Termination Shock

“I’m guessing it’s about the axe,” he said, when he had returned from that little excursion. Hendrik was done pissing and was killing time watching a Dutch soccer game on his phone.

Hendrik, clearly disgusted by the progress of the game, put the phone down and nodded. “I never told the story because I knew it would upset Bel. But the Watersnoodramp” (by which he meant the disastrous flood of 1953) “came during the night, and by the time we were aware of it the downstairs was already awash. So we remained upstairs, naturally.”

“Naturally.”

“Because you expect the water to go away, or for someone to come and help you, and you just aren’t thinking straight. But then we had to get up on the beds, because it had come up that far. Then up on top of the dressers. Finally we waded to the ladder that went to the attic, and we climbed up there, thinking we were safe. But in fact we realized we had put ourselves in terrible danger because from the attic there was no escape. No windows or trapdoors. We did not fully realize it until the water came up to the level of the attic floor. And it kept rising.”

“You’re right. This would have made Mother very upset if you had told her,” said Willem who was breaking a sweat just listening to it.

“I swam for it,” Hendrik said. “Stripped off my pajamas, dove into that cold water, felt my way to a window, smashed it out, then went through and got up to the surface where I could breathe.” He held up one arm to display a scar. Of course, it had been prominent the whole time Willem had been alive, but Father had always vaguely chalked it up to his eventful youth. “I was then able to climb right up onto the roof and pry up some of the tiles to make a little hole. It didn’t make a difference because that was when the water stopped rising, but”—he shrugged—“it made the people inside feel better. And it gave me something to do.”

“So now you keep an axe in the attic.”

“Yes. Not an original idea, by the way. Many people around here do the same. Especially since Katrina.”

Willem was accustomed to his father’s roundabout way of conveying important lessons through these kinds of nonverbal signals. A brainy youngster could always argue with a parental statement, especially when the kid was a native English speaker running rings around his immigrant dad. But you couldn’t argue with an axe in the attic.

“All right,” he said agreeably, “so you do take the threat of rising water seriously.”

“As how could I not!” Hendrik scoffed. Before his father could get going on the Watersnoodramp, Willem nodded vigorously and stretched out his hands in surrender. “What are we going to do about it is the question.”

“We, as a civilization? About global climate change?”

“I know, right? Too vague! Too much diffusion of responsibility. Too much politics.”

Hendrik cursed under his breath at the mere mention of politics and inhaled as if to deliver some remarks on that topic. Willem waved him off: “Instead ask, what are Dutch people going to do specifically about rising sea level and suddenly it is simpler and clearer, no? Instead of the whole world—the United Nations and all that—it’s just the Netherlands. And instead of all the detailed ramifications of greenhouse gases and climate change, we are talking of one issue that is clear and concrete: rising sea level.” Willem again nodded toward the bayou. “No one can argue with that. And for us, obviously, it is life or death. We fix the problem or our country ceases to exist. So that makes it very clear.”

“Not so clear that the politicians can’t fuck it up,” Hendrik pointed out.

“I don’t work for a politician, as it turns out.”

“But you just finished giving me a lecture on the limits of her power. The Grondwet and all that.”

“And you responded, Father, by telling me about the non-political ways that the monarch can inspire and lead people.” Unspoken, as always—because it didn’t need to be said—was Johannes on his knees, blind, hearing the faint whistle of the descending blade.

“So the question we are here to explore,” Willem went on, “is whether a moment has arrived when the queen can play a role in leading the nation out of grave peril—without overstepping constitutional bounds.”

“It is a good question to explore, to be sure,” Hendrik said, after a little pause to consider it. “But why are you exploring it in Texas?”

“Good question,” Willem said. “The answer is, there’s a man down in Houston who had the presence of mind, a few years ago, to put an axe in the world’s attic. We are here to find out whether the moment has arrived to pick it up.”

THE MISSISSIPPI DELTA