The Road to Ames

Dear Diary,

I used to think an adventure began with a secret passage or a mysterious message hidden inside a book.

Ours began with the windshield wipers.

They swept back and forth as fast as they could, but the rain kept getting ahead of them. Beyond the windows of Father LeRoy’s Cadillac, the Iowa fields had become enormous brown lakes. Corn stood in flooded rows, and the harvesting hadn’t even begun.

Robert sat beside me with our book open between us. Mini slept against my leg. In the front seat, Sister had just been reading about the crowds traveling to the Cova da Iria at Fatima.

“Carriages, automobiles, bicycles—even donkeys,” Robert said. “Everybody going to the same place.”

“Fortunately,” Father said, “we have a Cadillac.”

Then the radio crackled.

“Motorists are warned to avoid flooded roads—”

Father turned up the volume.

“The bridge on the approach to Ames has washed out. Seek an alternate route.”

Nobody spoke.

Rain hammered the roof, and Father tightened his hands on the wheel.

“Washed out,” he repeated.

He seemed beside himself for a moment. Then he pulled into a gravel entrance.

“The map, Sister. We’ll have to find another road.”

Sister unfolded it across her knees. Robert leaned forward to help.

“There’s a road right there.”

“That,” Father said, “is a fold.”

Even Sister smiled.

Father traced a thin line with his finger.

“This secondary road should bring us around to the highway beyond the bridge.”

We turned onto it, and soon there was nothing around us but flooded fields and fence posts disappearing into the rain. Visibility was terrible. Father leaned forward, watching every foot of pavement.

Then something came floating along the ditch.

A broken fence rail.

I sat up straight.

“Father—”

“I see it, Kathy.”

A moment later, he stopped the Cadillac so suddenly that Mini scrambled to her feet.

“We must not go farther.”

We all saw why.

A torrent of muddy water was pouring across the road ahead. Branches spun through it. The pavement disappeared beneath the rushing water and emerged again on the other side.

Robert closed our book.

A heavy limb struck something under the surface, reared up, and vanished.

Father checked behind us and carefully backed the Cadillac onto the rise we had just passed. There he stopped and shut off the engine.

“We’ll conserve gasoline,” he said.

Without the engine running, we could hear the roar of the water.

“Are we stranded?” I asked.

“For the time being.”

He turned toward us.

“But we are safe here, and safe we will be if we stay on this rise in the road. We have water, food, and a Cadillac.”

Mini gave a small bark.

“And Mini,” Father added.

Sister handed around sandwiches and spread a blanket over Robert’s knees and mine. I tried to eat, but I kept watching the place where the road disappeared.

Our book lay on the seat, still open to the Fatima chapter.

“Those people had to wait too,” I said.

Sister looked back at me.

“At the Cova?”

I nodded.

“They came all that way, and the children didn’t appear. They didn’t know what had happened.”

“They became angry,” Robert remembered. “Some wanted to march to Orem.”

Thunder rolled across the fields. I glanced down at the page—the sudden flash, the thunder, and the white cloud around the little oak.

“Then they knelt and prayed,” I said.

Sister nodded.

“Their waiting became prayer.”

I looked through the rain-streaked window. I wanted to be brave, but I also wanted dry socks and a road that stayed where a road belonged.

“Father, were you frightened when you saw the water?”

“Yes, Kathy,” he answered. “And that was our signal to stop.”

He looked toward the crossing, then back at us.

“We have a good place to wait. We’ll stay here until we know we can leave safely.”

Robert tucked the blanket around Mini, who promptly wriggled out and settled on our feet instead.

I took another bite of my sandwich.

The rain still poured. The bridge to Ames was still washed out. But inside the Cadillac, we were together, and our Reading Club meeting wasn’t quite finished.

Father turned in his seat.

“Kathy,” he said, “would you end our Reading Club meeting by leading us in a Hail Mary?”