the deputy's synopsis of their survival. He didn't really have an argument or reason for his survival, especially Victor's. "With all due respect officer, I am not the kind of man who relies on or expects this 'grace.' I am a proud man of reason. In last night's terror and destruction of lives -- I am not the kind of man who even asked for any 'grace' from the divine, or whatever. Last night I did not pray and I did not ask for grace, or luck. I just tried my best to survive. I do not hold to superstition. I have my doubts about grace."

"Well, whether you asked for grace or not -- I think it came to you and your son last night. Whether your pride will let you believe it or not, the good news about your boy was delivered by a messenger of grace. You can't accept it and I can't explain it. It's a big mystery the way I see it. Grace, it just comes."

Victor pulled himself back into the world of the living, and looked at no one in particular, and asked, "Do you think we could go get some breakfast?"

The officer looked right at the kid and said, "Yes sir! I'll take you two boys into town, get you into some dry and warm clothes and get you looked over and then we'll load you up with some hot breakfast. I'm afraid we'll have to fill out some paperwork also."

The deputy moved both Joseph and Victor into the backseat of his patrol car, telling them that the amount of water that came down Moses Creek last night did enough damage to parts of the highway in the river valley to make it impassable. They'd have to take "the scenic" route back to Loftenberg by way of Emmaus. He apologized that this longer route was going to keep them from breakfast a bit longer.

Joseph's mind was not allowing him to sleep in the back of the sheriff's car, rounding curve after curve as he wrestled to wed his grateful heart with his perplexed mind. He needed to offer a coherent explanation for Victor's survival and the appearance of the stranger who delivered the good news to him.

As the deputy drove them through Emmaus, he glanced in his rear view mirror and saw that the father in the back seat was not asleep like his son. About seven miles beyond Emmaus, the deputy spoke for the first time to his passengers, "Hey, take a look at this. I think some kids came by this here little church and messed with Sunday's sermon title. This time they changed it to:

The lawman slowed as he passed the altered marquee. "I can't remember what it was supposed to say -- but I know it wasn't that. Maybe that's kind of funny, sort of clever in its own way, you know. But I can't help but think, especially after finding you two alive after last night, that there are unexplained things out there that you shouldn't mess with if you were truly wise. But in the end, I think God just looks down at our smug little lives and says, 'People, enjoy and lighten up, accept a little grace -- learn to take a joke.'"

The car accelerated again as the deputy continued, "In my mind that's what I was talking about when I mentioned grace. Grace is kind of an unexpected joke played on us by our creator. We might not even ask for it, but here it comes anyway."

Joseph sat silent for a moment, then said, "Yeah, maybe. That sermon is probably going to be titled, 'Your God is now here', or something like that."

As they pulled into Loftenburg, Victor, lifted his heavy eyelids and with a faint smirk and asked, "Mister, can we have grits with our breakfast?"

The deputy slowed the car and answered, "Victor, you don't need to ask for grits with your breakfast, they just come."

Victor looked at his father next to him and then smiled, "Good, that's what I thought.

I guess some good things just come without asking. Like last night's grace."

Joseph put his arm around his boy, "And like this morning's grits."

Victor hugged his dad hard and broke into a huge, warm smile, "Like grits."