The Rain and the Fire and the Will of God

by Donald Wetzel

  “It has got washed loose is all,” I said.

  We looked at the crooked corn for a while and then back at the gully being dug, and then Mr. Blankhard come up from behind us and stood there looking, too. In the rain I had never heard him coming. He just come up out of the rain and stood between me and Rodney and looked. He was wearing a big black raincoat and hat that went with it and ankle boots of rubber, but for all of that, standing there in the rain looking up at his hill, he was getting his self as soaked as we was.

  He seemed like he hardly noticed it. I could see the rain dripping down the side of his neck and underneath his raincoat, and it was beating down into his face like it was nothing but a board. But none of it bothered him that I could see. No more, I guess, than that gully being dug or his corn leaning crooked up and down the rows. He just wasn’t the kind to be bothered.

  So we all stood and looked at it, and then Mr. Blankhard seemed to notice us. “What has brung you boys out here in this weather?” he said.

  “We come to see the damage,” I said.

  Rodney said nothing. Mr. Blankhard turned and looked at the hill again. “There is some things, boys,” he said, “that is nothing more nor less than God’s will.” Rodney and me just stood there. “One of them,” Mr. Blankhard said, “is rain.”

  I had never doubted it. Mr. Blankhard turned and looked at us again. “There is nothing none of us can do,” he said, and then he started back toward the road and me and Rodney come with him. On the road he still stayed between us and we walked along on each side of him. I said nothing and neither did Rodney and we walked back over the bridge and up again toward the houses.

  I was not even sure Mr. Blankhard knowed we was walking there with him. He just looked up the road ahead and kept walking. It was something. It was like walking down the road with God, Mr. Blankhard’s God, though the only way it could have happened was the way it did. In the rain, I mean.

  14

  It went from August to September but you never would have knowed it. The heat stayed and the mosquitoes stayed and half the time I stayed asleep, whether actually sleeping or walking around, it made no difference. Nothing happened at all.

  As for Jenny, I like to drownded going through the branch right after the rain to see her, wading through a pool of muck I never guessed was there until I was in it, and it had me smelling so bad when I got to the Holmeses’ that not even Jenny could stay near me for long. Mrs. Holmes finally sent me home to wash.

  Then I tried it again and got to see Jenny alone for maybe half an hour. We stood out under their pecan tree and was having a nice conversation when finally her ma stuck her head out the door and hollered for Jenny like she thought we was clean on the other side of the branch. I wished we had of been. Give us both a scare, though. Like she had just as good as hollered in our ears.

  But mostly when I went over there was all the Holmeses there or none at all and it was a problem. I give it quite a bit of thought, though, and I believe Jenny done the same. That night we had went for the walk was not the kind of thing you forgot. And anyhow there was school coming up, and at school at least when I seen Jenny there would not be all of them Holmeses hanging around but only Les. And I figured at school he might not hang around so much. Things is different at school.

  Rodney and me stayed speaking again, but that was about all. It seemed to me he had largely lost interest in being a farmer or cowboy any more. He stayed pretty much to his self. He done a lot of it on our porch, however, just sitting there. About the only person he seemed to care to talk to was Ellen, for the rest of us he just sat. Once in a while I would go down to the bridge with him at nights and fish for an hour or so, but I believe he done it mostly so he could smoke.

  In the evenings, Rodney would sit most usually on his back steps and practice playing his guitar and singing. Sometimes it would be quiet, with all of us but him on our porch, and then he would start in and we would listen for a while. He usually sung low, but sometimes he forgot and let it out louder, and Ellen said not only had he got to play good but he sung good, too. But he never come and played for us direct. Figured he wasn’t good enough yet, he said. Ellen asked him sometimes.

  But except for sitting on our porch or fishing with me from the bridge, it looked like he had more or less decided to let the Hill go its way while he went his alone. If the Bay boys come and we went somewheres, Rodney stayed where he was. Just wasn’t interested. His sunburn eased up some and his hair started coming back long again, and I was afraid by the time school begun again it would turn out that the Hill hadn’t done a thing for him at all. In a way, Rodney sure was stubborn.

  Actually, about all he done around the Hill any more was still milk them cows. I guess he was stuck with them. For me, with school coming up and the work to be done around the place before then, there was days when I hardly noticed he was around. Though he was, of course. Usually on our porch.

  Then finally the heat give a little. Pa said it had broke, but the most I could say was maybe it had give some. Sometimes in the evenings a shower come up, the way they do in the fall, and once in a while in the mornings there was a thing you could call a breeze and not just some hot air being blowed around, but that was about it.

  And then one day around noon Jimmy Bay come down—I guess he figured the heat had broke, too—and said he knowed where there was a bee tree and we should go and cut it down. So I told him I believed it was the wrong time of year to begin with, though maybe it wasn’t, and that it probably weren’t no bees but just some wasps he seen. I was not for cutting down trees that day.

  Jimmy give all this some thought. “They might have been wasps at that,” he said. We discussed it some and in the end he said he would go back and take a better look and then let me know which it was, wasps or bees.

  But he never come back, so early that evening I started up his way to see if maybe he had got lost. I went through the woods and took it slow. Once I stopped and pulled down some Spanish moss and looked through it until I found a flower thing, and then I went on. When I got to the Bay place I found out that what had happened was not that Jimmy had got lost but that he had got stung. Got real close this time, I guess.

  He was sitting on the front porch covered with some black-looking grease his ma had put on him, but for all of that he was smiling. “Them was bees, all right,” he said.

  He seemed to have no pain at all. For once, I guess, he had settled a thing for certain by his self. “If they was wasps,” he said, “I never could have stood it.”

  I looked at him. Under all that grease it was hard to tell how bad it had him swoll. “Well,” I said, “I am glad for your sake they was bees.”

  “I’m glad they was, too,” Jimmy said. I believe he was really glad at that. So for a time we sat there and talked about bee trees, about which we knowed nothing, and then we was quiet and Jimmy just thought about it some, I suppose. Then I showed him the flower in the piece of Spanish moss.

  “Had you ever knowed they had a flower?” I said.

  Jimmy looked at it. “No,” he said, “is that the flower?”

  “That’s it,” I said.

  Jimmy looked at it some more. “It ain’t much, is it?” he said. So we sat there a while longer and I guess Jimmy went back to thinking about bee trees and finally I got up and come home.

  That night after supper me and Rodney went down to the bridge. We tied some lines to the railings and then Rodney lit up and we stood there and fished. Standing there leaning against the railing and feeling a little coolness coming up from the water, it was an easy way to spend some time. There was a smell of fall coming, too, I noticed. I believe you can always notice it first around water, a creek, I mean, and at night. You can get a few cool mornings in early September, but you will not know fall is really coming up until you get its smell. When you do, there is no mistake, for as far as I know there is no way it can come until it is finally time. Myself, I was glad to see fall coming.

  I guess we had been there ab
out an hour when Ellen come down. I heard her coming, singing, probably so we could know it was her, as it was dark, and then she come up and stopped singing and stood between us. “Rodney,” Ellen said, “every time you strike a match, Pa says you ought to know that we can see it from the porch.”

  “From that far away?” Rodney said.

  “You can see a struck match a long ways in the dark,” I said.

  Rodney went and tested the lines and then come back where me and Ellen was. “I guess I never thought your pa would notice it,” he said. Then he flipped the cigarette he was smoking into the creek and turned his back to the house and lighted another one.

  “Rodney,” Ellen said, “you smoke too much. You shouldn’t even smoke at all.” I guess that her and Ma and Pa must have been talking about it up there. Probably worried that maybe I might have took the habit up myself.

  “I’m pretty well growed,” Rodney said.

  For a while nobody said nothing, and I figured Ellen would let it go. Then Ellen said, “Rodney, what I meant was only how young you are.”

  I knowed myself right then that this were not a thing she should have said. Not to Rodney. But he didn’t say a word back to her. All he done was go and test the lines again. Ellen sung a little bit to herself and then she stopped. She probably wished she had never brung the subject up. Nobody said nothing for quite a time.

  Finally I said, “Smoking cuts your wind.” I waited and some time went by, and nobody said nothing about that, either.

  Then Ellen said there was no moon but it was cooler than last night and the mosquitoes seemed not so bad, and then we was all quiet again for a time.

  Then Rodney said, “My father already knows I smoke,” and then he went and tested the lines again and stopped further down the railing from me and Ellen and leaned out over the water and went on smoking.

  So for a while me and Ellen talked some more about where had the moon and the mosquitoes went and it looked like a good night for catfish to bite, and then Ellen sung a little some more to herself and then moved down next to Rodney. It was dark and I couldn’t see too well but I heard her walk up to him and stop, and I heard him pull himself back off the railing some, and then Ellen said, “Rodney, I wonder if you would let me have one of your cigarettes, please.”

  I turned and looked hard, but I couldn’t see hers or Rodney’s face. I knowed for a fact that Ellen didn’t smoke. But I guess Rodney give her one despite of his surprise, because I heard Ellen say, “Thank you.” Then a little bit later she said, “Could I have a match, Rodney, please?”

  So Rodney struck a match for her, but it went out, so he struck another and she held his hand up to her cigarette and finally got it lit. With them bending close together like that, lit up by the matches Rodney struck, I seen how Rodney was actually taller than her by a half a head. Then Rodney lighted a cigarette of his own and the two of them stood there smoking. I said nothing. All I could hope was that Pa didn’t finally come walking down to the bridge his self to see what all this fire was about.

  Then Ellen and Rodney got to talking some, mostly about the fishing they was doing, though I had never knowed before that Ellen cared for fishing either. Finally I give up on all of it. They was hardly including me in their conversation anyhow. “You may not have noticed it,” I said, “but the mosquitoes is getting bad again, so I believe I will go home.”

  “I haven’t noticed them none at all,” Rodney said.

  “Me, neither,” Ellen said.

  “I believe I will stay and fish some more,” Rodney said.

  “Me, too,” Ellen said. Then she asked him for another cigarette and he give her one and took another one his self and they got them lighted up this time with only one match.

  “Well,” I said, “that is all right with me, but let me warn you of just one thing. If you catch any fish you can clean them yourselves.”

  Then I left, going back up to the house alone, with Ellen and Rodney still standing there in the dark, smoking and fishing by their selves. For all I knowed, they might stay there fishing and smoking like that until Ellen got the habit, too.

  15

  For the next few days it was hot and bright and like being back in the middle of August somewheres, and then one morning I waked up and it was different. The sky was nothing but one big gray cloud. Outside my window the yard looked as quiet and plain and big as it looks in late evening, and I could see where there would be rain by noon for sure. You can tell those things. I got up and ate and went outside.

  Outside, there was that hot sticky feeling to things that comes sometimes before a rain, when it is clouded over and building up and holding off. Grab up a handful of grass on a day like that and you can hardly throw it back down. It just sticks to your fingers. I done it, which is how I know.

  I went and found Rodney in the branch again, and just about then a few big drops come down and we took his guitar and run back up to his uncle’s house with it, but them few big drops was all there was. I have seen a rain hold off like that for hours. Then at noon while I was eating dinner some more stray drops come down and a little wind come blowing through the house and slammed shut some doors and I figured the rain had really begun. But that was all there was, them few stray drops and that wind. After that it went back to being only hot and still and holding off again.

  Later, I sat around with Rodney for a couple of hours and it still didn’t rain. So after a while we went down to the lot to see if the stock had come up. They hadn’t. “I suppose I will milk them cows soaking wet again,” Rodney said.

  I looked up at the sky. “I suppose that shed is not much help at that,” I said.

  “None at all,” Rodney said. We went through the lot and looked down toward the branch but none of the stock was in sight. They must have been in the branch or on the other side of it. Or just hid by weeds. Then we went back and went into the barn, and sitting there on a box a little ways from the door was Mr. Blankhard, taking nails out of his bucket.

  “Good afternoon, boys,” he said. “I believe we are in for more rain.”

  “It looks like we are,” I said. I was somewhat surprised at his friendliness. In front of him on another box was this little piece of railroad iron, and while we stood there he spread a sack across his knees and picked up his hammer and begun banging away at his crooked nails. Straightening them. Then I noticed he was singing, not saying the words, but singing anyhow. I never knowed he could. Sounded like a church song.

  “It will rain before supper for sure,” I said. Mr. Blankhard nodded his head, like we was agreed on that, though it may have been just from the hammering that he done it. So me and Rodney just watched him for a while and then we went back outside and walked around some more.

  We went down through the branch and over to his uncle’s corn field and then back down to the creek, where we sat while Rodney smoked. Then we went back to Mr Blankhard’s place and down to the lot again.

  Mr. Blankhard had left but the cows had come up, so Rodney went and got the bucket and milked. While he was milking there come another little scattering of rain, but it quit before he was through. It was coming, though. I could tell.

  It was dark by the time we was through with supper, but it still hadn’t come. We sat out on the porch and was mostly quiet. It was hot and still and things was still all as sticky as they had been in the morning. Rodney come over for a while, and then left, and finally we all give up on it and went in to bed.

  It was too hot and sticky to sleep. I shut off my light and just lay there and sweated. I could see the light from Ellen’s window shining out into the yard, and I figured she was reading awhile. Then it cut out and the yard was dark. Now and then I heard Ma or Pa moving around and still talking some in their bedroom in back.

  Finally it were quiet. Then Ma must have gone out to the porch to see if the screen was latched, because I heard her go by and then I heard her holler back to Pa. “Sid,” she hollered, “Mr. Blankhard’s barn is burning!” Then she hollered the
same thing again.

  For a minute I just lay there. It seemed impossible. Then I heard Pa’s feet hit the floor back in their bedroom and then he come past my room, and I jumped up myself and went out to the porch and then Ellen come and we all stood there looking. Ma was right, Mr. Blankhard’s barn was afire. It was mostly the cow shed part, and the flames was still down near the ground, but they went on up and took hold of the barn while we stood there watching. Looking down under the limbs of the pear trees you could see it good, but then it got up high and the leaves begun to blot it out and you could only guess. Then lights come on all at once all over Mr. Blankhard’s house and the back door slammed and I seen Rodney run out into the light in his pajama bottoms and then stop and run back into the house again.

  “Jack,” Pa said, “get down there quick and see that the stock gets out of that lot.”

  “They ain’t there,” I said, “I seen them leave,” but I run in and got on my pants and run back out and down the road toward the lot. The light from the flames was already enough to light things up, and I seen Rodney running down toward the barn underneath the pear trees, bare to the waist and bent over funny and running slow. And then he come out from under the trees and I seen he was carrying a bucket full of water. I got to the gate and inside the lot just as Rodney come running out from under the chinaberry tree. I could see water slopping from the bucket when he run. He run right up to where the door of the shed would have been, if you could have seen it through the fire, and for a second I thought he was looking for the door, but just in time he stopped and flung the water out and then backed up.

  Close as he was, he had missed. It had all fell short. But even if it hadn’t, the way that fire was going it wouldn’t have made no difference. I could see there weren’t nothing left to do but watch it burn.