Rapid City '72

June 9, 1972 9:48 P.M.



Third grade, your voice stole my ears
Through school, you were all I eyed
Now in nearly thirty years
This, the only time I’ve lied



Warehouses look pretty much the same, cold steel structures, with cold concrete floors, aisles of products to be stored and sold at wholesale prices.  They are stacked in neat rows; usually on skids waiting for an over the road driver to show up with a bill of lading so a forklift chauffeur can load up the requested amount of parcel.

The rain was falling harder than Brad had ever seen it fall in his twenty-nine years of South Dakota life.  He had opened the huge garage door at the back of the warehouse that the semis used to load or unload and was watching the rain pummel the pavement just a few feet from his vantage point.  He had also called home to tell Rhonda that he was working late again.  This had become a habit over the last three months.  The biggest problem was that his paycheck never seemed to increase, only his excuses. The overtime he was being paid was in Lana dollars, and that was more than enough compensation for Brad.

Here was a guy with a bad and reckless resume’.  He was good looking, got married to Rhonda too young just to save face, and had three children since graduating high school.  Oh, there was no question, he loved his kids, but he never got the ‘play’ time he believed he deserved.  He just spent an average of fifty to sixty hours in the warehouse every week.  Justin, (Mr. Boy) was now turning ten.  Shelby, (Little Squippey Head) would be seven soon and then there was the new baby only five months old.  Adam was a handful even if one loved kids, especially after a long day at the warehouse.

Brad stood staring at the rain beyond the wide mouthed opening the building provided while a small and gorgeous hand caressed his neck.  Lana was from the same class as Rhonda but had never married.  She was a vivacious brunette with all the right benefits in all the right places.  She was the girl during high school that Brad thought he could never have.  She squeezed a little tighter on his neck so he would look at her.  When he did, she motioned her head toward one of the dark, empty lanes the warehouse provided.  “I can be your storm if you need one?  Surely you’re not just going to stare at the rain all night”?  He stopped watching the down pour and looked into those dark brown eyes that made him call home every night to say he was working over.  The two of them slipped off far down a corridor of parts and pieces waiting for delivery to far away places.

A large steel spring on a warehouse door tends to make noise no matter what one does to disguise it.  The slam that follows as it hits the frame is nothing that anyone could hide from.  Rhonda, his wife and another brunette, intended to filter neither one of these noises.  Brad scurried from out of the darkness to stand face to face with his wife of almost eleven years.  He said nothing.  She did the same. 

There is something about a woman who senses the foundation stones of her very life, family, and peace are crumbling…, she just knows.  Brad stood there in front of the pouring rain beyond the garage door and continued to say nothing as they stared at each other.  Rhonda began to shake like a child that has been in the winter cold too long even though the night was very warm.  From the shadows, Lana appeared adjusting her halter top and snuggling up next to Brad as if to say, “Hi honey…, is there something you need?”  While Brad did not speak, his demeanor changed to that of one who was undeniably guilty.  He bore that deflated look of a man who could never call home again with apologies and believe that he could live in two worlds that would never collide.

The three of them stood there speechless with Lana perched and cradled all over Brad.  Rhonda still shaking with tears rolling down her cheeks finally broke and in words gobbled up and stuttered with emotion she spilled, “I just wasn’t aware that me and the kids weren’t enough for you?”  Lana jumped in at this point, “If you were enough he’d be home.  If you were enough, he wouldn’t be making love to me everyday.  Have you looked at yourself lately girl?  Good god, this little moment and picture itself speaks a thousand words.”

Lana finished her attack on Rhonda with her arms around Brad’s waist and her head on his shoulder, she just glared at Rhonda.  Brad still said nothing…, but now he was also shaking.  Rhonda, fifty pounds beyond their marital bliss looked to him at this moment like the sumptuous girl with that, “I’ll do anything you want” looks from the day he married her.  Good god she was beautiful, and by the way, she had delivered three of the most beautiful children anyone could hope for.  He looked into those devastated eyes and realized how much she meant to him.  He knew how far he had strayed.  He knew he didn’t deserve her.  He also knew that the leach attached to his person and berating his wife was no one he cared the slightest bit about.  He also knew it was probably too late to ever regain Rhonda’s respect.

As he was trying to figure out what he could say to tell Rhonda how much he loved her, something changed.  He pushed Lana away and held his head cock-eyed to the sky trying to listen.  “Do you hear that?” As he absorbed the sound it was similar to a freight train, yet there were no tracks near there.  Then the steel front door burst open and water began to rush in.  The very mooring of the steel building creaked and moaned as it began to contort and collapse with all three of them staring and caught by complete and utter surprise.

As Brad grabbed both Rhonda and Lana to drag them outside the garage door, the sound of explosions and electrical power lines whipping and crackling could be heard.  Walls of water twenty feet high were sweeping by both sides of the warehouse leaving only the small space where they were huddled just outside.  The fluorescent lights inside the steel tomb they had just escaped from went black.  Brad screamed above the noise for everyone to lock hands together.  In that instant, that second, that moment, the injured innocent bride clasped her helpless hand to the husband who had betrayed her on one side and to the hand of the women who was trying to destroy her family on the other.  Brad held his stolen toy with one hand and the woman he had so hurt with the other.  Lana was left to have one hand cuffed to the husband and father she had seduced while clinging desperately with her other hand to the hand of the woman she had completely mowed down  and butchered, violating any decency she might have ever possessed.  The fury of nature can sometimes deliver and produce a most odd union of souls.

The liquid fury then poured over the top of the failing building right down on the feeble sacrifices below.  They were swept away like ants on an ant hill where a small child had dumped a bucket of death just to see what it would look like.  Driven helplessly and carried unwillingly through passages that used to be used for streets, they careened madly as one, as one entity in the darkness.  All lights were gone and the noise of the torrent was horrific.  They had assumed the clasping of hands as a way to all be buoys for each other, but the reality was that they were more like sinking stones dragging each other under as each personality grasp for one more breath.

The hands that were intended to save them and keep them together became treacherous claws and tentacles of death.  Each individual was scratching and climbing over the other to gain a better position.  In the swirling and the confusion Brad was not sure if he had pushed Lana or Rhonda away to their death sentence.  The noise was unbearable, but Brad managed to hear Lana scream his name one last time before her voice was silenced forever.

Now it was just the unlikely couple of more than a decade clinging to each other.  There was nothing either could do to help the other as they felt their bodies being ripped apart by all the debris that pounded against them.  They could not communicate as the wickedness of Mother Nature’s voice drowns out anything they would have said to each other that might have mattered or made any difference.  Still, though holding on to one another, they had become rivals for air, for oxygen, for another second of life.  Brad was stronger and he climbed up Rhonda’s chest and shoulders in the blackness to breathe again.  He managed to grab onto something in this twisting hell that was actually above the water and floating.  Regaining sanity, he realized that Rhonda was no longer in his hands or under his feet.  He knew if he could just reach her and get her to this floating savior that they could make it together.  With the rain stinging his face, he screamed her name over and over, but there was never a reply.

Brad clung to his floating pardon, whatever it was, there in the blackness and rage.  He continued to call out Rhonda’s name in futility.  Ultimately his head struck something dull and immobile as he was swept past it.  He nearly passed out from the blow, but rather than fade he was left in a kind of wonderland daze.  Around him were what appeared to be floating lifeboats on top of the rapids that were all ablaze with flames jettisoned to the sky?  They were like funeral pyres escorting him to his final destination.  In reality they were propane tanks that had been whisk away and had exploded from the impact of the flood by electrical wires.

There in the rapids, bused along against his will, his body had been shredded by trees, cars, and all manner of junk being scurried toward some dedicated location.  Brad, nearly unconscious watched the parade of propane tanks burning and thought, “Remember those ornaments; they were all gold and silver snowflakes that we hung on our first Christmas tree? This would be a nice night to just come home on time.  I’m sure Rhonda would like that and Justin, Shelby and I could snuggle up to an episode of “Laugh In”.  If I get there early enough I could even feed Adam in his high chair.  That would be nice.  That would be different.  That’s what I need to do.”  Content with his decision, Brad succumbed to unconsciousness and released his grip on his lifeline, disappearing below the torrid current somewhere beneath the murky South Dakota skyline.

The New York Times would report the next day that the bursting of Canyon Lake Dam due to heavy rainfall had left many dead with the death toll expected to rise dramatically and more than five hundred missing.  There was no word on the more than four thousand tourists believed to be camping in the Black Hills.  Senator George McGovern was expected to fly home to South Dakota tomorrow.
President Nixon ordered his chief aide for disaster relief to expedite all appropriate assistance.  Mayor of Rapid City, Donald V. Barnett advised the local community to not touch any bodies that they came across and to be aware that downed power lines could still be lethal.  Governor Richard F. Knelp declared the city a disaster area and ordered one thousand Air National Guard members to help in rescue efforts.

The bodies of Brad, Rhonda, and Lana were never recovered.  It was assumed they had been buried naturally somewhere south of Rapid City beneath debris in the valleys and ravines of the Black Hills.

The man you hoped you were
And the man you’ll never be
Are buried somewhere with her
In the man they’ll never see

Wind whistles through the Black Hills
Hear me screaming out her name
Rivers churn and sorrow spills
And the Badlands hide my shame


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