I Will Send Rain

by Rae Meadows

  Samuel laughed. “I think I can make her float.”

  “That’s what I said about that whore over in Beauville,” McGuiness said.

  The men drank. As he tipped his glass back again and again, McGuiness grew jovial, punching the others in the arms, telling tales of his exploits—“You ever wrestle a cougar? I didn’t think so. Yeah, I did once. Breath smelled like dead fish. I won.”

  Hardy sank back, his Southern drawl softening his words, and Samuel felt the fire in his belly work loose his tongue.

  “Let me ask you something,” Samuel said. “Do you believe in God?”

  “Oh, come on, Noah. Don’t get all Bible-clutcher on me,” McGuiness said.

  “Do you?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, sure. But I have my doubts. Like the whole unfairness of life, for starters.”

  “I have had my own doubts,” Samuel said.

  “Faith in God is faith in the truth despite the doubt,” Hardy said. “And truth is freedom. Jesus says it in John 8. I’ll show you the passage.”

  “I’ll take your word on it.” McGuiness poured Hardy another drink.

  “It’s frightening,” Samuel said quietly. Both men turned to him. “That kind of freedom.”

  “I’d never build a fool boat,” McGuiness said into the silence that followed.

  “You’re a good man,” Hardy said to Samuel, ignoring McGuiness.

  “Am I? Maybe I’m as crazy as old man Dean.”

  “Elmer Dean thought the Germans were sending him messages through his teeth.”

  “Maybe they were,” McGuiness said. “Maybe they told him to do a swan dive off the roof of the Fitzroy Hotel.”

  By now they were all good and drunk. McGuiness grabbed a tin of saltines from the counter and pulled down a plate of butter from the icebox. He used his finger to smear butter across a cracker, fitting another on top.

  “Snack, anyone?”

  The pastor held out his hand and McGuiness dropped the sandwich into his palm.

  “My daddy loved saltines but we only had them when he was flush and we could actually go to the mercantile,” McGuiness said. “One time my brother and me thought it would be funny to fill an old tin with cow pies and leave it in the kitchen so he would think it was his lucky day. We hid. He came through the door with two squirrels in his hand. His nose red and hair all crazy. We knew we were fucking dead.” He laughed. “He whipped us, of course. Broke Jerry’s arm. Never did set quite right. Made us eat the cow shit until we barfed.”

  Samuel and Pastor Hardy grimaced but McGuiness was chuckling.

  “Christ, you are a pair of sad Sarahs. It’s funny! To have to actually eat shit.”

  “My father used to make me pick out the switch I wanted to get beaten with,” Hardy said. “‘Get your blade, boy, you’re cutting it, too.’”

  “Could you forgive him?” Samuel asked.

  “He couldn’t read or write and he was swindled out of his little piece of ground so he had to sharecrop alongside former slaves. He couldn’t abide it. We ate corn porridge once for a month. He was a broken man. I forgave him before he passed on. But he comes back to me sometimes and I feel that anger all over again. I still want to smash his mouth with my fist.”

  “Shit,” McGuiness said. “You-all are wrecking my drunk. So you taking two by two, Noah?”

  “Maybe a cow. A hen or two.”

  “Who you letting on?”

  “If you’re worried,” Hardy said, “you better get building your own.”

  “I ain’t too worried.”

  They listened as the wind buffeted the house, the relentless sand roughing the windows. By now they were used to the whistle and moan, the droning world on the other side of the wall. Samuel closed his eyes and imagined the house being worn away. Annie and the kids seemed a faraway life, a world of darkness and dust between him and them. He was tired of seeing everything through squinted eyes, through a dirty mesh. He fell asleep, with a clunk of his head against the table.

  * * *

  SAMUEL WAS VISITED by the swirls of water, black like oil, the rain drops as fat as duck eggs. The voice a deep murmur in his head, so clear and strange, with the force of a thousand thundering buffalo. It filled him with awe, with humility. It filled him with terror. I am your servant, he said without speaking. I am here.

  The men slept late into the morning, the sun sending knives of light through the dusty air in the house. The storm had moved on, leaving the usual mess in its wake. McGuiness, splayed out half under the table, was covered in fine gray powder. Samuel brushed off his shoulders, and wiped his face with his shirt. He could hear the pastor cough and gargle in the bathroom.

  McGuiness hauled himself onto his side with a grunt.

  Samuel rose and rinsed two glasses and filled them with water.

  “You awake?”

  “Go away,” McGuiness croaked.

  Samuel cleared a windowpane with his palm. The sky was an uncanny blue.

  “I’ll start coffee,” Hardy said. He hobbled into the kitchen in his mended shorts and a T-shirt, the armpits stained yellow. Samuel was taken aback by the intimacy of seeing him this way. “God has given us a bright new day, hasn’t he?”

  The pastor’s hand shook as he measured coffee grounds into a dented pot. He closed his bloodshot eyes. They were a battered bunch. Samuel’s head felt hammered with each movement.

  McGuiness heaved himself to his feet, ignoring Samuel’s outstretched hand.

  “Got sugar for the coffee, Pastor?”

  “I wouldn’t have pegged you for a sugar type,” Hardy said.

  “You don’t think I’m sweet?”

  “Not sweet, no. But you’re not as tough as you seem, either.”

  “Says you.”

  “Says me. Sugar’s in the canister there.”

  “What do you say, McGuiness? You should come to church sometime. Meet your neighbors,” Samuel said. “We’re not so bad.”

  “Darn if you ain’t an earnest son of a bitch. Don’t you ever drop the bullshit? I’m not looking for salvation.” McGuiness laughed and shook his head. “I got to take a piss.”

  In the small, Spartan bathroom, he scratched his big belly and stretched his arms, his hands grazing the ceiling. Above the sink in the scratched mirror he looked grubby and bloated, his beard a grizzled mess. He knew what these men could never know: A man is who he is. That doesn’t change. A thief is a thief. A bad man stays a bad man underneath. He’d been set at seventeen.

  “You want to end up like me?” His father had raged at him for stealing from the collection plate at church. “How much you get? Give it here.”

  “No.”

  “No? You smartass pissant. This is my house.”

  His father was ramping up, his face coloring, his eyes roaming about looking for something to settle on, someone for him to rip into. Where was Jerry? Where was his mother? McGuiness couldn’t remember. In his mind he saw only his father, a bully and a brute who smelled like animal guts. For some reason, the shovel was inside the house, leaning up against the door. It was as if he had planned it, so calm and quick were his movements as his father turned to light his pipe. A clean clang from behind with a shovel to his head. Steel against soft skull. McGuiness had never understood why his mother cried—how many times had his father punched her bloody?—that poor wretch with her mousy face and whispery voice, why she had slammed his chest with her two tiny fists.

  He pulled his overalls back up. At the sink he ran his wet hands through his hair. He spat. He wasn’t drunk anymore, only parched and nauseated. On his way from the bathroom, he slipped into the pastor’s bedroom. On the dresser was a small bowl full of coins, which he emptied into his pocket. On the bedside table, beside a Bible, was a small gold ring. He took that, too.

  * * *

  Dearest Annie,

  I’m writing you in the midst of this latest abomination, the bulb flickering overhead, barely enough to see by. How will I get this letter to you without your husban
d seeing it? I haven’t figured that out yet. But given the howling outside, I will have plenty of time to think of a delivery means as the night wears on and on. I am thinking of the time, not so long ago, that we waited out the dust in the car on First Street. Beautiful you were, even under a layer of dirt.

  I hope that you are safe, though I wish you were with me here. I would read to you if the light held. I have a copy of Pride and Prejudice somewhere in the boxes of books I haven’t unpacked since I arrived at this outpost as a younger man. Have I told you that I imagined myself some kind of cowboy when I left Chicago? I still don’t have any idea how to ride a horse. And truth be told, they make me sneeze.

  I am a planet spinning out of orbit, Annie. I think of you and only you. Church today was devastating for me. You pulled away. What did it mean? I have gone over each gesture, each word, again and again. With so little time to talk, my imagination is fertile and predatory. Are you thinking of me too?

  My brother has sent word that my father is sick. He is dying. I haven’t told you about my father. He is gentle and hardworking—he owns a creamery—though when I was young I found him maddeningly small in his vision. Fulfill orders, eat at six, one beer with the newspaper, bed at nine. Ideas and ambition might as well have been pillow fluff. Maybe all sons feel this way about their fathers at some point, even favorite sons. Maybe it’s part of growing up and finding one’s own way. But I was mercenary. Not only did I choose to not work beside him as my brother did, and become a newspaperman instead, which he found a dishonest profession, I left, without a thought about what it might do to him. And worse, I’ve never gone back to visit, after all these years. It is hard for me to admit this to you now.

  I am going to Chicago. I don’t know for how long. And here’s the crazy notion that I can’t wrest from the coyote’s mouth. I want you to come with me, for a few days. Okay, there it is, finally, why I wanted to write to you. (In my old profession, that’s what they call burying the lede.) I would like to walk around the city with you on my arm. I would like to show you Lake Michigan. I would like to take you to the Lincoln Park Zoo. Can you believe they have a gorilla from Africa? I would like to take you on your first streetcar. Think about it. You don’t need to tell me it’s not the right thing to do. But we live only once, as far as I know, and happiness should count for something, shouldn’t it?

  I know there are your children to think about. But a few days is what I’m asking.

  It sounds like the roof is being yanked off by the wind. This storm seems different, darker and dirtier, if such a thing is possible. I’m sorry for the smudged paper.

  I love you, Annie Bell. I wanted to say that to you at the church but I was a coward in the shadow of your troubled face. I love you. Come away with me.

  —Jack

  * * *

  THE MAYOR CAME down from his office, where he had spent the night of the storm, and walked out into a glorious day. He waved to Edward Banks who swept off the sidewalk in front of the post office. Jeanette, her hair pulled back in a scarf, wiped down the windows of Ruth’s. There was a cool edge to the air, just a hint when the wind blew, which made him balloon with hope. The letter was folded in his shirt pocket. He had willed himself not to reread it for fear he would lose his nerve. He had yet to come up with a good excuse to drive out to deliver it, but he was undeterred. His heart was charging ahead, and he had no choice but to follow.

  Jack sighed as he took in the state of the town, a layer of new dust, his own car tires half buried, a roll of barbed wire in the middle of the road. He had ten minutes before Jeanette would flip the sign to Open, so he kept walking. At the church he saw the blown-out window, but as he walked around to get a better look, there was Samuel’s car, a small dune wedged against its rear. Samuel was here, and Annie was surely there.

  He turned around and started to run.

  CHAPTER 12

  Annie lay awake in the dark morning, her limbs sunk into the bed. She was alone. She heard the door slam as Birdie went out to the barn for chores. Must you, Barbara Ann? she thought, before she remembered to be easier on her daughter. Remember, she told herself, what it was like.

  When she’d taken her one and only trip to Kansas City, she had been Birdie’s age. Her father had been invited to a Presbyterian council meeting, and her mother, in an uncharacteristic moment of vigor, had insisted they accompany him. Seventy miles in a hot and crowded train, but Annie didn’t mind. A big city. Another state, even. She tried not to let on about her excitement to her parents, but she could not hide her upswing in mood.

  “Nice to see you smiling,” her father said. “Life is not too unbearable today, I gather. ‘I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.’”

  From her window, Annie watched the large industrial buildings begin to crowd the landscape as they neared Missouri.

  “Maybe you can pick out a new dress for Annie while we’re here,” her father said to his wife. He pushed his round wire glasses up on his nose. “That one’s a little short, don’t you think?” As if she were not sitting right across from him.

  “Yes, Reverend,” her mother answered.

  Reverend, Annie thought, like she was just another one of his fawning parishioners. What about a husband and a wife? What about love? It was no wonder her father had looked elsewhere.

  “I read where each chandelier in the terminal weighs over thirty-five hundred pounds,” he said.

  “Isn’t that interesting,” her mother said. Her voice was feathery light, but her tone was flinty underneath.

  “Let’s not forget to look up when we arrive. Nothing like it back home.”

  When Annie stepped into the station’s vast atrium, she felt as if the floor had dropped. She did look up, at all the dazzling crystals and starburst lights. She breathed it in until she was dizzy.

  “I’m afraid I’m running short on time,” her father said. “We’ll meet back here. Five o’clock. Your watch is wound, Sarah?”

  Her mother nodded. He patted her arm and left them.

  Outside, the buildings rose fifteen stories in the sky and electric streetcars clanged. Annie felt herself expand. But her mother grew timid, stuck on the top step, stunned by everything moving around her.

  “Can we ride on one?” Annie asked.

  Her mother shook her head. “No, no. There’s a café,” she said, grasping Annie’s hand.

  Inside, women chatted and laughed, perched at tables in their brightly colored dresses, parcels at their feet. Annie ordered chocolate cake, which arrived on a gold-rimmed plate garnished with a strawberry rosette.

  “Isn’t this fun, Mother?” Annie picked up the strawberry, marveling at how it had been carved into a flower.

  “It’s quite loud in here,” she said.

  Annie let a bite of cake melt in her mouth, a small bite to make it last and last. But across from her, her mother frowned at the close chattering voices, the scurrying waitress, and sipped her tea. She seemed to be winding herself tighter and tighter, shrinking into her high-necked white dress. Her pale fingers twitched against her teacup.

  “You remember the Thurgoods’ son,” her mother said. “He’s just begun seminary.”

  Annie didn’t answer. She did remember the Thurgoods’ son from when they were kids—a nice quiet boy, his hair slicked into place—but she was unwilling to be drawn in by her mother, uninterested in her matchmaking. Her mother cared that he came from a moneyed family and that he would be a minister. She did not care about what would make her daughter happy. And then Annie began to feel the familiar confinement push in again, of her narrow Kansas life, of her mother thinking she knew best. The café at once felt stuffy, closing in, so small Annie thought she could touch wall to wall with her outstretched hands.

  “William. A couple years older than you. He used to come to children’s Bible study.”

  Annie still did not answer. She shook her foot and watched the activity of the city beyond the bright window and wanted to burst out through the door.
<
br />   “You’d like him.”

  Annie snapped her gaze back to her mother. You don’t know anything about what I’d like, she thought. But she would bide her time, figure out what was next. She’d smiled close-lipped and false, and had said, “Let’s go, Mother. There’s a shop across the way.”

  It had been twenty years, but Annie could still feel that flinty defiance she had felt then. She sat up in bed and swung her feet around to the gritty floor. She feared Birdie had already locked her out the way she had done to her own mother. But at least Annie knew her daughter wanted to see the world, see something beyond the farm. Annie had felt that once, too. With Cy gone, Birdie still had a chance, if only she would take it.

  * * *

  FRED’S DOOR WAS closed. Annie turned the handle and stepped inside. It was like an eerie twilight, the windows covered. The whistling gurgle that met her sounded like an old steam tractor trying to turn over. It took her a moment to realize what it was.

  “Fred,” she said, shaking his shoulders, “oh, Fred.” The dust rose in an airborne halo around him.

  He sputtered awake and, after his body stilled from the coughs, he smiled.

  “You sound terrible,” she said. “You need cough syrup.”

  In the kitchen she mixed a drop of kerosene in a spoonful of sugar, the solvent vapors burning her nose. Fred hopped into a chair, his hair powdery, his lips drained of color.

  “Take it all at once,” she said, handing him the spoon.

  He reared back with the smell of it and shook his head.

  “That wheeze is bad. Go on.”

  Fred scrunched his face and choked it down, then gulped water to rid his mouth of the taste.

  “I’ll make pancakes,” Annie said.

  Fred’s eyes watered. He hated this cure. His belly burned. He could feel his breathing ease, though, or he imagined it at least, the kerosene snaking into his lungs, clearing out the passageways.

  “Get your mask on,” his mother said.

  He rolled his eyes and looped the limp mask around his ears. From the window, the rising sun showed a sky washed clean.

  “Pop?” he wrote in the dust on the table.