One hundred ten, no less, no more, for each to tell how lost before, To mark a story split in four, how foreign waters left the shore. Tippin Betts: Ira, the town drunk, told me what he’d tell anyone willing to listen, that he found this little riddle lying facedown in a pool of landfill bile between mountains of refuse and the tin shack where he lives. When the sun went down and ‘stoled the light away’, he made a fire, and when he dropped this note in to get it going a great gust of wind came up behind him and carried it on into town. A torrential downpour was right behind, and an impossible rain came down hard and fast all night. The next day, the entire downtown was submerged, flooded by five feet of standing water. Mr. H. William Wildenbrandt: Tippin Betts, a funny lookin’ lad who works volunteer with the rescue squad, was rowin’ from house to house, lookin’ for stranded children and elderly folk like me, when a sheet a yeller paper flowed on past. He tells me he run into Ira drinkin’ on the banks, who told him he seen that note too ‘fore the wind took it away. While that fella Betts was instructin’ my wife Eudice how to get up on the roof and assurin’ her she wasn’t gonna die, I went out to the porch and got the fine idear to take me a stroll. So I untie his dinghy and off I go. Mayor Dupree: Before I fell in love with politics, I was a professional in the underwater rugby circuit. So when our only first responder called and said he was stranded, I got the gear out of the closet and assigned myself to the case. After squeezing into my wetsuit, I jumped in and pressed through the water like it was a championship game. When I came up to take a break I saw Mr. Wildenbrandt climbing into a rowboat. When I got over there he was blotting a wound on his leg with a folded-up piece of dingy yellow paper, so I gave him a proper bandage and rowed him back home. Ira: So I’m watchin’ the flood ‘ats down below when I decides to take me a bath. When I gets down the hill I run into Mayor Dupree. I peg ‘im ‘bout makin’ things right fer all the folk when he hears some wailin’ and take off. In the dinghy there’s a piece’a paper, and what’s writ up top? Same thing as ‘at note I find a coupl’a days back. I realize it’s the very same one, only a whole story been writ on it since I seen it last. When I gets done readin’ I add my part. Then I look up, and all that water is good as gone.