Jacob studied the church. A brick wall with curled barbed wire along the top ran around it; a decidedly unChristian sight. In the wall stood a large iron gate bearing a notice reading: The Aryan Fellowship of Jesus, Oklahoma. The bile rose in the back of Jacob’s throat; he’d come across the Aryan Fellowship before, in a town a hundred miles west. They were a nasty bunch of bigots and Jacob had been forced to flee after they’d nailed one of his coyotes alive to a cross. Every cell in his body pulsed with the desire to run. But as he squinted up at the bell tower, the way the sunlight caught the edge of the brass bell reminded him how there was beauty and hope in even the ugliest places. And, for the first time in his life, the rainmaker ignored his instincts.
He pushed back his long chestnut hair and rested his forehead on the steering wheel. He had the type of beauty that only becomes apparent after a few minutes; his sensual face had a satyrlike quality that oozed into the psyche like a subtle perfume. In other words, he was the kind of man that women found irresistible and men dreaded. At forty-six Jacob was at the height of his powers. But at this precise moment he felt anything but powerful. He was exhausted. He’d been on the road for twenty years, traveling from one settlement to another, one dustbowl to another, wherever he was needed—but in every place he’d ended up being run out of town. His was a thankless task, he thought, a gift that had become a curse.
Rainmaking was a talent he had been born with, one that had been handed down over generations. His father had been a diviner, famous for finding water in the most remote parts of the American wilderness. Jacob used to accompany the garrulous bearded man as he scrambled possessed over gullies and ravines, his forked branch twitching, often followed by a mob of jeering disbelievers. But those same farmers, real-estate developers, prospectors, would all stop in their tracks, gasping, hours later when the drill released a gushing spout of fresh clear water from exactly the location the diviner had predicted. Jacob could never understand why his father didn’t stay and reap the rewards, financial or otherwise, the townsfolk offered him. It was only later, when Jacob was older and inflicted with the same gift, that he realized his father had been unable to dwell in one place. For as soon as the diviner found water, the restlessness would be upon him again and he was immediately summoned by another drought. It was a slavery that had held Jacob’s family in bondage for generations.
Moon, the silver-gray coyote sitting beside him, whimpered. They’d been driving for ten hours straight and she was desperate for some exercise.
“Okay, girl, I hear you. Let’s say welcome to what is gonna be home for a few weeks.” And with world-weariness evident in every aching muscle, Jacob pushed open the door and climbed out.
He stood staring at the cloudless sky for a moment then wiped the sweat from his hands on his creased leather pants and sauntered up to the door of the town hall. It was locked. He turned to look down the street. Although there was no one visible, he could feel hidden eyes burning holes through his shirt.
“Go on, stare as much as you like, for I am the alchemist and your world will never be the same again,” he muttered defiantly, then realized that he was completely devoid of inspiration. Sighing deeply he tucked a business card under the door’s brass handle and whistled for the coyote.
The Ford Bronco headed over to the empty trailer park at the edge of town. Preacher Williams watched it go, staring after it from his office alongside the church. A thin-lipped man, who wore his misery in the stoop of his shoulders and hollowed cheeks, the preacher had a particular hatred of anything that smacked of handcrafted faith, cults, or sects. He had convinced himself that devilry, a corruption of the human soul, had seeped slowly but undeniably into the last half of the twentieth century and now into the twenty-first. It was a global corruption from which he was determined to save his corner of the world.
“Rainmaker indeed,” the preacher muttered and reached for the phone, the wine-colored star-shaped birthmark on the top of his hand becoming visible for a second.
Chad Winchester, sitting high up in a tractor in the middle of a ruined dry field, heard his cell phone ringing but couldn’t remember where he’d placed it. Understandably the florid mayor was distracted—Abigail Etterton, wheat farmer and the most glamorous widow in the state, had his erect penis in her mouth. Chad glanced tenderly at Abigail’s beautiful mouth sliding up and down his glistening organ. They’d been lovers for over two years and there had been many occasions when he’d considered divorcing his wife. Political astuteness, however, always overrode the exigencies of love. He moaned quietly, deeply regretting his ambition in that instant. Sandridge was a fiercely religious town and his wife, Cheri, cheerleader of Sandridge High 1976 and head of the Wheatgrowers’ Wives Association of Oklahoma, was a popular woman. But a woman who had never achieved orgasm, and not for want of trying on Chad’s part.
His own climax was proving uncharacteristically elusive, not helped by the ringing cell phone. The thought that it might be some disaster he should deal with gnawed at the edge of his mind.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, you might as well answer it,” Abigail remarked from between his legs. Embarrassed, Chad tucked away his rapidly diminishing penis and reached for his cell phone.
The rainmaker looked out of the window of his trailer. When he’d parked it in the dusty trailer park the place had been empty. Now, the locals had started to gather in bunches. There were two sprawling Mexican families, their children chasing each other with handfuls of black dust. There was the gas-station owner, holding a pitchfork in one hand, glaring at the trailer as if he were expecting battle. Next to him, six young farmers, obviously brothers, lounged over a brand new tractor. From their high cheekbones and strong features Jacob guessed they were of Germanic descent. Finally, there were the women.
“All women have their own beauty, if you look at them long enough,” Jacob observed, fascinated by the way one, who looked like a librarian, moved her hands in fluttery gestures. Next to her was a buxom blond matron in a hat. Obviously an official’s wife, Jacob thought, assessing her body with the practice of a connoisseur. “Or how about the virgin aching for experience?” he murmured, gazing at the gauche schoolgirl in the short skirt who rubbed her legs together like a restless colt.
“Gals, I’m here for you. I am everyman. I will fulfill your every fantasy while none of you, not one, will ever be able to move me.” He smiled painfully. “I am as arid as the land I’ve come to liberate.” The declaration made his heart suddenly ache.
He pulled the shutters down, overwhelmed by an exhaustion that was spiritual rather than physical, and leaned wearily against the wall of the trailer. Stuck to the refrigerator were photographs of his four exwives and an article torn from Life magazine about a horrific British murder involving a vegetable root. Jacob had a fascination for bizarre murders and the description of the Welsh spinster murderess had captivated him. One day he was going to meet her. Smiling at the thought, his eyes wandered to a pink garter embroidered with the name Charlene that hung on the fridge door handle.
Jacob pulled it off and sniffed it. Sometimes he wondered whether he had a heart at all. He’d reached his midforties without ever being affected by anyone. It wasn’t that he was shallow—at least he didn’t think so—it was just that he had a constant sense of emotional distance, as if he were experiencing the world from the bottom of a deep clear well. The women he’d been involved with—and there had been hundreds of them—all fell in love with the idea of rescuing him from the shimmering depths of his aloofness. They would caress him, nurture him, lie down for him, dance, weep, shout and moan, but he remained untouched by any of them. And now, nearly half a century old, Jacob had abandoned the idea of love altogether. The best he could hope for was the secure feeling of being wrapped up tight, losing himself in yet another sexual conquest. The sensation made him forget his mortality, his loneliness and fears. But the feeling inevitably passed the moment he reached orgasm and then the remoteness would rush in, stronger than before.
Cheri Winchester, the mayor’s wife, still sported her hair rollers. The sun had dried her curls into stiff rivulets but she was too distracted to notice. “Applefort called in a rainmaker after three years of drought and they say that it worked a treat,” she remarked to her best friend, Rebecca, who ran the local cultural center, which consisted of a sole dusty exhibition dating back to 1954 when Sandridge won the prize for the cleanest town in the southwest.
Rebecca stepped closer and peered at the caravan across the fence. “Dangerous voodoo. Dreams destroy people’s lives, you mark my words.” She pursed her lips, remembering her own broken hopes—a fiancé who died in the first Gulf War and with him any chance of Rebecca escaping spinsterhood.
“Oh, Becs,” Cheri ventured, “you know I believe in collective hope.” Rebecca squinted at her; sometimes Cheri’s quirky ideas irritated her intensely.
“Surely if we all pray together we can make a little rain fall?” Cheri blushed, the boldness of her statement leaving her on shaky ground.
“Amen.” Stefan Kaufmann, one of the six handsome brothers, smiled sexily at her. Cheri smiled back, then to her dismay heard her husband’s car approaching.
Chad’s silver Lexus skidded to a halt. The crowd swung around. The mayor, perspiration already staining the armpits of his blue shirt, climbed out from behind the wheel. Bill Williams, the preacher, whose pale body never seemed to sweat, even in this scorching heat, tagged behind. The crowd parted as Chad strode through, his showmanship at its peak. The preacher scuttled crablike beside him. Jeremiah Running Dog, sheriff, second-largest landowner and head of the local Lions club, followed them. A bulky man in his late sixties and weighing over three hundred pounds, he was feared for his unpredictable temper. Jeremiah moved at a leisurely pace, but if one looked closer the coiled muscles at his neck betrayed his apprehension.
There were three sharp taps on the aluminum door. Jacob finished his whiskey. This was how it always started: the men of the town would make the first approach. Drought reduces people to the most basic of emotions, he mused. Dignity dissolves after the seventh month. There is something about a dearth of rain that flattens the hope out of all men, yellow, white, green, or black. He knew he could predict the reception he’d get from any small town official just by plucking a withered blade of the local grass and rubbing it between his fingers.
He stood up and stared into the mirror by the door. He slicked back his hair, adjusted his silk shirt, and practiced a smile. He still had trouble relating to the handsome man who looked back at him, always incredulous that all the heartbreak he caused had left no mark on his face. The pristine features suggested the morality of an angel. “If only they knew,” he whispered and stepped out of the trailer.
The three town representatives stood waiting. A gasp of expectancy rippled through the crowd as Jacob paused in front of them. The sunlight transformed the rainmaker’s hair into a blazing dark red halo. From the neck up he looked like Jesus; from the neck down like the devil, with his loose scarlet shirt and silver pendant of a satyr visible against his oiled chest. Smiling at the crowd he bowed elegantly, sending a quiver through the women.
The mayor decided to take charge. He cleared his throat and announced loudly, “We don’t like hawkers here, or strangers for that matter.”
Jacob leaned down and caressed his coyote with his tapered hands, his ring, its sapphire the blue of water, glinting in the sun. Eventually he spoke: “I heard there was a drought.” He lifted his face and the searing indigo of his eyes pierced Chad Winchester with a terrible longing for the sea. For a moment the mayor wondered if he wasn’t affected with the same drought madness that had caused Jeremiah’s thirty-five-year-old son to leap to his death into the town’s empty dam the summer before.
“A drought,” Jacob continued, “that is breaking the backs of animals and the hearts of men.” His resonant voice boomed around the field and caused the body hair of the crowd to collectively stand on end.
Sensing the disturbance the sheriff moved forward. “What can you do?” Jeremiah demanded, rolls of fat clinging to his sweat-soaked shirt. He tried not to stare too hard at the glinting pendant, which only added to the obvious sexuality of the man.
As Jacob walked toward them the immensity of his presence made the men involuntarily step back. The rainmaker was at least six foot five and the Cuban heels gave him another three inches.
“I can make it rain, for weeks if I choose. I can make this ground bear grass. I can turn all your crops green again.”
“Spoken like a real con artist,” the preacher muttered. He scanned the mesmerized crowd then turned back to Jacob. “What are you after, mister? Money?” Mockery tinged his voice.
“I have my conditions. Money ain’t one of them,” Jacob replied, his perfect teeth gleaming. He noted the glint of hatred in the preacher’s eye and remembered the Aryan Fellowship sign.
“So if you’re not after money, what are you after?” Jeremiah stepped between the two men.
Jacob twisted his sapphire ring. This was the moment when his intuition was really tested. The code of honor his lineage had bred into him obliged him to be truthful, but it was a truth that required diplomacy.
“You have to understand that water is an element. It needs to feel welcome. There is an emotional aridness in this town that has driven the rain away. For it to return, it needs tenderness, affection, love…sex.”
A ripple of excitement ran through the crowd at the word sex. Preacher Williams breathed in sharply, sounding like a wounded bullfrog. Jeremiah surprised himself by remembering his own secret Cherokee beliefs; next to him Chad thought about Abigail, and how the air around her often seemed moist with her juices.
Unperturbed, the rainmaker continued. “There are frictions between living souls that create an ether of invisible fluids. These fluids attract the rain clouds—they operate as a kind of magnet.”
Jeremiah, now acutely aware of his own schism between Cherokee and Christian and feeling uncomfortably compromised, spat into the dust. “Cut the bullshit. We’re not interested in your methodology, we’re only interested in results and what you’re asking for them, boy.” The last word rang out with condescension.
Jacob paused for a second, then: “What I want is one of your women.” He tossed out the sentence as if it were the most casual of requests.
The crowd began to murmur. Chad raised his hands and hushed them. He turned back to the rainmaker. “What for?”
“The only way I can induce rain is to make love to one of your women,” Jacob repeated slowly.
The crowd broke out in an uproar. The preacher let out a great screech of indignation. Jeremiah had to forcibly hold back one of the Kaufmann brothers, while Chad stood frozen in the midst of the commotion, paralyzed by the realization that his personal equilibrium, both political and sexual, was under threat.
Jacob retreated to the trailer. “I strongly suggest you consider my proposal,” he said to the mayor before slamming his door.
Ignoring the jeers audible through the thin walls, he poured another whiskey. “The seed is planted, now I just have to watch it grow,” he said. Satisfied that events had been set into motion, he curled up on his bed and fell instantly asleep.
Outside, the preacher glared in disgust at the silver trailer as the crowd dissipated, wandering back to their lives. Cheri went to the hairdresser to rescue her hair. Chad drove to his office to meet with the town veterinarian who had more reports of dehydrated cattle. Rebecca strolled back to her bookshelves, secretly appalled at the small throbbing between her legs.
While Jacob slept he dreamed the shape of the settlement. It was his way of marking out his territory. Propelled by the image of himself carried in the minds of Sandridge’s residents, he shot high above the roofs of the town to float i
n the cloudless sky. He loved the sensation of disembodiment, as if his physical self had dispersed like a cloud of invisible droplets. He was nowhere and everywhere.
Below him he could see how people’s emotions stained their lives like color. The old widow’s grief, a dark blue-gray hue that seeped across her kitchen table as she sat staring out at the empty fields. Jeremiah, standing in his stable and remembering his dead son as a boy, his memory streaming pale mauve from his hand onto his shivering horse.
The beast glanced up knowingly at the rainmaker’s invisible hovering spirit. Jacob smiled down at the stallion and continued his journey, floating along Main Street, past the town hall, past the doctor’s surgery, past the diner with its tin walls glinting in the sun, past the bell tower of the church.
He paused at the church. From his position in the sky he sensed a most marvelous presence. Fascinated, he moved closer.
Who are you? The words manifested as clearly as sparkling icicles and hung in his mind as strongly as his own voice. A strange new emotion gripped him as he realized the presence was female. Before he could answer, the shimmering was hidden from him by an ugly darkness. It fell across the light and enveloped it. Help me! she cried out, her pain almost ripping Jacob’s head off.
“I have no power in this form!” he replied, panicking, pushing against his own skin, trying to transform spirit into muscle.
Whoever it was beneath the darkness struggled and then lay still. It was like watching a hawk tear apart a rabbit. Horrified, Jacob tried to bring himself awake but found that he could not. Instead his dreaming pulled him closer to the violence below. The barriers of brick and mortar melted away, and, looking down, he recognized the preacher, his thin pale buttocks pounding against a girl pinned beneath him. The air filled with the sound of screeching birds. Several starlings and an owl flapped wildly around the room, swooping and attacking the preacher, who paused only to beat them off with his arm. Transfixed, Jacob could not look away; it was both a terrible and an extraordinary sight, for the girl had the most exquisite soul he had ever experienced.
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