I Flooded the Creek

Jill hated the taste of tears. She hated the way they crawled into her lips like salty spiders. Dandelions bowed their heavy heads and tickled her calves as she sat and stared at the creek still dribbling from last night’s storm. The grass pushed water into her jeans.

She looked back and saw no signs of her father, but she heard him screaming her name through the trees, and the rage in his voice was enough to bring fresh tears to her face. Salty spiders, wrapping her cheeks in their web.

The tall elms overhead dropped their branches in sharp bouquets. She picked up the longest ones she could find and hauled them to the creek. The strip of water was wider than her stride, so she threw off her shoes and waded barefoot. Her tears slipped into the water and swam away.

She picked up a rock the size of her fist and weighed it in her hands. Rough, cold, and very, very heavy. With her other hand she dug through her pile of sticks until she found one the same length as her arm. Crack. It split in half over her knee. She drove it into the stream, and — Bang! Bang! Bang! The rock made sure it was there to stay.

Thunder blared, and her father’s voice faded to a howl in the distance. Crack. She could no longer feel the tears in her eyes. Bang! Bang! Bang! The stream found itself barred by a low picket fence, alla Jill.

When she was little, Jill had watched a beaver build its dam. She lived with her mother at the time, in the frosted hills of Vermont. Their little log cabin looked over a broad valley bottom where a little river wound its way through the grass and wild blueberry bushes. One day, her mother took her to the river and showed her all the dead poplars on its banks that had been girdled from the bottom of their trunks.

“Look,” said her mother, and Jill saw a pile of branches in the water that made her think of a bird’s nest. “No,” said her mother, “That’s a beaver dam.”

Come the summer rains, the little river would swell into a great, big pond behind the dam. Reeds took the place of the dead poplars, and Jill loved the way the mud oozed between her toes as she followed the footsteps of frogs and herons. Her mother watched her from a high perch on the hill, and spoke to her with gestures only the two of them understood. One leg raised in the air — heron. An arm above the head — tree. Both hands forward, palms facing out — beaver dam.

Her father only saw a dirty swamp.

“What’s that big puddle?” He said.

“A beaver pond.”

“Beaver?” He squinted.

“It won’t do us no harm, dear.”

“It will do me some harm, I tell you. I’ll have it gone.”

It was gone the very next day, and month later so were the reeds, and a year later so was her mother, and that was the last time Jill ever saw the cabin on the hill, and the first time she came to realise tears tasted like salty spiders.

Crack. The sky glowed with lightning. Bang! Bang! Bang! The last stick wedged itself between two rounded boulders. Water was already beginning to pool behind the little weir, and Jill dug her hands into the bank to seize a loaf of rotten leaves that smelled like sweet syrup. An earthworm poked its head out from the debris and she pried it gently away. As she pushed the leaves behind the sticks, they soaked up with water and blocked the spaces in between. The rain came like an applause.

She stood in her pond and let her braids fall loose against her back like cold, slimy eels. The water rose from her ankles to her knees and cradled them like a mother’s touch. Her mother had cold hands, she remembered. Bad circulation, but it came with superpowers. Her mother could sense a storm coming because her kneecaps would ache where she broke them as a child.

When Jill closed her eyes she could see the reeds, and they grew so fast. They rose from her pond and latched onto the streambed with their roots and bent with the water to cover her weir in a green blanket. She saw dragonflies flit between the leaves and chase each other and dip their tails in the pond, and when she looked through the elm trees she saw a woman standing with her arms raised in the air. Tree.

“Jillian!”

Salty spiders crawled out from her eyes and forced them open. Footsteps tore through the woods and gnashed the leaves into flakes. The elm trees quailed and quivered like children. Jill planted her feet firmly in the mud and clenched her fists by her side to curb the shivers creeping through her limbs. This was her pond, and nothing could touch her. She turned to face her father.

“Jilian,” he screamed, “Come here!”

“No,” she said.

He drew the leather belt from his waist and uttered something vile, but the storm drowned his words and the rain drew a veil around Jill. She felt the creek pull against her as it grew from a trickle to a roar, but she stood firm even as the gargling torrent sheeted around her like soup poured from a pot. Her mother once told her that beavers built their dams so that they could live in deep ponds where wolves and foxes could not reach them. You can’t reach me either, she thought as she met her father’s eyes. They burned a nasty red as elm branches tore at his shirt like claws, and his boots slipped and sunk in the mud.

“Stupid girl,” he said, “See if I don’t make you sorry.”

She let his words pass over her like a wave. The surface of the pond writhed with bubbles, but in its depths lay calm, still water. With the rain on her lips, Jill could hardly taste her tears.

“See if you catch me,” she said, “See if I come.”