Rain Maker Found Dead
Title: Rain Maker Found Dead
Rating: G
Length: 657 words
Miss Clara was the one who’d found the body. The town, ever grateful for the Rain Maker’s services, had hired her to go to his house three times a week and clean it, top to bottom. When Miss Clara found him, hunched over his breakfast with his face securely pressed into the cereal bowl, she screamed so loudly the gardener working next door heard her and came running, hedge clippers still in hand. It was only a matter of hours before the whole town knew: we were doomed.
Some of the more stubborn town folk started heading down to the riverbank right away with buckets and bowls to fill before the river dried up. We all knew what they were thinking: I’ll survive as long as I can, and hope that it’s long enough to be saved. Some of the others began to pray to whatever god it was they worshiped, and still others began to imitate the dances and chants they had seen the Rain Maker do, in hopes of calling a downpour, even though he hadn’t been dead a week yet. A few of the town folk just shrugged their shoulders, either resigned to dying of thirst eventually or thinking that something would come along to save them.
Poppa was one of those, thinking that it’d all work out. We screamed at him, telling him that we needed to start stocking up on water, that we should leave town and wait until it started raining before we came back. But he just brushed back the hair from our foreheads, lingering on the youngest, Susan, like she had a spot of dirt on her face. Then he went out to the yard to smoke a cigar.
The next few weeks, we all hated him, except for Susan, who just stared up at the sky with disinterest, too young to know we were being left to die. The fields began to dry and the river began to shrink. The richest family in town left; then it was hoards of people, flying away like birds fleeing a fire. But Poppa said nothing, would not even acknowledge us when we talked about the drought, just smoked his cigars and did his work. It seemed that he did not notice the dying trees, the cracking earth, the disappearing river.
Finally, the oldest among us decided that we were leaving, father or no. She instructed us to pack our things and get the car ready, and said that even without a license she was going to drive us away from his hell hole and our suicidal father. We loaded everything we could lift into the car: bed sheets, coolers, books, the television, Momma’s jewelry, paper towels, flashlights, pillows, chairs, toys. When we were done the car looked like it belonged to the refugees of a war. One of us said it looked like the car had been a donkey in a previous life. Then the oldest noticed that Susan was not around and told us to go find her so that we could leave. No goodbye to Poppa, in case he tried to stop us.
Susan was not in her room. She was not in the living room, nor the kitchen, nor the playroom. We could not find her, and did not know where to look, until we heard something like a bark coming from the yard. We went out, and there she was, half naked, with dirt smeared on her arms and parrot feathers stuck in her hair. In each hand she held clumps of dirt made wet with spit and her eyes were flashing. She spoke to us in a strangle gurgle, a mangled gibberish of noise like she’d something in the back of her throat. Either this was some strange new game of hers, or she’d gone crazy. We could think of nothing to say, but then there was the monstrous clap of thunder and we all looked up to the graying sky.