We sat on the peeling, white-washed porch. Creaking rocking chairs and singing cicadas. The cool, damp breeze smelled of ozone and the coming storm. We were due for it, and the corn shuddered in anticipation.
I sipped my sweating iced tea and watched the evening air turn yellow-green. It was soon that eerie color which bespeaks cyclones, or at the very least hail. The cats ran under the porch, and the sheep began bleating in the barn. Whipping and tearing about, the wind slammed against the house - it seemed to have dropped ten degrees in as many minutes.
Growing up in the flint hills, I could call a bad thunderstorm three days in advance. It was in the way the colors brightened and the air smelled like freshly tilled dirt. Now, lightning danced in the distance, towing billowing black clouds the size of mountains. The thunderbirds tore about in the cosmos, and heavy hammers landed deafeningly on the anvils in the sky.
I turned and smiled at my wife of forty-some-odd years. This was going to be a good one.
She brushed silver bangs from her face. We held hands and waited. The tin roof over us offered some protection from the arms of stinging rain and bludgeoning hail. When the storm finally rolled in over us, we would duck inside, soaked and cold, but laughing and grinning. We loved the storms. The thrill was like a time machine, bringing us back through the years of turmoil and famine. Back through the days of children becoming adults and having children of their own. Down past the times they grew up and moved on.
That particular storm landed like the very wrath of God on our little farm. I remember the demolished shed and the trees torn limb from limb.
Briefly, late in the night, the moon broke through the shadows and revealed the damage. I stood at my window, a wrinkled skeletal frame in striped boxers. It seemed impossibly large that night, the moon, it seemed to fill up the whole sky. I saw the split rail fence uprooted and the river of mud running through our front yard.
I couldn’t sleep. The adrenalin which had come with the storm was still running strong, and my hands shook. My wife lay in our feather bed, tucked deeply in a tangle of hand-woven quilts. I lit a hurricane lamp and smelled the sulfur and the burning oil. A small black puff of smoke.
Carefully, I crept to the top of our creaking stairs and climbed down. She could sleep through a thunderstorm but a flushing toilet would wake her like an air raid siren. I went to the linen closet and wrapped my shoulders in a shawl. The rain was starting up again. A whip of lightning cracked on the horizon.
What I needed was a glass of warm milk. The gas stove lit and the sauce pan on, I got down the vanilla and the sugar, like I had so many times before. It was a remedy my mother had taught me when I was a little boy. When prayers for sleep had failed, and tossing and turning grew weary, that sweet, warm, frothy cup of vanilla milk would knock me right out. It never failed. As I was whipping up a cup, my mostly golden retriever mix padded in from her bed in the living room. Before it got too hot, I poured some milk in her bowl and ran my fingers through her thick, curly fur.
The storm was really picking back up now. Crashings and thunderings ebbed and flowed with the rushing rain. In my corduroy chair, in the darkest hours of the night, I sipped warm milk and watched the shadows dance on my walls. My mutt curled up at my feet, and I welcomed the company.
A few hours before sunrise, I crept back upstairs and snuck into our bed. My wife had kept the mattress warm; and my pillow was deep. Sleep soon overcame me, and with it with dreams of buffalos and ancient spirits dancing under the heavy sky. A giant silver orb of disproportionate grandeur hung in the heavens.
There hasn’t been a storm quite like that sense. No less than seven tornadoes had torn about the grasslands that night. It was a wonder both our barn and house had made it through unscathed.
The very next day, we got five phone calls from our children making sure we were still alive. I even got to talk to my first great grandchild. I say talk, but she mostly just cooed. It hardly matters because your heart breaks just the same.
End.
Post Script: This is an old, mostly unedited story I wrote last minute for a contest of some sort. I'm glad it didn't win, because it's objectively not very good and the stories that came out on top were marvelous. Posted today because I was surprised it hadn't been yet.
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