"Reed, Robert - OurPrayers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reed Robert)

made people around the country notice us. Mountainous ice jams pooled the
runoff. The Grand River was plugged up for a week, the Interstate closed and
white slabs of ice bulldozing their way through several towns. But the coverage
was only national at its height, and then only for a few days. Nobody was killed
until an elderly couple drove through barricades and onto a flooded stretch of
highway. I watched that drama on television. Live. It was more exciting than any
TV fiction, I'll confess. Scuba divers dropped from a helicopter, perching on
the sunken cat's roof. Genuine heroes, they wrestled the limp bodies out of the
cold foam, and only then did I feel a little guilty. I was enjoying the
spectacle. Strangers had died, but I felt superior. I was warm and dry, safe
inside my own house, and some wicked little part of me enjoyed the tragedy, even
wishing for more of the same.

We lose our levee before dark. It's not our sandbags that fail, nor our backs.
It's the meat of the levee itself, months of saturation leaving it soft and
pliable, and porous. Two, three, then four places give way from below, water
boiling up, nothing left to do but retreat and curse the luck of it. For just an
instant, I consider slipping off to see my house one last time. It's back from
the river, on slightly higher ground, and maybe there's hope. For the ten
thousandth time, I entertain the image of building a private barricade, saving
my property with a single superhuman effort. But one of the painful lessons in a
disaster -- the lesson that comes as a surprise -- is how weak and ineffectual
each of us can seem. The difference between human and superhuman is about two
rows of sandbags. Which is rarely enough, I've learned. Time after time after
time.

In the end, we're trucked to high ground and a refugee camp. Rain begins again,
light for the moment. Half a dozen video crews record our stiff climbs out of
the trucks. CNN is here, of course. And ANBC. Plus a Japanese crew, and a
Russian one. And the Brazilians. Plus a group I don't recognize. Dark little
Asians...Indians, maybe?

None of them speak to us. Maybe news of the fistfight has made its way through
the ranks. Or maybe even the reporters realize that there aren't any new
questions, and the old questions can't clarify what people around the world are
seeing. "A ten-thousand-year flood," I hear. "It's official." And I'm thinking:
What does that mean? Ten thousand years ago we were coming out of an ice age.
Each millennium's weather is unique to itself. And if memory serves, aren't we
in a new millennium? Maybe this will be ordinary weather for the next thousand
years. Who knows? I know it's not some asshole from CNN, let me tell you.

From the edge of the camp, past the water-soaked tents and prefab shacks, we can
see down into the river bottom. We can see the advancing waters. My house is
obscured by distance and the strengthening rains, and I'm grateful for the rain
now. I keep telling myself that everything of real worth has been removed. Even
my major appliances have been pulled out and stored. So why the hell do I feel
so lousy?

The Indian crew comes over and sets up.