Devil's Rain ~ Short Story

Great plumes of steam rose from the near endless plain of grass, for the devil's rain had come again. A sinister sort of name I thought, but that is what she said it is called around here, and I defer to her wisdom. After all, I am just a city girl, and the ways of rural folk are foreign to me. 

We were stepping off the porch now, descending rickety steps into the overgrown yard. The rocking chairs we had vacated creaked back and forth on the deckboards, the only movement in the sudden sultry stillness. We were taking a walk, in spite of the oppressive heat. I did not wish too, but yet again, I deferred to her, my host, the master of this 40 acre antebellum world. 

I had always made her come to me, to the apartments and glass mirror buildings. The hustle and bustle of Kansas City, incessant traffic all hours, day and night, the sights, sounds and scents of concrete and asphalt. She had always been the country bumpkin, the foreigner. It is only fitting after all these years that I be made the pariah. 

Despite the dampness of the dirt, the ground crunched a bit under my sandals, the grass slowly cooking under the cruel burning sun. So early it seemed to me, to be out with such hubris before summer has even whispered of awakening. Yet she says nothing of it, but vague mentions of heat and dry, and a ban against the use of the archaic Whirlpool rangetop in sunlit hours. 

I whipped my hand back and forth in a vain attempt to cool my face. A daydream of a water balloon, sweating beads on its latex surface, stretching, aching, until- POP! 

I shooed the thought away, at the same time she absently batted at a fly. So close to me, yet so unaware, or could it be called indifferent? No matter I decided, as we trudged from the by comparison prim and domestic yard into the tall grass. The unknowns, where things slithered around underfoot and over sandaled toes, unprotected- 

I shook another thought away, and tried to think of wildflowers and butterflies, and kitty cats leaping from johnson grasses in humorous attempts to catch hummingbirds, but the brown grass seemed to laugh at me as it stood still as a statue. Still as- well, dry grass on a humid and steamy afternoon. 

I lost track of time as we talked, about land, and familial history, and livestock, and other quaint pastoral things. Several times I felt splinters of grass stalks and brambles caress my bare ankles with their cruel kiss. But she continued on, so dutifully I did also, long-suffering as I followed behind. The rustic life must have been growing on me, or else so saturating my soul I had no other choice, for the image of a little yellow chick waddling behind a proud and tall mother penetrated my mind and did not leave until I chuckled lightly to myself. 

We were at the bone dry wet weather creek bed now. I could not imagine it now, what for the dry brush and hedge on either side, and the cracked backdrop of the iron stained cotton rocks that lay scattered all about. I tried to imagine the rushing floodwaters, tearing through the grass, throwing stones out of the way of its torrent but I failed. I could not even bring thirst to my wanting lips, for it seemed so far away. It might as well have been on the moon for all the good it did me. 

I broke from my stupor all the sudden, a great bellow issued forth from the heavens, as it a rent in the earth had formed and all the anguish the ages and hell had burst forth into the setting dusk. My sweat turned in an instant ice on my skin and I trembled from my shoulders to my soles. 

I looked at her, and reached out for mutual refuge, but I found nothing amiss. Only a placid face and blank eyes. After a pregnant moment she finally read the look on my face and in a simple voice said, "Weaning time. The mothers are calling for the calves." The she looked off into the forming sunset and said not more. 

As we stood and watched the afternoon gold streak into a violet dusk, my body became chilled again, though this time from the cool breeze that lapped at my skin. 

Without a word she turned and began back to the house, the porch light calling sweetly to us from the distance, whispering of heavy quilts, and lacey curtains fluttering in moonlight. I quickened my pace to match her long stride. How fast she walked sometimes, how quick she could be to leave me behind if she was not careful. 

Moonlight set in quicker that I had expected, and in its neon whiteness new things took shape before me. Placid cheekbones were sharper and blank smiles less gentle. A trick of the moon, after all there are no Kansas City street lights in this place. 

The night changes many things, something deep inside told me, something I could not name nor understand. I looked up into the starry heavens and looked at the milky way and imagined how it must have looked, glittering against my pale eyes. I gazed suddenly back at her, with a desire to see her eyes, but could not for her head was just so slightly turned from me to obscure them. Shadows, only shadows, like the ones encroaching all around us. 

My pace quickened, as did my heartbeat. She remained steady, steadfast. But this no longer brought any comfort to me. The wind in the grass seemed to cry out to me in mockery, "City girl, city girl." 

We were closer now, maybe 20 feet from the edge of the sprawling country yard. Everything is bigger here, I thought, and I felt small. Small against the sky and the expanse of it all, the grass, the creekbed, the hay fields rustling in the moonlight. How many ears crooned to my footsteps? How many eyes watched me? My flesh prickled, and my lower legs wobbled and cried out to my head. 

I looked to her, and shuddered again, and not all from the cold anymore. Even she was bigger in the moonlight. How small I was. Like a beetle. Have you ever crushed a bug city girl? Have you ever smiled when you snuffed out a match? 

The light from the porch nearly bathed us now, yet the shadows in her face remained. Then I noticed something that even a city girl should have seen long ago. There was not a sound, not even the rustling grass that had taunted me before. There was only our footsteps. I tried to focus on them, to find comfort in what was not, but I failed. For it had already dawned like a fiery atom bomb. Her steps were silent, as the night around me, while mine were like drumbeats. Intrusions in the ebb of dusk, unwelcome, alien. 

The sultry wind bathed me in sweat. I walked quicker and quicker. Something was in the wind, something that awoke my ancient cells. A scent of dark decay, floating, wafting. Tendrils of it snaked into my nostrils, trying to invade its way inside me, to possess my being. 

A deer, I just knew she would say it was a deer, lying mangled in some ditch by a waterworn gravel road. Or an old refuse pile, rotting in some forlorn grotto. 

The lights of her house of her house were so close now, if they had been wine their fumes would have long lulled me into a stupid. But unlike wine, and unlike a friend's should, they did not welcome me. The were cold. Colder than incandescent light should ever be. They seemed to stare into me. 

But despite it all, I could not fully realize my unease. It was like the suggestion of a shadow, in the corner of a moving eye. A whisper on the back of a neck, when you know no one is there. That no one could possibly be there, that is it ridiculous, that it is impossible... 

A coyote howled, not far enough away, just beyond the edge of the light. My sweat was ice upon my skin, the frostbite was tightening its jaws around me, deeper and deeper the fangs sank in. 

Onto to the porch we were in a instant. The screen door was open, and I was inside before a blink. She was behind me, I heard the door shut the way all doors shut. The floorboards creaked under her feet as she moved further into the kitchen. I told myself I was safe, that the night was outside. I assured, I implored, I pleaded desperately with all the rationality I could muster. But I could not, no, I would not turn around, for I knew the shadows on her eyes remained. 

I shuddered for a final time, though the old farmhouse was far from cold.