Reflections

Mandi Fugate Sheffel

I awoke to the smell of gas, dank water, and mud, and it was hot and sticky, and the sheets stuck to my skin. No light was coming into the room, and from the window, I could see a boat where Highway 160 was supposed to be, and the emergency lights from the James Still Learning Center gave the water an orange glow. I checked my phone, and there were calls and text messages. People thought I was dead because I didn’t have any service, and I couldn’t respond to any of those messages. I didn’t know people were dying and hanging in trees just down the road. I didn’t know all the hollers had filled up with water, and people searched desperately for higher ground. I woke up my roommates, waited in the dark, smelled the smells, and wondered what first light would bring. Gone were the tears of joy from just 12 hours ago. Gone were the happy, warm embraces. Now, people were panicking and crying and looking for an escape. People loaded their cars and wanted to go home, but I was home, and there was nowhere; there was no escape for me. And daylight brought more heartache, and the flood mud filled the air. It stayed there, and trailers wrapped around trees, and the bridges floated downstream, and piles of rubble, tires, and trampolines and front porches, building up like dams and helicopters and lifeboats filled the streams.

With a borrowed crowbar, I pull nails and wood-paneled siding from the wall. Remove the soggy pink insulation and throw it in a pile in the middle of the room. The foreman says, “Everything up to the water line must go.” He calls himself the foreman but I’m no construction worker. The room smells of dank water and flood mud. It’s hot and sticky, and the July humidity sticks to my skin. The mask on my face, wet with sweat, makes it hard to breathe. And I want to pull it off and throw in that pile of insulation, but I fear what’s in the air, what we’re stirring up. People are already sick with some kind of lung fungus from the shit mixed with mud, baking in the heat. I wonder if this house is even worth saving. It’s hard to see the home that was here before. All that remains are remnants of a family I’ve never met and will never meet. The brown reflective eyes of a mounted deer watch as a team of volunteers make the decision of what stays and what goes. Family photos are yellow-streaked, and the ink is running off the pages. Clothes, papers, pots, and pans are all in a trash heap in the front yard. When four feet of water engulfs a space, there’s nothing left to save. With the walls down to the studs, I drag a construction bag into the bedroom and work my way through the rubble. Pick up a magic eight ball and give it a shake. Quietly, I whisper, “Will things ever be the same?” The blue triangle bobs then becomes clear: “Outlook not so good.” I find a pill bottle, or a pill bottle finds me. It seems like drugs are always finding me. The voice inside me, the one I have to convince every day that we don’t need pills today, looks at the label. It’s nothing good. It’s not Oxycontin or Percocet or Xanax, and even if it was, I won’t take one. I’ll throw it in the bag. But I hold it a beat longer than anyone else might cause I remember what Oxycontin feels like. Sometimes, I taste that bitter burn that used to run down my neck from my nose. This house ain’t a far stretch from the houses and broken-down couches I snorted pills on. In the days, I was high. More and more, I think about getting high. Floods and viruses are lonely.