The Rain and the Fire and the Will of God

by Donald Wetzel

  What could I have said to him? Still, I believe he had been worried some all along because he seemed to pick up a little, and he stayed up alongside me while we went back again about a hundred yards or so until I seen a place that looked good.

  There was still some lightning, but most of it north of us now. “There is no trail that I know of here,” I said, “and this is a wide old branch. But I have went through it along in here before and we will just head on in and make it the best we can. I will lead.”

  So we went down into the branch and started through. I had forgot what a thick and tangled branch it was. There was vines as big around as trees in there and water in places a couple of feet deep and the same with muck, and then tangles that could not be gone through but only around, until with the rain and the lightning and having to stop and lift little Andy up over things and going one way and then another, trying to get to the opposite of where we was actually going so as to find a way to get going right again, it got so I wasn’t positive if we was going to come out on the other side or on the side where we had went in.

  Rodney stayed close by me, though, and he done all right. We must have been right in the middle of it when one time he stopped and looked around and said, “Jack, I swear it would be quicker if we just swung through on the vines.” I could see he was getting used to things.

  But we was in there longer than I had figured we would be. Then the rain begun to slack up some and I thought I seen light through the trees a little to our left so we all went that way and pretty soon I could see we was coming out of it all right.

  So we come on out and I seen I didn’t know where we was. There was a little hill right in front of us. It should not have been there. I stopped and thought about it and I figured we had probably come too far north before we come across, and if that was true then the swampy place I was looking for should be close to the south of us. But all I could see was that hill. I was tired. The lightning had just about quit, so I said, “Jimmy, go up on top of there and look and see if you see anything that looks to you like a swamp.”

  Jimmy done it. Then I seen no point in our waiting where we was so we went on up behind him. Jimmy got there and looked and pointed off south and hollered back there it was, and we went on up beside him and looked and there was the swamp just like I had hoped it would be. From the way Jimmy led off toward it you would have thought he had brung us right out there his self, instead of which it was me, just like a crow flies.

  So we followed along in the low place at the edge of the swamp and the rain let up some more, and then finally we come to the edge of Mr. Blankhard’s pasture, which is mostly woods, and crawled under the fence, and went on. Then the rain quit altogether, except for the drops that kept falling from the trees for a while.

  It was something how quick little Andy cheered up. He flung his hair back and it stayed and then he run on ahead of us, knowing where he was now, and then run back and his face was shining like it had only just been washed and his clothes was not stuck up against him any more and you would not have thought he had even been out in the rain. Kids is like dogs that way. They can forget a thing has happened before it is hardly done. They will not even show it.

  And after, they will not want to talk about it forever, either. Like I could tell what was working with his brother Jimmy now, by the way he come up with me and Rodney and started asking questions about the ’gator we seen. He wanted to get it all straight for telling.

  We went through the woods part of Mr. Blankhard’s pasture and then through the briars and weeds part and finally come to his branch and went up along it until we come to the cow path that goes through it and then we crossed it and was home. The sun come out again while we was going through. I figured it was close to four. We had not done so bad at that.

  We headed toward Mr. Blankhard’s barn. Once again it had not got struck.

  “How big was that alligator?” Jimmy said.

  “Five feet, three inches,” I said.

  “How big was that alligator, really?” Jimmy said.

  “Ten feet,” I said.

  “How come before you said five feet, three inches?” Jimmy said.

  “Did I say five feet, three inches?” I said. “I had forgot.” Five, it could have been, though I am not so expert at alligators that I can tell from the distance between one’s eyes how long it will be on back to its tail. And anyhow Jimmy had seen that ’gator as good as I had.

  But Jimmy could not get it off his mind. “Rodney,” he said, “you seen it. How long was it?”

  “Five inches, maybe,” Rodney said, “between the eyes. From the eyes to the end of the snout, maybe two feet.”

  “What you do,” I said to Jimmy, “is multiply. That is a standard way of measuring alligators anyhow.” It wasn’t so, of course.

  “For some alligators, five feet is not big at all,” Jimmy said.

  “Ask Andy,” I said.

  “Ten feet,” Andy said, not waiting to be asked.

  “See,” I said. “He multiplied. Two times five.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Andy said, “I can’t.”

  “Well, then,” I said, “how can you be sure?”

  “I ain’t sure,” Andy said.

  We walked on up toward the barn. The sun was out good and come down the hill nice at us and already it was drying off things. The leaves of the chinaberry tree in Mr. Blankhard’s lot had got the dust washed off them and the sun coming down through them made them shine like they was oiled. Everything around there looked clean for a change. We went through the lot and out through the gate and then up our road. And Jimmy kept on about that alligator.

  I knowed that once he got it straight he would go around telling about it for a month. In fact I knowed that the way Jimmy would go around telling it, it would finally get to be no different than the lies you hear other people telling, even if it was true. I mean it wouldn’t sound true no more. The way he would tell it—I mean just to be telling it—nobody would know or care if it was true or not. Like with the postmaster, Mr. Brainbridge, who claims he shook the hand of President Hoover once. He has told about it so often that nobody knows if it is true or not or cares. It sounds like a lie.

  So finally I said, “Jimmy, as far as I am concerned what we seen that looked like alligator eyes was two big bullfrogs, one eye apiece, probably courting, and what that was that looked like a snout I will never know. Make up your own lies.”

  Jimmy is funny about getting his feelings hurt. He will not get mad; he will just put his head down and hunch up his shoulders and go home. Which was what he done, and Andy with him.

  So me and Rodney stood there in the road a little, and in a minute little Andy come running back. “Jack,” he said, “that was, too, a ’gator. I seen it.”

  “Andy,” I said, “you swum with it.” And that seemed to satisfy him and he run on back after Jimmy.

  Me and Rodney went and sat on our front porch steps. They was practically dry. Ma come out and stood up behind us and said, “I am not meaning you, Rodney, but I should think you, Jack, when you see such a storm coming up could at least make some effort to get back where there is shelter instead of just acting like no one cares if you get struck by lightning or not, or perhaps you was safe and dry in a cave all this time.”

  I know of no caves anywheres in all these woods, and besides Ma could see we both was wet, so I said nothing, except that I was sorry I had not got back sooner. And then Ma asked were we hungry and we said we wasn’t and she left us alone again.

  For a while we just sat there, looking at everything drying off. Then Rodney said, “How come you was so rough with Jimmy?” He sounded mostly curious.

  It was hard to explain. “Look,” I said, “with Jimmy it is just a story. Even if it happened. Myself, I don’t care if no one believes him or not. It’s not what Jimmy says that I care about or what people believes. It’s just that he ought to make up his own big stories.”

  Rodney give it some thought. “Well,” he said,
“all he wanted was to know how big it was.”

  We sat there awhile. I could see that Rodney was still puzzled.

  “Look, Rodney,” I said, “that alligator were real.”

  We was quiet, and I never knowed if Rodney seen what I meant or not, but at least he was quiet, just sitting there and nodding his head.

  We was drying off fast. The mosquitoes and heat was already back. I could tell that by ten the next morning you could be able to look around and not even know that it had ever rained.

  9

  The next few days I seen quite a bit of Rodney. He was finally coming around to being friendly. All he had needed was the time.

  But it was clear there was ways about him that was far from changing like they should, though I figured it could still happen before school took up again in the fall. Knowing that school, I feared for him. What I mean is it were not his fault especially, but for one thing he never really got over the habit of burning. He’d burn and peel, burn and peel. I got tired of watching it. And underneath it he just stayed white. His hair, cut short like that and with him never wearing a hat, was bleached out to about the color of skim milk, which hardly helped toughen up his appearance none. Skinny like he was, and with that hair, and with his nose either pink and raw or red and peeling, there just weren’t no one else in the county he could have been mistook for.

  With all the walking in the woods we done and with him doing the milking for his uncle and hoeing in their garden and even giving me and Pa a hand sometimes on an easy thing, he still never got so he set his feet down solid when he walked or lifted up a ax or a hoe like it looked natural to him. It was almost like in some ways he was like his uncle and could not have changed if he wanted to. Maybe due to breeding.

  But anyhow he was friendly, despite that Ellen had once said that the most that anyone could do was to get used to me. And though he was no more natural now about a lot of things than he was to start with, still where one of us went the other one went and it was better than each of us going where we went alone. We was company.

  July the Fourth come, which is never much on the Hill as Ma don’t hold with explosives of any sort, but Rodney’s pa sent him some money and me and Rodney got some expensive cherry bombs and aerial bombs and none of the little stuff at all and for a few hours we livened things up around the Hill a bit. No damage was done except to Mr. Blankhard’s old watering trough in his lot, which we blowed the bottom out of with a aerial bomb. We was curious if it would go off under water. It did, twice, just like they done in the air. It is an old cypress trough that will last forever, but the force of these blasts was too much and it sprung about three big leaks and in no time was dry. All it had done for years was breed mosquitoes anyhow. I have never knowed of a horse or cow that drunk from it. They drunk instead from the creek in the branch.

  But aside from that there was nothing much happened. Which was to be expected. Cousin Nat showed up and it was the first I knowed he had been gone, but then he went to work for the Holmeses again and we only seen him in the evenings. Him and Pa went to school together, but you would never know it, as when he is drinking, which is most of the time, he is not much different than a kid. Ma says nothing has growed in him a bit since the first time he shaved except his thirst for alcohol and foolishness. Yet he has been around some and can tell some happenings that true or not is often funny. Despite he’s so shiftless, Pa likes him, and anyhow he is kin.

  There was the advantage of his working for the Holmeses that I could get a ride with him over there now and then. He had come back from Florida with a big old yellow mile-long car that had about sixteen windows in it and half the seats busted out and “New Meadows Airport” wrote on both sides of it. Said he bought it for the bargain of it from some airport outfit that had gone busted down north of Miami. Seventy-five dollars, he claimed.

  The real trouble with Cousin Nat as I seen it was these ideas he always had about not being a farmer. The way it worked out, he has never actually rose to being even that, but is usually working by the day for somebody else or not working at all. This was the third time that I knowed of myself that Mr. Holmes had took him on. When not drinking too hard he’s a good enough worker, but in the end he will either get into some jam from drinking or finally just quit, whichever comes first. But with a dairy farm likes the Holmeses’ there is always work, no seasons to it, and with no one but Les to help where he could, Mr. Holmes could not be too particular.

  So Nat would come over about dark and sit on the porch some and talk with Ma and Pa and get some drinking done so as not to be drinking too much where he works, and they would sit there talking in the dark and laughing a little now and then; and when he had drunk what he brung before it got too late and was not in a bad condition according to Ma, I would ride back with him and maybe get to see Jenny for a while. It beat walking, though going over those bumpy dirt roads in that long low car I was always afraid we was going to hang the middle of it on a high spot and be left there stranded.

  So one night when we was bumping along I spoke up over the noise, though usually it was better not to try and talk at all, and got in a conversation with Cousin Nat, the end of which was that he said he would not mind at all driving us all to Loxley to the show some night, providing he had the gas. “It is a den of iniquity, however,” he said, “and you must promise, of course, to stay out of its drinking spots, as I will not take the blame for corrupting the young.”

  I could see no danger of anyone getting corrupted there except maybe Cousin Nat, who could manage it just about anywhere, so that same night I asked Jenny would she go. The others had gone in and we was standing by her gate to say good night. She give it some thought. “I suppose Ellen would be going, too,” she said.

  I had already figured it would have to be that way, though I had not yet said nothing to Ellen about it. “Her and Rodney,” I said, “to keep it equal.”

  So Jenny give this thought for a while, also. “What about Les?” she said.

  I couldn’t see myself where he would add to things much. “Well,” I said, “he may crowd us all up some, but if he wishes to tag along it’s all right with me, I suppose.”

  “He is only my brother,” Jenny said, “and in that car of your Cousin Nat’s I can’t see there would be much crowding even if Ma and Pa come, too.”

  Jenny is always too quick to catch a thing up. “Well,” I said, “you can ask them too, I guess, but remember that half them seats is busted.”

  So we stood there a while longer and then Jenny said, “If you was not always so smart about things they might be fun, but there is nothing else to do anyhow, so if Pa says I can I will.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said, “I will see there is fun all right,” and then Jenny said good night and I said good night and I come home.

  The next day I asked Ellen about it after dinner, when she had gone to her bedroom to take a nap. She lay on the bed and looked up at the ceiling and let me stand there and wait while she give it some thought herself, and then she said she would do it as a favor to me and on the condition that Rodney be brung along, too.

  I could not figure out why so much thought had to be give by everyone on this. I seen Rodney later and he had to think some about it, too. But when I told him what Ellen’s condition to me was, he seen there was hardly no way out of it and give in without hardly another thought.

  So then all I had to do was get the money for it from Pa. It was easier than I expected. He give me three dollars and no advice at all. Ma said nothing either. You never can tell.

  I worked it out with everybody for Friday night, and it come, and Nat come over when he said he would dressed up worse than a picture salesman and as far as I could tell sober, and me and Ellen and Rodney got in the back and I said, “To the airport, please,” and Nat finally got it started again and we left.

  We drove up in front of the Holmeses’ and I told Nat to honk his horn and Ellen told him not to, but for me to go in and get Jenny right, which I done. Les coul
dn’t come on account of a boil on his back which had got so bad he could only rest on his stomach. He was laying on the front room couch and I said hello to him and to Mr. and Mrs. Holmes. Then we left Les laying there on his stomach and me and Jenny left. There was seats enough for us all and more, with Cousin Nat still sitting alone up front like a chauffeur.

  At the movie Nat parked the car out front and said he thought he would go and look up some friends instead, as he had seen this show before, and then he went off looking for them. So Rodney and Ellen and Jenny stood there in a bunch while I went and bought the tickets and then we all went in and sat in the back, where it is safer from people throwing wadded-up popcorn bags and stuff, and then the show got started and we seen it.

  It was a Western, which it always is on a Saturday night, and I noticed Rodney give it full attention. I could have told him a few things wrong with it. For one thing, no man can fire a six-shooter nine and ten times and never load it that I can see and then fire it still some more. Another thing is, you run a horse hard on a hot day and he will sweat and get winded just like a man, and only in movies is horses always inhuman in these and other ways. I mean, if Mr. Blankhard could have learned his chickens to be as neat about things as these movie horses is they would have never died from the filth. It is quite a trick. But somehow they do it, as I have never seen a stable in a picture yet that looked like a natural stable. Aside from these things, though, it were a good show, and I could tell that Jenny weren’t sorry that she had come.

  Then we went outside and got in the car and sat. Pretty soon all the people from the show was gone and the other cars was gone, and there was just us left, sitting there under a street light in Cousin Nat’s big yellow car and wondering how long we was going to have to sit there. We talked some and waited some more, and then I said, “I believe Cousin Nat may have went and found some friends and got drunk.”

  “You should not say that,” Ellen said, “but you may be right at that.”