Читать книгу Standpipe - David Hardin - Страница 17

NINE

After weeks of stacking water in dining rooms, hallways, basements, garages, bedrooms, and bathrooms; under stairwells, behind couches, next to stoves and refrigerators; on counter tops, coffee tables and landings; outside, on screen porches, I’m still surprised to hear the hectoring chirp of a smoke detector with a dead battery. Chirping, common as brimming ashtrays, threadbare carpet, pungent cooking odors, pit bulls, crime bars, blaring televisions, and children rendered mute by our sudden, inexplicable presence in their living room. The first few times I state the obvious, as if any reminder were needed.

“My son’s coming tomorrow.”

“I called the landlord yesterday.”

“Shit, I ain’t even notice it no more.”

I observed a few small rituals whenever I visited my mother in her final years. They required minimal effort, took less time than making toast, but satisfied a yearning in both of us for much more, desire subsumed for something considerably less, but much safer. Upon arrival, after a perfunctory embrace, before hauling in my bag, I would dutifully replace her furnace filter and put fresh batteries in the smoke alarms.

The AmeriCorps kids who volunteer with the Red Cross had, up until the water crisis, busied themselves installing residential smoke detectors throughout Flint. Now, their talents have been repurposed to install faucet filters. I don’t know if replacing dead batteries remains part of their official duties. I learn to ignore the chirping, stepping around busted recliners, leaving a trail of bottled water down dim hallways, working quick, quick, back to the truck—on to the next stop.