The Rain and the Fire and the Will of God

by Donald Wetzel

  But Rodney turned and run back to the house for another bucketful, though he could have gone over to the faucet by the watering trough instead, and by the time he got back we was all standing there watching it burn, Ma and Pa and Ellen and me, and off to one side a little, in a long dark robe of some kind, Mr. Blankhard. Rodney come running up again, breathing hard and soaked from the knees on down, and Mr. Blankhard stepped back a little so as not to get his robe splashed, and Rodney run on up to the fire. This time he stopped and took aim before he flung, and whatever water was still in the bucket shot up into the flames as nice as could be and went psssst, and the fire sent a big long flame licking up like what he had done was throwed coal oil on it, and then Rodney come back a few steps and just stood there.

  He could see it weren’t no use. There was nothing going to be left of that barn at all. Then he turned and walked off a ways by his self and stood like the rest of us was doing and watched it burn. There weren’t no wind, so nothing else was in danger.

  It was something to see. The whole thing was burning now, the quickest I ever seen anything catch, the sides, the roof, everything, all burning at once. The flames went up as straight as if they was in a chimney, and then the sparks went on up from there and then way high up blinked out, and down near the bottom it was just one big red roaring thing like you see when you look through the air slits of a wood stove. You could hardly stand to look straight at it. It made a sound like somebody crumpling up paper, only loud, and a sound like wind, and you could hear things crack and pop and now and then something inside would fall and the sparks would go shooting up from the top, way on up.

  You must have been able to see that for miles. The Bays come up, Jimmy and his pa, and then Les and Mr. Holmes and then three or four cars full of people from town. There was quite a crowd there.

  And all this time, Rodney stood off by his self, the fire lighting up his bare chest and showing the colors in the fancy pajama pants he was wearing, while he stood there holding onto the empty bucket and watching the sparks go up into the air like they was the end of everything for him, gone forever.

  It went quick, though. It went so quick it practically never fell in, just burning like it stood there, all at once. By the time the crowd had really got there it were already dying down some. And then people started talking a little and moving around, though at first they had just stood there, and I seen Mr. Blankhard leave and go up to his house. Then in a while he come back down again and he was carrying a pack of cigarettes in one hand and Rodney’s trousers in the other.

  He called Rodney over to him. I guess everybody else seen it, too. The fire was dying down, but you could see clear enough, even the look on Mr. Blankhard’s face, though I wasn’t close enough to hear what he said. I just seen him say something to Rodney and then hold out the trousers and the cigarettes. Rodney looked at them and nodded, and then they talked some more. Then Mr. Blankhard give him the trousers and Rodney took them and stood there holding them, and Mr. Blankhard stood there holding the cigarettes, and then Rodney took his trousers and walked back to where he had been standing before.

  Finally Pa and Mr. Holmes went up and spoke some to Mr. Blankhard. I guess they asked how it started. Because Pa come back and told Ma that it was lighted from a cigarette dropped in some hay. Then I remembered that Rodney had got tired of all that mud in the shed right after the last big rain and flung down a lot of old hay on it. So then he must have forgot, and come down to smoke in the cow shed, and flung his cigarette down into the hay like it was mud.

  So I went up to Mr. Blankhard myself and waited, and finally Jimmy Bay come up and asked how it started.

  “My nephew believes it was started by a lighted cigarette being dropped in some loose hay,” Mr. Blankhard said. He didn’t look like he wished to speak with Jimmy about it at all.

  Jimmy give it some thought. “Whose lighted cigarette?” he said. Like he didn’t know. Maybe he didn’t, though.

  For a minute I thought Mr. Blankhard was not going to answer. Then he tipped his head toward where Rodney was standing. “His,” he said.

  Jimmy didn’t say nothing back. Some of the town people come up and talked with Mr. Blankhard, but the fire was dying down a lot now, and they begun to leave. Finally there was just Jimmy Bay and his pa and us and Mr. Blankhard and Rodney. I had said hello once to Rodney already but he had not seemed to want to talk much, but now I seen Ellen had gone over and was standing next to him, the darkness coming back around them now, so that all you could see was the whiteness of Rodney’s chest, and his and Sister’s faces, looking down into the fire. It had all come down and was burning in flames only here and there, but for the rest it was just a big low mound of coals, already darkening some. I walked over close to Rodney and Ellen and said hello again, but I guess he didn’t hear me.

  “It was all my fault,” he said.

  “Well, it’s done now,” Sister said.

  And she was right. It was just about over. It would smolder and smoke a while longer, I figured, but by morning there wouldn’t be nothing left but ashes.

  We stood there looking at it, me and Ellen and Rodney, and over near the chinaberry tree, Pa and Ma and Jimmy Bay and his pa, and off by himself, Mr. Blankhard. Then a big drop of rain come down and hit me on the arm, and then some more come, and in a minute it was raining, slow, but picking up all the time. It had finally come after all.

  I looked and Rodney looked up and then him and Ellen just stood there looking at each other, and I turned and seen Ma and Pa looking over at Mr. Blankhard, and I looked, too, and he was standing there staring up into the rain, still holding the cigarettes in his hand and staring up into the dark and letting the rain come down harder and harder into his face like for the first time in his life he was wondering where it really come from.

  “It come too late,” Jimmy said. I had forgot he was here. I looked back and he were standing by his pa, looking down at the rain going into the coals. I suppose he had said it just to himself. But I expect all the rest of us was thinking the same thing anyhow.

  Except maybe Mr. Blankhard. Maybe all he was thinking still was that it rained or didn’t rain according to God’s will. Because finally he looked back down at the coals again and sort of nodded to his self like maybe for once instead of saying himself how things was with God, he had asked a question and got told. Anyhow, he just stood there and nodded for a time, and then he turned and went back up to his house. Then the rain got coming down even harder and Pa and Ma and me and Ellen left, too.

  I guess Rodney stayed until the end. We got up to the house and talked about it some, and Pa said well, anyway, it weren’t much of a loss, and we went back to bed.

  At the time I went to sleep it was raining down hard and steady; I could hear it pounding on the roof and splashing down on the slate underneath the gutter spout at the corner of the house, and I figured raining as hard as it was it would probably be done by morning.

  It was a good rain in the end, all right. But it had sure held off.

  16

  The next morning I went down there first thing, and pretty soon Rodney come down. He was dressed in clothes like he was going to town and his hair was combed neat and he just walked around kind of aimless and looked at the ashes. The rain had come too late to save even as much as one board. It had put the coals out, though, so that it wasn’t even smoking anywheres. The only way you could tell the barn had not been burned some weeks ago was by the smell. There is nothing smells the same as wet ashes from wood that has just been burnt.

  I let him walk around by his self for a time, and then I went and walked around with him. His eyes was a little red and his eyebrows singed down a little, but outside of that and a kind of new sunburned look, he looked all right. For a while we just walked around at the edge of the ashes, and then I told him what Pa had said, that it weren’t much of a loss. He just nodded.

  Then we went and sat on a log under the chinaberry tree. We was quiet. Rodney hadn’t hardly spoke a word
all this time. “I’m sorry Ma didn’t see it sooner,” I said, “you might have got there in time to put it out.”

  Rodney give me a look and then looked back at where the barn had been and at the ashes. I picked up a rock and throwed it and it went into the ashes and made a kind of splash.

  “How come you let me get hit with that branch?” Rodney said.

  I thought he had forgot all about that. And I could not see what that had to do at all with his burning his uncle’s barn down. For a minute I was about to tell him he should watch out for his own branches, but I didn’t. Looked like he had trouble enough as it were. “I forgot how tall you was,” I said. “If I’d remembered, I’d of hollered.”

  “Oh,” Rodney said. That was all he said. Then he picked up a rock and flung it into the ashes like I done and it went in without a sound and made a splash, and then I flung one and he flung another, and I figured that was the end of the matter. Anyhow he said no more about it. We sat there not saying anything at all and throwed rocks down into the ashes until finally we run out of rocks. Then we just sat there.

  That night he stayed home and played his guitar for a while and then went to bed, I guess. But the next night he quit early and come over and sat with us again. Nobody said a word about the fire, except that once Pa said Rodney if you want to smoke now, go ahead and smoke right here, although for a boy your age it will stunt your growth sure. Rodney said yes, sir; but he didn’t take Pa up on it. When he left, I noticed he didn’t go home, so I figured he had probably went down to the bridge. You would have thought that after burning down a barn he might have quit. I guess he had the habit bad.

  In a way, though, this seemed to have finally quieted Rodney down altogether, and he had been quiet enough to start with. Except for the time he spent on our porch I hardly seen him at all any more. Things was getting busier around the Hill then, and I guess none of us give him much mind. At least I was kept busy by Pa like I had practically been took on as a hand, and just what Rodney done by himself I hardly noticed.

  He come over every night, but when he left he wouldn’t go home but down to the bridge for a smoke, or off somewheres, and it would really be late sometimes when I finally heard him go through the gate to Mr. Blankhard’s yard and knowed he was quit for the night. Sometimes I never heard him coming in at all.

  And I don’t know whether it was that Mr. Blankhard wrote to Rodney’s pa about the fire, or whether his pa just done it on his own, but Rodney got a letter from his pa telling him to come back North. The day it come Rodney come over and showed it to Ellen and me. It said his pa had made new arrangements and Rodney was to come back North in time to start back to school there. There was even a train ticket in the letter, from the Junction to White Plains, New York, one way. The longest ticket I ever seen. Folded up like one of them picture-postcard folders.

  It come on a Friday and Mr. Blankhard come over and worked it out with Pa to take Rodney back up to the Junction Monday. We was busy, with school due to open in a week, and I knowed it hurt Pa to do it, but all Mr. Blankhard still had was that horse of his.

  In a way it come as a surprise, and in a way it didn’t. I mean, school was only a week away and Rodney was still no more ready for it than he was the day he come. So I was glad for Rodney, knowing the trouble he would have run into, and yet I was sorry, too, as I had more or less figured on him being around for a while. As for Rodney, I couldn’t much tell what he thought about it one way or another. He showed us the letter, but from then on he hardly said a word. Looked like he didn’t know himself if it was something good or bad.

  Saturday I worked all day with Pa until almost dark and practically forgot that Rodney was even going, but that night he come over early and Pa and Ma and Ellen made quite a point of talking to him about this and that for most of the time we sat there, though I could see he didn’t want to talk none. When he left he went down to the bridge for a smoke and me and Ellen went with him. The three of us must have stood there for half an hour without hardly a one of us saying more than it was a pretty night or weren’t it nice the mosquitoes was gone. In a way I guess we all was just about as confused about his leaving as Rodney was.

  Sunday it was hot again. Like it had went back to August. And it was during the morning that it really come to me that Rodney were really leaving. Maybe it being so hot again had got me thinking about the whole summer, all the things me and Rodney had done together and all. Anyhow, we was sitting out on his back steps not doing anything and talking about what was there to do and then it come to me like a shock that he was going. In a way it was strange, sitting there talking about what to do like it was just like any other day—which it was, with nothing to do at all when you come down to it—and yet it being probably the last time him and me would ever sit there talking about it like that. I guess it must have struck Rodney as somewhat strange, too, because after a time he left off talking altogether and we both just sat there.

  That was about all we done all day, just sit somewheres not saying anything or walk around somewheres not saying anything. And sweat. And go get drinks of water. Or just sit. And finally Rodney took Pa at his word and took out some cigarettes and started in smoking right there on our porch. I seen it give Ma a surprise, but she never said a thing.

  And that night Rodney come over and we all talked a little again for a change, sitting there watching the moon coming up and talking about what a hot summer it had been and how good the crops had all made out and things like that. And then finally we all got quiet again and Rodney got up and said good night and I said I would see him in the morning and then he left. Pa and Ma went in and me and Ellen sat there a while and then we went in, too.

  I got in bed, but there was a full moon outside and the light come right in my window; and besides it were just too hot for sleep, the way it can get sometimes in September and you feel it more than you would in August. It is like something has been adding up all through the summer and then when the summer is about over you get the sum of it, everything suddenly being more hot and heavy and quiet than it has been all summer long. It was so still I could hear every little noise that on another night I would never notice. I could even hear the cars going by over on the highway, when usually I would say you could not hear cars on the highway from our place at all, even if you listened for them. Then I heard the click and the squeak of Rodney opening the gate to Mr. Blankhard’s yard, and I figured he was coming in for the night.

  But he must have been just coming out, because in a little while I heard the sound of his guitar, a few easy chords and then nothing, out in the road. At least that’s where I thought it were, and I listened but everything was quiet again for a time.

  And I had about got it figured I must have heard wrong or that Rodney had decided against it, when he begun again. At first it were low and I wasn’t sure yet where he was and then bit by bit it come up louder until I knowed by the sound that he must be sitting right up under the tree by the corner of our fence.

  Quiet as the night was, it sounded nice. I wondered about it though, him playing in the road like that, and then I heard Ellen get up in the next room and walk across to the window and stand there, and about that time Rodney begun to sing and I got up quiet and went to the window, too.

  There was a moon like daylight. And there was Rodney, all right, sitting there under the tree on a couple of old truck tires, playing his guitar and singing. He was close enough so I could see he weren’t wearing no shirt, like maybe he had went to bed and then got up and put on his pants and come out to play his guitar some and get cooled. At least that was how I figured it, and that he come up by the corner of our fence so as not to wake Mrs. Blankhard, who sleeps light. And he was singing quiet, like he was only singing to his self.

  It was a country song he was singing, though, and I stood there listening to it, thinking he sure had a voice like a girl, all right, but that for learning country singing he had done pretty good. It was “Red River Valley” he sung. I could make out the wor
ds easy. “From this valley they say you are going,” the words start, and he knowed them all.

  It’s a kind of sad song, and hearing him singing it to his self, and seeing him sitting there, skinny, bent over his guitar, alone under the tree, his skin just as white and his hair just as curly as like I seen him the first time, it come to me how sad the summer must have sometimes been to him, him new here and living with Mr. Blankhard and his aunt and with his own father off somewheres and with no mother at all. And then with all that trouble he had. Last of all burning the barn. And for a second I had half a mind to call to him that I heard him. Just to say hello.

  But I didn’t. I was afraid it might wake up Pa. So I stood there listening, thinking how nice the singing sounded even if it did sound like a girl, and then he come to the end of the song and stopped. I could hear a cow cropping grass over across the road. And the moonlight, it being so bright, somehow made it seem even more quiet. Rodney just sat there, hardly moving, but it was like I could still hear it, the guitar and the singing.

  Then I seen the cow. It had moved out from under some pines and stood there with its head up, not moving at all, the way a cow will sometimes do at night, like it’s sleeping standing up. The moon was so bright I could see the lower branches of the pines, plain, and going up the hill the tops of the trees was standing out against the sky like some crooked steps going on up to where the moon was. And then Rodney begun to sing again.

  It almost give me a start. I had practically forgot about him being there. And this time he sung loud. Right from the beginning. And the guitar was louder, like he had been sitting there all that time just making up his mind about it. It was the same song he were singing, but from the first it was different. It was like he weren’t singing to his self any more.

  “‘From this valley they say you are going,’” he sung, “‘we will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile …’” He had turned to face our house more, but that weren’t it. His voice was all the way out now, clear and open as the singing of a turpentiner, still high—higher than I ever knowed he could sing—but not like a girl’s any more, not at all. And for a minute I was some way afraid for him, like I knowed he was in for more trouble but I didn’t know what, and I almost wanted to holler some kind of a warning at him. Then it come to me, and for a second more I still stayed afraid for him, and then I knowed that even if it was trouble it was still all right. I knowed what it were, and I was proud for him. He was singing to my sister.