The Rain and the Fire and the Will of God

by Donald Wetzel

  It was a brave thing to do. That open, I mean. That loud. Like he didn’t care who knowed it so long as Ellen did, like that was the only thing that mattered, that she should know it. Because he must have knowed all the time, not only now but before, that for himself there couldn’t be nothing, nothing but Ellen going her way and him going his, the way it had to be.

  But it was clear and loud and open, and he sung it slow, and like he meant it, all the way through. And then he stopped and sat there awhile quiet again. If it had waked up Pa, Pa never give a sign.

  Then I watched him get up and put his guitar under his arm and go back down the road toward Mr. Blankhard’s house, and then I heard the gate click. I stayed there a while longer and then I went and got back in bed. And then I heard Ellen moving back from the window, and I wondered if she knowed.

  Outside, the cow started cropping grass again, and way over on the highway I heard some cars go by. Then down in the branch a hoot owl called and far off got an answer, and it went back and forth for a time, and then quit. And then I heard a sound I didn’t know, and I thought it was Ellen and I listened and heard it again and it was Ellen all right. She was crying.

  And then she stopped and everything on the Hill was quiet. I would have liked to got up and got a drink of water, but I didn’t. I just lay there. Everything stayed quiet and finally I went to sleep.

  In the morning Ma said maybe there was something I could do to help and I went over first thing, but Rodney’s suitcases and boxes was already packed and stacked near the door and Rodney was sitting on the back steps, all dressed and ready to leave.

  But he weren’t to leave until after dinner, so we sat there together for a while. Then I said, “Rodney, I had about forgot but you have never seen Jimmy Bay to tell him you was going.”

  “I figured he would probably be down some time,” Rodney said.

  We sat there a while longer and then we got up and walked down to the lot and looked at the ashes. Then we went out into the pasture and down as far as the branch, and I could see Rodney was commencing to sweat, dressed up like that, so we went back and sat on the log under the chinaberry tree for a while.

  Then Mrs. Blankhard give a yell for Rodney and we went back up to the house. He had forgot to pack some stuff, and I helped him get a suitcase out from the bunch and Mrs. Blankhard put the stuff in it and then me and Rodney went back outside.

  It was too late to walk up to the Bays’ so I told Rodney I would tell Jimmy good-by for him and Rodney said he would maybe write him a letter.

  “Print it,” I said, “I doubt if Jimmy can read straight writing.”

  “I will write it on music paper,” Rodney said. “Then you can read it to him.”

  So then we walked back down to the lot and then down to the branch again, and then we come back and sat down on the log under the chinaberry tree and just sat there.

  Then we talked some about how hot it was getting, and then we went back up the road to his uncle’s house and got a drink of water and come back out again and sat on the steps some more. Then Mrs. Blankhard come and said Rodney’s dinner was ready and I got up and said I guessed I would go get some dinner, too, and I left.

  After dinner Ma said maybe there was something I could do to help again, and I went over and got a box and a suitcase and Rodney got a box and a suitcase and we took them over and put them in the back of Pa’s pickup. Then Pa come out and said he was ready and we went back and Mr. Blankhard got a suitcase and I got a couple of little bundles and all there was left for Rodney was the guitar, so he brung that.

  When we got there Ma was already in the truck and Pa was fooling around with the stuff me and Rodney had put in the back and Ellen was standing off from the truck a ways on the path. Mr. Blankhard put the last suitcase in back and then went around and talked to Pa while I give Ma the bundles to put up front. And then I turned and seen Rodney going over to Ellen. He had the guitar in the case and when he got to Sister he swung it up by the handle and held it out to her.

  “You can have it,” he said.

  There was nothing she could do but take it. She looked surprised. “Are you sure, Rodney?” she said. She was holding it by the big end, the way he had swung it up to her, and it looked like she was going to let it slip, and then she turned it around and took it by the handle.

  Rodney was already coming toward the truck. “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  Ellen looked at it and then back at Rodney and he stopped and looked at Ellen and they stood there. “I will learn to play it,” Ellen said.

  “If you want to,” Rodney said. “But it’s just to have.”

  And then he turned and come over past me and got in the truck. Ma started talking to him, and Pa started up the motor and backed back over the cattle guard, and I seen Rodney nodding to what Ma was saying, and then they was headed up the hill and Rodney turned and looked out the window at us.

  I waved and he nodded his head and then they started on up the hill and Ellen waved and he got his hand out somehow and waved back and then they went on up the hill and was gone.

  I watched until they was out of sight, and then I went up onto the porch and sat down. Ellen had already taken the guitar on in the house. I sat there awhile and then Ellen come back out and sat there with me. We didn’t say nothing for a time and then I said, “There was a book that come with that guitar that shows how to play it.”

  “It’s in the case,” Ellen said.

  “Maybe I could learn to play it sometime myself,” I said. Ellen didn’t say nothing. Then she got up and went in the house and brought us both back glasses of water and we sat there and drunk it. It sure was hot again.

  17

  You have probably seen a mailman drive up to a bunch of mailboxes set on posts by the side of the road and not a house in sight anywheres and wondered where was the people for all them mailboxes. But then you will see a school bus drive up and maybe stop right there by the mailboxes, too, and you will not believe sometimes the numbers of kids that keep coming down off that bus and going off in all directions. Anyhow, see a thing like that or even better ride a school bus some, and you begin to get some idea of all the people there is that lives on farms that you would never know was alive from one day to the next. Just driving by on the road, unless you happened to notice the mailboxes or get stopped behind while a school bus is letting kids off, you would never guess how many people there really is in Alabama. I mean, every fall when I start riding the school bus again, it comes to me as a surprise. There is farms and families all around through here that I have never even seen, let alone know the things that is going on there, and I have lived around here all my life.

  If it wasn’t for school, I probably wouldn’t even get to know most of the kids I do. Some of them I never get to see one time all summer. And then when I see them again in the fall I am surprised at how some of them look like all they have done all summer is growed. I suppose it looks the same to them, though. I mean that even if I haven’t noticed it none I have probably growed somewhat through the summer myself.

  And every year it seems to me that the school bus is more crowded than it was the year before. And noisier. And that there is more young kids and fewer older kids all the time. The way those smallest ones holler and yell and fool around, it is a wonder to me that somebody don’t stop them. They sure can get to be pests. They are apt to come up and swat you with a book most any time. And you are supposed to laugh, like because they are little it is a joke. It is a nuisance. And some of them little kids is strong.

  And I believe they are worse on the bus me and Ellen rides than on the one that Jenny rides. I guess that since school took up I have rid more on Jenny’s bus than I have on mine. Going home, I mean. I ride out to her place and get off there and then come back through the branch by myself. Old Mr. Lester who drives that bus keeps arguing with me about it. Says as far as he knows I don’t live on his route. You would think he owned the bus or something.

  Usually me and Jenny ride way
to the back, though you certainly get bounced around some there, but it is best for keeping out of Mr. Lester’s notice and getting away from the kids. There is several dozen kids hardly old enough to go to school that gets off at different places between town and Jenny’s place, and if you are anywheres between them and the door they are apt to run right up your back getting off in time. They are all afraid they will get carried on off by the bus, I guess. It is a relief to see them piling out into the road and then taking off through the woods, though, as much for me as for them. By the time we get to the Holmeses’, the bus is apt to be practically normal. On the bus me and Ellen rides in the morning it gets worse all the way on into town. On a rainy morning them kids come in and shake the water off themselves like dogs. It’s a mess.

  Once and a while me and Ellen will miss the bus, though, and then Pa drives us in, like he done this morning when Ellen decided at the last minute she had not got her hair done up right. I could have went on by myself, but I figured I would rather wait and get drove in with Ellen.

  We got there late and it was noon before I got a chance to talk with Jenny. She had thought at first that maybe I were sick or something. I told her what done it, though. Ellen ought to learn to fix her hair like Jenny’s, which is simple and smooth and curling only at the ends, and is the same ever day. I doubt if she ever fools with it at all.

  This evening old Mr. Lester give me trouble again. I had got on with the first bunch but then there wasn’t no more come pushing in for a minute and it give him a chance to get after me again. I half believe he wished nobody rid in his bus at all. Anyhow, he called me up front and asked me how long did I mean to keep riding that bus anyway, and I told him as long as it kept going out by the Holmeses’ place.

  “Don’t get smart with me, Jack Haywood,” he said.

  “No, sir,” I said. I started to go back to the seats I was saving but he started in again.

  “How do I know you ain’t getting in trouble,” he said. “No one has told me yet that I was to let you on this bus at all.”

  “Look,” I said, “anybody knows if I miss my own bus and there’s another still here that is going near my place it is all right if I take it.”

  Old man Lester stuck out his hand and pointed through the window. “Your bus is sitting right there,” he said. “It ain’t hardly started loading.”

  It was true, of course. I said, “Well, I can’t see where I am hurting anything and anyhow I have got permission. If you don’t believe it you can ask.” Jenny and some others come crowding in then and heard me saying that, and Jenny went on to the back and held our seats for us.

  “Maybe you do and maybe you don’t,” Mr. Lester said, but by this time the kids was really piling in and I went back and sat down next to Jenny.

  Finally it got filled up and Mr. Lester closed the door and got up and looked around the way he always does and then he sat down again and after a while we got going and bounced over the railroad tracks and was started out the road toward the Holmeses’. Way up front I heard the Stratton girls bust out laughing at something among themselves, and then Jenny said, “Is it true you got permission?”

  “You think I would lie?” I said.

  “Some day you will get caught in your lies,” Jenny said.

  “Have I ever lied to you one time?” I said.

  “No,” Jenny said. “But Mr. Lester don’t believe you.”

  “It’s the truth,” I said. “I got permission from Ma.”

  Jenny laughed. “Jack,” she said, “that were not what he meant. You will get yourself in trouble yet.”

  She didn’t seem much worried, though. As a matter of fact when I asked Ma about it she said it was all right with her if it was with the school board and the Holmeses, because as far as she was concerned it was at least one interest I had got that was not altogether pointless and foolish or at least one that she could understand and hope that some good might come from it. Ma still had the notion that all I liked to do was get in fights with some poor boy or another, or go around shooting at innocent songbirds. Before school had took up again she give me a talk about it, saying the time had come for me to consider becoming somewhat civilized finally. I guess she had failed to notice how I had went all summer without no real trouble of any kind to speak of.

  “Trouble is not my worry,” I said to Jenny. “In fact nothing is.”

  “I suppose some day you will even be rich,” Jenny said.

  “I doubt it,” I said, “but don’t you worry about it.”

  Most of the kids was off the bus by this time and finally the Stratton girls got off, too, and the rest of the way to the Holmeses’ place things was quiet. Then Les got off, and me and Jenny, too, and the bus went on up the road.

  We went and stood under their pecan tree and talked for a while. Then I started heading down the road toward home, slow, a few steps at a time, and Jenny come a ways with me, the way she always does. Somehow we never exactly say good-by or anything, but just walk down the road a ways together, talking some, until finally Jenny hangs back a little more and I get ahead some more and then we say something about seeing each other tomorrow and Jenny goes back and through the gate and up on her porch, and when she has got there I start home really myself. One way or another, we can not stand there in the road and talk all afternoon anyhow.

  But we aren’t in a hurry, either. And actually we never talk about nothing much. This afternoon I told her we had got a letter from Rodney and that he had give up smoking. Jenny asked me what else the letter said and I said I didn’t know, the letter was to Ellen and that was all she told me.

  Then Jenny said she believed Mr. Grange didn’t like her none at all, and I said I supposed Mr. Grange was probably that stupid, all right, but old Miss Hadley weren’t like no mother to me, either. Then we walked on down the road a few steps and stood and talked some more, close, then we begun to draw apart.

  In a way it was hard to do. I mean, we come back again, and then got apart some, and then come back again. Then we was past the fence at the corner of their yard, and Jenny doesn’t usually go no further than that. Then we talked some more and Jenny looked back at the house and then at me and I started leaving and we said we would see each other tomorrow. Then I waited and watched Jenny go back through the gate and go up on her porch, and then I turned and started home myself.

  Going home through the branch I moved right along. It was not so hot now, and the sun come slanting in under the trees from the west the way it does in the fall, and lit up the woods in places. And down in the branch it seemed nearly dark already, but then coming back up out of it I come into the sun again and seen it was still early. And in no time at all I was at the bottom of our road.

  To be honest, even if it weren’t for Jenny, I would not mind that walk at all. In the afternoon, I mean, toward evening, in late September. And with Jenny, too, it is nothing. I mean I am by myself all right, only it is like we have never really drawed apart at that until I hit the bottom of our road and recognize I am home.

  So I went up the road slow, like I usually do. Then I come even with Mr. Blankhard’s lot and seen something moving there. I hardly noticed it at first, but then when I seen what it was I stopped for a minute. What it was was Mr. Blankhard, bent over, walking around in the ashes picking up nails. Bent over like that he could have been anything. Then I seen him straighten up and seen the bucket in his hand and knowed who it was, all right.

  It couldn’t hardly have been anything else at that. What would any animal have been doing out in the middle of all them ashes? In a way, it had give me a start, though. So I watched him for a while and he just stood there looking around at the ashes and everything, and then he started looking for nails again, looking down around his feet.

  Then he bent down again, and I went on up the road to the house. I don’t think he even seen me go.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, w
hether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1957, 1985 by Donald Wetzel

  978-1-5040-1586-8

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