The Rain That Bathes the World
By Faircloth Kirk
Copyright 2011 Faircloth Kirk
Smashwords Edition
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Through Stained Glass
Rain.
It pattered and popped against the silver tin roof. Echoed through the house made of brick, plaster, and unanswered prayers. Slid gurgling through the gutters. Gushed into the earth. Puddled around the ancient tires of the somber Buicks and Cadillacs parked in the backyard because the church had no parking lot.
The boy clipped on his navy blue tie with the green and white stripes and wondered if God was crying.
He shrugged into his blue blazer, the one his mother had bought at Goodwill for five dollars, the one that had the stain on the lapels you couldn't see unless someone told you it was there.
He slipped on the penny loafers his brother had outgrown last summer, wiggled his toes in the extra room that he knew would give him a blister. Sighed.
The Root of All Evil was not growing in the parsonage.
He kicked a pile of Legos out of the way and left his room behind. Trotted down the stairs that had always squeaked. Stopped in the hallway at the bottom by the upright piano that had never been in tune. Tapped at the B sharp that had never worked. Moved on.
His mother and his brother were waiting by the back door. She was wearing her black dress and her silver necklace. His brother was wearing a five-dollar, Goodwill blazer. Three years apart but they still dressed like twins.
His mother was giving the Speech. Be on your best behavior. Be respectful. Look people in the eye. Say yes sir and no sir. Yes ma'am. No ma'am. Be young men. Not little boys.
She had been giving the Speech for a year now, ever since the boy and his brother had played hide-and-seek at a wedding reception and his brother had almost knocked the cake over when he had hid underneath its table. She had been so embarrassed.
She hadn't wanted this life.
She had married an engineer. Not a pastor.
But things change.
Souls are set ablaze with holy fire and everyone around gets singed.
The three of them huddled under a black umbrella and went outside.
The rain was gentle. No wind. No malice.
God had destroyed the world with rain. Now He bathed her with it.
The boy's loafers sank into the puddles as they made the trek across the gravel driveway to the church. He wondered what it must be like having to drive to church.
They marched up the concrete steps at the front of the church, where old Mr. Howe had always smoked a cigarette between Sunday school and worship. Until cancer had eaten his lungs and he hadn't been able to smoke anymore.
The boy remembered the funeral. It had been on a sunny day in September, summer's white-knuckled grip finally being pulled apart by an autumn breeze. There had been few people at that funeral, and even fewer tears.
The boy had once had a puppy. It had wandered onto Mr. Howe's land and the old man had shot it with a .12-gauge shotgun.
The boy had smiled at Mr. Howe's funeral.
They stepped inside the vestibule, his brother accepting a program from an usher while his mother snapped the umbrella shut. To the left was the small room where the deacons told jokes while they waited to take the offering on Sunday mornings. To the right was the room that had the rope that rang the church's bell. The bell that the boy and his brother had gotten spanked for ringing on a Saturday night because there had been nothing else to do. Up ahead was the sanctuary where the funerals were held.
The Sanctuary.
Take off your hat. Wipe your feet. This is the House of the Lord. Act like it.
Blood red carpet slid beneath the rows of oak pews that were just comfortable enough to fall asleep in. The chandeliers clinging to the vaulted ceiling cast gloomy light that made it hard to read the lyrics in the hymnals, the hymnals that made the church smell like a musty library.
Along the walls were twelve colorful stained-glass windows depicting the life of Jesus Christ. The Manger. The Temple where twelve-year-old Jesus had spoken to the old men. The Baptism. The Temptation. The Woman at the Well. Walking on Water. Healing the Blind Beggar. The Last Supper. The Garden of Gethsemane. The Crucifixion. The Empty Tomb. The Ascension.
The boy had been to all the churches in the county and had seen their stained-glass windows. He knew that these were the most beautiful.
They found a seat towards the back below the Woman at the Well. The boy looked across the sanctuary, sizing up the crowd. All the regular antebellum leftovers were in attendance. Mr. Holliday with his toupee that somehow always seemed to point north. Miss Durham with her quivering jaw, rheumy eyes, and purse full of Luden's throat lozenges. Colonel Berglund with his glass eye, the man who had driven an ambulance in World War I. Mr. Clayton with his sloppy dentures. According to the rumors, he had once shot a black man for brushing up against his Oldsmobile.
Millionaires, all of them. Old money that had trickled down from the plantations. These were the people who kept the church afloat. They were the ones who had paid for the boy's Goodwill blazer and hand-me-down loafers.
And they were dying.
Weighing down the front pew was Gerald Updike, the undertaker, a man so fat he couldn't fit into the coffins he sold. His funeral home was in the county seat ten miles away. He slept upstairs, and the corpses slept downstairs. The boy could only assume Mr. Updike had an elevator.
Every Christmas, Mr. Updike would send poinsettias to all the old women in town. In their bridge clubs and beauty parlors, the women would talk about what a nice man this Updike fellow was, sending flowers out of the goodness of his congested heart--never realizing he was soliciting their upcoming business.
Mr. Updike was getting busier by the week. Pretty soon, the boy imagined, he wouldn't have any white people left to come sleep in his living room.
The organ, which had been dribbling unobtrusively through the background, raised its voice and the service began.
They boy wasn't paying attention. He was staring into the exquisite window, watching Jesus talk with the Samaritan whore.
He thought of the water gun fight he and his brother had had last summer on the Fourth of July. How the sun's dazzling smile had made him squint. How the muggy, wet heat had coaxed the sweat from his pores like a snake charmer bringing forth his serpent. How the dewy grass had tickled his bare feet as he had sneaked around the side of the house. How the savory ghosts of hotdogs and hamburgers from cookouts down the street had settled over the backyard and had refused to leave.
He had finally caught his brother by surprise and had been just about to unleash a torrent of cold water on him when the back door had opened and their father had called them inside. The boy had tossed his water rifle in the grass next to a patch of dandelions.
Three days later, he had been at his grandmother's funeral.
The water rifle had lain in the grass for the rest of the summer, its rainbow plastic bleaching in the sun.
The dandelions had died.
The organ fell silent and the boy's father stepped to the pulpit. Frowned with hopeful gravity. Gripped the pulpit with vulnerable authority. Spoke with reserved passion.
The boy kept staring at the window.
He thought of the day the new Wal-Mart had opened twenty miles away in Rapid City. The newspaper had said free food would be there, so the boy and his family had piled into their burgundy Mazda and had started driving. They had driven through the endless sprawl of cotton fields that had once been picked by slaves. Past the white oak with the noose hanging from its lowest branch that had a story everyone had forgotten. Through the brief patch of swamp that was supposed to be haunted.
Up ahead, blurry through the heat rising off the pavement, police lights had flashed. An accident had occurred, one involving a motorcycle and a Ford F-350.
Don't look, the boy's father had said.
The boy had looked.
Blood and organs smeared across the asphalt like spaghetti used as finger paint. The policemen shaking their heads, hidden behind their sunglasses. The driver of the truck sobbing in the ditch.
Someone in the audience began to cry. The boy didn't look to see who it was.
He looked into the Samaritan woman's eyes and thought of the kitten his mother had found on the side of the road. She had taken it home, bathed it, given it a saucer of milk. Orange fur and big blue eyes. They had named her Marmalade. She had made the boy smile. Until the day he had walked outside to get the paper and had found her body lying half-crushed on the double yellow line in the middle of the street.
The boy's father finished speaking and Gerald Updike lumbered to the pulpit and sang "It Is Well".
The boy stared at the window.
He stared and stared and stared and stared.
But I couldn't see through stained glass.
Azaleas
Ninety-nine degrees and sixty percent humidity can turn a mind that already has romantic tendencies into a factory of melodramatic, poetical nonsense.
That's me.
With the water hose.
And the farmer's tan.
Standing in the midst of a group of azaleas.
Everything's a circle. The azaleas convert the carbon dioxide into oxygen. Carbon dioxide from the SUVs of the commuters who drive to work to acquire a disposable income. Oxygen that keeps the commuters breathing. Commuters who buy the azaleas with their disposable income. Azaleas that convert carbon dioxide into oxygen.
I pause, wiping the sweat from my brow with a sweatier forearm. The heat doesn't bother me. The hunger does. It's almost two in the afternoon, and I still haven't eaten lunch. Probably won't for another forty-five minutes.
One day, I won't work here anymore. One day, Haybridge Garden Center will just be nostalgia.
I'll go to college.
I'll get a degree.
I'll become a commuter.
A commuter who buys the azaleas that keep him alive. The azaleas that pay for the tuition that will transform a garden center grunt into a commuter.
I'm still watering the azaleas.
Millions of people in countries I'll never visit are dying of thirst.
I'm pouring gallon after gallon of water onto organic lawn ornaments that don't have souls.
God bless America.
My walkie-talkie squawks. The Boss is calling me to the outdoor cash register.
I close the valve on the watering wand, let it clatter to the blacktop. I start walking, the damp leaves of the azaleas painting my legs as I fight my way out of their midst. They don't want me to leave.
A sweaty customer in a V-neck shirt demands the price of a gardenia. He looks like he smells bad.
I smile--customers like it when I do that--and answer his question.
He frowns and leaves for the Home Depot.
Another small business dies.
The Economy gets worse.
The commuters head for the unemployment line.
I keep walking.
I'm skirting the edge of the first greenhouse when Ruth pops out from behind a group of cypress trees. She still has that look of abject confusion chiseled into her pug-like face, her blonde butch haircut matted against her sunburnt forehead, her arms swinging like fire hoses as she scurries towards me.
Ruth.
I can't stand Ruth.
In the two months she's been working here, Ruth has been nothing but a thorn in my side. All she ever does is complain about her pathetic workload, voice her various insecurities about anything and everything, and ask me where plants are.
Two weeks ago, she let three tables of geraniums die. Job security is not in her vocabulary.
She is running scared. The sky is falling. The world is ending. Help me, I'm a victim.
She called my name.
"Yes, Ruth?"
She flings a flabby arm in the direction of an elderly couple a hundred yards away, wisely keeping their distance. “I have a couple with me who are looking for clematis. Can you--”
“In the back against the fence.”
“Thank you!”
“You’re welcome.”
Apparently, my tone leaves much to be desired.
“Are you mad at me?”
Yes.
Yes!
YES!
“No, I’m not mad you.”
“Ok, I wasn’t sure.”
She shuffles back to the unlucky patrons, sucking air in giant gulps from the exertion.
When is she going to get fired?
I splash through a strand of puddles created by two hoses that didn't connect right. There was a time when I avoided puddles--out of respect for my shoes--but now I don't care. I am the King of this place, and I am bulletproof. Nothing can touch me.
Except the Boss. Of course.
He stands next to the ugly box of plywood and awning that houses the outdoor cash register, guzzling from a can of Diet Coke, his meaty fingers threatening to crush the aluminum into a tiny ball of matter that will never decompose. He is short and round, with skin so perennially abused by ultra-violet rays that it's hard to tell where the epidermis ends and the melanoma begins. I often wonder what sort of picture could be created if I connected all the sun spots on his bald head.
Probably something with fangs.
A pudgy twenty-something with ghostly skin--the kind you get from playing endless hours of MMO-RPGs in your mother’s basement--and a head of greasy curls stands next to him, glancing around nervously, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
I swear under my breath.
This again.
I've seen this episode before. I didn't like it then. I don't like it now.
The Boss tosses the empty can into a trash bin. “This is Luke. He’ll be working with us now. I need you to show him the ropes.”
I mechanically shake Luke's hand. Hi, nice to meet you. I just lied. This is a fake smile. This is not my real personality. I am a fraud who makes minimum wage.
His hand felt like a sweaty lump of Play-Doh. Luke has no idea how expendable he is.
I show him around the garden center. These are the annuals. These are the perennials. These bushes are deciduous. These bushes aren't. These are the evergreens. This is the gun to put in your mouth when you finally snap.
Oh, wait. You won't be here long enough for that. My mistake.
I take Luke to a group of hawthorn bushes baking on the blacktop. I show him how to water them. Then I abandon him.
A plane flies by overhead. I look up. The commuters are taking a business trip.
I wonder if the Wright brothers knew what they were doing that day at Kitty Hawk, what they had created when Orville took off on December 17, 1903.
Man can now fly. What does He do with it?
Bombers destroying London.
Bombers dumping napalm on Vietnam.
Passenger jets crashing into the World Trade Center.
The Knowledge of Good and Evil.
The Tree in the Garden.
The trees that keep the commuters alive.
The trees I still have to water.
Back to the azaleas.
Never Land
Gas sloshes through the nozzle, swallowed in greedy gulps by my truck's gas tank.
I'm throwing money down a hole. Waiting to hear the splash at the bottom.
Snap!
The nozzle's handle kicks against my fingers. The tank is full. The bleeding is over.
I tear the receipt from the jaws of the self-service machine. Glance at the damage.
I walk around the dented front of my truck, clamber into the driver's seat. Thinking of how many receipts the gas pump has printed in its lifetime. How many times it's documented in black and white America's greatest addiction.
I crumple up the receipt and toss it on the floorboard next to a sticky Red Bull can. I don't bother to fasten my seatbelt.
Back on the road.
The miles are slipping beneath my tires like sand from an hour glass.
I'm in a sea of cotton fields.
The cotton is green.
It's already summer.
It's already summer, and I'm going home.
Home.
Where the heart is.
Sure.
I knew what the next three months would be like.
Three months of convincing my mother that I don't drink alcohol. That I'm doing fine on my grades. That I'm still a virgin.
Three months of sitting in a wooden pew, listening to my father try to tell dead people how to live.
Three months of hoping for a brain aneurism.
I sigh.
It's pitch black outside, and a storm is moving in.
I adjust my mirror because the bastard in the convertible behind me turned on his high beams. I catch a glimpse of myself in the reflection and I sigh again.
Look at me.
I'm twenty years old.
I just finished my second year at a college that probably won't invite me back in the fall.
I've been in school for fourteen years and the only job I'm qualified to do is to stock the shelves of a supermarket.
If the statistics are right, I probably have a venereal disease.
Cue depressing music.
This isn't how it was supposed to happen.
I was supposed to be somewhere by now.
Be someone.
When I was twelve, I told myself that I would have a record deal by my eighteenth birthday.
I haven't picked up a guitar in six months. God knows how long it's been since I've sung sober.
The wind is picking up. It's starting to rain.
Things aren't right. Things aren't fine.
But no one tells me that.
They say it's all natural.
It's all normal.
Dreams die.
Passions fade.
Goals become more realistic.
It's all a part of growing up.
Growing up.
I hate that phrase.
I can't grow up.
You die after you grow up.
It's really storming now. The rain is falling sideways.
The guy with the obnoxious high beams is more stupid than I thought he was. In the midst of a Deluge, he steps on the gas and zips around me. I touch the brakes and let him go.
That's what I wish I could do.
Touch the brakes.
Put Father Time on a leash.
Slow things down just enough so I can savor them for once.
I wish...
I wish I could fly.
I round a corner and my heart stops.
The guy with the high beams is stopped in the middle of the road because the wind knocked over a tree.
I slam on the brakes, but I'm going too fast.
The front end of my truck plows into the back of the convertible.
I blink and I'm through the windshield.
Look at me.
I'm flying.
I land on the wet pavement, skid to a stop in the glow of the high beams.
Blood bubbles through my lips.
Father Time has broken his leash. It won't be long.
I'm sorry.
It's the only thing running through my cracked skull.
I'm sorry.
I want to ring the church bells.
Shout it from the rooftops.
Sing it from the mountains.
I want to tell the world, but I'm all alone on the asphalt.
This isn't how it was supposed to happen.
I can't die. I've never lived.
I can't move at all.
My vision is getting blurry.
Rain washes the blood from the corners of my mouth.
God destroyed the world with rain. Now He bathes her with it.
Jesus.
I can hear my heartbeat fragile in my ears.
Dear Jesus.
I am the thief on the cross.
Remember me.
I hear someone screaming.
I know I've done wrong.
Or are they singing?
But remember me when you come into your kingdom.
I can feel it coming.
Remember me.
And now...
It's time.
Time to fly.
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