This is why I'm fun on road trips! - MCM
Tammy's water broke and pert near flooded all of Main Street. The Krystiak twins had to be taken out of the dollar store in one of them blow-up rubber rafts. Old Ms. McGertz hasn't been seen and is presumed drowned. But let me back up.
Bob Halpern is one of the two full-time police officers in the town of Sandy Lake. There are only about 600 residents, give or take, so the Cahill County sheriff's department does most of the heavy lifting. Bob has been sucking up every minute of overtime he can ever since they got word that Tammy was pregnant again.
The last time, she ballooned up to damned near three hundred pounds. She had a craving for those hot spicy fried pickles, you know, the ones you can get at the county fair. She had Bob running all over Cahill County and as far away as Torrence trying to find the damned things.
To most folks, Tammy barely hits 'pleasant' on most days. The added weight and aggravation of pregnancy seems to make it worse. Even her best friend Red (real name Regina Kildauer, but everyone calls her "Red" on account of her being a ginger. Most of the guys down at the VFW will tell you the carpet matches the drapes, if ya get my drift) can barely tolerate her when she gets like this. She once joked during the last pregnancy that Tammy might just eat that baby when it pops out.
Truth be told, I can't really hold it all against Tammy. Sandy Lake is a small, boring town in the middle of nowhere. She's too smart to be stuck here, and she doesn't care who knows it. She got knocked up the 1st time when she was only 18. Bob Halpern was little more than Sheriff Riley's errand boy at the time. One night at the VFW, a few too many brews, some sticky fumbling in the back of his old Cavalier, and that was all she wrote.
Tammy's dad, a bible-thumpin' widower, wasn't gonna let her get an abortion, and he was dead set that Bob Halpern was gonna 'man up' and 'do the right thing'. So, it was a good ol' shotgun wedding, minus the proverbial shotgun. That resulted in Little Bobby Jr., a useless mama's boy if there ever was one. The 2nd time was when she got as big as a whale and damned near lived on them nasty fried pickles. This resulted in Peter, whose nickname became "Pick", short for "Pickle", or worse, "mama's sweet lil pickle".
From Day 1, Pick has been a hellion. He's smarter than most, and bull-headed, just like his mother. He's prone to bad choices too, a trait he picked up from both parents. Dare that kid to do something, and he'll become living proof why some things just shouldn't be done.
Bob Halpern couldn't be blamed for picking up overtime even before this latest pregnancy. He always did his best to provide for his family. Bought the old McNalley place up on the corner past the old church, now a body shop. They didn't bother to modify the building much. Just took out the pews, put in a lift, and added a bay door on the side.
Yeah, folks make do with what they have to work with in and around Sandy Lake.
Bob Halpern loved his family and seemed to like his job, but no one could blame the man for wanting the peace and quiet of a squad car or directing traffic over the domestic din of Tammy and the boys. Although younger by 2 years, Pick would slap his brother Bobby Jr. around when no one was looking. Little Bobby was never one to rat on him either. So, he developed a reputation for being clumsy, when in reality, he just had a mean little brother.
Tammy’s pregnancy was different this time. Old Doc Halliday said it might be twins but couldn't be sure. She was getting big enough. He'd been trying to get Tammy to go to the clinic in Torrence for an ultrasound, but she just never seemed to make the time. One of the boys always needed something, or she had something to do with Red, or she just needed her 'me time'. The latter, as well as most of the rest of the time, revolved around this pregnancy's craving. Strawberry milkshakes. Just couldn't get enough of them! She was definitely getting close to the 300-pound mark again, and Doc Halliday warned it might not come off as easy this time.
Bob Halpern looked even deader inside when he heard that particular bit of news. Tammy could always be a handful, but she was by far one of the best-looking women in Cahill County. Always had been. Even when she got really big when she was pregnant with Pick, he thought she was beautiful. Red liked to remind him that was just the glow pregnant women get.
What the hell would that she-devil know? The fact that she'd never been pregnant herself wasn't for lack of trying. Like I said before, most of the guys down to the VFW knew all about Red Kildauer. There was no line of guys looking to put a ring on her finger, but she almost never lacked for company either, if ya get my drift.
Irwin and Norwin Krystiak were twins. Identical twins. Their mother, Beth, insisted on dressing them alike. When the eye doctor said one of them needed glasses, she got a 2nd pair, but without prescription lenses, for the other. The boys were, in plain language, just weird.
They didn't play with the handful of other kids. Hell, half the time it sounded like they were jabbering to each other in their own language. Their mother insisted they were geniuses for this. To most people, it was just off-putting. Especially to old Ms. McGertz down at the dollar store on Main and Wimple.
Irene McGertz was somewhere between 70 and 120. No one knew for sure. All anyone knew was she was born in Sandy Lake and would most likely die there. She never married and had never been further from Sandy Lake than the occasional trip to Torrence, about 30 miles away. Before the dollar store, she worked at the A&P grocery store, and before that the old 5 & Dime. She was old, and a bit mousey looking, but that little mouse could roar if she needed to. These days, when/if she roared, it was either at the Krystiak twins or the Halpern boys.
Young boys always have a knack for sorting out who might be a weak link in the social chain. They're often wrong, but it never stops them. Old Ms. McGertz had landed in the boys' sights, and hardly a day went by that she wasn't chasing at least one of the little bastards out of the store, usually swinging a broom.
Like a lot of small towns, Sandy Lake had its share of old-timers. You could usually find them down to the VFW from around noon to supper time. They'd just sit around, tell the same old stories over and over, nursing boilermakers and highballs, and generally knowing everything. It was a Tuesday, and it didn't seem much different than any other.
Old Clive Swickert came in bitching that the Halpern boy, Pick, was flicking matches into the dumpster behind the body shop. It's a damned miracle he didn't start a major fire. Buddy Gephardt interrupted his heroic tales of military prowess at Grenada to add, "Any child prone to playing with matches is likely gonna try to light them all."
He probably wasn't wrong, and from the looks of his own hands, probably had some personal knowledge on the subject. Gephardt was a known bullshitter. When Willie Lomax came in shouting that it looked like Main Street was starting to flood, Gephardt and his cronies cried bullshit.
"Hell's bells, Willie, it ain't even raining! If a storm was in the area, and a flood was coming, our damned phones would all be screaming!" With this he raised his old flip-phone and waved it around. This brought chuckles from everyone at the bar.
"See for yourself, ya old buzzard!" Willie Lomax taunted.
They all got up to look out the side door of the VFW, the one that led to the parking lot and had a clear view of Main. Damned if it didn't look like water was building up.
One of the oldies suggested maybe a water main had busted.
Not a one of them ever would've guessed that the only thing that broke was Tammy Halpern's water. And there was a lot of it. An insane amount of it!
And it just kept coming.
Bob Halpern and his namesake had to go pick up Pick at the body shop, where the boy had been caught playing with matches. Before he had a chance to reprimand the boy, his shoulder radio went off.
"10-65 intersection Main and Wimple, main intersection. Officer required to handle traffic. Possible flooding."
Halpern sent his boys home to their mother and hopped in the cruiser to the main intersection. He couldn't help but notice some sort of liquid covering the road.
He never saw his boys again.
Down at the dollar store, Irene McGertz was dealing with her own emergency. The Krystiak twins were in the store and acting up. If that wasn't bad enough, the handful of customers' cell phones were all screaming. She figured maybe a storm was coming. She heard Mrs. Modley saying something about a flood watch as she left her basket and headed out the door. Norwin Krystiak threw a container of Ramen at his brother, who in return threw a box of oatmeal. Both containers broke open on the floor. It was broom time.
The only thing more annoying than Amber Alerts on the damned cell phones everyone and their brother has now is the infernal, damned-near constant weather alerts. Sandy Lake is part of the lake district! We always get weird weather. Main Street floods at least once a year. It has yet to be national news. Until now...
Bob Halpern stood in the center of the intersection of Main & Wimple, emergency light in hand, making sure the occasional vehicle didn't ignore the cones he had quickly set up. The water, or whatever it was, came up to his calves by this point. Whatever it was, it was warm. He just hoped it wasn't toxic. Tammy was due any time now. He had to be around for her and his growing family.
The guys at the body shop had failed to completely extinguish Pick's little dumpster fire, and fueled by the automotive waste, it roared up and flames began licking the back wall of the shop. They called the volunteer fire department, then ran out with a fire extinguisher. Brody Calhoun, probably the best body and fender man Cahill County had ever seen, tripped and fell face first into a rising tide of something that resembled warm, thick water.
The oldies down to the VFW had apparently made a collective decision that this flood would be no worse than any of the others, and resumed drinking and playing pinochle. Buddy Gephardt started singing the old Johnny Cash song, "Five Feet High and Rising", which garnered him a round of chuckles and guffaws.
Red Kildauer had let herself into the Halpern house, as she had dozens of times before. The flood of water had come down the stairs and swept her away.
By the time the floodwaters hit about 3 feet deep, it was every bit as deep in the dollar store. Old Ms. McGertz did the one thing she knew she had to do. She started blowing up one of the old rubber pool rafts and told the Krystiak twins to hold tight. She insisted they'd be OK.
She blew just about every breath she had in her lungs into that raft. She put the boys into it, handed them her broom and told them to use it as a paddle. With that, she pushed the raft and the boys out the front door on the streaming flood of whatever this liquid was. With her last push, she fell into the water and never came back up.
By this point, the Krystiak twins were screaming.
Some lady was sitting on top of her car at the gas station across the street when she saw the raft and the boys. She wasn't from the area. She had just stopped for gas.
She jumped down and into the water and pulled them over to her car, but only after taking a photo with her phone. 'No one will believe this!' she thought to herself.
She assured the boys that they would be OK.
As the water level crept higher, she pulled the boys on top of her car and held them tight. She tried to lighten the mood by saying, "At least it's not raining." The Krystiak twins didn't seem to get the humor. They just clung to her and cried.
She dialed 911 and explained that the little town of Sandy Lake was flooded. The dispatcher sounded like she thought the lady was nuts. There wasn't a cloud in the sky for miles.
Feeling that she wasn't being taken seriously, she uploaded the photo of the boys in the raft floating out of the dollar store to her social media. SANDY LAKE FLOOD in all caps, with the date and the time, plus she added SEND HELP! The photo went viral.
Within 30 minutes, rescue teams and news crews were en route to Sandy Lake.
Within another 30 minutes, the floodwaters began to subside.
When the rescue teams arrived, they found the lady and the boys still sitting on top of her Ford Focus. The Krystiak twins were alive and well but had clearly been traumatized. The stranger lady just sat with her arms around them, telling them over and over, "It's going to be OK. Help is here! It's going to be OK!"
By the time the floodwaters were only a few inches deep, the rescue teams started to find bodies.
They found the Halpern boys tangled up in a bush.
Red Kildauer's body was found a half block down Main, with her foot caught under a mailbox.
The oldies rode out the flood the same as they had many before it, sitting in the VFW, nursing boilermakers and highballs, and telling old stories. They finally had a new tale to tell.
Neither Officer Bob Halpern's nor Irene McGertz's bodies were ever found.
When rescue teams started going door to door, they found the door open at the Halpern residence. The downstairs had clearly sustained flood damage, but they also noted the carpeting on the stairs leading to the bedroom was wet.
When they went up to investigate, they found the dead, emaciated body of Tammy Halpern. She was thin as a rail and looked totally dehydrated. They wondered how long she'd been there like that.
Residual samples of the floodwater were sent to the state capitol for testing. In what must have been an error, the test results kept coming back as amniotic fluid.
copyright notice © 2026 Michael C. Metzger
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