Chapter 2 – The Rain

Like I said about the rain in central Texas, we usually don't get a lot of it here. To the north of us and to the south of us, but not in the central valley. So none of us were prepared for what followed.

It started rainin' on a Thursday. At first it was just a nice, steady little rain and we were all enjoying it. It rained like that Thursday, Friday and Saturday. It slowed us down some but didn't stop us. We have two big barns that we could work in, and that's just what we did.

By Sunday we'd all had enough of it. And that's when it really started to pour. It was raining so hard outside that we were back in the barns, working with the new crop of foals and the yearlings. Dandy was handling the horses that had a behavioral problem; I had no idea the man was so brilliant with problem animals. There's only so much you can do inside the barns, however, and somewhere around three o'clock we had to go back to our houses and pray that the rain would stop.

It didn't. On Monday it continued in a steady downpour, and I began to worry about flooding. My house was on an incline, as was Dandys, but Brets and Beaus were down at the bottom of the hill. We talked seriously about fillin' up bags of sand, just in case, and decided that would be on the agenda for Tuesday. By Tuesday morning it had become a necessity. The rain continued to pound down all through Tuesday and it didn't look like it was gonna quit anytime soon.

I got Bret and Beau together and we discussed what needed to be done. "I think the two of you better gather your families and the things you can't live without and come up to my place. We'll move the kids around so that you'll each have a bedroom and a dry place to stay."

"Do you really think the houses are gonna flood?" Beau asked.

"I do. The way things are goin' it could be sometime tonight or tomorrow."

"Poor Lily Mae. Just what she needs, nine more people to cook for." The look on Bret's face said it all.

"Don't worry about that. There's three extra hands that all know how to cook. We might have to eat in shifts, but we'll get it done."

"What about Pappy and Uncle Ben? You think their houses will be alright?" Bret had the right to be concerned, but I didn't think their houses were in danger. Yet. I was more worried about the livestock and the barns.

"I think they're fine for now. We'll keep an eye on their houses and see how it goes." Pappy's and Ben's houses were on higher ground than Bret and Beau's, but not as high up the hill as mine.

We spent the rest of the day moving a baby, four children, four adults and the necessities of life to my house. I wasn't gonna be any help in the cooking department, but I helped Lily make beds and move furniture. We moved Breton and Tim in with Beauregard and moved Lily Beth in with Maudie. That freed up the two rooms we needed. It wasn't an ideal situation, but it was the best we could do. At least Bret, Beau and their families would be warm and dry.

It was still raining on Wednesday, and the road was washed out. We spent the morning distributing the bags of sand and hoping they would be effective. The horses were getting restless, confined to their stalls, and we tried to take them to the two indoor corrals we had to give them a little exercise. Fortunately, the cows didn't care if they had room to move around, as long as they got fed.

We'd moved as much of the chicken coop as we could into the barn with the cows, but it was far from an ideal situation. The chickens were a noisy, smelly lot, and they were crammed into a coop about half the size of normal because that's all we could get inside. It was looking more and more like we were gonna have to move Pappy and Uncle Ben, and I had no more room. I rode up to Dandy's house and explained the situation. Given the choice of having Pappy and Uncle Ben as guests or Bret and Beau's clans, Dandy naturally chose Pappy and Ben. At least there would be two women there that could cook for them, and he and Bret didn't have to put up with each other.

Thursday was no different than the prior week had been. We'd been cooped up for so long that we were all beginning to go stir crazy. Me and Bret went down to see about his house, and he was a most unhappy man. The place was definitely flooded, with mud and debris everywhere. "I guess you'll be getting a new house," I told him and he made a face.

"You know what a pain that's gonna be? Ginny should be happy, she was tellin' me just last week how old and worn out our furniture was. It's gonna be expensive."

"Well, there's not much you can do about it. Let's go see how Beau's house has fared." And I headed back out the door.

Beau's house was even more of a mess. Anything that had avoided Bret's had taken refuge in Beau's. I could tell that Pauly was gonna be a real busy man for the next several months. The count stood at two houses and a new chicken coop so far. "Let's go check Pappys and Bens places."

"Good idea," I told my brother as I slapped him on the back. "Guess you're gonna be guests at our house for a while."

"That should be interesting. Can you just imagine what Ginny and Doralice can cook up when they're together all day?" Bret seemed to find that funny.

"Don't remind me," I shot back.

We went to Pappy's house first. We had laid sandbags up against his front door, and they seemed to be effective. So far so good. It was still dry inside, and we wasted no time going to Ben's. Ben wasn't so lucky, even though we'd done the same thing with the sandbags as we did at Pappys. Thy seemed to have slowed it down, however, as the mud and water had stopped about three feet inside the door. "I guess we better go check the barns."

Bret nodded his head and we set off for the cross-breed barn. There was a leak in the roof way back in the corner, but that wouldn't be too tough to fix if it ever stopped raining. Then we went to the livestock barn. That, sad to say, was a mess. There was water and mud everywhere; some of the cows had been standing in it for God knows how long. We herded the animals into the dry part of the barn and they weren't too happy because they were jammed in, twenty cows in a pen designed to hold ten at the most. Next was the barn where we kept the pregnant mares, and it, too, had been flooded. The stall in front had taken the worst of it, full of water and mud almost a foot deep, and we had a mare down. We rushed in to see what we could do, but she was already gone. It was one of the Arabian cross-breeds and she'd been almost ready to foal. I don't know who was the most broken-hearted, me or Bret.

We headed back to the house to clean up and get dry. Before we went in I looked up at the sky. It was dark and cloudy, the same way it had been for a week. "When is this rain gonna let up?" I asked my brother.

"God only knows. And even he might not be sure."

When we got back to the house everyone was there waitin' for us, anxious to find out what had been destroyed and what had survived. "Bret and Beau's houses are a total loss. Both houses are gonna need new furniture; what's there has been ruined by the water and mud. Pappy's is alright for now, but Ben's is gonna need some work. The mud has invaded the first three feet of it right inside the front door. The cross-breed barn's got a hole in the roof, the livestock barn was flooded, and we lost a mare that was about ready to foal. I don't know how much longer we can stand this rain."

"Which mare did we lose, Daddy?" Maude asked me.

I'd hoped that I wouldn't have to tell her right away, but that was not to be. "I'm sorry, honey, it was one of yours. The blue roan cross-breed that was in the front stall."

"Do you know what happened?" There was a tremor in her voice.

"No, sweetheart, I don't."

"It could have been trauma," Bret told her. "That front stall took the worst of the flooding, and the mud was pretty deep by the time we got to her."

"Is there anything we can do to prevent any further damage?" Ginny asked.

"If we had more sandbags . . . but we don't. I can't think of anything, Ginny. Bret, you got any ideas?"

"Yeah, but I don't think I can make it stop raining."

My brother, the jokester.