Free The Color of Your Skin Ain’t the Color of Your Heart by Michael Phillips Page A

Katie’s room. “The sun’s out. The rain’s stopped!”
    A few minutes later, all four of us were standing at one of the upstairs windows looking out. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, which was so brilliant a blue I’d almost forgotten what it looked like. The sun made the brown water stretching out across the fields all the uglier. What was normally mostly green, wherever we looked, had been replaced by brown as far as you could see, until it met the blue of the sky at the horizon.
    How could there be so much water? Was this how Noah had felt?
    “Let’s go look at the post!” said Aleta excitedly. “I want to see if the water’s gone down.”
    “You’ll have to get dressed first,” laughed Katie.
    We all scurried back to our rooms and then ran downstairs, got on our galoshes, and hurried outside. We had been watching the level of water on an old fence post in the field past the barn that had a lot of knots on it so we could see the water rising. We had to get boots on to get close enough. Gradually we inched through the water until it was nearly to the top of our boots. We stopped about ten feet from the post.
    “The water’s gone up since yesterday!” said Katie. “How can it go up when the rain’s stopped?”
    Just then we heard a deep chuckle behind us.
    “Da flood don’t care ’bout no rain,” said a voice we knew instantly to be Henry’s. We turned and saw him moving toward us in his bare feet with his trouser legs rolled up. “Effen dere’s still water comin’ down from upriver, hit’ll keep risin’, maybe even fer a day er two.”
    We turned and all began sloshing back toward the house.
    “I still don’t see how that can be, Henry,” said Katie.
    “Hit’s jes’ the way rain an’ rivers an’ floods is, Miz Kathleen.” ‘
    ‘But is the flood over?”
    “ ’Peers likely, effen we git no mo rain fer a day er two, an’ dat looks promisin’ wiff dis sun shinin’ out. Once da water gits as high as hit’s gwine git an’ starts back down, dis ol’ flood’ll be gone in no time.”
    “Will you wait till then to go back to town, Uncle Henry?” asked Aleta.
    “No, chil’,” laughed Henry. “I can’t do dat. Effen you can gib me a good cup er coffee, I’s be on my way. I gots ter git back ter work.”
    “We’ll give you breakfast to go with your coffee,” said Katie. “But how will you get back?”
    “Same way’s I come—rowin’ out yonder ’cross dat water on da other side ob da house.”
    Two hours later, Henry got in the little rowboat and headed out across the flat brown sea.
    “But what if the current takes you into the river?” said Katie, still worried about how Henry could possibly navigate what looked like an ocean.
    “Don’t you worry none ’bout me, Miz Kathleen. Effen I git too far down an’ da river takes me, den I’ll jes’ point dis yere boat inter dat current an’ ride as fast as hit wants ter go till I can work my way to the udder side. You neber fight a current—you go wiff it till you gets across it.”
    Even as he spoke, Henry was moving away from us with great pulls on the two oars, and pretty soon he was heading out into the middle of the water.
    “I’ll be seeing you ladies as soon as dis water’s all gone!” he called back to us.
    Aleta waved one last time. I looked at her face and saw that she was a little frightened as she watched Henry row out into the middle of the water.
    “I don’t want anything to happen to Uncle Henry,” said Aleta.
    “He’ll be safe,” I said.
    We watched until he was out of sight, then went back into the house.
    The sun kept up for two days. By then, like Henry had said, the water had started to recede. It rained a little more on the third day but not enough to do any harm, and then the sun came out for good.
    Eventually the water began to subside even more quickly. But it took a week for the river and streams to fall back down to their former courses. And when they did they left a mess of