My house, uphill on the original homestead, was dry. The pond bed, where the pond used to be, was now a fast-moving river.
The exposed spillway my late father-in-law and I had built 30 years ago sat naked in the rain, useless, doing nothing it had been designed to do.
I drove down to the edge of the subdivision in a borrowed pickup with high clearance. I parked at the corner of the main road where the asphalt disappeared into water.
I got out in waders and a slicker. I did not have my recording equipment on me. I had left it on purpose.
I was not there to document. I was there because Mrs. Patterson lived two blocks in and her late husband's photographs were still in her dining room.
I waded in. The water was just below my knees at the deepest point. The mailboxes were standing in it. A child's bicycle lay sideways on a lawn that was no longer a lawn.
Mrs. Patterson was on her front porch in a raincoat holding a flashlight she did not need. She had moved her shoebox of photographs and four of her photo albums up to the top of her bookcase.
She had moved her late husband's quilt onto the dining table. She had done it alone at 78 years old in the dark while the water came under her front door.
I helped her move three more boxes onto the higher shelves. I did not say anything. She did not either.
When we were done, she put her hand on my forearm and squeezed it once and went inside.
I waded back out. I had to cross Linda's cul-de-sac to get to my truck.
She was standing in her driveway in pajamas and rain boots. Her hair was wet. Her husband was inside, audible from 20 yards, yelling into a phone.
Linda was screaming at him through the open garage. Two of her downstairs windows were obscured by brown water from the inside. A floating cushion from her sectional was lodged against her mailbox.
She saw me wade past.
She did not say anything. I did not say anything either.
That afternoon at 3:00, Linda posted a 12,200-word statement on the neighborhood Facebook page. I read it on my phone at the kitchen table.
She blamed decades of neglected creek maintenance by an absentee landowner. She named me. She accused me, by name, in writing on the community page that 280 households followed, of engineered drainage sabotage.
I did not respond.
I did not have to.
A neighbor I had never spoken to, a woman in her 30s named Tasha, who lived three doors down from Mrs. Patterson, posted a reply within two hours.
She did not write a word in her reply. She posted four things in order.