Dan Retsler sat on the hull of a half-submerged boat, the mud thick around his thigh-high fishing waders. In his right hand, he held an industrial quality flashlight; in his left a pocket knife. He was filthy and wet and exhausted. Night was coming and there was still hours of work to do, buildings to search, items to move. He had managed to send the warning out early enough to evacuate most of the homes along the river, but the destruction was still heart-rending, the loss almost unimaginable.
The trailers were the worst. The water had knocked them about like Tonka Toys, ripping them in half, crushing them, scattering them all over the low-lying valley as if they weighed little more than matchsticks.
They were worth about that much now.
He ran a hand through his hair, feeling the thick silt that seemed to have become a part of him. The foul stench of the mud might never come out of his nostrils.
The river looked so tame now, a narrow trickle through the valley. He had seen the Dee flood before: once after a particularly wet December, and during the 1996 February storms, dubbed The Storm of the Century by commentators who felt it was pretty safe to apply that label when the century was nearly done. But he had never seen anything like this, so sudden, so furious, and so severe.
The Dee was a tidal river which opened into Hoover Bay just south of Whale Rock. High tides and too much rain often caused the Dee to flood her banks, but the floods were low and fairly predictable. Until 1996, no water had ever touched the trailer park, dubbed Hoover Village by some wag, and until that morning, had never touched the highway winding its way along the valley and into the Coastal Mountain Range.
The sun was going down, turning the sky a brilliant orange and red, with shades of deep blue where the clouds appeared. The Pacific reflected the colors. Retsler stared at it, knowing that any other day, he would have stopped, appreciated the beautiful sunset, and called someone else's attention to it.
A hand touched his shoulder. He looked up, saw the coroner, Hamilton Denne, standing beside him. Denne had a streak of river mud on the left side of his face, and his blond hair was spiked with dirt. His silk suit had splotches and watermarks, and his Gucci loafers were ruined.
Denne's wife would probably have a fit--she came from one of Oregon's richest families, and despised the fact that Denne still insisted on doing his job even though they didn't need the money. If anyone asked her what Denne did, she would tell them he was a doctor, or if they pushed, a pathologist. She never admitted to the fact that he worked best with corpses. He was able to keep the secret because the coroner's position was an appointed one in Seavy County, and no one ever printed his name in the papers.
In his left hand, Denne balanced a clean MacDonald's bag and a cardboard tray with two styrofoam cups of coffee. He nodded toward the sunset. "This looks like the best seat in the house. Mind if I share it? I'll pay my way with food."
Retsler didn't reply. Any other time, he would have bantered back, said something about bribing a public official, or teased Denne about whether or not he could have afforded the food. But Retsler didn't feel like banter. He didn't feel like company either, although he didn't say so.
Denne handed him the coffee tray, then sat beside him. Retsler took out a cup and wrapped his hand around it, letting the warmth sink through him.
"Didn't know what you liked, so I got everything," Denne said. "Whopper, Fish something or other, Biggie Fry--"
"Whopper's from Burger King," Retsler said.
"Well, you know me," Denne said. "It was my first time at a drive-through window. The wonders of technology."
Retsler was too exhausted to smile. He knew it wasn't Denne's first time in a fast-food joint, since he'd dragged Denne to them countless times. Denne always protested, and then ate like a thirteen year-old at a basketball game.
Denne was holding the bag open. Retsler reached inside, and pulled out a Big Mac and fries. The smell of grease and sugar made his stomach cramp, but he knew he had to eat. He pulled the wrapper back and took a bite, tasting mustard, catsup, pickles and mayonnaise long before he got to the meat.
With the lining of his silk suit, Denne wiped mud off the boat's aluminum hull. Then he set the bag down, and rooted inside of it, pulling out a Filet O Fish. Denne had a penchant for the things, which Retsler always found odd, considering they lived in a place where they could get the freshest fish in the world.
"At the Club," Denne said, peeling the wrapper from his fish sandwich. He was referring to the Club at Glen Ellyn Cove, Whale Rock's gated community. "They have old maps of this coastline, some dating from the turn of the century. The last century."
Half of Retsler's Big Mac was gone. He was hungrier than he thought. He took a sip of coffee, waiting for Denne to finish. It was always easier to ignore Denne when the man was talking.
"Up until 1925 or so, this river wasn't the Dee at all. It was the Devil's River."
That didn't surprise Retsler. The Devil, in his opinion, had once dwelt on the Oregon Coast, eventually leaving behind his Punchbowl, his Churn, and oddly, his Elbow.
"When folks decided they wanted to bring tourism into Whale Rock, they shortened the name of the river." Denne took a bit of the sandwich and talked while he chewed. "Know why it was called the Devil's River?"
"Sea monster?" Retsler said. The food must have helped him feel slightly better. He answered Denne this time.
"No," Denne said. "That's Lincoln City. Devil's Lake."
Retsler wadded up the sandwich wrapper, and shoved it in the bag. He sipped his coffee. It was black and burned. He drank it anyway.
"They called it Devil's River," Denne said, "because it flooded unexpectedly fourteen times between 1899 and 1919. On clear nights, they said, the river would rise and fill the valley until this place looked like a lake."
In the distance, cars swooshed across the Dee River bridge, oblivious to the destruction hundreds of feet below them. The sun was gone now, leaving traces of orange against the night sky.
"You're saying this is not my fault," Retsler said.
"Acts of God happen," Denne said.
Retsler drained the styrofoam cup. "You don't believe that."
"Of course I do."
Retsler turned to him. "Hamilton, you and I've seen some strange things in Whale Rock."
Denne's eyes were hidden by the growing darkness. "It was a freak storm."
"You've never lied to me before, Hamilton. Don't start now." Retsler stood, grabbed his flashlight, and flicked it on. The beam made the mud glisten. "Thanks for the comfort food."
Denne had his elbows on his knees, his right hand holding the cup from the lip. "Dan," he said. "You didn't start this thing."
Retsler paused, wondering why that didn't make him feel better. Then he said, "And I didn't end it, either."
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