Throughout the night, the sounds of the house disturbed him. He wrote it off as the settling of the wood, the easing of old joists and supports into their various roles, but he knew better. The water was finally coming for him. A long winter with multiple heavy snows, a spring beginning with a crush of steady rains--it was too much to hold back anymore. Even the dog looked worried, or does she look like that all of the time?
The fear was not for the rain pouring down the sides of the house, running down the slant of roof, but for the ground. Bubbling up through the saturated ground and into the basement floor. The yard turning into liquid and the house teetering, gliding through the muck of the neighborhood and bobbing like an ill-designed ship.
He would take the helm if necessary, jump to the back balcony and keep watch for errant telephone poles and trees that had not yet sunk or toppled in the viscous lawns. He would guide the house inland, navigating suburbs west to Pittsburgh, to Chicago, to Denver and maybe to drop anchor in the Rockies.
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