Just because I don’t know where to put it for now:
"By August the river was running so high it threatened to wash over its sides onto the train tracks up on the east bank. The bottom silt all stirred up to the top and brown bubblin’ way past the linden trees already, fifty yards or less from McCullough’s corn. That would’ve made things even worse. Not gettin’ the little bit of crop left standing into market, seems to me, would have been the town’s last dyin’ breath. Up at the Second Baptist they was prayin’ even harder than they had in spring for rain, now singin’ their Christian guts out it would stop. And maybe too for the good Lord’s forgiveness, though it looked like we’d got him God Almighty pissed. As if the hallelujah folk hadn’t caused enough trouble with the fields layin’ like flats of mud and fruit only half grown already rotted on the trees. The orchards stinkin’ of soured wine, the fields worse of decayin’ tomatoes, beans and pig manure. It carries on the wind, doubled by the dampness of the nights. I blame them—and God; not Joey Dolan. Nor the liquored up on homemade whiskey kids that killed him."
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology