The Year of the Flood

by LOUIS BROMFIELD

1

THE rains began, cold and dreary, early in April, and day after day they continued through April, through May, and into June. Meanwhile, the fields grew wetter and wetter, until at last the hillsides themselves began to weep, the water oozing down the slopes onto the lower ground. In the flat country to the west of us the fields became lakes of water, sometimes almost unbroken for miles across the level rich fields.

In our county, oats should be planted as early as possible, for winter oats, seeded in the autumn, rarely weather the rigors of the northern winter, and a farmer cannot afford to gamble on them. Oats planted in March have the best chance of success. In 1947, planting in March was out of the question, for the fields were still frozen and covered with snow. The usual “false spring” which allowed us to put in early oats did not come at all, and then the rains began, falling day after day, in showers some days, in drenching downpours on others. And always it was cold, so cold that even the wild flowers and the morels (those first delicious woodsy fungi that grow in the deep forests under ash trees or in old and dying orchards) grew confused. A sudden burst of sunlight brought some of them into flower and fruition only to meet disaster on cold frosty moonlit nights. The bluegrass, watersoaked and cold, languished instead of growing and kept the restless cattle (who know better than we do when spring should be at hand) prisoners in the barns and soggy barnyards. They mooed and cried out in their restlessness, the sound of their mournful voices drifting far across the woods and hills. Charley Schrack, standing in the doorway of the barn, watching the fields drenched by gray rains said, “I can’t remember anything like it in fifty years.”Lots of farmers talk that way when drought or floods by persistent rain begin to spell disaster, but this time it seemed to me that Charley was right, for it rained when it looked impossible. Rain seemed to fall in cold, frosty weather out of skies that were comparatively free of clouds. It was as if the heavens were a gigantic shower bath with a small irresponsible child playing with the chain which released the water.

In modern agriculture, the weather is about the only thing which a farmer cannot somehow control. Against the next most catastrophic potential — a sharp disastrous fall in prices — the good farmer can protect himself and manage to survive, but when the rain comes in floods at planting time or refuses to come at all for one dreary week after another, there is not much that he can do. And flooding rains are worse than drought; a farmer can irrigate dry burning soil if he possesses t he facilities; he cannot mop up heavy persistent floods.

At Malabar and among the hills of our neighbors we were better off than the flat-country people, for the water did not stand in lakes on our hills of glacial gravel loam. The worst we had to face was the seepage spots and “wet weather springs which appeared here and there, sometimes at the very top of a hill. These we could plow around, leaving them waterlogged and fallow, for another and better year. Our soil was loose and open and you could work it wet without too much damage if there was enough organic material mixed with it. And we had the advantage of mechanization — that when there was a break in the weather we could get into the fields and, with tractor lights burning, work on shifts all through the night.

And that was what we did during the awful spring of 1947, and so somehow we got ninety acres of oats into the ground, some of it in land which had been rough plowed the autumn before and was all ready for disking, fitting, and drilling. We got in our oats in one of those two-day breaks when, if the sun did not shine, the rain at least did not fall. Then the rains broke again and the cold persisted and in three or four days the oats were through the ground in a pale, misty shimmer of lettuce green across the wet brown fields. And our hearts and stomachs felt better and our pride rose, because we had in the ground probably more oats than any farmer from the Appalachians to the Great Divide.

Copyright 1948, by Louis Bromfield

There is in every good farmer a curious, overwhelming, almost malicious pride common to the human race but especially well developed in the cultivator. It is born of satisfaction in being “smarter” than his neighbor, in having his acres look greener, in getting in his crops earlier, in having fields where the hay or the pasture is heavier. Every good farmer takes a kind of perverse satisfaction in the discovery that his neighbors’ fields look poor. The sight of a poor crop in someone else’s field somehow warms the heart of the farmer whose own fields are lush and green.

The pride of a good farmer is often his worst sin, but it is also what makes a good farmer and what helped to feed this nation and the rest, of the world in the difficult years when lack of machinery and labor made farming a backbreaking, long-houred job. It is that same pride which makes the good farmer resist subsidies and government payments and all the paraphernalia of a “kept” agriculture. In his heart a good farmer wants to show that he cannot be “licked,” and that without help from anyone he can grow abundant crops despite every handicap.

That is why a good farmer grows short-tempered and desperate when the weather turns against him. With each day of drought or flooding rain, he becomes more frustrated and savage, because the weather alone he cannot lick altogether either by machines or muscle or long hours in the field. And so farmers everywhere that spring of 1947 grew illtempered and angry.

Still it did not stop raining. Time for planting oats receded into the distant unchangeable past, and time for corn plowing came along, and still it rained and stayed cold. There were no warm showers. There were only flooding downpours day after day.

2

SOLOWLY countless farmers abandoned all hope of planting oats. They talked of other crops and of putting all their land into corn. Corn planting time came along and still it rained. Here and there in our hill country one could see farmers dripping wet on their tractors, turning over sod ground for corn planting. Sod ground, especially in soil like that of our county, can be plowed fairly safely when it is still too wet because the roots and vegetation help to keep the ground open and aerated, and prevent it from packing. We too plowed sod in the rain and turned under the acres of rank sweet clover on the loose, alluvial soil of the farm we rent from the Muskingum Conservancy. We dared not even put a tractor wheel on the small acreage of waterlogged clay.

But even after the ground was plowed it was too wet to fit for planting. Day after day went by, each rain bringing us nearer to the last date at which corn could be planted and have any chance of maturing before the average frost date of October 4. Then the rain stopped for a couple of days and again we worked night and day until all but ten acres of corn were in the ground. By our own standards at Malabar, we were three weeks late, but with luck that corn, changed at the last moment to a quickripening, short-season hybrid, would mature if the frost held off.

We were thankful that we had all our corn in save for the ten acres of clay which we could not touch because it was as wet and sticky as glue. So we planned to put that into buckwheat, let it serve the bees, and then plow it into the soil for the benefits it would give us the following year. “At any rate,” said Bob, “it will look pretty, and it’s better than leaving the ground bare or to grow up in weeds.”

And again, smugly and pridefully, we settled back aware that we had probably more corn in the ground than any of the farmers to the west of us all the way into the corn country, where the fields were still more like the carp ponds of Austria and Czechoslovakia than the fertile fields of the Midwestern breadbasket country. But still it rained and remained cold, and we began to worry over whether the seed would rot in the ground.

Then for three days the rain suddenly stopped, and capriciously the weather changed from cold to oppressively hot with a baking sun, and a new peril developed — that even with all the organic material we had pumped into the soil for years and the fresh crop of sweet clover turned under, the soil was so wet that the hot sun might bake the surface and prevent the tender, germinating corn from piercing through. So on the third day I climbed aboard the tractor, attached the rotary hoe, and drove it full speed back and forth across the surface of the cornfield because the faster you drive it, the more efficiently it works, breaking up the surface and throwing the tiny weed seedlings and bits of crumbling earth high into the air.

Driving at full tractor speed, I felt good. The sun was shining. The alluvial gravel loam was dry enough for the rotary hoe to work efficiently. The Conservancy farm lay alongside the big artificial lake formed by one of the dams of the Muskingum Flood Prevention Project. The lake beneath the clear skies and hot sun was a brilliant blue. The distant wooded hills were tropically green and lush from all the rain. The birds, mute during the weeks of downpour, chorused from every tree, bush, and hedgerow; and from the marshy land along the lake came the sound of splashing caused by the thrashing about of the big carp engaged in an orgy of reproduction. And in my heart was that gnawing farmer’s pride that we had outwitted even the weather. It was one of those fine days which are recompense for weeks of bad weather.

At sundown I drove happily home and ran the rotary hoe briskly over the plantations of beans, peas, and sweet corn. And then at suppertime as the shadows began to fall across the valley and the lush forest, there came a sinister note of warning. Out of the symphony of birds singing and the music of the frogs in the ponds below the house, there emerged a note which fell on the ears and assaulted my senses as violently as a shrill fife playing loudly and discordantly in the midst of a great orchestra. It was the cry of the tree frogs calling for rain. It. came from all sides, the same monotonous, trilled note which in time of drought can be the most lovely instrument in the whole symphony of nature.

Tree frogs do not, as legend has it, “call for rain.” On the contrary, they call when the atmospheric conditions foretell rain. They are not suppliants: they are prophets. I looked out of the window, and against the brilliant sunset big, dark, unmistakably wet clouds were piling up at the end of the valley. I couldn’t believe it could rain again.

When I pointed out the clouds, Bob said, “Well, we haven’t got anything to worry about. Think of those poor guys in the flat country with their fields still under water. Even if it stopped raining it would take two weeks for the ground to dry out enough to get a plow into them.”

Two things were certain: that we were ahead of most farmers and that no matter how hard it rained we had lost, and were losing, none of our precious soil. It stayed where it was meant to stay, held in place by that thick pasture and hay sod or the protecting sodded strip which prevented it from ever getting away from us.

Tired from the all-day jolting ride on the rotary hoe, I fell into the deep sleep that comes only after physical labor in the open air, the kind of sleep which you can feel yourself enjoying with an almost voluptuous pleasure.

I slept like a log until about two in the morning, when a prodigious clap of thunder which rocked the whole house awakened me. The thunder was bad enough but there was another sound even worse. It was the sound of rain on the roof, the sound of Niagaras of unwanted water streaming from gutters and spouts which could not carry it off fast enough. And above and through the sound of the rain on the roof came another sound of water even more menacing — that of the spring brook which ran through the garden below the house.

It was a sound I had not heard in seven years, since first we controlled runoff water on the hills and pastures above. Now, after all these years, the clear little creek was roaring again. I rose and went to the door. There I heard another sound, even more ominous — the roar of Switzer’s Creek a quarter of a mile away which had been clear and well-behaved, never going out of its banks since farmers upstream had begun taking proper care of their fields. Now it was roaring again. It could only mean flood.

With a feeling of helplessness I went back to bed. to lie there sleepless and worrying over the fact that all the work I had done with the rotary hoe was useless since these torrents of water would pack the earth harder than ever, worrying over the cattle, the calves, the horses in the bottom fields.

At daylight I went to the door and looked out over the valley. Part of the lower pasture was flooded but the livestock were safe on high ground, drenched and grazing peacefully in the downpour. Through the middle of the flooded field ran the swift, muddy current carrying with it whole fences, trees, rubbish, bits of hog pens, and even a brandnew milk can bobbing along on its way from some springhouse upstream to the reservoir lake below.

It rained thus until nine o’clock in the morning, when suddenly the awful downpour ceased and everyone on the farm — men, women, and children — streamed out of the houses toward the bridge over Switzer’s Creek. There was the kind of excitement among us which comes perhaps as a recompense to people in the face of destruction and disaster, a kind of exhilaration which brings all people, whatever their temperaments or differences of character, together on a common level.

With all the dogs, the men crowded into the jeep to inspect the farm. The wheat fields, so green and lush even the day before, were beaten down in spots as if a giant had flung great pails of water against the wheat. In the wild swamp and woodland we call the Jungle, the water poured through the trees high above the banks. Here and there a log or a tree had become lodged and collected a bundle of flotsam and jetsam, and the diverted waters had cut out a whole new channel. We stood there on a high bank, silent, watching the flood, awed yet somehow exhilarated by the terrible, incalculable power of rushing water.

3

THAT afternoon the air cooled and the bright sun came out, and two days later the gravelly cornfield was dry enough to repeat the whole process with the rotary hoe, all the long hours of rough tractor riding at top speed, to break up the crust all over again and let the young seedlings through. While I worked back and forth across a big sixty-acre field, the air turned muggy and hot once more and the wind shifted a little to the south, which is always a bad sign.

I kept listening above the rumble of the tractor for the sound of train whistles. In our country when one hears the whistles of the Pennsylvania locomotives it means dry weather; when one hears the B & O, it means rain. In midsummer one prays for the B & O. For once I wanted to hear a Pennsylvania whistle. Presently, as I was finishing the job with the rotary hoe, I heard a whistle. It came from a B & O freight train pulling up the long grade to Butler, and never have I heard it more clearly!

At about the same time great black clouds began to appear again at the head of the valley and the accursed tree frogs began to sing. I knew that once again I had gone over that cornfield only to have all my work undone.

At twilight I rode the tractor the two miles back to the house. The setting sun disappeared beneath clouds, and as I rode the drive up to the Big House, great solitary drops of rain began to fall. The water in the reservoir had already gone down about two feet in two days, leaving part of our oats field bare in time to save it. If we had another heavy rain it would mean, with the lake level above flood stage, that instead of the young oats plants being released before they were drowned, the whole field would be flooded again, and perhaps the cornfield that lay above it.

The rain was the same kind of flooding rain that had come down two nights earlier. Indeed it was worse, if possible. Eight o’clock came, and nine and ten, and still it poured. The little brook in the garden began to roar, and then from the valley came the louder roar of Switzer’s Creek.

I took a couple of good drinks and went to bed to read, thinking I could take my mind off what could only be disaster. But it wasn’t any good. I tried reading novels, agricultural editorials, magazines, but through all the print and ideas, good and bad, came the devilish sound of torrents of water pouring off the roofs and the rising roar of the little brook. And at last when my eyes grew tired and I began to feel drowsy, I heard the ring of the telephone.

Bob’s voice answered me. He was calling from his house below, not far from the creek. He said, “I think we’ve got a job. The horses in the bottom are scared. They’re running up and down crying out. One of them tried to get across the creek and is marooned on the island. We’ve got to look after them and the cattle.”

I asked, “Is it worse down by the bridge?” And his voice came back, “Brother, you ain’t seen nothing.”

I dressed, gloomily, worrying about the animals and especially the horses. Cows and steers are generally phlegmatic; they either take things calmly or go completely wild. But horses, and especially saddle horses, get frightened, like people, and for me the horses, like dogs, are people. I took only one of the dogs with me. I chose Prince because he is the steadiest of them all. Bob met me at the bridge, water streaming from his hat and jacket. He had an electric torch, and with that and the lights of the jeep I could tell quickly enough that I hadn’t seen anything until now. The water was so high that it was seeping through the wooden floor of the bridge and sliding past beneath with a terrifying speed. A whole log struck the edge of the bridge and made it shudder, and then slipped under the water out of sight in a second.

While Bob got his car I opened the pasture gate and drove through. Even the high ground was running with water, and wherever there was a depression the water stood in deep pools. The lights penetrated a little distance into the mist and driving rain, enough for me to see that only a rim of bluegrass remained above the flood. The lights picked up two things, both white: the white spots on the Holstein cows that had gone to the high ground and were either grazing or lying down, and the white blaze on the forehead of Tex, my own mare, as she came toward me splashing through two feet of water.

Tex is a beautiful Kentucky mare, and the proudest and the most spirited of horses. She rules the others and it is impossible to catch any of the others in the field until you have first captured Tex. The other horses follow her with docility. But she is not too easy to catch and likes to play a game of enticing you near to her and then suddenly kicking her heels and rushing off. But in the flooded field she wasn’t behaving that way, and now ran straight toward the lights of the jeep followed by another horse. As I got down she came up close and whickered. There were no antics now. She was afraid and wanted to be taken care of. Then the lights of Bob’s car were turned into the field and I saw that the other horse was Tony, who is young and strong, and by nature a clown. But tonight he wasn’t clowning. He too whickered when I spoke to him.

I recognized Tony with a sinking heart because I knew then that the missing horse was Old Red. Both of the others were strong and spirited and could have taken care of themselves even in the terrible current that was running, but Old Red was old and tired. He was a little deaf and nearly blind. He was the one you felt sorry for.

4

OLD RED had brought up the little children until they had learned to ride well enough to handle the younger horses. If they fell off he would stand still until they picked themselves up and climbed back on. He never got flustered or showed off and reared like Tex, and he never clowned as Tony did. We bought him, when he was twenty-one years old, because he was calm and docile. He wasn’t a clever horse or a spirited horse or a beautiful one. He was always just a kind, patient old slob. And now, at thirty years of age, with his joints stiffened and his teeth mostly gone, he was marooned on an island in the midst of a roaring flood such as the county had not seen in half a century. I wished it had been one of the others.

As I took hold of Tex’s halter, for the first time without her giving an indignant toss of the head, Bob came up out of the darkness and rain and mist with the light. He was carrying a long rope.

“I thought,” he said, “we might need this to get over to the island to get the horse off.”

I told him the missing horse was Old Red and that I’d better take the other two to the barn before they turned completely panicky and uncatchable.

Tex led easily enough. She wanted the dry safety of the barn, and Tony followed as always at her heels. Prince, despite the fact that, like all Boxers, he hates getting wet, trudged along beside us, his ears down and his stub of a tail pressed low in an effort to get it between his legs. Bob went off through the water to check on the cattle on the high ground.

I discovered on my return to the field that the water was still rising. Far off through the rain I could see the faint glare of Bob’s torch as he checked the cattle, and in the light from the two cars I could see the stream of logs, trees, and driftwood moving swiftly down on the surface of the current, but I couldn’t see the island or Old Red.

I waded into the water and was joined presently by Bob, but as the water rose higher and higher above our ankles and knees, it was clear that we were never going to make the island.

Then the willows of the island emerged but there was no island. There was only swift flowing water covered with leaves, bits of sod, and branches. And then out of the mist, catching the light from the cars, appeared a ghostly Old Red. He was walking up and down, whickering loud enough to be heard above the sound of the water.

I called out to him and he stopped, looked toward me, and then started in my direction, but as soon as he reached deeper water he turned back to the island and the shallow water.

There wasn’t any way to get to him. The water had risen so high that on the whole of the farm there wasn’t a rope long enough to permit us to reach the island, and even with a rope tied about your waist, there wouldn’t be much hope of getting through the torrent. Even if I made it, there was small chance of getting a horse in a panic to follow me.

I shouted to him again and again, and each time the old horse started toward me and each time when he got into deep water he turned back to the island.

Meanwhile both Bob and I were drenched. The water ran inside our jackets and down our bodies. Prince, miserable in the dampness, crouched beside me. At last I gave up. “There’s nothing to do,”I said, “but hope that he’ll stay there and that the water won’t get much higher.” And so we turned away with a sickening feeling through the rain and water, leaving the old horse where he was. We had hot coffee at Bob’s house, and as I said good night to him, he said, “Maybe I opened my big mouth too soon — saying we hadn’t anything to worry about.” I laughed, but I knew what he meant — that probably sunrise would find most of our corn and oats deep under the waters of the big lake.

By the time I got back to the bridge the planks were under water, and before I drove across it I got down to make sure that the planks were still there and the bridge safe.

At home Prince and I dried ourselves off and joined Mary for hot soup and a snack. Then I went to bed after taking two sleeping pills so that I would not waken in the still early hours of the morning and hear the terrible rain and think of Old Red.

It was nearly eight when I wakened. The rain had stopped. The old orchard on the hill above my room was streaked with early morning sunlight, and the red sandstone rock looked brighter and the trees lusher and greener than I had ever seen them. But in the back of my mind there was a sore spot which could not be healed until I knew what had happened to Old Red.

I went to the windows at the other side of the house which overlooked the bottom pasture. The water had gone down and the surface of the island, littered with branches and trees and old boards, was now above the flood. But among the willows there was no sign of Old Red. I felt suddenly sick and in a last hope I thought, “Perhaps he is all right after all. Perhaps he’s just around the corner below the slope.” And I went back to the far end of the house and looked out, and there behind the slope, peacefully munching bluegrass with the few teeth he had left, was Old Red.

After breakfast Kenneth and I climbed into the jeep with the dogs and set out for the Conservancy farm. From the Bailey Hill we could see the lake — an enormously enlarged lake covering twice its usual area, with clumps of trees here and there, barely visible above the water. The road was under ten feet of water and the bridge structure was out of sight.

So, turning round, we took to a rutted abandoned old lane and the open, soggy fields and somehow we made it. As we came over the crest of a slope, we saw the full extent of the disaster. All the oat fields and half the corn land were covered by water, and here and there in low spots in the field were great ponds of water as big as small lakes.

This was, in reality, a disaster. We sat for a time in silence looking at the wreckage. It wasn’t only the money loss, but the loss of the long hours of work and care we had all put into these fields.

For three weeks most of the Conservancy farm remained under from five to twenty feet of impounded water, kept there to prevent its menace from being added to the already disastrous floods on the Mississippi. When the water went down at last, not one living thing remained, but only the desolation of logs and fence posts and driftwood scattered across the barren fields. Even the trees were killed along with the blackberries and elderberries that filled the hedgerows. We had not only lost our crops, but we had to clear the fields of their debris.

5

GOOD farmers are by nature optimistic; otherwise the uncontrollable vagaries of Nature — the floods, the droughts, the plagues of locusts — would long ago have discouraged them and the world would have been left starving. We were no different from other farmers — we hoped that the great flood had marked the end of the persistent intolerable rains.

We were wrong. June passed into July and still the rain continued, not just showers, but cloudbursts coming sometimes twice a day. Even the fishponds overflowed, and big trout and bass escaped into the Clar Fork and the lake below. Came time to fill the silos with grass silage and we began cutting and hauling but quickly found that every tractor had to carry a log chain so that we could pull each other out of the mud, a minor disaster which happened ten or fifteen times a day. Twice the big John Deere dug itself into the mud up to its belly and a string of four lighter tractors, chained together, could not drag it out. In the end, with four-by-fours chained to its giant wheels it succeeded in lifting itself out of the mud.

Somehow the silos got filled with the lush, heavy alfalfa, brome grass, and ladino, but even the grass was so full of moisture that it had to be wilted a long time before it could be safely put away. Weeds grew in the corn and more wheat was beaten down in the fields of which we had been so proud. The oats which remained grew more and more lushly, and all but the tough, stiff-stemmed new Clinton variety were beaten to the ground while weeds began to grow up through them.

Then the weather turned warm but the rains continued; and at night, when the air cooled, the whole valley was blanketed in heavy white mists which appeared at sundown, rising in smokelike writhing veils above the trees. For days the valley seemed more like Sumatra or Java than midsummer Ohio country. Rust appeared for the first time in our experience on the ripening wheat, and mildew on the leaves and fruit of the fruit trees. Some of the grapevines began to die back from the tops, a sign that their waterlogged roots could no longer stand the lack of oxygen and the wetness of the earth. Three times the vegetable garden was replanted and three times drowned out, sometimes standing for days under water.

Then came a brief respite which in itself was very nearly a disaster. There was no rain, but in its place there was a brilliant sun accompanied by hot winds which burned the moisture out of the topsoil but not out of the subsoil, where the water still soaked the roots of all vegetation. It baked a crust over open ground and burned the overlush leaves of the crops. At night the moisture still rose from the soaked ground in heavy blankets of fog. It was as if now the earth, rather than the sky, were raining.

Somehow we managed to combine the wheat, although we lost from five to fifteen bushels per acre of wheat literally beaten into the earth by the torrents of water. Except for thirty acres of good oats on the highest ground, the crop was ruined. In the heads there were no grains at all, but only chaff.

The short, vicious heat was only a delusion. As it came time to make hay and clip and bale straw, the rains began again. Ragweed grew higher and higher in the standing straw, and the hay, partly dry and then soaked, rotted in the fields. The whole farm, usually so neatly kept, acquired a disheveled, unkempt, half-tropical appearance.

And so it went, on and on, through the end of July and then August and well into September. Only the pastures and the new seedings gave us any pleasure or satisfaction, for they were lush and green, but even this was small compensation for all the lost labor and seed and fertilizer and the depression which arose from the sight of wet hay and weed-choked cornfields. The buckwheat planted later on wet ground produced a bumper crop, but few farmers take pride in lowly buckwheat, and the season was so wet that the bees could not even work the blossoms.

Then in the beginning of September the rains stopped and two weeks of hot weather day and night set in, and suddenly the corn, after dawdling along all summer, began to show signs of ripening and making a crop. The soil began to dry out for wheat plowing, and the miraculous resiliency which preserves farmers against utter and paralyzing despair began to assert itself.

Gradually the season began to recede into the past. It was becoming the “old season.” It was time now to plow and fit for wheat, to clip the bluegrass pastures and the weeds for the last time in the evil year 1947. With the turning of the first furrow the pride which was humbled began to rise again. The fields were full of moisture and the plowing was easy. The earth turned over behind the plow, dark and crumbling, and we smelled already the wheat harvest of the coming season, which we knew would be the greatest harvest we had ever known. The lime trucks began moving across the remaining worn-out high pastures, raising visions of deep, thick clover. In the desolated oat fields of the Conservancy farm and on the poor strips of the Bailey Place the sweet clover stood deep and rank. The new season had begun.