I Will Send Rain

by Rae Meadows

  “Stayed with Pastor Hardy. I expect he’ll be home as soon as he can.”

  Fred was itching to get back to the boat. The hull was taking shape, barely contained by the barn. He loved working with his father, who was transformed in the smoky lantern light. He didn’t say much, but he trusted Fred to do things right. To measure and steam and saw and set and sand. It would be the first boat Fred had ever been on. Sometimes when he was alone in the barn, he would overturn a milk crate and sit in the boat and imagine the rocking waves and surges lapping the sides. He would be the one gripping an oar to help steer them through the storm, his sister saying, “You can do it, Fred. Save us.”

  Us. He’d forgotten about the baby. He glanced at his mother, who of course didn’t know. His mind jumped to his mother’s apron, the one he’d found at the old house, but that and the mayor’s visit, he could not make it all fit together right. He didn’t like keeping secrets, and all of a sudden he had a whole handful of them. He rose to go find Birdie.

  “Where are you going?” his mother asked.

  He pointed out to the barn.

  “Tell your sister it’s breakfast time.”

  * * *

  THE MORNING WAS blessedly cool, as if the heat had finally worn itself out. Dawn had broken, but it was still dark in the barn. Greta’s flank was warm against Birdie’s cheek as she washed the cow’s udder.

  “It would be okay if you kicked me, honey, just this once,” she whispered. “One swift one. Right here.”

  Greta lowed and stomped her foot, ready for Birdie’s fingers to give her some relief. Birdie waited, hoping the cow would get mad enough. But Greta just made a lot of noise. So she started on the milk, the stream clanging into the pail.

  Did Cy ever wonder about what she was doing? That was the worst thought, that he never thought about her at all. She closed her eyes and concentrated and thought, “Cy. Can you hear me? There will be a baby.”

  She now had the smallest beginning of a belly, a slight rounded fullness down low. She knew the baby existed, of course, but it was an idea, like gravity. It had no connection to an actual thing that would tear its way out of her. It was not a he or she. It had no face, no heft. She imagined the screams, the groping fingers of a baby that was not hers. She knew she was not a mother.

  Life was mostly about remembering or waiting, Birdie thought. Remembering when things were better, waiting for things to get better again. There was never a now, never a time when you said, “This is it.” You thought there would be that time—when you turned sixteen, when Cy finally kissed you, when school got out—but then you ended up waiting for something else.

  Now she dug her heels in against the passing of each day. She thought about the things that might make the baby go away. A knife slip. A punch. Getting pummeled by dust and debris. Women miscarried all the time. Why couldn’t she? She prayed to God to take the baby away, but she knew it wouldn’t work because that was not something you could ask for. What should she pray about, then? She prayed and prayed. God, do something.

  Maybe she could move away and pretend she was a widow. Someone would marry a widow with a baby. There was no shame in that. “He was a good man. Died in a thresher accident,” she heard herself say. No one would ever have to know. She would never come back to Mulehead. She would miss Fred. There would be that. She would be sorry to miss him grow up.

  Birdie knew what she could not do. Turn out like Mary Louise VanCamp who’d given birth four months after marrying that Bible salesman. People in town called her Mary Louise VanTramp. There was something wrong with her son, but no one ever knew what. His eyes bulged out of his head and he ate dirt. Mary Louise had moved back in with her parents when the salesman disappeared. Pitiful. Shut away on a ranch out near Kenton.

  Love is not something to be ashamed of, Birdie imagined herself saying. She would not hang her head.

  “Who am I kidding, Greta?” She ran her hand along the cow’s flank.

  She slipped the full bucket from under the cow and brought it to her mouth, the cream foamy white on her lip, the milk warm and sweet.

  She would miss that, too.

  * * *

  BIRDIE LEANED HER head into the open drive bay of the barn where her father and brother worked on the boat. A skeleton frame nosed up against the back wall, the front or back of the boat she couldn’t be sure, ribs held in place with rough scaffolding. It was dim even in the growing daylight, and she tripped on a chunk of wood before righting herself. She picked it up. A two-foot sawed-off section. Maybe if she hit in just the right place. It was an awkward grip in one hand. Hit hard with everything, she told herself, do not chicken out. She took off her work shirt, crusty with the morning’s milking, and touched low on her tummy with the board, knowing she would have to be precise. She closed her eyes for a moment as she took a breath, then pulled her arm back wide and swung, as if her own body were not the target.

  It was a shock even as she knew the blow was coming. She threw up almost immediately, bile from an empty stomach, and she fell forward onto hands and knees. The rough end of the plank had scratched her and the impact had knocked her breath out. But within a couple minutes, the pain faded.

  She sat back on her heels and waited for cramps or blood or some deep inside signal. She waited until all she felt was a familiar gnawing hunger. She whipped the piece of wood away where it landed in a far corner of the barn.

  * * *

  “DID HE SOUND like this last night?” Annie asked. “And you didn’t tell me? Was his mask on?”

  Birdie took a big bite of pancake and put her fork down. She was amazed she could eat, yet here she was, again starving. Still pregnant.

  “What?” she asked, mouth full.

  “I just,” Annie said. “We have to be vigilant.”

  Fred leaned his head back and balanced a pancake on his face.

  “He seems okay to me,” Birdie said. “Other than smelling like he might burst into flames.”

  A trail of footprints tracked the kitchen, as if the floor were covered in first snow.

  “You’re not going outside anymore today,” Annie said.

  Fred stomped his foot, and scowled in protest.

  “It’s probably worse in here than out there,” Birdie said. “Now that the sun’s out, looks as clear as a bell.”

  Annie sighed. Her daughter was right.

  “If I see you without your mask, young man, you’ll be stuck next to me, cutting quilt squares and mending your father’s pants for a week.”

  “I have a blouse that’s missing some buttons,” Birdie chimed in.

  Fred narrowed his eyes at her from behind his mask. He pulled a pad of paper and a pencil from his pocket. “Hens,” he wrote, holding it up for his mother to see.

  “Go on,” she said.

  When he was gone, Annie felt newly uncomfortable alone with Birdie. She went to the sink and started on the dishes.

  “Whatever happened to the VanTramps?” Birdie asked.

  Annie dropped the frying pan into the sink. She exhaled slowly and turned to Birdie.

  “Barbara Ann. The VanCamps. Don’t be uncharitable.”

  Birdie scraped back her chair. She just wanted her mother to know without having to tell her. She wanted her mother to take on some of the burden, to make it better, the way she used to do when Birdie was little.

  “The VanCamps. They were around and then they weren’t.”

  “They headed to Texas. They had kin down that way.”

  “They ran away.”

  “They moved on. Sometimes it’s the right thing to do,” Annie said. She soaped a rag and went to work on the greasy pan.

  Birdie stood.

  “I’m the same as her,” Birdie said.

  “As who?”

  “Mary Louise.”

  “What?” Annie wiped her hands on her apron and turned to fully face her daughter. “Why are you like her?” A quick glance at Birdie’s middle.

  Birdie stopped her hand before it reached her
belly.

  “Because—”

  “Because Cy left?”

  Birdie could shake her head or she could nod, reveal or conceal. She angled her body one way and then another, but her mother didn’t read it as an answer.

  “Cy didn’t leave you, Birdie. He didn’t have a choice. He had to go.”

  “I know,” Birdie said. “But it doesn’t make it easier.”

  “I know you can’t see it now. But someday. You might see it as a blessing.”

  Birdie’s shoulders drooped at the lost opportunity, at her mother’s insistence that she knew best. She was now eager to be free of the stifling air between them.

  “I would have thought Pop would be back by now.”

  “Probably helping out whoever needs helping.”

  Without comment, Birdie walked out and left her mother alone.

  Annie untied her apron and sat at the table. She took a crescent of pancake left on Fred’s plate and ate it with her fingers. It was a shame about Mary Louise, trying to sell the Bibles that man had left while looking after a child who was not quite right. What was a girl like that to do in this wasteland? she thought, as she stuffed more of the syrup-sticky pancake into her mouth.

  Outside a car hiccupped and squeaked to a stop. Samuel. She rose and drank water directly from the tap to get the food down, then wiped her face on her apron. The relief she felt to have him home came as a surprise.

  But it wasn’t Samuel. Jack Lily. Her face lost its composure. An exhaled “Oh” escaped her lips.

  “What are you doing here?” Her voice caught. She was angry at him for risking a visit, but desire curled through her veins like smoke.

  “I know,” he said. “Annie.” His stillness eased her disquiet.

  She could smell the soap on him, see the muscles of his jaw clench and release.

  “What do I say about why you’ve come?” She looked behind her for Birdie.

  “Just take this.” He opened the screen door and handed her the letter. “Phones are out,” he said more loudly. “Wanted to talk to Samuel about something.”

  Annie looked wildly about. “Okay. He’s not here. Should be back any minute. Stayed with the pastor through the storm.”

  “Got a call from the Cimarron. They want to do a story.” He sounded as if he was onstage, his voice meant for others to hear, his words rehearsed.

  “A story?” she asked. The envelope was as light as a butterfly in her hand.

  “They’ve heard about the boat.”

  “I’ll tell him you stopped by.”

  He reached for her hand. “Say yes,” he whispered.

  Fred poked his head out of the coop and saw the mayor’s green Model A. “Go away,” he thought, not knowing why, just knowing. “Go away go away go away.”

  * * *

  ANNIE SWEPT OUT the house, starting upstairs to work the dirt down. She had not yet read the letter. Holding onto the broom took the shake from her hands. Outside another car door slammed. She stopped midstroke and listened for Samuel’s familiar footfall on the porch.

  When he looked up, he seemed startled to see Annie frozen midway down the staircase.

  “Everything all right?” he asked. He scratched his head and looked down.

  “Fine,” she said.

  He looked ghastly, his clothes unclean and rumpled, his hair sticking up above his ear. His eyes, though he wouldn’t really look at her, were red and puffy.

  “Pastor okay?”

  “He’ll manage. I thought it best to stay.”

  “Good of you.”

  The letter. She’d tucked it in her Bible and then hid it under her mending pile. She swept a dusty pile down a step. The letter.

  “I found him sitting in the church. The window blown out.”

  “What was he doing?” She asked it, but it was an empty question. She knew well enough. She moved down the last two steps to the floor, clutching the broom and piling the dirt.

  Samuel shrugged. “I didn’t push him on it.”

  “There’s coffee,” she said.

  “The children?”

  “Fred’s out with the chickens. Gave him some kerosene. He sounded real bad this morning.” She wanted this to sting, but when she saw that it did, she felt sorry.

  “I’ll go see to him,” he said, his face hangdog and contrite. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”

  She moved the broom’s bristles through the dust. The letter burned a hole through every other thought.

  “Birdie went off somewhere to mope.”

  Samuel nodded, as if waiting to be dismissed.

  “I’m glad you’re back safe,” she said.

  He smiled at her, that open-to-the-world smile she’d fallen in love with.

  “I best get some coffee,” he said. He brushed by her, laying a hand quickly on her shoulder as he passed.

  She listened as Samuel pulled a mug from the cupboard, scraped the coffeepot against the stove, poured a cup, and set the pot back with a clank. She waited, broom still, as he drank and, as she knew he would, looked out the window. Finally the back door creaked open and banged shut.

  Annie leaned the broom against the wall and bounded up the steps to the bedroom. From the window, she watched Samuel make his way to the chicken coop. She dug out her Bible and pulled from it the envelope, flipping it over twice—looking for what?—before messily tearing at the flap.

  * * *

  FRED SAT CROSS-LEGGED on the wooden plank in the center of the hen house, wiping a rag over the once-white feathers of one of the leghorns. Since the first storm he had used his mother’s flour paste and strips of rags to cover as many of the open seams of the coop as he could. He made sure the birds were in, with the door latched, for every storm.

  The mask was stuffed into his pocket. His breathing was fast and ragged, as if he’d climbed all the way to the top of Black Mesa—the air blurred by bits of straw and dried dung and dust. He would do his best to stay clear of his mother today.

  “Here, girl,” he thought. He lifted the one from his lap and replaced her with another. “Let Freddie clean you up.”

  “Son?”

  Samuel pried open the door, the light making Fred squint.

  “You spoil those birds so. Pretty soon they’ll be wanting their water in a silver bowl.”

  He could see Fred’s chest rise and fall quickly, the little concavity at the base of his throat sucked taut with each breath.

  “Hard to get air in?”

  Fred shrugged. Samuel ran his finger along the chicken’s head.

  “Are the eggs starting to taper?”

  Fred pinched his fingers together to show a little. When the hens stopped laying, it usually meant cold weather was coming.

  “I think we ought to get back to the boat soon, huh?”

  Fred jumped up and wrapped his arms around his father’s waist. Samuel was not quick enough to stanch the tears that gathered.

  “Whoa there. Soon, I mean a little later. Got to clean up some around the place first. What do you say, after lunch?”

  Fred nodded, his chin hitting his chest, his head too large for his beanpole body.

  “You do a fine job with the hens. A fine job.”

  Fred smiled and pointed his thumb at himself.

  Samuel remembered how Fred used to sit on Annie’s lap, his head nestled under her chin as they sat after supper, her finger tracing his small translucent ear. It was his son’s fragility Samuel feared, and he thought maybe it was his job to buck Fred up. Give him a gentle nudge. But now he could admit he felt jealousy, too. The closeness a mother was allowed. Once he had wondered aloud to Annie if Fred wasn’t a little old to be sitting on her lap. He tried to keep his tone light. “I know he’s your little one,” he had said. He hadn’t meant to, but he’d come off as accusatory somehow, or dismissive, and when she turned to him—she’d been peeling potatoes at the kitchen sink—he knew he’d been wrong to say anything. Her eyes were filled and she blinked furiously to contain them. Oh sure, he had ap
ologized, taken it back. But she had surely lodged it away somewhere with the other times he had disappointed her. “He can sit on my lap as long as he wants.” That was all she had said, and they’d never spoken of it again. The next time Fred climbed on her lap, she looked away. He had broken the spell, and Fred soon forwent the lap altogether, running off to play with his toy cars or get into Birdie’s business. Samuel had, sadly, gotten what he’d wanted.

  “Have you seen your sister?” Samuel asked.

  Fred shook his head and twirled his finger in a circle next to his ear, a gesture he’d picked up from boys making fun of Jonas Woodrow.

  “She’s just a little temperamental these days,” Samuel said. “She’ll come around. See you for lunch. And don’t think I don’t notice your mask off.”

  Fred hung his head and pulled the mask from his pocket.

  “Just make sure you have it on when you come in. No need to upset your mother.”

  * * *

  BIRDIE WALKED JUST to go somewhere else. Ruth’s, maybe. She had a dime in her sock for a sugar cookie or maybe some licorice from the store. She felt a flutter of hunger in her belly even after all those pancakes.

  It was warm, but, at the tail end of summer, the edge was finally off, as if the bullying sun had lost a little of its will. The seeds were in the fields on both sides of the road for all the next-year-will-be-better folks, and now the hope would turn to snow—maybe it just needed to get cold again and the sky would open up—and the waiting was on again.

  Halfway to town she saw Mary Stem on her bicycle riding toward her. Mary was her friend, she supposed, yet Birdie didn’t really like her much at all. She was chirpy and tedious, not even that nice. But there was no detour, everywhere so starkly out in the open.

  “My mother called out your way,” Mary said by way of greeting. “But no one picked up the phone.” She’d always had one eye on Cy, and Birdie knew she felt a certain victory in his departure.

  “I must have been gone already. Can’t say where everyone else was.”

  “What are you doing out here anyway?” Mary straddled her bike and adjusted the kerchief on her head.

  “Walking.”

  “Walking where?”

  Birdie shrugged. “To town, I guess. I don’t know. Nowhere, really.”