Raft People

By M.L. Katz

As the world is consumed by massive floods, one Texas family chooses to build their own survival raft in this climate disaster novel.

Before the Big Flood, Liz Green worried more about getting in trouble at school than global climate change. She lives on the Texas Coastal Plain with her single mother, brilliant older brother, and awkward younger brother. But as the water keeps rising, her family—along with billions of people all over the world—are stuck between the rising seas and snarled escape routes.

The military is overwhelmed and the wealthy are rushing to their secret ocean habitats. But a website called RaftPeople.com is helping ordinary people construct homemade crafts to float out of the disaster. Now Liz and her family must work together with their neighbors—a female special forces officer, and a retired naval engineer—to build their craft before their Houston suburb floods.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Apr 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9781618682604

Book preview

Preface | Leaving Leah’s Folly

Fifteen years after the Big Flood, I still regard every rainbow with suspicion. Years before the catastrophe, childhood friends showed me a Sunday school workbook that suggested every rainbow contained a promise that the world would never flood again. I saw plenty of rainbows suspended over a horizon of murky water as I hugged the deck of Leah’s Folly during the time of the Big Flood. I am studying a rainbow now. I can see bands of color fade in and out against a slice of washed-out sky. It is all beautifully framed by my office window. My nicely-mounted certificates and diplomas surround the window on both sides. Faced with recounting my family’s survival story, I feel mocked by the work of men and nature.

I remember asking Rabbi Gerson about rainbows and omens one morning when we stood on the deck of Leah’s Folly, the little homemade boat that saved us from the Big Flood. It had stormed the night before, and everything felt damp and clammy. Choppy gray water stretched out in all directions as far as I could see. On the horizon, the water just blended into the gray sky. Little streams of water kept flowing around the rails and structures on the deck. I wore flip-flops, and my feet were cold, wet, and blistered in a dozen places.

Rabbi Gerson had on gym shoes, and they were soaked through. His dark pants had faded from being splattered and badly cleaned so often. He wore a borrowed sweatshirt and baseball cap because his other clothing had been ruined weeks before. The rabbi’s untrimmed beard waved in the chilly wind. His chapped lips were set in a stoic grimace.

In fact, our mission that morning was simply to take our wet/dry vacuums and get rid of the pools of water. We hauled the battery-powered devices out of our storage shack and estimated that each of us would need to fill and empty the heavy things at least half a dozen times. The job promised to be tedious.

I looked around and saw our companion crafts, Devil’s Island, Bayou Drink, Moby Dick, Sisters of Mercy, and Mighty Duck, bobbing all around us. People on the decks of the other boats managed to shout greetings and wave. I should have been cheered up, but at that point in time, I could only see a band of luckless, but ridiculously optimistic, primates floating on the open sea.

I try to picture myself, the way I looked back then, as a teenage girl during the time of the Big Flood. I had magenta streaks in my frizzy brown hair. My clothes were a mismatched selection of whatever was not ruined or hopelessly filthy. I had lost a pant size, and lacked a belt. I tied up my jeans with a brightly-colored scarf. A deep frown pulled my chapped lips down my face. I must have looked like a sad clown.

Rabbi Gerson considered my questions, smiled at me and said, Liz, stop looking for good omens. Let’s just keep trying to be one. He touched his head, right below his hat, and he winked at me. This morning, we will focus on being the best deck cleaners that we can be. We will make sure that your mother, brother, and the rest of our people do not slip on a wet spot. How can our mission be any clearer?

He could have said a lot more, but as the weeks passed, Rabbi Gerson’s speech had become concise. Among the several crafts that floated together, he had an unruly flock of unreligious Jews, Christians, Moslems, Buddhists, Hindus, agnostics, and who knows what else. Some of us even suspected that a few Bayou Drink rafters engaged in some sort of island voodoo religion. Burdened by his own grief, and tasked with explaining the inexplicable, I believe that he had just decided, wisely, to mostly lead by example.

Now I must pull my eyes away from the window, and my mind back to the present. It takes some effort to stop visualizing the miserable deck of Leah’s Folly, and to watch my husband take a place on one of my guest chairs as I try to center myself in the here and now. Daniel stretches out in the corner, ankles and arms crossed, apparently determined not to be central to this conversation. Mark, my younger brother, just stands in front of my desk looking expectant.

How do you think we can describe a survivor? I ask Mark abruptly. That’s what our dear older brother Andrew asked for, right? They want to figure out what allowed us to survive a flood that covered almost twenty percent of formerly dry land in a few months. They believe, I suppose, that their analysis could help people in the future.

They say the strong survive, but most of us were not really strong, Mark begins earnestly. We just need to tell our story to explain how we pooled our strengths together. When something or somebody got lost or failed, something or somebody else always seemed to fill the void. His earnest expression and tone suggest that he had chosen his words carefully even if they strike me as trite. As he speaks, he looks intent, but his eyes focus on some point on the wall to the right of my own face. Daniel and I have given up on training Mark to make better eye contact.

I understand how Mark thinks, but I am already frustrated. Mark, Daniel, and I have been asked to deconstruct a particular type of flood survivor so some naval intellectuals can build a profile. My older brother, Commander Andrew Green, sent the request to Mark. Perhaps they believe the Dry Line will move again, and more people will have to start drifting. More likely, they just have some budget money to spend and this project seems a likely prospect to enhance their reputations while preserving their funding.

Fifteen years ago, everybody in this room belonged to a group called Raft People. These are groups of people who survived the catastrophic and sudden Big Flood on homemade or small crafts. Scientists still argue about the exact sequence of events that caused the seas to rise, but I plan to document what we heard, and when we heard it. All I know for certain is that we only had a few months to prepare, and lots of people had even less time. By the time we actually believed that the water was rising fast and far, a lot of options had already been closed to us. How can we tell anybody about surviving as Raft People when most of it still seems so accidental?

The strong survived? I ask my brother gently. From everything I saw and heard during the first months of the Big Flood, strong men with tree trunks for legs had about the same chance as tiny infants or nutty teenage girls. No one particular quality, like good health, a high IQ, an indomitable will, or even a lot of money, could guarantee survival. No particular infirmity, like advanced age, a disability, or mental illness would rule it out either. I am certain that I will say the same thing at the end of this narrative as I say at the beginning. All I can tell you is that survivors survived.

My younger brother, Mark, shakes his head as he paces around to stand over my shoulder to see what I am entering in my laptop. Daniel, my husband, still leans back in my comfortable client chair. I know he is listening, but he almost looks asleep.

That answers nothing, Mark says. They want to know what qualities increased survival chances, and you want to tell them it was just dumb luck?

Now I pause, almost out of breath from my long speech. I started speaking quietly, but I know that I am almost yelling as I finish. Mark barely notices. He paces around behind my chair. I wish he would just sit down. I sigh. In the end, I believe it mostly came down to luck, I affirm with a sharp nod, or a lack of it.

Luck, Mark snorts at me. He pauses to read over my shoulder again, as I record our conversation on my laptop. I have this great voice recognition software, and I just have to add in some details and make a few corrections. This way, I can participate in the conversation while recording it. The software makes me consider how odd our life has become as our society has become both more high tech and more primitive ever since the Big Flood. That topic alone could probably fill several books. I scribble a note to consider the subject for a research paper or a book. But right now, I have to stick with this task.

I do find Mark’s presence, hovering over my shoulder, very annoying. I have to suppress an urge to slap down my laptop monitor. But even as I begin to feel my pulse pounding, I know that I am not angry at Mark. I am angry at being tasked with this project that will force me to revisit a time I had rather leave behind me. I spent several months enduring discomfort, pain, and sometimes real fear, and finally, unsupportable grief. I have spent fifteen years trying to put it behind me. Now they want me to turn back and face the waters again.

As Mark circles around to the front of my desk I can’t help but think his face looks the same at thirty as it did at fifteen. Anybody who knew Mark in those days would be able to recognize him now. He even sports the same honey-colored mop of curls, and the same spotty patches of wispy beard. I bought him a new razor at the Big Box store, but I always have to remind him to use it.

I blow out a big sigh as Mark continues to circle my desk. Maybe flexibility would be a better word than strength, I say, tasting the term on my tongue. Our little homemade boat slipped under the radar most of the time. Multi-million dollar floating cities got sabotaged or attacked by desperate people or activists. We coped with shortages and surprises, but they could not. We had back-up plans for our back-up plans, and the ability to change plans on the fly. We did not feel entitled to survive, as they did, and so maybe we stayed lighter on our feet.

Maybe if you could reduce this to a strategy game, larger investments would tend to generate more opposition attack points, Mark says soberly. The bigger projects take more damage, and they do not regenerate health as quickly.

I have to laugh as I turn my head to see if my brother is serious. Sometimes, with Mark, I have difficulty telling. I thought I had said something profound, and shockingly, Mark considered my words from the perspective of a gamer. I do not even want to think about those awful flood times, much less analyze them. But here stands Mark, reducing the whole tragedy to an online strategy game. Is that how he copes, or is it just the way he thinks?

I glance over at my husband. Daniel rubs his eyes with two fingers, with the palm of his hand over his mouth, I am sure, to hide his grin. The Big Flood reduced to a video game analogy almost undid both of us.

Mark, why not just create a video game called Sim Flood if you want to raise some money? Danny asks, speaking up for the first time. You can do just about everything else. I’m sure you could learn to do that. Maybe you can sell it to the U.S. Navy for a million dollars.

But Mark stands there, glancing back and forth with his mouth set in a grim line. Danny’s comment is not lost on Mark, but my brother chooses to ignore it.

"Remember back on Leah’s Folly, how we all tried to make interesting meals from our limited and diminishing supplies?" I say.

We made a sort of contest out of making good meals from whatever we had. Before the Big Flood, there was a popular cooking show, called Chopped, where chefs competed to produce gourmet meals from mystery baskets of ingredients. We called our version Swamped.

The meals were usually a lot better than they should have been, given our ingredients and working conditions, and they masked our shortages. Maybe those contests helped us engage in denial, but they also gave us something to look forward to as we endured months of discomfort interspersed with hours of real danger. We only really started to get depressed when supplies ran so low that the game was almost impossible.

Who says denial is always a bad thing? Daniel asks quietly. If they weren’t in denial, all of the adults probably just would have jumped into the water. Some part of their minds must have figured they would probably fail. We were still kids then, and we took our cues from the adults, so we were too stupid to realize how much trouble we were in. But the rafts did fail often. Experts estimate that only half of the Raft People made it to the Dry Line.

Which was a far better than average survival rate for all of the people in the affected areas, Mark points out. It was even better than the survival rate on the expensive habitats. He looks pointedly at Daniel.

You know what makes me want to cry? I ask. Without waiting for an answer, I say, If any of the adults could have looked through a time machine, and seen the three of us sitting around this office, I believe that they would have declared the whole adventure a great success.

My husband shrugs and nods. Mark stops pacing and looks pensive.

Maybe, Mark says finally, but we don’t really know what they were thinking. We only know what they told us, and we can probably only remember about half of that. This is going to be difficult. He sighs as he steps around my little desk, picks his way through the stacked piles of clutter on my office floor, and finally lands heavily on the sofa usually used by my patients.

I look up from the computer to watch Mark as he cradles the precious can of Coke I set out for him. I have to grin at him again as he lifts the can to his lips for a comforting sip. I imagine that is how wine connoisseurs sample a precious vintage. In our post-flood economy, a can of Coke costs a little less than some expensive bottles of wine, but more than some of the local, fruity stuff that can be purchased at the little market in town. I am still amazed that some people, Mark included, seem addicted to the stuff.

Danny is still sitting in my comfortable guest chair. He has his slim, hairy legs stretched out, with his ankles crossed, one beat-up gym shoe lying across the other one. His hands are, similarly, crossed across his belly. Even though Daniel’s abdomen has stayed flat, and his arms and legs are corded with wiry muscle, he makes me think of a Buddha. He leans back and listens to Mark and me with the detached smile he usually reserves for his patients.

I wish Danny would just tell me to give up because this exercise is much too painful. But Danny never takes sides when Mark and I argue. If he did, I fear he would support Mark. He smiles broadly, displaying his missing tooth. My handsome, brilliant husband has a jack-o-lantern smile. Along with everything else, I am aggravated that we have not been able to get that tooth fixed yet.

My therapy office, the one with framed diplomas on the wall, used to be the dining room of a fairly large rural home. I imagine large families, trooping in for festive gatherings on holidays and Sunday afternoons. Generations must have gathered here for comforting meals with their loved ones. Now people just come here to confront and spill their pain.

Daniel let me choose my office. After I asked for the old dining room, he cheerfully took over the smaller den. The den does have a nice bay window, though. My husband is always organized, neat, and professional. I am comfortable with a sprawl of books and papers, overstuffed pillows and stuffed animals for my younger clients. It is obvious that I need more space.

We use the old living room as a waiting room. We tried to keep it looking as much like a living room as possible, so clients can lounge on the overstuffed sofa or an assortment of comfortable chairs. We have piles of magazines, children’s books, and a few toys stacked on the big, blocky coffee table that came with the house. In the corner, we have a small refrigerator that contains cold water. I try to keep a large basket on top of the fridge stocked with packaged snack items that I buy in bulk at the big warehouse store.

Mark must have entered through the front door and stopped at the snack basket. Just now, he is ripping into a small bag of corn chips.

Danny and I want our clients to feel like guests. They fit us in between the drudgery and tedium of living in this post-flood, refugee town. Many of them are survivors, like us, but they are not all Raft People. Some were refugees on the road, and others lived well above the Dry Line, but lost family and friends, while they endured shortages and terrible anxiety. The only good news is that, as time passes, we see fewer children. Babies born during the time of the Big Flood are now as old as Mark and I were when we endured it.

Mark and I had been adolescents during the Big Flood, and Daniel had not yet turned twenty. Now, even Mark, my eternal younger brother, will turn thirty on his next birthday. I keep finding strands of gray hair on my own head, a legacy from my mother, I suppose. I remember that my mom grayed early too. Before the flood, she experimented with a series of dyes. By the time we got close to the Dry Line, she had turned from an ageless suburban mom into a silver-haired, careworn, middle-aged woman. I try to remember her looks from earlier photos I scavenged on the Internet, but somehow, she is frozen that way in my mind.

I have based my entire therapy practice around getting people to move on. I try to guide them away from the flood, and into the next chapter of their lives. I try to get them to take joy in their current situation and demonstrate that the lives they have rebuilt can replace their old ones. Now, Mark wants me to turn myself back to face the Big Flood. I am afraid of what I will find there, and I see no reason to live through those times again, even for the sake of science.

When Mark first approached me with Andrew’s request to compile my journal entries into some sort of narrative about our experience as Raft People, my heart started to race. How can something that I experienced that long ago still paralyze me with fear? Periodically, I have to battle my own vivid sense that I could open a door and the tides and fear would all come rushing back in. Compiling this narrative seems dangerous. It opens doors. Those doors may be the only thing holding back the water.

Maybe I will call demons if I speak their names too often.

All of the world’s top scientists have assured us that the Dry Line has been fairly stable for over a decade, and should mostly stay that way for generations. The catastrophe was acute, and not really chronic. The flow from the drilling accident has slowed to a trickle, and the icebergs seem stable again.

At the same time, ecstatic scientists are studying Antarctic life forms in lakes and fossils from rocks that have not seen the sun for millions of years. They even found the remains of a multi-million-year-old, eight-foot-tall primate, with a brain cavity larger than a human’s. Near the excavation are hotly-contested metal objects that several scientists claim are fabricated artifacts. While our ancestors were busy throwing feces at each other, were some genetic cousins forging metal? History may be more fantastic, if a bit grimmer, than pre-Flood people ever imagined.

But the experts never really warned us about the Big Flood until it was already creeping up into our backyards. They said the water would stop, and the water kept inching forward. The Dry Line may have stayed put for a decade, but I have learned through hard experience to regard nature and experts with suspicion.

Maybe Mark experiences something similar. That’s why he never really gets anywhere or finishes anything. He is just looking over his shoulder, waiting for the time when he will have to start scavenging again. Why should he build a legacy that he may have to abandon? I believe this. I could probably help Mark more if I did not feel the same way so often. But now, a sudden thought sparks in my head. It is so large it seems like it fills the room.

"We have never left Leah’s Folly," I announce suddenly. We have all kept quiet for a while, lost in our own different thoughts. When I speak, Mark almost seems startled.

We stepped over the Dry Line fifteen years ago, Mark says. Do you think we are living inside of a giant computer or somebody’s dreams, like in the old movies? But as he argues with me, he suddenly appears to be scared. His expression confirms my diagnosis.

Danny, from his corner seat, nods and smiles. Eureka, Doc, he says mildly. This huge thing, which just occurred to me, is something he already knew. He never confided it to me, probably because he thought it was as obvious as his missing tooth.

What are you talking about? Mark asks. "We left Leah’s Folly a long time ago. We left it balanced on top of that strip shopping center that was right under the water, and we never went back. He turns his head back and forth, taking in my expression of epiphany and Danny’s gap-toothed grin. You guys are nuts. He pauses, frowns at Daniel, and asks, And Danny, when are you going to get that tooth fixed? Do you need some money?"

Danny just widens his smile.

But this is important. I also choose to believe that Andrew wanted to give us a chance to strike back against that awful book, written by the equally awful Captain Marx. The former naval officer named his travesty I Am Mark Green. He had been the coordinator of Gulf Coast Raft People Relations during the Big Flood. That was, of course, when they still called it the Gulf of Mexico, and not the Sea of Mexico. In my humble opinion, Captain Marx must have been the most ineffective officer to serve our country, as well as being a terrible author. My older brother, Commander Andrew Green, probably cannot counter Marx directly, but I have to believe he is giving us a chance to get the story told from our perspective.

Captain Marx never spent one minute on Leah’s Folly, and mostly only communicated with us by radio. He portrayed us as lucky and mostly incompetent whiners and himself as a sort of super hero. Our own perspective is quite different. Worse yet, he painted an image of Mark as some sort of idiot savant. Mark did a lot to help all of the feeble, ill-prepared boats make it as far as they did, and he may be a savant, but he is no kind of idiot.

After the book hit the Internet, Danny and Rabbi Gerson gave several interviews to counter Captain Marx’s ridiculous assertions. Other members of our group even demonstrated at Captain Marx’s speaking engagements. Noble Dr. Pham spent three days in jail for trying to land a punch. But the whole time, Andrew stayed silent. Maybe he doesn’t consider it important enough to waste energy on. But again, I have to believe he just bided his time, waiting until he could get a credible account published.

Maybe the researchers believe they can reduce the ability to survive a near extinction event down to some particular scrap of DNA, psychological profile, or belief system. Maybe they just have some grant money that needs to get spent.

You’re the doctor, Mark says to me. Well, at least, you are the psychologist with a Ph.D. As you know, I never finished college. Andrew says you have to be the leader.

"Andrew sent you this request, I say. He never talks to me."

That’s just because you scare him, Mark said. His mouth twists into a half grin. Daniel wipes his hand over his mouth to try and suppress real chuckles. I suppress my own urge to pick up things to throw at both of them.

Well, I say, ignoring Mark’s unprofessional assessment of my relationship with my older brother, and Danny’s unspoken agreement, we survived because our contentious and mildly misanthropic mother decided that we should build some sort of ark out of fence posts, tires, and scraps. You and Mr. Thomson improved on that idea. Against all odds, the darn thing floated, and here we are.

Here we are, Mark echoed. And there you go.

He shook his head. A honey-colored curl flopped against his forehead, and he blew out a frustrated sigh. Liz, if we just send them that, I doubt they will pay us.

I had already concluded that Mark wanted to revisit the whole catastrophe because Andrew offered to pay us each three thousand dollars out of his grant money. In the post-flood economy, that could get somebody into a modest house with a good down payment, buy a decent used car, or pay for a semester’s tuition. We could get Daniel’s tooth fixed, and still have plenty of cash left over for our depleted savings account.

Maybe Mark thinks that Andrew is trying to do us a favor. And Andrew is certainly self-interested enough to believe that whatever is good for him, must also be good for everybody else. I am too cynical to believe Andrew has approached Mark out of a total sense of altruism, but not so cynical I would go out of my way to shatter dear Mark’s illusions. As Daniel already pointed out, denial may not always be a bad thing.

Mark lives alone in a manufactured house on our property. He cares about few material things beyond his precious laptop, multi-player game accounts, and a fast Internet connection. He never learned to drive. I figured he just wanted the money to hoard or spend more time dabbling at taking college courses. I could believe that Mark, unlike Andrew, is altruistic enough to want the money to help Danny and me.

Why do you want the money? I asked abruptly.

I hadn’t really thought about it, Mark said. But it is a lot of money. Besides, you and Daniel can surely use it. You might still have a kid. I am sure that Mom would want to know she went to all that trouble so she could have grandchildren someday. You just may want to get your mortgage paid off. I do your books, remember? I know that half of the clients pay you in eggs, hand-knit scarves, or repair work.

Daniel smiled again. And the other half barely pay us at all.

My husband and I had managed to get a cooperative loan for a few acres of land with a large, old house, a fairly modern storage building, and the manufactured home Mark lived in.

A local dentist, Dr. Chen, had owned the property before us. He figured our community, where everybody was a flood survivor, or closely connected to several flood survivors, could use a few more therapists. One of our fellow rafters, also a dentist, was distantly related to Dr. Chen’s wife. Pete Pham had put in a good word for us. Even though Dr. Pham chooses to altruistically practice his craft closer to the Dry Line these days, he made it his business to stay in touch. The local dentist had underwritten the bulk of the note, with extremely fair terms, and so he stood as our largest creditor. The rest of the financing came from dozens of investors who each contributed a few dollars. Social loan arrangements like this had become very popular these days.

Daniel and I mostly lived upstairs. We used the master bedroom for ourselves, and kept a couple of guest rooms in case Mark stayed over, or we had other visitors. Sometimes other surviving rafters from our little flotilla would travel through town. We had set up the remaining bedroom as a den, with a small TV set and sofa. Downstairs, we only used the kitchen as personal space. Everything else was dedicated to the therapy practice of Dr. Stern and Dr. Green-Stern.

Even though we lived modestly, we barely subsisted on our income. We got a little cash from renting out the storage building, and from payments we got from renting unused acreage for gardens. We also counted upon the rent Mark chose to contribute. Mark’s rent was variable, and it usually consisted of enough money to make up the current month’s shortfall or cash for emergency repairs.

Why do I air our financial problems and lack of forward momentum? I do it because now I see that only our bodies ever really crossed the Dry Line. Our minds, and our souls, still ride on Leah’s Folly.

Yes, Rabbi Gerson might tell me to read Exodus. Maybe he would smile and gently remind me to read about Job. He’d shrug and assure me that the water had wounded him too, and that maybe I should give him some professional advice for a change, seeing as I was no longer a child, but now a doctor. I can picture him smiling warmly and offering me a sandwich or piece of cake, all strictly vegetarian.

By the way, Rabbi Gerson had become a vegetarian on Leah’s Folly in order to keep kosher as well as he could. After months of abstaining from meat, and after all of the things we had seen, the thought of eating animal flesh repelled him. He called it New Kosher, and apparently there is a popular movement like that among the younger Orthodox Jews, and even some Conservative and Reform members of the faith.

Some Christians and even American Islamic groups are picking up on the idea too. The Christians also called their movement New Kosher, though the Moslems called it New Halal. Representatives from all three movements hold big happy conventions together, and bigger cities have restaurants and grocery stores totally invested in the idea. Many Buddhists and Hindus, who simply regard the New Kosher as their old dietary rules, have also joined in.

Though Daniel and I agree with these sentiments, and for economic, sustainability, and moral reasons we try to eat vegetarian meals most of the time, we still slide in an occasional night out for burgers or fajitas. Like a lot of other people, we succumb to our cravings for meat, and when we do, we just try not to think about it. I am pretty sure that the practice of eating meat, especially from unsustainable sources, has fallen into the gray areas of disreputable activities in this refugee town. I imagine that carnivores are regarded the same way that smokers were in the nineteen-eighties when no-smoking areas started to become more common.

On the other hand, Mark loves animals, and he always brings home stray dogs and feeds feral cats. He catches bugs and takes them outside, rather than swatting them. And I have seen him get stung trying to save a drowning bee in the neighbor’s pool. But I am pretty sure that his days usually include a stop for a bucket of chicken, a burger, or a bag of greasy tacos. Caring for live animals and consuming animal flesh just exist in separate parts of Mark’s mind.

Thinking about our experiences during the Big Flood makes me think about my patients. These poor people, my clients, cannot get images of drowned puppies, floating dolls, and much worse, out of their minds. In those days, before and during the Big Flood, the smallest mistake could get magnified into a great tragedy. I spend my days trying to tell them that a near-extinction event, on the scale of the beginning or end of an ice age, is hardly their fault. I tell them these things because I believe them, but also, because I need to keep reminding myself.

As I ruminate, Mark perks up and says, Before the flood, there were about seven billion people on the planet. Right after they established the first year’s Dry Line, there were only five billion people. Today, because of falling birth rates, there are even less than that. The scientists predict that we may stabilize back down at about three to four billion.

All of those ghosts had to go somewhere, I say. I just said it, impulsively, like it came from the mouth of somebody else.

There were billions of tragedies, Daniel agrees, after giving me an odd look. But now we have taken a step back and mostly moved towards a more sustainable lifestyle. It really doesn’t hurt people to eat turnips and beans for dinner a few times a week. I would never say this in public, but I think that we, the human race, needed to step back in order to move forward again. It may just be part of nature. It has certainly happened before.

Right, Mark agrees. I read that humanity was reduced to a small group before the leap forward to actual intelligence and civilization. Also, the great plagues in Europe may have accelerated reform because labor became more valuable.

I do not care for Mark and Danny’s silver linings. I listen to them ramble on, telling each other encouraging things, and start to feel the mild pounding of an upcoming migraine. My thoughts take me back to Leah’s Folly again. Suddenly, I am a scared girl, hugging the floor of my mom’s cabin as the boat slides around like soap suds circling the drain. I could have stood up, or at least I could have risen to my knees. If I had, the universe may have been altered just a tiny bit. If I could have just managed to catch my breath enough to answer when my mom called for me, I might be able to put a task like this in its proper place. I picture myself stuck to the floor like a bug on a pin.

We plan. The gods laugh. We get up the next day and keep putting one foot in front of the other. Some of us make it. We make horrible mistakes, but we get lucky, and then we just try to start over the next day. Rabbi Gerson asks me if I want a sandwich, vegetarian of course.

I talk. Clients listen. I feel like a fraud half the time because my patients describe the same feelings and images I already feel and see. In fact, unlike most of my patients, I need regular medication to get myself out of bed in the morning, and I need it again before I try to go to sleep at night. I tell my patients what I tell myself: We all have to move on. Mostly that just consists of attending to the day’s tasks as well as we can. I tell them what Rabbi Gerson told me. Clean the decks.

My work must help them, at least sometimes, because most