Miss Elaine lived by herself in a small house that had been her daughter's before the daughter, Abby, had died of cancer at age thirty-nine. Miss Elaine was short and wizened, like a doll made from a shrunken apple, but had a steady, hustling gait like a wind-up toy. During the spring and summer, she tended her vegetable garden behind the white cottage.

When she needed anything else, she walked two blocks down the empty road by the river to the general store, where she quietly filled her rope bag with milk and butter, chocolate and lunch meat, eggs and dried noodles. The Masons, who ran the store, waved to her and sometimes shouted, "HELLO!", but didn't say much else because they somehow assumed she was deaf. The small, firm figure never did anything to contradict that belief. She hustled back down the road in silence, always on the side opposite the river as if the water were an enemy, her flowered dress, one of a dozen, barely moving against her body.

She had lived in the town for twenty years, yet she was not a part of it. She was recognized, but not embraced or even named, like a gift sent by an acquaintance that is kept, but left in its box. Miss Elaine was indifferent to most things including the town, the land she tended, the clothes on her back and the bills she paid. She had learned long ago to treat her surroundings as a vision, neither more nor less frightening or real.

"Make friends," Abby had said. "Then you won't be alone here when I'm gone."

"Friends, pah!" Miss Elaine had replied. "I've had enough friends in my day. I'm just as happy with my own company." She could never explain to Abby that the only real friends are those who saw you grow up. They were the ones who knew you through and through. Her girlfriends from Cartersville, Emily and Alice, had played beside her in the mud when they were five, and had sat in her livingroom when she and Colin announced their engagement. When her family had gone to church, she had walked in straight and proper in a fresh dress, proud to say she knew everyone there, and that they could all be asked for help if necessary.

But that had been before the men came.

There was nothing Miss Elaine loved to do better than pull up her cotton dress and kneel in the earth of her garden. She rose at five, as she usually did in the spring and summer, and prepared herself a cup of tea. After a few sips, she went outside and got to work, weeding, digging, watering, feeling the dirt. She did the entire garden herself, beginning in April, and needed no one's help. She had had her own plot since she was a girl in Cartersville. Her Daddy had given it to her, and marked it off with sticks and twine. She had raised tomatoes and cucumbers. After they all had to leave, she had had nightmares of her plot slowly being flooded with water. She could feel it now on her feet and legs. There were times when Miss Elaine looked down and realized she had wet herself. At first she was ashamed, but she soon forgot.

She spent her afternoons listening to the radio and doing a little cooking to last the next couple of days. This Saturday she made, despite the wilting summer heat, pot roast, potatoes, and carrots. She listened to Sunday services, hoping to keep her bid in for heaven. Always she was ahead of herself, stuffing casseroles, cooked meats, and gravies in her big white freezer. To her way of thinking, if she dropped dead, whoever found her would have plenty to eat for his trouble.

Her eyes were not as good as they used to be, even with her glasses, and she sometimes had trouble reading her own labels. Instead of spaghetti sauce, she would thaw out strawberry jam, and instead of gravy, she would find she had cooked chocolate sauce. Everything had begun to look like water to her. The air was water, and so were the things she touched. It's come back for me, she thought, and sighed. Three years ago, she had given up reading her magazines and even the Bible, yet her eyesight worsened. She could never tell how high the river was getting any more, and suspected one day it would begin to lap at the front door. It all comes around, she thought.

Her daughter's pots and pans clanged together in the sink. When she thought of Abby, it was in an immediate yet far-off way. She knew and yet she didn't always remember. Abby had come into the world a baby and miraculously left one, bald-headed and mewling and sweet. The day Abby had died, Miss Elaine had changed her diapers as she had Abby's first day on earth, after Miss Elaine had birthed her in the Towson Hospital. Oh, how it had hurt! Sometimes it seemed to Miss Elaine Abby had never grown at all that she had been a bald-headed infant all those years.

Miss Elaine would never have dreamed of leaving Maryland before Abby became sick, but now she was old and had learned the secret. The secret was that she carried her lost ones inside her, so it didn't matter where she laid her head. Her husband, who had died forty years back in an automobile accident, was there too as she went through her day in the town, in the back of her mind, even when she got caught up in the visions of ordinary life. What a handsome man he had been when they first met! He had fine red hair and a big mustache like two licks of flame. Colin strong, from his construction work, with a big chest. She had loved to lay her head on it; it felt like a warm piece of steel. Married at sixteen, widowed at thirty-six. "I was so proud when he asked me to the movies," she told Abby, "he and his brothers had chipped in and bought a new Ford. I was so proud to be seen in that car." Yet she had rued that vanity the day he had run into a truck and been decapitated. For many years she had been sure she was the one who had brought the sadness on them all.

After Miss Elaine had cooked the main course, she liked to stew and freeze her tomatoes and make pickles from the cucumbers. Her cucumbers from the past few years hadn't tasted right. They were too bitter. Last month, a batch had made her vomit. "I've never been one to be sick, " she told Abby. "The only time I ever went to the hospital was to have you, but I cried so much when we were told to leave town, Mama thought I would die."

Who was it who had broken the news to her? Had it been Daddy or Colin? They had found out and from then had a year and a half to get out. Had she been old enough to date Colin? She couldn't remember. She remembered a deep voice, male and steady saying, "They are going to use the land for a reservoir. We all must find somewhere else to live." She had asked if they couldn't use just part of the town, and leave them alone. "No," she had been told. "We all must go." Had her mother said one of these things, or had she been dead? Miss Elaine had begun crying and had cried every day until Colin asked her to marry him, and they got married and moved to Towson. Miss Elaine sighed. He had been such a handsome man, carrying her from the dead town like an avenging prince. He father had slapped Colin on the back at their wedding and told him, "If you can make Elaine smile, you must be all right." There had been many jokes about getting wet. Miss Elaine frowned at the thought of the wedding. She couldn't remember if she had had any bridesmaids. She had worn a lace and white linen dress her mother had made. Did she have any sisters? No, Colin had had a sister.

Miss Elaine put on a headscarf and cleaned the house, running a damp rag over the wooden furniture and an electric broom over the splintery wooden floorboards. The furniture was old and made from a cheap mahogany, and the floors were covered with rag rugs. Almost everything in the house was Abby's, and many of her papers still lay in stacks around the house. Her clothes were in the closets. There were times when Abby's possessions made her seem very close by, and Miss Elaine would speak to her as if she were in the next room. "Cartersville was a good town," Miss Elaine told her. "There was no reason to take it away. They could have put the Loch somewhere else, but they didn't."

When she had finished cleaning, she gathered soiled white bed linen and all of the towels and thrust them into the light blue machines by the back door. After all of this exertion, she allowed herself one cigarette and a piece of chocolate.

Thank goodness I'm still on my own, she thought to herself as she lit her cigarette. If it's one thing I can't stand, it's being told what to do. Colin had learned this early on. He would show up at her parents' house and tell her they were going to the movies, and she would slam the door in his face. She did this four times before he figured out he should ask her what she would like to do. He hadn't known that she had burst into tears every time he had left, afraid he would never return. There wasn't too much to do in Cartersville at night, besides park or meet up with other young people at church or on the steps of Saunder's store, but with Colin's car they could go the movies in Towson, or go to concerts nearby, or even to Baltimore if they left early in the day. She would have been glad to go anywhere with him, but she had taught him to ask her first.

From time to time they dredged the river because of silt. They were up to it again, running the big machines right through her Saturday. Miss Elaine's house was right across the street from the river, and the hoopla made her crazy. Now she put her hands over her ears, and went to check on her vegetables, as if they might wilt from the noise and movement of the machines. When she walked to the Mason's store the other day, she peered at the invaders, barbarians in bright vests and yellow hats, curiously. "Serves them right!" she had shouted. "Serves them right!"

There had been rumours for years that one could see the reflection of the town in the Loch water. They were obviously digging for it, trying to capture the ghost so they could be rid of it forever. They were trying to find the church steeple, which was also said to be visible when the water was low.

But was the water low? Or was it high? She thought she had seen it on her front lawn the other day. It was better to be sure, not to miss the evacuation date. Miss Elaine crossed the road and crossed a little footbridge to the other side of the river. A young man in an orange vest stood in her way. She asked him, "How high is the water?"

"It's fine," he answered. He took her by the elbow and steered her back to the footbridge. "Be careful around here, okay?"

Miss Elaine stood very straight and crossed the bridge. The insolence. These men knew nothing. There were only four families left in town, including hers. Colin had gone to find work and an apartment for them in Towson, but she wouldn't leave until she had to. There were only three children at the school, and the water level kept rising every day. The Saunder's store was gone, an empty shell about to burn, and much of Main Street was under water. The school yard was starting to fill up with water, inch by inch. They had no good furniture left at the house, and only a few boxes of possessions. Daddy said they had to wait for their new house in Ridgely to be fixed up, which would be any day now. Mama was tired and lay down a lot on a walnut bed they wouldn't take with them. She tried to talk about Elaine's wedding, which would be in a month. "I promise I'll sew your dress for you," she kept saying. "Just as soon as we get out of here. I'll do it at Daddy's office if I have to."

Most of the buildings that were on Main Street had been knocked down by the men. They wouldn't listen to her. Now the ones that stood would be burned, and the ones that hadn't burned stood there like hulking tombstones. The men were making the way for the water, then letting the water come in and take over. The whole town smelled like a swamp. Miss Elaine looked at the men working across the river and yelled, "You're making a terrible mistake! Put the reservoir somewhere else! You don't need to kill the town!"

The men looked up at her. Finally, they were listening. One was coming toward her. Was that Colin? Was he helping them too? She looked across the flooded main street and began to cry. This was all that was left.

Miss Elaine turned and ran across the bridge to her cottage. She was exhausted, but put the electric broom in the closet before she sat down. What day was it? She hadn't smoked for quite a while; she found a match in the kitchen drawer and lit it. She usually kept her cigarettes on the shelf above the stove, but they did not seem to be there. The match burned her fingers, and she dropped it on the ground.

She was so very tired from her day of hard work. She had taken a journey today, hadn't she? A long one. It was early, but she knew she should go to bed. "Good night, Abby," she called out. She opened her walnut bureau and pulled on a white nightgown. Her mother had made it for her, along with her wedding gown.

She waited for Colin to come to bed. He came in, and started to take off his shirt. His pants were caked with dried mud. The red hairs on his chest shone in the lamp light. "Are you happy?" he asked.

"With you, always," she said. Then she became very sad when she remembered Main Street, all of its buildings reduced to graves. "Why did they have to take the town away?" she cried.

Suddenly she was younger and asking her father the same question. "Progress," he replied.