Summer Rain

by Mike Voltz

Part 1 appears
in this issue.

conclusion

One thing Reverend Boone could say for the rainmaker, he was as good as his word, at least in one respect. A few hours later, as Boone made his way to visit Miss Dunnam, he observed a cloud of dust rising behind a cart. He waited and was greeted by the sight of Carl Engle’s half-bright farmhand, driving the horses. His name was Matthew or Michael Hawkins, Boone couldn’t remember which.

The horses plodded along, and the rainmaker knelt in the flat bed of the wagon, hands clasped in prayer. His face was turned to the sky and the peculiar flat-brimmed hat covered his eyes with a small wedge of shade. Engle’s man gave Boone a sweet, empty smile and touched a finger to his sweaty brow.

Boone nodded back. The rainmaker looked down from the sky and studied the figure on the side of the road. He tapped the driver’s shoulder and the cart rolled to a stop.

“Mind lettin’ us by?” said Aaron. His tone was casual, but there was nothing casual or friendly in his eyes.

“Why don’t you come down and talk for a minute?” Boone expected resistance, curses maybe or stone silence, but Aaron rocked back off his knees and climbed down. He stood nearly a foot shorter than the preacher. “Do you see what you’re doing?” asked Boone.

Aaron didn’t respond, just stared up at preacher with his firing squad eyes. “You’re giving the people false hope. You’re going to break their spirits. Do you understand that, son?”

“I ain’t your son and I ain’t giving them false hope.”

“I don’t know what your story is or where you’re from, but this town is in trouble. These are good people, but they’re desperate. If you offer them hope then take it away, you might as well kill them.”

Aaron smiled. It was a singularly unpleasant expression of puffy gums and rotted teeth. “Been praying a lot?”

Boone was taken aback by the boy’s question. His smile suggested a trap and Boone chose his words carefully. “I pray for our souls.”

The smile fell. There was no witty rejoinder, no blasphemy that would cause Boone’s hand to lash out and send the boy to the ground with a ringing ear. Instead, Aaron held out one hand, facing up. The palm was grimy and sparkling with sweat. Boone expected that, at any moment, the boy was going to perform some sort of parlor magic. Maybe that sort of thing impressed folks in other places but in Durham, a spade was a spade and a cheat was a cheat.

Boone watched carefully, framing both of the boy’s hands in his field of vision. Aaron’s fingers trembled slightly, but otherwise he remained still. They stood like this for some time and Boone was on the verge of asking just what the point was when a single drop of water landed in the center of the rainmaker’s palm.

Boone took an involuntary step back, lips moving in the Lord’s Prayer. The rainmaker rubbed the drop with his finger, making a dark sworl in the dust.

If it was a trick, it was a good one. Boone had never lost track of the other hand and the drop had fallen from quite a height. He looked up, but the sky was still the same hateful blue. When he looked back down, the rainmaker was climbing back onto the platform of the cart.

“Nothing to say, preacher? You’ll see pretty soon. You keep prayin’. I got the power. When I call for the rain, it comes down.” Then, almost as an afterthought, “On the just and the unjust alike.”

It was only after Aaron tapped the driver on the shoulder again and the cart rolled on, that Boone realized the boy had been mocking him.

His heart beat heavily in his chest, and his thoughts were jumbled, flashing images. The cadence of his pounding heart made him think of war drums and Boone realized that, for the first time this summer, gooseflesh dotted his arms.

He continued on his errand of mercy, convinced that it was a trick but shaken nonetheless. By the time he reached Miss Dunnam’s house, his heart had settled back into its normal rhythm, but he couldn’t stop thinking of the drop, falling almost faster than his eye could follow, smacking into the boy’s hand.

In the end, he didn’t have to wait long for the answer. Boone was kneeling by Miss Dunnam’s bed. He knocked twice before coming in, and was greeted by a most unpleasant scene. Miss Dunnam lay in her bed and for a moment, Boone was sure that someone had torn out her eyes, leaving ragged black holes. Then he realized that she was dead and the holes were no more than clusters of flies, busy at her half-closed lids.

Her body was even smaller in death, and it barely registered a bump under the sheets. If not for her hair and her hands peeking out of the sleeves of her nightgown, she might not have been there at all.

Boone took one of her hands and hoped her passing had been painless. He was still in that position when he became aware of a plinking sound. It was small but, in the dry and dying town, as unmistakable as a herald’s trumpet. Boone placed the hand on the sheet and went to see what was happening.

He opened the door onto another world. At least, it seemed so at first. The day, previously hot and dry, was now cool. The breeze that crept across the dead yellow grass of the lawn had a damp edge to it.

Boone looked at the thermometer mounted by the door. For days the mercury had sat at 100, straining to burst out of the tube. Now Boone could actually see a thin band of white where the mercury had fallen. Boone allowed himself a moment of relief; in spite of his fear, he thought there had never been a more beautiful sight.

All over Durham, on isolated farms and down the main street, doors opened and people came out to look at the darkening sky. Clouds moved in from the east like strange alien ships, turning the sun into a glowing coin, then a small patch of light, then nothing at all. Some people ran outside, others stood in their doorways looking out into the newly dark afternoon. There were even a few people running around with their tongues out and their faces tilted up at the sky. Their foolishness was caught in the shutter flash of lightning, followed closely by the rumble of thunder.

The first drops of rain fell lightly, no more than a suggestion on a few lucky brows. Cheers of joy rose and were lost in the roll of thunder that announced the arrival of the storm. The rain began to fall quickly and beat the dust back to the ground. All over town, it plinked and popped as it fell in pots and buckets. The skeptical few who had watched the rainmaker’s proceedings with a disdainful eye now hurried to collect as much as they could.

In the fields, rain fell on the parched crops. It ran down dry leaves and soaked into the baked earth. Animals licked at the ground, desperate to soak up as much moisture as they could. Children ran through the streets, stomping in puddles and sending muddy sheets of water onto each other. Adults who would have disapproved in a season not devastated by drought, laughed and played too. And in front of the building that served as his office, John Anderton stood with his arms spread, looking up at the sky as the rain rushed down to meet the earth.

The heaviest part of the downpour lasted almost an hour. The rain slackened to a drizzle, pushing down the awful humidity that threatened to rise. The clouds remained, dark and heavy as ever, and the smell of rain lay on the earth.

People made their way back to the church and packed the pews, filling the air with the smell of drying clothes and hair. By the time Boone arrived, most of the pews were full. Wet footprints covered the floor, leading this way and that. Boone entered to find the rainmaker leaning against the pulpit and, for the first time in his tenure as the town’s resident man of the cloth, Boone took a seat near the back.

The rainmaker’s eyes were cast down and people were content to watch him, murmuring amongst themselves, looking at the boy with power in front of them. Then Aaron reached up and pulled off his hat. He flipped it expertly into the lap of a man in the first pew. “Now it’s up to you to pay what you think I’m owed.” As the hat began to pass from hand to hand, the boy reached for the cigarette behind his ear and tucked it into the corner of his mouth.

Eventually, Anderton received the hat and pressed a few bills on top of the pile. Then he carried it to the front of the room with both hands encircling the crown, like a goblet offered to a king. The rainmaker, no king but a boy with thin wrists and greasy hair, took the hat and set it on the ground.

“I appreciate that, I surely do,” he began and Boone was suddenly sure of what was going to come next. His eyes had fixed on Mitch Telford in the front pew. “I appreciate it a lot, but I want something else, too.” One finger pointed at Mitch’s wife. “I want her.”

Marianne Telford looked around, then at the rainmaker with the fingers of one hand lightly touching her chest. He nodded. Over and over, Boone saw the single drop of rain pulled out of a clear blue sky, smacking into the boy’s palm. A being with such power was surely used to getting his way.

There was a moment of silence in which Mitch struggled to find the courage to speak. Outside, the clouds moved slowly, but it seemed they had darkened and moved closer. Tightened, thought Boone.

Mitch shook his head and in a voice that was not quite steady, said “No. This is my wife.” He stood up, alone in the room full of people, and looked like he wanted to take a step toward the rainmaker. Maybe raise his hand and scare him back into being a boy, but Boone felt it too. The air, wet and suffocating, was charged and the fine hairs on his arm were standing up.

“I want her now!” said the rainmaker, and it was the high, petulant shout of a child making a demand. Except this one’s demands would be obeyed and his wishes met.

Mitch pulled Marianne to her feet and began walking to the door. They sat in the front pew, wanting to get a good look at the rainmaker, thinking of the stories they would one day tell their children. Now they made the long walk to the door.

Mitch pushed the door open and ushered his wife out. He looked back at the rainmaker, an island among a sea of upturned faces, and Boone saw that the man was afraid. He took another step and, as his foot crossed the threshold, the rainmaker screamed.

He called down a bolt of lightning as easily as he called down the rain. It struck Mitch, spiking his head with an angry snap. For a moment, Boone could see the faint outline of Mitch’s skull as the lightning filled his body with electricity and shone through his flesh. His eyes burst and splattered on his cheeks. The pews erupted with screams as Mitch collapsed, trailing smoke, and lay in the entryway of the church, empty sockets turned towards the sky.

The rain began to beat down again. It smacked against the windows of the church, like an invading force. Aaron stood with his hands clenched in front of him and his childish pout had become a scowl.

“When I ask for something I want it!” he screamed. His eyes searched the crowd, daring anyone to challenge him. Rain-cooled wind blew in through the open doors. The first few rows of pews had been overturned by those desperate to get away from the boy with his hideous power. His skin had turned pale and the cold sore at the corner of his mouth stood out in purple relief. “When I want something you better give it to me!” he screamed. “Anything I ask for!”

The door banged open and shut in the wind. The rainmaker’s hat tipped over and bills blew across the floor. From his place near the aisle, Boone noticed Anderton gathering the courage to run. His eyes shifted from the rainmaker to the open door and back again.

Boone screamed at him mentally to stay put, but Anderton bounced on the balls of his feet, then sprang for the exit. It was a short-lived attempt that saw him nearly fall with his first steps. He regained his footing, but didn’t make it past the door. Another bolt of lightning struck Anderton in the chest. The mayor was driven back through the air, landing in the aisle and sliding bonelessly towards the pulpit.

Before the mayor’s body came to rest at the rainmaker’s feet, Boone was running for the door. The rainmaker screamed again and Boone threw himself to the side as the bolt of lightning passed over him like a heavy, living thing. He scrambled up, feet slipping in the mud; he would have been struck if the door, seemingly under its own direction, had not slammed shut.

The lightning struck an overflowing barrel, blowing it to pieces with a hiss of vaporized water. Then Boone was on his feet, running through the storm. He sobbed as he ran and his tears mixed with the rain, as he disappeared into the growing storm.

Sometime later, Engle’s half-bright farmhand Hawkins brought Marianne Telford back. He held her out like a doll, with one big hand clamped on either arm. The church’s door was bolted shut now and he knocked with his foot for admittance. He was let in by a man whose hands shook badly.

Hawkins couldn’t understand why. He was a little scared, sure, but mostly happy that God had finally come into their midst as Reverend Boone always said He would. Hawkins didn’t know why everyone was so afraid. He didn’t understand why some of the women had taken their clothes off, either, and felt a heady mixture of shame and lust at the sight of their uncovered bodies. Hawkins wanted to look away but couldn’t, and so contented himself with sneaking glances and hoped that God didn’t catch him peeping.

Far away from the church that was no longer his, Reverend Boone huddled in a pigsty. He had stuffed the holes in the roof with plugs of moss. They swelled and kept the water out, but did little for the cold. As night brought a final layer of blackness and the rain continued unabated, he nursed his faith.

Boone had always believed that for every demon, there was an angel; now he wasn’t so sure. There were rainmakers, certainly, but he’d never heard of one to part the clouds and call down the sun to dry the earth and warm the skin. He wondered if even God’s eye could pierce the clouds to find his creation gone awry.

As Boone sheltered in the sty with rain beating against the roof and the cold stiffening his body, he thought of what he’d seen. He no longer thought of the single drop of rain falling into Aaron’s hand, but of lightning. Long, jagged fingers of lightning reaching down for Telford and Anderton, touching them and sending electricity surging through their bodies.

Boone thought of the boy who had claimed the town and everything under the storm clouds as his own. He wondered if the rainmaker would dare use his lightning with a conduit formed by Boone’s hands around his throat; all the rain, hail, and thunder the clouds had to offer would only make him squeeze tighter.

As he stepped out and the rain began its ceaseless beat against his head, Boone thought of clouds breaking apart into wisps and tattered scraps, and the feel of the merciless summer sun on his skin.

to Challenge 380...