The mayor’s wife paused, frozen in the moonlight. She was wearing nothing but a Victoria’s Secret camisole under Chad’s old parka. The sound of cicadas was intense; the incessant buzzing blocked out most other sounds. All she could hear was the thudding of her own heart.
Cheri hadn’t been able to analyze the sensation that possessed her when she woke beside her sleeping husband. She had arisen like a somnambulist, slipped on the camisole, and walked silently out the back door to find herself gliding down Main Street like a ghost. An invisible rope of a thousand glistening tingling threads pulled her along, tugging at each nipple, sucking at every part of her long-neglected sex.
“I’m not in command of my actions,” she repeated to herself, trying to take some comfort in the mantra. “I am under a spell,” she muttered as she quickened her pace toward the caravan, a silver zeppelin under the moon.
“At the very least,” she concluded as she arrived at the trailer’s doorstep, “this is the kind of sacrifice only the mayor’s wife should be expected to make for the greater community.” And with that consoling thought, she knocked softly.
Above, a tawny owl that had been following her progress with great curiosity, hovered for a second, its beady eyes watching as she stepped into the van. Perching carefully on top of the vehicle, using its claws to balance, it made its way to the window.
It wasn’t exactly the woman Jacob had been hoping for, but he’d always nurtured the philosophy that womanhood was elemental, and, as such, the individual manifestation wasn’t really so important. He smiled at the mayor’s wife, a voluptuous woman whose vital juices, he assessed with one glance, were long overdue for liberation.
I dedicate this lovemaking to you, Miranda—he sent the thought to his captive lover as the matron fell into his arms in a timely swoon.
As Jacob carried Cheri over the threshold, a light flickered on in Rebecca’s bedroom across the road. Sandridge’s cultural ambassador wasn’t one to leave anything to hearsay. Meanwhile, hanging upside down, its round feathery face pressed against the window, the owl’s eyes widened.
The mayor’s wife lay across the quilt, her eyelids fluttering. “I’m here,” she murmured coyly, “I’m here to make…rain.”
But Jacob’s hands had already lifted the hem of her camisole, were massaging their way up her thighs, touching her in a manner she had not thought men capable of. “I hope you appreciate the sacrifice I’m making,” she managed to say between gasps, as he caressed the secret part she’d spent many a wasted night praying that Chad, in his clumsy fumblings, might find.
“I’m here for the town,” she screamed as Jacob buried his face in her sex.
As he worked his tongue, the rainmaker conjured up gargantun clouds that gathered on a night horizon, rolling cumulus, decorated with silent flashes of lightning that twisted magically into Miranda’s hair blowing wildly around her face as she smiled at him.
As he caught Cheri’s clit between his lips, he imagined the trees bending in a stormy wind. Swaying, they transformed into the dusky arch of Miranda’s naked back.
Meanwhile, over at the diner, Hank Thurson’s barometer swung to Humid for the first time in over a year and the weather vane atop the town hall burst out of its rust to spin wildly.
With her legs pinned to the bed, Cheri had no choice but to surrender. A spiderweb of ecstasy ran from nerve end to nerve end. Experiencing sensations she hadn’t known existed, she clutched at his hair, pulling violently. The pleasure was so intense she thought she might faint, but still the rainmaker held her down, pausing only to bite gently at her inner thighs in brief respite before fastening his mouth again to her sex. Above the trailer, storm clouds gathered. The owl shook her feathers.
Cheri cried and moaned. Deep within her the rainmaker felt all the trapped disappointments, the sorrows of missed opportunity, the tedium of mindless duty building like a massive tidal wall. Maestro that he was, he took his time, allowing the longing to subside for a moment, only to build it up again, knowing that the higher the wall, the greater the outpouring.
Miranda, Miranda, he thought over and over, sending her every shiver of pleasure he felt. He intensified his lovemaking, calling on all his prodigious abilities, blowing, licking, and teasing every nerve end to the point of explosion.
Finally, when he sensed he had brought Cheri to the brink, he raised himself high on his hands and plunged his heavy sex deep into her. Finally Cheri understood the true function of the male organ. As Jacob thrust into her she clutched at his buttocks, shocking herself with loud guttural cries, wanting more and more. Recognizing her urgency he quickened his pace. The tsunami rose and rose until it filled Cheri’s mind, then broke, flooding her with glorious, unadulterated pleasure.
“Ahhhhhhhh!” she screamed, her first ever orgasm rippling through her like an epiphany. A second later Jacob followed, his body trembling violently. In the bell tower, Miranda, her pelvis raised up in bliss, twisted in ecstasy at exactly the same moment.
Suddenly the residents of Sandridge were woken by a huge peal of thunder, and the owl flew off in the direction of the church.
It rained and rained and rained. In the early hours of that first day the townsfolk came out and danced under the heavy droplets of water, their naked legs and arms splashed with black mud that had been dust for so long. Jeremiah, shaking with relief, went to his son’s grave and thanked God and the great buzzard—talisman of his people—his tears mingling with the rain.
Only the mayor, a heavy sleeper, slept through both the thunder and the pelting of the rain. It was Cheri, rosy and flushed, who shook him awake three hours later to tell him the fireman wanted his permission to ring the church bells as the outraged preacher had barricaded himself in.
Chad, although drowsy, still noticed the strange new aura surrounding his wife. Others might describe it as happiness, but he put it down to her exhilaration at the breaking of the drought. Again he congratulated himself on having had the sense to pick a woman who excelled in her duties as the First Lady of a god-fearing farming community. Chuckling to himself, he dusted off his raincoat and pulled it on over his pajamas.
“I wonder who the woman was?” he remarked to Cheri as the Lexus pulled out of the slippery driveway. Cheri blushed, but as usual Chad was too preoccupied with himself to notice.
The preacher had been awoken not by the thunder but by a sudden chorus of nightingales. When the beautiful but piercing cries filled his bedroom he leaped to his feet and, dragging a great flannel robe over his shrunken frame, flung open the window and peered out. He didn’t notice the trembling raindrops bursting over his bald pate; the sight before him was so frightening and so lovely that his heart jolted against his chest. He wondered for one brief moment whether he had been blessed with a visitation, but then as he looked closer he recognized Miranda.
She was dancing nude in the rain, her body contorting like a snake to its own music. At first he thought that she was being attacked by a flock of birds, but as he looked closer he saw that the nightingales hovered around her, each holding a strand of her long black hair in its beak, each whirling madly like a demented dervish. A lone owl sat on a branch above, as if it were conducting the whole event.
“Witchcraft!” the preacher cried out and rushed outside, throwing his coat over her and bundling her back into the house. After pushing her into the dingy bedroom and bolting the door, he sat at his desk, shaking with rage and terror. It was then that he heard the fireman banging on the door, demanding that the church bells be rung.
Chad stood on the back of a fire truck in front of the church, heedles of the pouring rain. He held a megaphone in one hand while his other arm lay draped around Cheri. It was a posture he felt conveyed family values and leadership. The mayor cleared his throat, the wet, elated crowd hushed into silence, and Chad began. “This is incredible! It is truly a miracle! God has blessed Sandridge!”
A great cheer went up. Overwhelmed, Chad squeezed Cheri’s arm for effect; he was a strong believ
er in exploiting the moment.
“I don’t know who we should thank,” he said, gesturing toward Jacob’s trailer, “the rainmaker, or the woman who chose to make the greatest sacrifice of all!”
At this Cheri blushed again. Her flushed cheeks went unnoticed by the men, but several women looked knowingly at each other. Rebecca leaned over to whisper into the ear of the beautician.
Chad continued, oblivious to the flame of gossip that was spreading like wildfire through the women in the crowd.
“Instead, I suggest we give thanks to the Almighty Himself!”
Obediently the townsfolk followed Cheri Winchester’s example as she bent her head to pray.
The second night Jacob was visited by the fireman’s wife; the third night the beautician practically pounded down the door; the fourth night he was frightened the van might actually tip over as the schoolmistress vigorously rode him. On the fifth night Rebecca drank the miniature bottle of whiskey she’d been saving for Thanksgiving and marched over to the trailer park. The rain did not stop. Exhausted, Jacob stayed in his trailer.
He was thinking of one woman only. With each new conquest his desire for Miranda became more urgent. Between the sessions of lovemaking he started taking long walks around the church, marking the time the preacher locked the iron gates, where the wall was lowest, and any other information that he might be able to use. On his second trek around the perimeter he noticed the owl following, flying from tree to tree.
“You’re with her?” he asked. The owl, as if in response, flew nearer and perched on the handle of an abandoned plow.
“Tell her it will be soon. I will send her a signal.”
The owl cocked its head then flew off to the belfry. As Jacob watched, slowly a plan manifested.
Miranda leaned against the bars of the diamond-shaped window. The owl was just visible as it zigzagged toward her through the pelting rain. It landed on the windowsill then squeezed itself through the bars. Hooting softly it shook the rain from its feathers.
Miranda held out her hand. The owl leaped onto her arm and walked up to her shoulder. Tenderly it rubbed its head against her cheek.
Have you brought me a message? she asked. The owl, clicking with its tongue and hooting, told her that the rainmaker would come for her before the next full moon.
Are you sure? What about the other women? she ventured, wanting the reassurance she already sensed.
Don’t waste my time, replied the owl crossly. You know it is you and only you he makes love to. He has a plan and they are part of it. Then, upon seeing a scurry on the other side of the room, the owl swooped down to catch a mouse.
The heavens had been opened and the rainmaker was paid a thousandfold for his moisture-inducing efforts. The women couldn’t get enough of him. Their nocturnal visits to his caravan became so frequent that they started to pass each other in the now muddy field that was the trailer park. Each woman discreetly ignored the other as they crossed paths, hair concealed by headscarves, ludicrous sunglasses wrapped around elated faces. Some even wore false eyebrows, false mustaches, and wigs.
Their cries of pleasure pooled in the crevices and corners of the trailer, eventually gushing out the windows and straight up into the overcast sky, triggering a new downpour every time. It was perfect alchemy. Soon Jacob was rendezvousing with every female over the age of sixteen and under the age of seventy-two and the pharmacy had run out of every known method of contraception.
But with every seduction Jacob felt his heart become a little more hollow. For the first time in his life he craved one woman and one woman only. Although he was able to envisage her image with each new caress, and although he knew that she was trembling in unison with him, it wasn’t enough. “One more week. When the water rises another four inches I will make my move,” he calculated, trying desperately to stem the gnawing void he felt inside.
His only comfort was her ambassador. He started giving the owl gifts to take to her: a pale green glass marble he’d won as a child; a locket containing a crystallized droplet rumored to be the last tear shed by Marie Antoinette before she was beheaded; and a fragile shell from the North Sea whose echoes had a mysterious Irish lilt that rang out from its spiral depths.
Early each morning the bird arrived at the belfry where Miranda was incarcerated. It would drop the gift at her feet, perch on the end of the rusty brass bed and, in low hoots, give her Jacob’s messages—descriptions of where they would flee to, where they would live once he’d freed her. He told her about a beautiful island down in the Mississippi Delta where he had grown up. There they would build a house, grow fruit trees and, most of all, be safe. He even told her that he wanted to have a child with her. “The loveliest child in the world, who will be able to make rain and talk to the birds; a child made from a rainbow,” he said. As the owl talked, Miranda’s eyes would widen with Jacob’s dreams. Soon, she thought, soon he will come for me.
From her window high above the town she could see the silver trailer. She imagined it lifting up into the sky and flying away, leaving only a glittering arc. Then they would be on his island, where she would have a voice as exquisite as the nightingale’s.
Meanwhile, the preacher’s congregation dwindled. A week after the first rain had poured through the bell tower and dripped onto the altar, only twenty worshippers sat in the pews. At first Bill Williams attributed the absence of his parishioners to the frantic mending of field boundaries and riverbanks, but when his most devout followers—all of them female—stayed away in droves, he became suspicious.
The preacher made his way to the library, determined to gate-crash the knitting circle. When he arrived he found a group of rosy-faced, happily chatting women, each glowing (obscenely, he thought) with an extraordinary sense of wellbeing. Worse were the nauseatingly generous compliments they paid each other over the clicking of their knitting needles. Bill Williams was shocked to his very core. If they weren’t all over the age of menopause he would have sworn that they shone with the ruddy glow of pregnancy. Even more disturbing was the wall of silence that sprang up when he asked if anyone had seen the rainmaker.
The preacher stumbled out of the building to be confronted by a mass of migrating frogs crossing Main Street to breed in the new canals running alongside the road.
“The man has got to be eradicated, he is human vermin,” he muttered as he plucked one particularly amorous amphibian from his bald head. He turned and marched toward the mayor’s office.
When the preacher had finished his tirade, Chad glanced outside. Although the rain eased during the day, it always came down in heavy squalls from about seven p.m. every night. Interesting, the mayor thought, not quite able to pinpoint why this observation should be so disturbing, and whether he should associate it with his mistress’s sudden reluctance to see him. The world was not what it had been, and neither were the women in the town, he concluded. As he watched a cow struggle through the stream that had once been Main Street, he wondered about the rain’s disastrous commercial impact. It was then that he decided to call a meeting.
The husbands, sons, and brothers of Sandridge crowded into the town hall. Not one woman had been invited to the meeting. As the last farmer wiped his mud-encrusted boots and squeezed into the space a hush settled. The men turned to their elected leaders with tense faces. Chad suddenly felt nauseous with nerves. Jeremiah, noticing that the mayor had paled, nudged him in the ribs.
“Er…I’m sure that everyone here is in agreement that…er…the rain has to stop,” the mayor ventured.
A murmur of support rippled through the crowd. Chad took courage from the notion that these men might be businessmen first and husbands second.
“Good,” he continued. “Therefore, the question is…” His voice trailed off.
“Louder!” some smart-ass yelled from the back of the hall.
The mayor cleared his throat. “The question is…whose woman is sleeping with the rainmaker?”
The farmers looked perplexed, then angry. Their
glances began to slide in the direction of their neighbors.
“Well, it ain’t mine!” one middle-aged farmer shouted. “My Shirley’s never been happier. Why, the other night she begged me for it! And I’m telling you, that was a first!”
Another, a young beanpole of a man with a squint, leaped to his feet. “He’s right. Mine wanted to try a new position last week and…it was kinda wild!” he concluded triumphantly.
The oldest farmer in the district pushed himself up with the help of his walker. “Agnes and I made love for the first time in twenty years. I dunno what came over the old gal but she was hot for it all right. Nearly damn well killed me,” he declared, hands shaking.
Suddenly every man in the hall started to shout out descriptions of the amorous adventures their wives, girlfriends, and lovers had submitted them to since the rains. It was bedlam, but one thing was for certain: the women of Sandridge had never been more sexually adventurous, nor happier, in any man’s memory.
Jeremiah pounded the table with a judge’s gavel. The commotion stopped instantly. Pushing Chad aside the sheriff stood up. “I don’t give a rat’s ass as to who the woman is—we have just gotta make sure this damn rain stops before it ruins all of us!” he shouted.
The preacher seized his opportunity and, springing to his feet, yelled out, “The rainmaker is to blame for all this! He is evil! He is the devil in disguise! I say we pull him in!”
Immediately a delegation of muscled farmhands volunteered to drag in the sex-crazed wizard.
“The sex-crazed wizard is already here.” Jacob’s sardonic voice rang out from the back of the hall. His eyes were dark-ringed with exhaustion, his hands trembling.
“Who is she?” Chad demanded.
“Which one?” Jacob retorted and smiled sweetly, at which fifty outraged husbands rolled up their sleeves.
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