I watched the body of the man I’d just killed float away downstream from where I stood, in just about the middle of the widest street in San Antonio.

My shoulders sagged. I felt nothing like remorse, only the sudden fatigue that follows the sort of adrenaline overload I’d just gone through.

Disinterested, I turned away from the human flotsam now headed downtown, concerned now only with the coming struggle against the flood’s powerful flow to reach my home.

My warm, dry, safe home.

A seeming dream-memory that drew my feet forward. Each step an exhausting effort, hampered by, I noticed now for the first time, the cold, the bone-chilling cold of the thigh-deep river which pushed me unceasingly away from my goal.

To maintain my balance I had to lean forward into the current, looking, I imagined, like a mud-covered mime walking into an imaginary hurricane. Each step a careful choreograph: lift the heel and force my foot forward, dragging my toe across the pavement.

Fear of the current or tripping over an obstacle were not what slowed my pace.

( Floods in San Antonio tend to follow a pattern. The old, inadequate sewer lines fill first, pouring their excess out of the curbside drains and then, in heavy enough rain, they build up power, even enough to lift the massive iron covers from their manholes.

The sight of these, riding on 4 to 6 inch fountains, is a laughable delight.

But if flooding continues, these amusements may be swept from their perches, leaving behind a deadly trap. A hidden void waiting for the misstep of the unwary.

Every flood season, 2 or 3 innocents meet their fate this way. Dying alone. Drowned in the turbulent cold and dark. )

It was, rather, the vivid image of being sucked through 12 miles of pipe to the south side of the city which kept me in check.

I lived, those days, in a six-unit apartment building about 2 blocks from Fort Sam Houston. It was a nice neighborhood, a mix of military, college student, and retired military housing. Across the street from where I lived was a grassy field dotted with pecan and black oak trees called Mahncke Park. In winter, the trees were bare except for bright green clumps of mistletoe.

As inviting as it looked from my window, I learned the hard way that it was not fair ground for picnicking. The oft-mowed earth was, instead of a pastoral meadow, a prime environment for thistly briar patches, several varieties of low, often nearly invisible cactus, inhabited by and two equally nasty and aggressive varieties of swarming, biting fire ants.

In retrospect, I guess the whole neighborhood was a lot like that. Beneath a thin veneer, the niceness disappeared.

The transient nature of its residents provided a fertile field for the city’s criminals. Burglary, car break-ins, and auto theft were rampant. Enough so that the Army issued warning guidelines to the soldiers, WACs, nurses, and civilian personnel that lived in that area.