Before the Flood Chip Brown (bio) Keywords Chip, Brown, piano tuner, Pacific Theatre, Navy veteran, boat, Noah, water (for my father Sandy Brown, 1924–2016) In other news—I did spend two hours yesterdaywith a piano tuner who resurrected six dead keyson the Steinway you left me. He was a Jehovah's Witness who told me humanity is only 6,000 years old.And you and I would meet again someday, in a gardenor possibly a music store. So maybe you'll want the piano back, you restored to age 19, traversingthe Pacific on a Navy tug. Or will it be wheelchair youat 91 and too unseaworthy to form an easy chord in C? Short on details the tuner was. But he knew his wayaround the action of an old upright, where everyEaster you hid licorice jelly beans on the black keys and our dogs would lie in level heaven gnawing bonesand plastic dinosaurs. As the sweet loon droned onabout the flaws of carbon dating and the true shape of Noah's ark, I heard your leitmotif, that leaflessmelody you played the day the movers cameand I bum-rushed you off the bench, shortchanging your last turn because they were charging by the hour.The way you stood and closed the lid. Never meet again.The way we both stood, stranded in the rising water. [End Page 296] Chip Brown chip brown, a former staff writer for the Washington Post, has written for more than 40 national magazines including the New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, National Geographic, Esquire, Harper's, Elle, Smithsonian, Vanity Fair, Outside, Men's Journal, Travel + Leisure, and Vogue. He is the author of two nonfiction books, Afterwards, You're a Genius: Faith, Medicine, and the Metaphysics of Healing and Good Morning Midnight: Life and Death in the Wild. He has published poems in Mountain Gazette and Alpinist. Copyright © 2021 The Massachusetts Review, Inc.