Flood

At the sharpest curve of the Fox River sat an aged farmhouse. Its worn clapboard siding was sun-faded and wind-torn. Windows sagged forlornly and the back steps invited one to a bog of mud. Days of rain had swelled the river, and floods threatened to break loose just twenty feet from those back steps, where Old Man Haven now stood with his pipe.

With his rheumy eyes on the swollen river, the old man saw a different vision, a memory ghost from decades earlier. Children's voices floated from his mind, splashes from the rocky river bank, an indistinct howl from a suddenly soaked sibling. Grass replaced the mud; shining white paint gleamed from the house's walls. Sunshine lit the scene with hope, with a light and carefree song.

A cloud loomed; the memory vanished in the outbreak of rain. Old Man Haven grasped for it but lost. It floated away on Time's river, like the children he'd once had, the children who would never grow any older. A season of influenza had claimed them all, silencing their shouts and laughter, leaving them cold and lifeless. That season was that last that Old Man Haven had bothered to care for the house or the yard or the river that flooded the yard and left only decay in its wake. There was no sense in caring for anything if it was just going to be taken away.

Old Man Haven stood in the rain, feeling its cold seep into his bones, and waited for the flood.