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I wake up the next morning with the sun in my face and the sound of rushing water everywhere. I’m still holding on to my brother Billy’s hand, where he fell asleep with his head on my hip. His face is smudged with dirt, so mine must be too. We’d sleep on the front porch sometimes, when the weather got too hot in the house at night, but this time it’s different. This time the chocolate water is rushing by and it’s so loud and I just want to make it stop.
I’m not really sure where we are now. The porch is the same — it’s got the same posts and railings and the same peeling paint on the floor, but everything around it’s changed. The only thing that I can see that I recognize is the IGA sign, but that’s supposed to be up the main road in town, not tilted against that tree across the street. Mama and I went to the IGA yesterday, ahead of the hurricane, to get candles and batteries in case things got bad. Mama said to me, “Abbie, we’re mountain people, and sometimes we have to just make do for ourselves.”
The porch has eight steps and last night when it got dark I could see two of them not covered by the brown water; this morning I can only see one step.
It was a long night, waiting for morning. The rain stopped just before sunset and then the wind came, howling like a blizzard, but it was a warm wet wind that I’d never felt before. Mama said it was going to be a one hundred year storm, and since I’m 9 and Billy’s 5, I figure we won’t see another like it. Which is fine by me. Billy put his head on my hip and I held on to his hand and we slept like that for a little bit. I had a dream about a boat coming by with two men in orange slickers that had EMS on them. Mama was in the boat with the men and she was holding two glasses of lemonade. They seemed to come right to us, to rescue us off the porch, like they knew where we were. But I don’t think anyone knows where we are cause our house is down the holla’ off the main road. It does all seem like a dream, the way the rain came down hard yesterday afternoon and wouldn’t stop, and the waves of water that came down the road. We felt the house start to move and I grabbed Billy and pushed him out onto the porch, but Mama couldn’t get out in time before the house slid down the hill and started to float away in the stream.
Billy wakes up and sits up close to me and I put my arm around him. He’s just a kid, so he doesn’t know what mountain people are like yet. He wants to know where Mama is and I have to tell him I don’t know, but we’ll meet up with her after the storm, that it’s a good house and it will take care of her. He starts to cry but I’m not worried cause Mama knows how to make do.
The water seems calm on top, like a lake, but I can tell it’s moving underneath cause bits and pieces of the town are floating by. If you didn’t know anything about our town, you could sit there on the porch with Billy and me and get a history lesson. There was Mr. Hurley’s blue truck, filled right to the windows with brown water and spinning real slow as it went by. Last summer we all loaded into that truck after our last softball game and he took us for ice cream. And there were lots of trees, and I wondered which tree was which, till I saw a big one wash by with a yellow ribbon still tied to it. That’s Mrs. Brock’s tree, she tied the yellow ribbon waiting for her son to come home from the war. When nothing washed by we’d just watch the swirls and shapes the water made. After a while the IGA sign just laid flat on its back like it was tired and floated clear away.
The sun is straight overhead, and the water seems to have quieted down a little bit. It’s flat and shiny like a root beer bottle.
“Abbie, I want to go find Mama,” Billy says. “We could just walk right off this porch and look for her.”
“Did you see Mr. Hurley’s truck wash by, Billy? That’s what’s gonna happen to us if we step foot off this porch.”
“Not that deep,” he says, and inches a little closer to the steps.
I start to yank back his shoulder, but that’s when we both see it, a long black snake with its head up, swimming down the river. Billy scoots back from the edge and leans up against me again. He looks up at me and his eyes are big and he says, “Maybe you’re right.”
It’s near lunch time; I can hear his stomach growl or maybe it’s mine. The wind dies down and it gets hot sitting on the porch. We sit side by side and I think I close my eyes when I hear some kind of motor. We can hear it whining over the rush of the water and I look up and see a red rescue boat, getting closer. And when it gets real close I can see two men in orange slickers with EMS on their jackets, and there’s a white dog that’s soaked and dirty, and when they pull up to the porch to help us in, I can see that Mama isn’t there. I hope she’s making do.
Richard Ferri lives with his wife in upstate NY on a property that thinks it’s a farm, with a dog who thinks she’s a person. He’s a software engineer and yet-unpublished short fiction writer who spends too much time in coffee shops and book stores.
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16 Responses to “MAKING DO • by Richard Ferri”
Comments
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January 13th, 2012 at 5:14 am
“Yet-unpublished short fiction writer”? Seriously? I’m having a hard time with the idea of this author never being published before; there’s just so much right with this marvelous story.
A great piece of story telling. So much shown – not said – about these children, their past and their future. They’ll make do, even with Mama gone.
BTW, does anyone else see a single metaphor? If there is one, it slipped by me. How in the world does an author write so descriptively without a single metaphor? It’s a talent I wish I had.
Five big stars from me, Mr. Ferri. I wish I could give your story ten.
January 13th, 2012 at 5:27 am
I enjoyed this engaging story from the first line to the last. I particularly liked the history lesson of the town summarized by bits of it floating by; and later, the calming of the waters compared to a flat and shiny root beer bottle. The plight of the siblings and the fate of their mother rang true. A fine story.
January 13th, 2012 at 6:05 am
I’ve read a lot of good stories lately, here and elsewhere, but a story this good is about as rare as a hundred year storm. Astonishing!
January 13th, 2012 at 6:48 am
@1 Interesting observation. I see there are barely any similes, either (like the root beer bottle).
I think the first-person present voice lends itself well to…active writing. There is less need to make narrative parallels based on metaphor, simile, or raw symbolism. You can just write about what is going on, and if you can nail the voice (which this clearly does), you’ve got lightning in a bottle. Not to take anything away from the exquisite writing. I especially liked the line about the brother having smudges, so the must, too. Says so much so simply, and establishes characters and setting, to boot.
I think this becomes a great example of why playing around with POV voice and verb tense (at least trying to imagine different angles) can be so important in writing and revising.
January 13th, 2012 at 7:09 am
What an odd setting. Very atmospheric and well-written. Thanks for the read.
January 13th, 2012 at 8:06 am
Richard. Dude. Gather up your stories and submit them someplace. There are hungry readers out there eager to read your words. Good job!
January 13th, 2012 at 8:12 am
A girl and her brother stuck on a porch after a flash flood takes their house (and mother) away, wondering what’s going to happen next. Lots of good places to go with that premise…and lots of bad places.
Fortunately, this went the good route, making it a clean, simple tale without hysterics, overwrought life-lessons, or maudlin sidebars. Very well done.
If this is how Mr. Ferri always writes, then his published credits are going to skyrocket, and he will more than “make do”. Five stars from me…..
January 13th, 2012 at 11:07 am
Gorgeous story. Beautifully drawn, pitch-perfect voice and hit strong levels of emotion without sentiment. Kudos, sir! Five huge stars well deserved.
January 13th, 2012 at 3:33 pm
Congratulations on your first well-deserved publication. I loved the 9-year-old’s “trying to be grown up” voice. Very enjoyable read, sir.
January 13th, 2012 at 5:03 pm
from start to finish, a writing triumph. gripping story well-told and believable. the scene and the kids will stay with me for a long time to come.
January 14th, 2012 at 3:13 pm
Wow. This was so realisic and sad, but I loved every minute of it.
January 14th, 2012 at 6:18 pm
Perfect.
January 18th, 2012 at 5:48 am
I’m torn with this one. As a piece of writing it’s great – an unusual situation with the kids stranded on their porch, plenty of good description of the water rushing by and the things floating in it.
As a story, though, I’m not so sure. I know there’s a lot of debate on this site and beyond about whether flash fiction needs to be a story (in the traditional sense) or not, but I like to see a change of some sort. The kids in this story wait to be rescued, and then the rescue boat turns up. They don’t have to do anything, and their experience doesn’t seem to affect their relationship or anything else.
The opening sentence makes this seem like a scene or an extract from a longer work, and that story would be something I’d be interested to read. Any plans to extend it, Richard?
January 18th, 2012 at 4:38 pm
Wow. Fully agree with Debi (#1), Melanie (#2) and several others. This is a very impressive piece of writing.
January 19th, 2012 at 3:35 am
Hi All,
I just wanted to thank everyone for reading the story, and for their votes, compliments and questions. And of course to EDF for providing the forum for newbie writers like myself.
I wanted to address Mr. Dan Purdue’s questions. Dan, I consider the piece to be self-contained, and currently don’t have a notion of writing it longer. When I originally wrote the piece, I thought the ‘history lesson’ of the town floating by could go on quite a bit longer, and it would actually be a story about the town, but the writing got too introspective for my taste. As for whether Making Do is a story or not, I can never figure this out with my writing. I think it meets some definitions, in that it has a protagonist, conflict, obstacles and resolution. I think the change in the protagonist is implied, in that Abbie has gone from having a house and a mom to being homeless and maybe an orphan. Maybe I took some latitude here in that it’s flash. I’m not sure I understand your comment about the opening. My intention was to start the telling of the story with the morning after the flood, and alternate the telling of the story between past and present. So the telling of the story begins after much of the action has taken place.
If anyone would like to discuss more, perhaps we should take it off forum – I’m rferri@mac.com.
And thanks for reading my stuff, Rich
February 12th, 2012 at 8:21 am
Loved the quiet introspection of the Voice of Abbie with the memory of a terrible storm hovering in the background- fury without sound told by the flotsam trolling by in the river. The kids…made do… in a difficult time.
Knowing that you are a first time newbi writer, I’m tempted to offer some of my writing to this site but am still nervous. Never have taken any class, its all just out of my imagination.