Folks say Gran caused the flood... at least that is how I heard it when I was a kid. You would think the flood was the only big thing that ever happened in Warden Mills. When I was a kid it was all anyone ever seemed to talk about.

The water was three feet high on Centennial Street and Tom Garrison loved to tell how he ran his little motor boat up and down, bringing supplies to the old folks and ferrying kids to the town hall before the Army showed up. 'Course my dad told it different. He said Tom did bring some food to his friends and might have took some little ones out but as soon as he saw Fred Givens body floating face down in the ditch next to Andrews Avenue he went home and got acquainted with a bottle of Glenfiddich.

Hell who could blame him?

Damn... this is this wrong... I guess if I am gonna tell you the story I should start at the beginning. In fact, I should start all the way back on May 3rd, 1951. That was the day Bud Sheppard's wife Mary died. She fell down the stairs according to Bud, but there were a lot of folks in Warden Mills who figured they knew better.

Bud or Shep as most everyone called him, was known to do a fair bit of elbow bending down at the Warden Pub and when he got a snootful he got mean. There were plenty of nights when a few of the big boys from the mill had to gently persuade him to go home, and just as many mornings when Mary 'fell down the stairs' or 'walked into the doorframe'. I figure she lived her whole life in fear of that SOB praying he wouldn't kill her and then he finally did.

Either way, they buried poor Mary over in Chapman's Grove and Shep cried real tears with all of their family and friends just like he was supposed to. From then on he was alone, save for his only real friend, my Grandfather, William 'Willy' Devers.

I never met Willy, he died before I was born, so to me and a lot of folks in Warden Mills he's kind of a mythical figure. I've seen pictures of him and he was a big man, at least six-foot-four with broad shoulders and incredibly long legs. His jaw was square and his hair was jet black. He wasn't exactly handsome, but his face was open and his smile was big and kind. Mostly what get's peoples tongues to wagging is how strong he was. There are all kinds of stories, most of which are undoubtedly exaggerations, about Willy Devers. One tall tale recounts how he once lifted a car off of a woman after a road accident. Another is that he reset the granite mill wheel when it slipped its gears. That wheel is still there in the old mill, I've seen it and it has to weight five hundred pounds. I figure even though those stories aren't true, he must have been a powerful man for folks to have made them up in the first place.

The real question as far as I am concerned is why on earth Willy was friends with Shep in the first place. The two men were nothing alike. Willy was a teetotaler and Shep was one step away from the town drunk. Shep was a squat fat man who spent most of his life on the dole and Willy worked at the Mill until the day he died. They had almost nothing in common other than having grown up in Warden Mills. There were plenty of good upstanding men in town that Willy could have called his best friend but for some reason he chose Shep. The worst of it is that Willy must have known Shep beat his wife, so why would he give the man the time of day? I guess I'll never understand.

Willy drowned on July 13th, 1959. That morning he got up at the crack of dawn and headed down Sheps old house on the edge of Mills Pond with his fishing rods, tackle box and a lunch Gran had made him the night before. They got in Sheps canoe and by noon Willy was dead.

Shep made it back to shore and stumbled up the hill and across two blocks to our house white-faced and raving. Gran ran down the road screaming and half of the town came out to search for Willy. To hear the old folks tell it, every boat in Warden Mills was out on that pond but they couldn't find him.

Willy's death was ruled accidental, but no one believed it. As I said he was a powerful man and a strong swimmer. The pond was less than half a mile wide for God's sake. There was no way he could have drowned.

There was another funeral and Shep cried real tears yet again but Gran did not. She stood there as Willy's coffin was lowered into the ground, dry faced and staring at Shep with such hate that it is a miracle the man didn't fall down dead himself.

Gran didn't cry then, or back at home when folks came to pay their respects or even after they all left and she was alone. Not one tear, even though she loved Willy as much as any woman loved the man with whom she chooses to spend her life.

It was midnight when the rain started. There was no rain in the forecast but it came down so hard you couldn't see more than a few feet in front of you. Buckets of rain like you have never seen, running rivers down the streets. The baseball diamond on Burns Road turned to mud, and Mills Pond started to rise. By morning, so much water had soaked into the ground that trees were starting to lean as their roots came loose in the slurry. Telephone and power poles came down out on route nine cutting off Warden Mills from the outside world.

It rained all that day and then all the next night. Gran stood in her bedroom, staring out at the rain and would not move. She didn't eat or sleep just stood by that window like she was in a trance or something. My aunt Lois had been looking after my mother Kate who was only nine at the time. She took Kate in to see Gran hoping the sight of her daughter my bring Gran back to reality.

It didn't work. Gran didn't even seem to know they were in the room and wouldn't answer when they spoke to her. Finally, Aunt Lois took Kate out of the room and when they were out of earshot she said, 'It's not normal that your mother hasn't cried yet... she needs to grieve.'

Little Kate looked up at her and said, 'Mommy is crying," and the look on her face scared Aunt Lois so badly that when she was finally able to leave town she never set foot in Warden Mills again.

Shep showed up the next day. He came, belatedly to give Gran his condolences. After the funeral, he had gone straight to the pub and gotten blackout drunk. Rumour was Roy the barman had carted Shep home in a wheelbarrow.

Aunt Lois brought him up to Gran's room, hat in hand and he said what he had to say. At first, it looked like Gran didn't even know he was there but after a moment she turned from the window and pinned Shep with a stare so full of hate that he actually stumbled backward. Then she called him a murderer and went back to looking out of the window.

The rain was coming harder, and people were starting to get scared. The roof of the church on Victory Lane collapsed and basements were filling with water. It was around this time that Tom started boating up and down Centennial Street and Mayor Wilson opened the doors of the Town Hall to anyone whose home had become unliveable.

Still, Gran stared out of the window and still her face was dry... no tears.

Shep was down in his house on Mills Pond. The pond had flooded its banks and surrounded the old wooden structure. The main floor was under water and fish were swimming in his living room. Shep had moved to the upstairs bedroom where lay in his bed drinking scotch.

On the fifth day, the whole town was under water. Even Grans house up the hill from the pond was beginning to flood. Sheps house now appeared to be sitting in the middle of a wide shallow lake. The water was up to the middle of the picture window which had burst inward sometime the previous night. Most of the trees between Gran's house and the pond were now down, and she had a clear view as Sheps house suddenly tilted to one side and then slowly slid towards the middle of Mills Pond. The water seemed to consume it and as it tipped over the other way Aunt Lois said she could hear Shep screaming.

Ten minutes later the entire house was gone.

The army arrived the next day and began the process of cleaning up. The rain had stopped and Gran had begun to cry which was what Lois had been hoping for. 'A woman has to grieve,' she said to no one in particular.

It only took two days for the water to recede and when the pond was back to its normal level there was Sheps house sitting almost in the middle.

The army men went out and searched the place. They found Shep dead in the upstairs bedroom, but not drowned. He had shot himself in the head with a .22 caliber pistol. In the living room, they found another body. It was Willy. He was sitting on the couch covered in weeds and mud. There were chains around his legs and his arms were locked behind his back.

Shep had murdered Willy out there on the lake that day. No one ever figured out why, but I guess it had something to do with Mary's death. Maybe Willy accused him of murdering her and Shep killed him to keep him quiet.

The flood had lasted six days and when it was done Gran cried but when they told her about what they had found in Sheps house she only nodded and smiled sadly.

Folks say Gran caused the flood... they say it was her tears that were falling from the sky to punish Shep. I don't know if that's true but it makes you think doesn't it?