Of Gods and Floods
Every story has two sides.
Ritchie
In Sunday school we used to hear about Noah and his ark, and the animals going two-by-two. Our teacher always used to say the most important part of it was that the Flood served its purpose, and God said he wouldn’t send one never again.
We always laughed about that, because the rules were a little different when you lived in between two of the biggest rivers in the country. We got floods about near every year. Some were big and some weren’t even worth watching over the levees, but they happened nonetheless.
“Ritchie,” Granddaddy would say to me every year, “let this be a lesson to you. Who created the world?”
“God did, Granddaddy.”
“And who floods it?”
“Well, my teacher said it ain’t nobody’s fault, just the snow melting up in Minnesota with no other place to go.”
“Your teacher’s an idjit.” He paused, sucked on his teeth. “Mother Nature floods us in Cairo. And you know why?”
Of course I knew why, but I didn’t want to ruin his story. “No, why?”
“Cuz no matter if’n it be a woman on Earth or a woman in Heaven, she gonna do what she can to make her man look a fool!” He’d laugh until he wheezed, and then Aunt Ella would come out and…
