From Time to Time
The people who remained were initially ecstatic when the first drops of rain began to fall.
For almost two years now, the drought had baked the land hard as concrete. It was harvest season. The corn stalks should have been close to six feet tall, beautiful in their green and yellow. Instead, they were dead brown, laying flat on the cracked earth. They had tried their best to grow earlier in the season but it had been impossible. There was no moisture, no nutrition. Only relentless heat and murderous sun and inevitable acceptance.
There had been teases of rain. A few times over the last few months, dark clouds had formed, the wind had increased, and the farmers had crossed their fingers. The flashes of lightning and crashes of thunder seemed encouraging. But just as quickly, the clouds passed without a drop and the sun resumed its pounding heat and continued evaporating the ponds and drying the wells.
Families had experienced droughts before. They were an accepted and understood risk of rural life. But this was beyond acceptable and understandable because it didn't seem to have the potential to end. And it wasn't just the crops that were perishing. Mice, rats, snakes were perishing too, dehydrating in the fields and on the gravel driveways and dirt roads. Fish lay belly-up on the edges of dry stream beds.
Even the old-timers had no answers and no historical point of reference to explain the conditions. The Miller family, for example, farmers on their land for over a century, were speechless. The farm's founders, the original Millers, a young married couple, emigrated - escaped - from Manchester in 1898 when they were only twenty years old, leaving behind an existence of poverty and urban misery. Somehow, they had been able to scrape together enough money to buy third-class tickets for a trans-Atlantic crossing to New York. It was horrific with sea-sickness and overcrowding. They arrived with nothing in their pockets. Successful in their escape, they quickly discovered that the urban misery of their past was going to continue in the city of their new world. But they worked as hard as they could at whatever they could find. They sold cloth and pots and pans and cleaned houses and shined shoes. Mr. Miller occasionally engaged in petty crime when times were really tough, sometimes stealing food, sometimes stealing from houses in the richer neighbourhoods. He went to jail once. Mrs. Miller occasionally engaged in petty crime too, but never the kind that she confessed to her husband and he never asked where the extra money came from. It was understood between them that desperation could not always afford morals.
After several years of struggle and intense discipline, they had saved enough to purchase a plot of land a few states away and so, with no experience, they left the city, migrated west and began the Miller Farm. Over time, with a growing family, more employable hands meant greater returns. They learned and harvested and were satisfied and decently fed.
It was never easy, they would honestly admit to that. The Spanish flu took two sons. The Great Depression almost broke them and the war years diverted their attention for too long. There had been dust storms and locusts and parasites. But they had always survived, subsisting at the least, living well from time to time, and the farm had passed relatively successfully from one generation to the next. Today the Miller descendants felt they had no choice but to concede.
Leaning against their fence in front of the barn, they watched as the auctioneers emptied their house and loaded the truck. With all their savings and resources gone, it was the only option left. The children had already moved to the city, hoping to re-establish. The parents would follow, first to a motel, then hopefully to something more permanent.
They weren't alone. Neighbouring farms had foreclosed and neighbouring farmers had also fled. The Pembertons, another generational farming family, a few miles up the road in the next county, along with having to face the drought's wrath, with a disappearing bank account and dry wells, had to contend with another tragedy on a morning a few weeks earlier. Mr. Pemberton had discovered that none of his poultry, over three thousand of them, had survived the night. Whether it was tainted feed or a bacteria or a flu, he didn't know and didn't have the energy or money to investigate. He had to incinerate them all. After, when the coop was empty, he chained the front door shut, walked back to his house, and told his wife it was time to go. She agreed.
Despite the desperation and dejection, there was never any shame. No one had done anything wrong. They had cried in miserable frustration and yelled and cursed the Heavens and promised to be good and go to church if things got better and had been as patient as they possibly could. And then, finally giving in, the majority of them locked the doors, conceded defeat to a power they could no longer oppose, and left as innocent victims, feeling ignored and powerless with prayers unanswered.
Only once did people hear of a suicide. More would not have been surprising. Mr. Ramsay, a very friendly and passive man, was discovered in his bed, laying on his back, arms folded across his chest, looking peaceful. An empty bottle of sleeping pills was on the table next to the lamp. His wife had passed a couple years earlier, taken by a degenerative disease of some sort, never conclusively diagnosed. He had been alone on his farm since then. His children visited regularly but they had their own lives to manage. The drought and its effects were his tipping point. The note he had written explained his thoughts. He thanked his family and friends for their kindness and love and told them not to be sad, he had lived a good, productive, fulfilling life. He apologized if he had let anyone down. Everyone understood. No one judged him but they were still sad.
Across the entire region, only a very few families had decided, and had the means, to endure no matter what. They were fortunate enough, because of either inheritance from rich relatives or investments that had unexpectedly soared, to have considerable savings that could outlast any emergency. Even if it meant locking everything up and leaving for a distant state or an even more-distant country, they would always be able to come back when the crisis was over. For now, though, they would remain on their farms, at least for a little while longer, and survive on imported food and water that few others could afford.
So when the first drops of rain began to fall, the people who remained were initially ecstatic. This time the black clouds and wind were not a tease. They had developed slowly over the course of the morning. People saw the clouds, heard the wind, scoffed without hope, and expected nothing, not willing to be disappointed yet again. But then they heard the sound of drops hitting the ground and they looked at each other in disbelief and walked outside. They stood on porches and on driveways, arms stretched up to the sky, almost in positions of Sunday church praise, and let the cool water hit their faces and run down their arms. The rain came down softly and steadily, dampening the dust, cleansing. The sun, their forsworn enemy for so long, was nowhere in sight. The clouds were black and full.
The shower, refreshing and relieving and encouraging, continued for an hour, maybe a bit more, before its intensity started to increase. Now the drops were large and the shower had developed into a storm and it was getting violent. The clouds swirled. The rain hit the baked-hard ground like little liquid explosions and could not be absorbed into the concrete earth. Its intensity increased some more.
The residents, back in their houses, looked at each other with a new fear. They watched as the water level started to rise and they listened as the noise of the rain hitting cars and tin roofs and wooden verandas got louder by the minute. The water had nowhere good to go so it went where it could. It found its way through little cracks in window frames and walls and front porch floors. It rose and overpowered enthusiastically as new enemies do.
Recognizing the new crisis, the people who remained unplugged appliances and gathered as much food and water and as many blankets as they could carry and climbed the stairs to top-floor bedrooms and attics. The rain pounded on the roofs deafeningly. It entered and dripped down walls. Everyone knew that life, at least for the next little while, was going to be horrific. But life during the drought was horrific too and they had survived. With no more anger to feel, they sat fatalistically but acceptingly on their floors and listened, eating when they needed, sleeping when they could. For the first while, there was discussion but soon there was nothing more to say.
After six days, in the early morning of the seventh, the sound stopped. Hesitantly, everyone dared to leave their rooms and descend their stairs to the lower levels. Furniture and dishes and paper floated in water that was four feet deep. In a procession, they waded, one by one, to the front doors, struggled through, and continued outside. Porches were soaked and unstable, driveways were submerged and fields looked like swamps. Creeks and streams, bone dry only a couple weeks ago, were raging. The clouds and wind were gone and the heat of the sun was back again. It was disastrous. Everything seemed so random and pointless. It looked like a beautiful day.
Chris Klassen is a hobbyist writer living in Toronto, Canada. After graduating from the University of Toronto with a degree in history and living for a year in France and England, he returned home and worked the majority of his career in print media. He is now living a semi-retired life, writing and looking for new ideas. His work has appeared in Short Circuit, Unlikely Stories, Across the Margin, Fleas on the Dog and Vagabond City.