The Storm
And so, we settle into a pattern. Ansel cooks, I clean up, and we play rummy on a rickety, old table on the porch before bed. He has stopped crowing at me in the mornings, which I deeply appreciate. The silence that settles between us at times is no longer awkward. The times that we do talk, we mostly discuss what this or that customer did at the market, or we laugh about Philomena scolding her fry cook, and other times we talk about fishing. As the mosquitos cut through the humidity with their high keening Ansel tells me about the fishing he did in the Pacific Northwest. He talks about how his hands would freeze inside of his gloves in the winter. He also tells me that his finger was lost somewhere off the coast of what used to be called Washington State.
“Wait…you didn’t cut it off with a knife?” I ask with surprise.
“What in God’s name gave you that idea?!” Ansel looks at me confused by my question.
“Uhhh…One time, Philomena told me…”, my sentence trails off as I notice Ansel’s shoulders shaking with laughter.
“That old broad really is something.” he chuckles to himself.
Leaning back in my chair, I look up toward the sky watching lightning jump from cloud to cloud. In the distance a low rumble rises into the air. The air feels thick and quiet in that way that lets you know when a storm is going to blow through. The summer after Joseph died I found myself huddled behind the dumpster in that recess of the wall as a storm tore through New Ontario. I remember thinking that I should just run out into the wind and let it blow me away. I recall how the tornado sirens wailed all night long. In the morning, I emerged to find the street had flooded down by the market, and everyone was exchanging stories, and they all came to the same conclusion: It could have been much worse.
Ansel stretches his leg out and I hear a deep pop in his knee. “Yep, that’ll be the storm coming.” he says, explaining the sound we just heard. “Look, I think that shed has run its course. I have an extra room, and it’s small, but I trust you enough now. There’s no way you’ll want to be in that flimsy shed with this storm ripping through. Go grab your stuff and come inside.”, He said in a matter of fact tone as he abruptly stood. If there is one thing I know about Ansel, it’s that I don’t get to argue with him.
As Ansel heads into the house, I run for the shed to get my things. I grab the blanket that Ansel left for me and spread it out on the ground, then I start placing things in the middle so that I can fold the corners toward the middle when I’m finished to form a makeshift rucksack. I roll up my mat, taking care to get the envelope I keep underneath. I also throw in some shirts that I’ve acquired from Ansel, my spare deck of cards, and my flashlight. It occurs to me that in this short amount of time living with Ansel, I’ve acquired more than I’ve had in a long time. Perhaps this is what it’s like to move on. You set about a task each day, and over time you realize that those days stretched into weeks and months, and in exchange for the time spent, you collect odds and ends along the way. Maybe someday I’ll need boxes to move my things. Maybe someday that envelope will get moved into the inside of a book or some other place that you leave things without thinking of it, and I’ll find it and it won’t hurt as much as it does now. Maybe. A crack of lightning illuminates the outside so that I can see every single space between each panel of wood in the shed. I quickly throw the blanket over my shoulder and run back to the house just as the rain begins to fall.
Sometime in the nighttime, the storm rips its way through New Ontario. Each time the wind roars outside it sounds like a guttural protest. A war cry. It sounds like the earth is being ripped in two, as if it were a sheet of paper. I lie on a small cot that squeaks each time I breathe. At some point I considered lying on my mat on the floor, but as the lightning flashes and illuminates the room, I can see water creeping through the floorboards. I decided that squeaking is better than soaking. Somehow, I fell asleep and it felt like the storm fell away. So much so, that in the morning when I swung my feet off the cot and onto the floor, the inch of water that met my feet gave me a good start. Then all at once I remember: the storm.
I find Ansel in the kitchen with a shop broom pushing water out of the door. Immediately, I grab a spare broom from the porch just outside the door. We work wordlessly; the only sound is the steady slop and swish of the brooms pushing against muddy water. I notice that the good-for-nothing screen has finally found its way free from the frame of the door. No more will it be kept in place, stretched out, proving itself pointless. The breeze floats freely through, brushing over my sweating brow like a cool hand. The air looks clean in the way it does after a big rain, and a spotless sky looks down upon us mockingly as we clean up.
“I never had any kids”, Ansel says, breaking the silence. “Always liked them though. A fella I fished with up North had a little boy named Tommy. That boy was rough as a cob. I tell you, he would throw these big fits. He would throw things, yell, the whole bit. Then, the next minute, he was all smiles and sunshine. I reckon it feels a little like that. The sky had a right tantrum last night, and it’s moved on, but now we gotta clean this mess up.”
For some reason that I cannot begin to fathom, I tell Ansel, “I had a baby brother, and he would do the same thing. When he didn’t get his way, he would act up. I remember cleaning up a lot of his messes.”
Ansel stiffens slightly and sadness washes over his face. “You….had a brother?”, he asks.
I search for an answer that doesn’t indict me, but all I can come up with is, “It was a really long time ago…before all…this.”
“Kid, you probably know this by now, but even if it was a really long time ago….there…there’s just some things you can’t walk away from. It ain’t right. Life ain’t right sometimes.” Ansel seems lost somewhere in the distance as he talks.
“Ansel”, I say, “I think this storm and what’s left behind, we can’t walk away from this either.”
We continue on in silence until my arms ache. Until the sun starts to sit down before us. As if it has the right to be more tired than the pair of us. I know we’re finished for the day when Ansel throws his broom against the door and kicks the trash can. I put my broom down more carefully. I begin to speak, when I hear the popping of gravel in the driveway and we see beams from headlights making their way down the drive. We both make our way around the debris to the driveway. Ansel stops dead in his tracks.
“Conrad?”, he whispers and then chuckles softly. “I’ll be damned.”
As the truck pulls in the lights cut out, and a moment later the man kills the engine. The door swings open and a tall man slowly swings his legs out, closes the door, and closes the distance between us and his truck. He’s thin and very tan with grey hair that has nearly gone white. He has bushy eyebrows and a thick mustache. His eyes are dark. Those eyes look so familiar to me, but I simply cannot place them. Silently, they clasp hands and shake in the way that men do when they’re caught up in an emotion but don’t want to speak of it. I see a glassy quality to Ansel’s eyes, but his stubbornness wins out and not a single tear breaches his bottom lid.
“Ansel”, the man says finally, “Sorry it took me a while to get by here. You know since she’s been sick…I…I just…” his voice chokes off at the end.
“Oh…don’t mind that. Besides, I got myself a new rummy companion. Of course, he ain’t as good as you. I beat him about 7 out of 10 hands.” Ansel nods toward me, indicating that I am that companion. “Franky, this is Conrad, Imelda’s dad.”
My eyes dart back to Conrad and as he smiles I know exactly where I’ve seen those eyes before. He shifts his weight from side to side and nods toward me.
“Nice to meet you sir”, is all I can manage.
He nods at me before turning back to Ansel and begins, “Look, I know it’s kind of a big ask. We were spared mostly, but there’s a lot of clean up. More than I can do on my own with my crew. And since my Annie’s been ill, I just don’t know if I should keep on going or just set fire to everything I see.”
Ansel looks off into the distance as the emotion swells up in Conrad’s voice. Suddenly, his eyes focus themselves right on Conrad’s. “What are you askin’ me then? You want me to tell you to keep going, or do you need help strikin’ the match?”
Conrad lets out a cackle, “I knew I came to the right place. I guess what I’m asking for is…help. Maybe on the weekend or when you aren’t at the market. I could use a spare set of hands to remove some debris from the storm, repair some fences, clear some drains, and repair the irrigation, that type of thing. Imelda can’t help too often because of deliveries.”
“We can manage that, I’m sure”, Ansel says as he glances toward me and it’s almost as if he can hear my thoughts as he adds, “Yeah kid, I said we”.
I smile back. I’m not sure if it’s my loyalty to Ansel or the desperation I hear in Conrad’s voice, but I find myself eager to help. As I glance back to Conrad I notice that he’s now holding a guarded expression.
“That’s a generous offer, Ansel, but maybe we can iron out the…”, he glances at me again, “details later.”
If Ansel notices Conrad’s reticence toward me he doesn’t show it. Not wanting to prevent their candor with one another, I yawn and stretch. “You know, I’m going to head to bed, Ansel, I’ll see ya in the morning.”
He answers me with a nod, and I turn toward the house. They speak in low, hushed tones as the door closes with a soft thud. Most of the water is gone now, and the smell of damp fabric fills the house. The cool breeze from the open window washes across the back of my neck. I’m too tired to eat. Suddenly, it’s all I can do to shuffle my way toward my little room. I collapse onto the bed with a loud squeak from the mattress. Almost immediately, I fall into a deep sleep.
