I like to feel the cool air soothe my skin
as I stand outside on the balcony
and breathe the morning air.
I like to hear the leaves in the breeze-blown trees
chitter-chatter amongst themselves
in a language I don’t understand.
I like to see the rain roll down the window
and the streams run in the gutters,
now clean and ready to start again.
I like to watch the clouds chase each other
across the sky, racing in the wind,
making shapes only I can see.
Oh, and it’s Friday.
January
damp and cold January
I have a cough and I cough and I splutter.
Does it matter? Does it matter?
My cough plumbs the depth of my lungs in the night like my soul plumbs the depths of despair in winter and the clouds…
…and the clouds are pigeon shit-grey and they roll in then roll over then roll away and leave me…
bathed in monochrome
and the rain…and the rain.
It’s water and I’m dancing
I drank more water than what fell to earth last autumn
so we rain-danced for a drenching soul-cleaning and yet…
it’s January
damp and cold January
let it rain, let it rain, let it rain
pour your monochrome down upon me.
The old man stood with a length of coiled rope around his shoulder and spat into the dust. The sky was cold and clear. He looked at the sky every day but the clouds still avoided him.
“Giovanni, what’s the latest?”
“January, papà.”
In November they said early December, then it was going to be mid-December, then Christmas.”
“No one really knows, papa.”
“No one knows?” The old man spat into the dust once again. He took a leather pouch from his jacket pocket and started to roll himself a cigarette. “My father could tell what the weather was going to do, a week before it did it.”
“You know as well, papa.”
The old man flicked a match. He scuffed his boots in the dust, kicking up a little cloud.
“I did once.” His rummy eyes looked up again at the clear blue sky. “This year is different.”
From their lofty position on the lower slopes of the mountain, where the pastures lay brown and dry, they could see the distant Monte Rosa. Even from that distance they could see its barren slopes; only its vague glaciers flickered white in the sun.
“There’s no tourism yet. Tourism’s suffering and we’re suffering with it, Giovanni.”
“The snow will come papa, it has to.”
“Do you think? When was the last time it rained, son?”
“October.”
“It drizzled for a couple of hours, Giovanni. It hasn’t rained in anger since July.” He flicked his head in a backwards movement. “Those woods are a tinderbox.”
Giovanni nodded his head. “The weather channel put the area on high alert for forest fire risk.”
The old man crushed his cigarette carefully under his heel. “It’s about the only thing the weather channel has got right this year.” He lifted the rope from his shoulder and placed it on the old trunk of a walnut tree that served as a chopping block. He nodded down the slope. “I want to get that fence in the bottom field repaired. If the snow does come at least the animals will be contained.”
This last comment fell like an axe blow between the men. They’d already lost a few animals, sickened by the drought conditions; they couldn’t afford to lose any more, there dwindling finances couldn’t take it. They’d lost the annual orders from the surrounding ski resorts, whose slopes were bare and car parks were empty. In his 72 years the old man had never known anything like it. He was almost glad his wife had passed away the previous spring and didn’t have to see what the farm had become. His son brought him back to the present.
“Five months ago we were enjoying a beautiful summer and everyone said we’d pay for it, that the winter would come early and the snow would be heavy.”
“Yeah, and I was one of them, telling the same thing to anyone who’d listen. Now I’m just the foolish sheep farmer who can’t tell the direction of the wind even if I wet my finger and hold it in the air.”
“Come on papa. This year’s caught everyone out. It’s not just down to us anymore. Think of all those satellites out there and they still can’t give us an accurate forecast.”
“Any farmer worth his salt should be able to mind his own, without the need for satellites or weather channels, son; just like my father and grandfather used to do. Maybe the people are right; maybe I am just a foolish sheep farmer that prophesises ‘red sky at night’.”
“Enough papà. Come on, let’s get the fence fixed so I can go to Cristina’s with that firewood.”
Giovanni looked into his father’s face. This autumn had taken everything out of him. His face was drawn and his eyes sunken and dark-ringed. The quick smile was no longer there, replaced by a stare which admitted defeat.
“We can do the fence later, son. Take the wood over to Cristina; if her father’s down in town, you’ll have to unload yourself, it’ll take time.”
Giovanni considered this. It was true. All the while the weather held, and it looked like holding for a fair while still, the bottom field fence wasn’t a priority. The nights were cold and Cristina needed the wood. He took the pick-up keys from his jacket pocket.
“Get some rest papa. I’ll be back in a couple of hours, three at the most.”
“Give my regards to Cristina and her father, if he’s there. I guess you’re right, I could use a little rest.”
“There’s nothing more any of us can do papa, at least until this weather shows signs of breaking.” He got into the pick-up truck and the electric motor hummed as the window rolled down. “Get some rest papa. How about we go into town for a couple of beers this evening; it’s been ages since we’ve done that.”
“About the last time we saw any money coming through the door, son.”
The truck engine revved into life and Giovanni waved through the open window. His father watched as the brake lights flashed once before the car drove out onto the road.
With a final spit into the dust, the old man looked once more at the sky. With his head bowed, he heaved the coil of rope onto his shoulder and walked slowly to the still-empty barn.
3am,
the devil’s hour.
The wind shrieks through the trees
and on a balcony
(mine?)
sends a flower pot flying.
Horizontal rain
sprays the blinds
in a machine-gun scatter.
With heavy head
and heavy lids
I sit
and wonder why.
Well, I didn’t expect to take part in this, I never have done. When I received my StoryADay May 2014 email this morning I paid it little attention as I had a busy, busy day ahead of me. However a couple of inspired hours this evening have produced 1,500 words – whether they’re good words or not I’ll leave up to you.
I’ve no knowledge of Ohio but Google maps gave me a geographic idea. I’ve no way of knowing if there’s a bus station in Marion, Ohio. I know there’s a Route 23 – Google told me. Anyway, here it is.
Thanks Julie, thanks Neil.
**********************
It isn’t normal, there’s no way this is normal. Bob Dylan once said you don’t need a weather man to know which way the wind blows and normally I’d say Old Bobby was right. I do however wonder what he would’ve said if he was stuck here with me in this dog-turd bus station, where the lounge caters for both arrivals and departures, somewhere in these back-fields of Ohio, watching a little Vespa getting blown around like a dropped chewing gum wrapper on a Chicago street. The wind and storm came from the north; now it comes from everywhere. What can I do to get back in time for my presentation tomorrow in Chicago? I look out of the greasy, finger stained window. The rain meets the glass two inches in front of my nose horizontally.
‘It’ll blow over,’ says some farmer Joe, probably a local from two fields down the road, ‘it always does.’
Genius. A down-home nougat of wisdom from the corn flats of Ohio. It most certainly always does, it’s called a weather pattern, and weather patterns; unlike other patterns, like those of the floral leaning on my wife’s dress, blow over.
‘You hear that honey? The man said it’ll blow over.’ Mrs 1978 big floral dress speaks just as I was thinking of her. Is that a sign of true love?
‘Blow over, my ass,’ not even bothering to turn around. I can see her reflection in the darkening window, trying to look sympathetic with arms folded, at least, when one of them isn’t shoving a donut into her cake-hole. Then, joy of joys, the baby starts crying. Tommy was fed only an hour ago but now he took up a wailing normally reserved for paid mourners at funerals. He takes after his mother; two peas from the same pod. I snatch half the piece of donut from her hand and shove it in the baby’s face. He shuts up and eats, he always does. It’ll give me a chance to think. If I wasn’t at the presentation at 9am the next day I was out of a job and out on my ass. And here I was stuck near Marion, Ohio. Not even Marion, Indiana, where at least they have the ghost of James Dean for company.
‘Don’t give him crap to eat; it’s not good for him.’ I presume she must’ve sprayed donut as she had a mouthful when I took half of it from her. Shame it didn’t fall backwards.
‘Start taking some of your own advice sweet cheeks and lemme think.’
‘The hell you think you’re talking to? I’m your wife and dammit you better treat me like it.’
I jump with a start as horizontal water turns to horizontal hail, big enough to bring joy to any gin tonic. My reflection mopes back at me in the now-black glass. The overheads come on full and an announcer’s muttering something through a wall of static. Hell you say boy?
‘I said, you skinny son of a bitch that you’d better treat me like it.’ A sugary paw that seems to be growing around the wedding band given aeons before pinches my shoulder and scatters refined fat-powder over my jacket. Enough weather watching. I drop my shoulder and spin round, nose to donut-crusher. The view outside was better. The rustle of the donut bag plays me in.
‘We flew to Cincinnati and we came here to this forsaken land of the corn, to see your father who doesn’t know who you are, your mother who’s too drunk to remember who you are and your shit-for-brains farmhand brother who doesn’t give a ding-dang-doodly who you are. Any why? Because you get…’
A chubby hand with weight behind it pushes me up against the window. A spray like a winter gritter truck fans out to great me. I blink.
‘You leave my family outta this.’ Another push and a podgy finger wave. ‘You leave my poor daddy outta this. Ma mama’s worked double shift trying to bring up Billy and care for pa.’ Tears somehow found their way around her ample cheeks. She’s a-hurting. Not as much as she will be if I lose my job and she has to cut back on her pastries. Hell, this is her fault anyway. Even the lack of rental cars is her fault.
‘Start eating three, yeah just three square meal a day and maybe, just maybe, you could get your ass in the car and travel further than the KFC before you start complaining and threatening to throw up. If we’d brought the car we would’ve been halfway to Chicago now.’
‘Maybe if you had yourself a decent car I’d be able to travel in it; that thing stinks and makes me sick.’
‘It stinks from the shitty Marlboros you smoke and the greasy food you eat. And what about my frigging presentation tomorrow?’ I bang my hand against the window, punctuating every syllable, raised voice barely audible over the wind trying its best to rip the roof off and the windows out.
People start to give us some space and make an unconscious ring around us. Great. End of the world weather outside. Hey honey; let’s watch the Laurel and Hardy couple go hammer and tongs in this excuse for an bus station lounge.
‘Maybe if you were the sort of husband you should be, I wouldn’t eat so much.’
‘What? I do 12 hour days in the studio to keep you in ices and him in diapers.’
‘You don’t know what it’s like bringing up a kid on your own, cos your husband ain’t there half the time.’ Thank God for small mercies. I take a series of deep breaths, my eyes blaze fire. She steps back and takes her hand away.
Noses and glasses peered over sports pages. To hell with them; I have to get out of here. I look around just as a gust hammers the window. Suddenly a garbage bin, the size of a small car, spins away from its post and heads toward the window. A communal intake of breath: even we’ve taken second billing now. I push my wife away from the window but she takes it badly, falls over on her ass and curses me to the four winds, except I think there are more than that outside.
Mr “it’ll blow over” comes over to me, holding up a key. ‘Son, we ain’t going anywhere yet. I got a cousin down in Columbus, you can take my car and leave it with him. You can get a plane from there; sure as hell get you there quicker.’
I liked the sound of down. The storm came from the north, from the lakes. Maybe it wouldn’t get that far. My wife, still sat on the floor, looks at me and shakes her head.
“It’s the job or us,” she says, without a hint of emotion.
I take the key and thank the man, and promise to fill up with gas when I get there. The address of his cousin is written on a torn flyer for a nearby agricultural show and tucked in my back pocket. I go over and ruffle Tommy’s hair and bend down to kiss him.
“Without my job there’ll be no us. Now get up and get going.”
She pulls Tommy away from me and holds him close. “Get away from us you selfish piece of shit.” The last word spat with cobra-like venom.
Against the advice of a security guard I head outside. The door is almost ripped out of my hands as I step out and hail rips into my body as I look for the brown pick-up. It’s sitting 50 yards away, rocking on its springs. I’m finding it hard to breath but tuck my head down and try to run. I fall over twice before getting to the door, fumble with the key in the lock and get inside. I turn the ignition and the truck starts straight away. Even with the lights on visibility is difficult. I head out onto the back roads trying to find my way onto Route 23.
I manage about a dozen miles, the last two through a black wood, without seeing another vehicle, which begins to concern me a little. I think back to my wife and kid sitting there in the airport, no doubt wondering how I can be so callous as to leave them there. Lost in thought I don’t see the fallen tree until it’s almost too late and I slam on the brakes. That was a close one. Now what shall I do?
I’m sitting here feeling the will drain out of me and join the puddles of water around my feet. A head-wrenching ripping sound comes from outside the car and I look up, and see a huge, dark shape crashing down in my direction.
The heat
The sultry heat
Humidity
Show humility
When my temper frays
And my patience craves
The rain
The wind
And the cooling
Of my soul
The summer lust
The heat-filled dusk
The night
The tortured night
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