The Rain and the Fire and the Will of God

by Donald Wetzel

  “He may not know the show has let out,” I said. “Or forgot we was with him. So maybe me and Rodney better go see if we can find him.”

  It was the only thing to do so far as I could see, but Ellen had to figure it back and forth for a while. Finally Ellen said, “Where will you boys start to look?”

  “First where there is signs saying beer,” I said, “and then where there is signs saying also whiskey. If we don’t find him at first we will find him later, I imagine.”

  “They will not let you in those places,” Jenny said.

  “They can not keep us out that I know of,” I said. “The worst they can do is not sell us whiskey.”

  “Well, if you are so smart, then why don’t you go ahead and find him?” Jenny said.

  So me and Rodney left them sitting there in the car and went first to a place I know and looked in and there was just some old people sitting around looking glum, and then to another place where there was a juke box making such a racket outside you would have thought that inside was fifty people at least, and what there was was a man leaning on a counter looking at a newspaper and another man who despite the noise had went to sleep with his head on a table and for the rest there was nobody. We went back out and down the street and Rodney said, “Who was that man in there sleeping?”

  “I never seen him before,” I said.

  And then we come to another place that had regular swinging doors on it and I would have passed it by myself but Rodney said, “Let’s look anyhow; we don’t have to buy nothing,” so we looked.

  Nat was way to the back at a table all by his self. We went back there and some people looked at us but nobody said nothing. When we got up to him he just kept looking down at his glass until I poked his arm. He lifted up his head and put the glass back down and looked at me. Looked like he didn’t know me.

  “Cousin Nat,” I said, “it’s me and Rodney.”

  He give his head a jerk. “I can plainly see it is,” he said.

  “Where has your friends went?” I said.

  He give his head another jerk. “Have they went?” he said. He looked around. They was nowhere.

  “We have come to get you to drive us home,” I said.

  He give us a look again, trying to remember it, I suppose. “Thank goodness for you two boys,” he said, “or I would not have a friend left in this world.”

  I could see we was getting nowhere.

  “The girls is waiting in the car,” I said.

  I could see he had forgot. Then a kind of sly look come over his face. “Dancing girls?” he said.

  About this time a fellow with a filthy apron on come up to us. “Nat,” he said, “I am uneasy about these kids being in here.”

  Nat give his head quite a jerk this time and leaned far back and looked up at the man. “These boys is my friends,” he said.

  “They is under aged,” the man said.

  I looked at the man and then I looked at Cousin Nat. He had gone back to looking at his glass. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m afraid they is up to no good.”

  I looked at the man with the apron again and he looked at me and shook his head, so I said, “Well, so long, Cousin Nat,” and me and Rodney went back through the room and out into the street.

  We walked along for a while and then Rodney said, “I doubt if he could have drove us home anyhow,” and I knowed he was right.

  We got back to the car and Jenny said, “I suppose they would not let you in after all.”

  “They let us in,” I said, “but they wouldn’t sell us no whiskey.”

  “Don’t be smart,” Ellen said. “Where is Cousin Nat?”

  “The last we seen him he was all by his self staring at an empty glass in that place next to Lee’s Feeds,” I said.

  “What a shame,” Ellen said.

  So then Ellen and Jenny got out of the car and we stood and talked about it for a while. It was Nat’s car and he had the keys, and Ellen probably couldn’t have got it started anyhow, so there was nothing to be done but walk. It was about two miles on the road to the Holmeses’ place and then however far it was back through the woods to our place, but Ellen said she would not mind the walk herself, so we left.

  We went down the street past the school and then over the spur railroad tracks and then on out the road toward the Holmeses’. We had just got past Martin’s Filling Station, which was the last place open along the way, when Rodney said he must run back to the station for something, but for us not to wait.

  “Don’t run,” Ellen said. “We’ll wait right here,” but Rodney took off running anyhow. So we waited and in a little while he come running back and we all started up again. We walked along for a while, all in a bunch, and then Rodney reached in his pocket and took out a pack of Chesterfield cigarettes.

  “I bought some cigarettes back there,” he said. Then he stopped and opened the pack and we stood around while he struck a match and got a cigarette lit up, and then we went on.

  “Well,” Ellen said, “I had never knowed you smoked, Rodney.”

  “I guess I have never mentioned it,” Rodney said.

  I kept an eye on him and it did not look to me like he was much of a smoker at that. He would hold the cigarette in his fingers for a while and then he would stick it in his mouth and put his hands in his pockets and go along holding it in his mouth, tilting his head a little and looking off to the side, sort of, on account of the smoke, I suppose, and then he would take his hands back out of his pockets and straighten up his head and put the cigarette down between his fingers again, which was as stiff as sticks.

  I could see Ellen watching him, too. “I guess you have smoked for some time then,” Ellen said.

  “Not so long,” he said. I figured about two minutes, and that he done it now to be older, being as he was sort of with Ellen. Finally he put it between his fingers and flipped it up the road ahead of us, and when we come up to it I stopped and stamped it out, and then me and Jenny hung back a little. But in a little bit we caught up with him and Ellen again. He had stopped and was lighting up another cigarette. So me and Jenny went past them and I speeded Jenny up a bit and after a while I looked back and they was quite a ways behind.

  The road goes straight from town right on to the Holmeses’ and then straight on by it for miles. There was a thin pale sliver of moon left, already low and about to set. Looking straight down the road you could see a bunch of stars way down at the end of it, looking lower down than the trees we was walking past at our side. The moon you hardly noticed. But there was a lot of stars and not a cloud, and the heat from the sun was still in the dirt of the road somewhat and when you stirred it up walking you could feel it come up at you. We kept walking right along, and going by the Swift house, which was the first house we passed, some little dog come out and barked at us and I flung a rock at it and said run, so we run a little, and the dog run back to the house and kept barking for quite a time. I guess Rodney must have been stopping a lot to light cigarettes, or else him and Ellen was walking real slow, because a long time later I heard the dog come running out barking again, and I looked back and couldn’t even make them out. Then I slowed me and Jenny down some. We had hardly talked none at all.

  “That were sure a fine show,” I said.

  “I seen one a good bit like it the last time I went,” Jenny said.

  We was each walking in a separate side of the road, like two separate car wheels, so I moved over in the same one with Jenny. It crowded us some, but if I tried to walk in the middle of the road it was too rounded, so for a ways we went on being crowded, now and then bumping some, but I seen no way to avoid it.

  “I get tired of all that gun shooting, though,” Jenny said.

  “They sure seem to do a lot of missing all right,” I said.

  “Well,” Jenny said, “there is too much shooting in the first place.”

  “I suppose you are right,” I said. “But I guess it is easier than the fighting, though, because sometimes it looks to me like
they crack one another pretty solid.”

  We had passed another house and been barked at by another dog, and then we come to a place where there was corn fields growing on either side and it was like walking down some tunnel without a top to it. It seemed a good bit darker, too, and we done so much bumping that finally I got Jenny’s shoulder steadied up against me and kept it that way, which helped. I am always surprised when I get up close at how small Jenny is.

  “They are all fake,” Jenny said. “If they was real they would have killed each other before they got started.”

  “They don’t look so fake to me,” I said.

  Then we come out from between the corn fields and there was the Stratton place. And then there was just woods on either side of us and way up ahead I could see a couple of the blades of the Holmeses’ windmill sticking up black against the sky. I looked back behind us and Rodney and Ellen was nowhere in sight. There was a low bank running alongside of the road to one side of us, so I said, “In case you are tired, we can sit down for a while and wait for Rodney and Ellen.”

  Jenny loosened up from against me and looked back. “They are nowheres in sight,” she said.

  “They are back there somewheres, for sure,” I said, and I took her arm up above the elbow and steered her a little toward the bank.

  She hung back and her arm swung up a little, and I stood there and give a little push. “Jack,” she said, “there is a ditch there.”

  “We will jump it,” I said, and I pushed and she pulled back and her arm swung up even higher and stayed there a minute like she was waving at somebody way down the road, and before I knew it I had laughed.

  I stepped up closer and Jenny’s arm come back down and we moved around. “Who wants to go jumping ditches in the dark?” Jenny said. “And besides there is no place to sit.”

  “We will sit on a log,” I said.

  Jenny leaned around me and looked. “Where is a log?” she said.

  Leaning around me like she was I reached out and got her other arm. “In the woods,” I said. “Where do you think a log is?”

  “Don’t be smart,” Jenny said, and she give both her arms a jerk and flung them out but I held on and for a minute both our arms was going up and down like we was flapping our wings, and for some reason I laughed again. “Stop laughing,” Jenny said, and then she backed up and flung her arms around again and I turned one loose, and she backed away in a kind of circle, holding her one arm behind her, with me trying to grab it, and we must have went around a couple of times like that before I did, and then Jenny jerked the other one loose and we went around some the other way.

  “I will find a log,” I said, and I got both her arms again.

  Then all of a sudden she give up struggling and bent her head over and started crying. At first I hardly knew what it was. There was just her head bent over and no noise and then I felt her shaking like she was either laughing or crying and then I felt something falling down warm and wet on my arms and I knew they was tears. I turned her loose.

  “Stop laughing,” she said.

  I had not been laughing for some time. “I’m not laughing,” I said. “Stop crying.”

  “I’m not crying,” she said.

  “I thought you was,” I said. I could not tell if she was stopped or not, and then she lifted up her head and I seen she was all right.

  She moved over to a separate rut and I stayed where I was. We had changed sides, I noticed. “Well,” I said, “I guess you don’t want no rest after all.”

  She started walking up the road again and I walked along, too. “Why do you always have to wrestle?” she said.

  “Who was wrestling?” I said.

  “I suppose it is all you ever think about,” Jenny said.

  I hardly knew what she was talking about. “When was I wrestling?” I said.

  We walked along and Jenny paid no attention to my question. “I suppose you think I like being wrestled with in the middle of a road. I suppose you think that is the way to do everything. I suppose you never even stopped to think about it.”

  We walked along some more and I could see that Jenny was good and mad at me, all right. “Well,” I said, “which question is it you want me to answer first?”

  Jenny speeded up then and I speeded up and caught up with her. We was almost to their place by then. “I’m sorry for being smart,” I said, “but I wasn’t wrestling back there.”

  “No?” Jenny said.

  “No,” I said.

  She slowed down some and then we come to her gate and stopped. I thought maybe I had convinced her after all. But she just turned and looked at me once and then turned back and went through the gate and shut it behind her.

  “Wait,” I said.

  Jenny turned around and waited.

  “There has been some mistake,” I said.

  “Well, I guess there certainly has,” Jenny said, “because if you was not wrestling back there then tell me what was you doing.” Then she didn’t wait for me to say nothing but turned around and went up the path and up the steps and into the house.

  I guess it were just as well. If Jenny had stayed, it probably all would have only got more misunderstood. So I went and sat down alongside the fence and rested. I had to wait for Rodney and Ellen, anyhow. Neither of them knowed the way back through the woods and the branch; otherwise I would have let them make it on their own.

  The little sliver of a moon had just about gone down, and while I sat there it finally did. There was just the stars then. So I sat there looking at the stars and at where the moon had went down and I thought about how quick things can change and go wrong with a girl. It is almost too much to keep up with. I thought about the talk me and Jenny had had that night on her porch when the moon was full and I had come back to be friends. When it looked like we was even more than friends. And then through my mind come a kind of picture of how cool Jenny looked on a hot still day and the nice easy way she kept herself, so separate and perfect, and how small she was. And there was a hurt in it, because I couldn’t see the picture of me there, too, and yet I couldn’t see it not that way either. I just couldn’t make us fit.

  For the time there didn’t seem to be an answer to it, so finally I settled it in my mind the best I could. A girl will stay nice to you, I decided, for about as long as the moon stays nice. Then they forget. I looked back again where the moon had gone down, and there weren’t no sign of it left at all, and I felt some better, though I suppose it were not so much a thing to be actually blamed on Jenny or the moon as a thing to be blamed on me.

  Then Rodney and Ellen finally come up and I got up from the fence and we went on down the road together. “You sure was a long time,” I said. “Jenny has already went in the house and gone to bed some time ago.”

  “Was we all that long?” Rodney said.

  I seen no point in answering him, and we went on, him and Ellen talking among themselves and me going on and leading the way and pretty much alone.

  10

  We would have been late enough getting home as it was, but due to Rodney’s smoking we was even later. Every time he’d light a cigarette he’d have to stop to do it, and Ellen and me would stop, too. He would smoke it about one inch and then flip it away the way Pa always done. If the woods had been dry he would have burned them down. By the time we got home I guess he had got the habit.

  I had never heard Rodney talk before like he done that night coming back through the woods. He talked about this and that having to do with up North where he come from, and said he figured later to go to college and be an engineer and build bridges. Said he liked the way bridges looked. Probably he seen a lot of big bridges around White Plains, as the biggest that can be seen around here are the ones going into Mobile, and they are so small that they have to be lifted up or turned around to let the boats go by. I have sat there with Pa and waited while they done it. And then some little tugboat all by itself would go through. Seemed like an awful waste of people’s time.

  Mys
elf, I put the whole night from my mind as soon as I could, and naturally I stayed away from the Holmeses’ for a while. Cousin Nat come over the next evening, and I said nothing about our long walk home and neither did he. Instead, he went and got into an argument with Mr. Blankhard.

  Every so often he does this. There is a thing between him and Mr. Blankhard that is practically a feud. No two people was ever more different. About the only way they are the same is that both of them does things that don’t make sense to no one but themselves. Like Nat, with his drinking and foolishness. Or like Mr. Blankhard, going around picking up old nails and saving them, when no one has yet even seen him nail two things together. The habit of thrift, Mr. Blankhard calls it. Even the bent ones he will save, throwing them all in a bucket as he finds them, and then in rainy spells he will go down and find a dry place in the barn and sit there straightening out the crooked ones on a piece of old railroad iron for hours.

  Yet different as they are they have come to be almost friends from all the arguing they have done. It begun one day when Nat decided he needed the loan of Mr. Blankhard’s typewriter. For the purpose of being a newspaperman, I think. Anyhow, Nat come riding up to Mr. Blankhard’s house in a borrowed car and stopped out front where Mr. Blankhard was fooling around with his catalpa tree, which looked like it was dying then and since has, and he leaned out the window of the car and hollered, “Hey, Charley,” at him. I had never heard no one call Mr. Blankhard Charley before, ever. I was sitting on our front porch swing with Pa and heard it all.

  “Hey, Charley,” he hollered, “how about I borrow that little old typewriting machine you brung from Memphis and ain’t ever used since?”

  Pa and me both stopped swinging, and Mr. Blankhard just turned around slow until he was looking at Nat, and then he stood there and looked at him like he never seen such a thing in all his life. Then he spoke, real slow. “Young man,” he said, “I doubt if you have the wits even to work out the simple mechanics of a typewriting machine, leave alone to write with one; and for what other use you may have meant to put it, that machine is not for loan.”