An Account of August 20, 1889

It was another gray evening. The sky was promising rain, and they surely needed it. Another dry season would do no good. She leaned on the porch, watching the clouds as if her eyes could keep them on track. It was a silly way to think, even sillier for humans to claim they control the weather. Still, she was happy watching.

Her father opened a window and her left ear perked up. The porch filled with a warm orange glow from the kitchen.

“Come inside, it’s time to eat,” the father said. 

When the daughter finally came the mother and father were both at the table. Dinner was tuna salad. It looked like everything she liked to eat. The fish flavor always swerved on her tongue, and no household liquid could be sweeter than cream. 

“It’s finally here,” she said. “We’re going to have rain.”

“I sure know it,” the mother replied. “My head has been aching all day.”

The father’s moustache twitched down. His mouth went small and his eyes wide. “Are you feeling bad again?”

“I’m alright. All I meant was that good pains bring good rains.”

The daughter laughed.

The father sat on the daughter’s bed. She whispered with excitement, “I hear it, I hear the raindrops.” 

He looked out the window, but did not see any drops. Everything was so still, even the stalks of wheat, that he might have believed it all a painting. The rain was not here yet. He got up, pulled the sheets tight over his daughter and brushed over her hair with one deep stroke.  Then he sat down again.

“You hear the future. What you can hear now I’ll probably hear tomorrow.”

Later he crawled beside the mother to sleep. She turned over in bed. 

“I knew you were coming. I was so excited to see my favorite friend, I couldn’t sleep.”

“Dear, have you not been able to sleep yet?”

“You know how I am these days.”

He closed his eyes and nodded, then lay against her as she tried to sleep.

“Maybe if you fall asleep you can tell them it’s for the both of us.”

“Maybe I can sleep for you.”

They both smiled and closed their eyes.

Before dawn the next day, the mother and father awoke as usual. The father yawned out of bed and looked out the window. The wooden planks of the front porch were dry. It seemed not even the grass beyond it held a dew drop.

“Is it morning, dear?” the mother asked, gently clutching and releasing a pillow. “The sky is all dark. She must be wearing her sun hat real low, and all you can see is shadow.”

“The sky’s sun hat? Who gave it to her?”

“The same crop watering monster who gives old women fevers.”

“Dear, you could rest here all day. I’ll go out and get started and you stay here.”

“I’m fine. I just need some work to loosen my squeaky parts, I think.”

“It’s okay. You worked so hard yesterday, and I don’t believe you felt any better.”

“Don’t worry about me. Let’s go.”

This part of the land was not meant to have such dry weather. Ever since the rain had refused to fall this year, the mother and father had been rolling jugs of water from the well. The mother held the back door open for the father, and the father held the first water jug for her to fill. He loaded it onto a cart. As the mother took the next one, he tried to discern if she was truly doing alright. Was she walking slower than usual? Were her eyes squinting to block the breeze that was starting to blow?

When they got around the house, pushing together, they felt the first few drops. 

The mother stopped. “The rain is here after all. We can stop pretending.”

The father looked up. It was dark enough to really be a monster, but raindrops were falling, nice and cool.

From the window, the daughter watched them. She had never seen the sky so dark that there was no sun behind the clouds. She watched two spots in the field where her mother and father were facing one another with their arms out, feeling the rain. Before long she could see the little drops bouncing on the front porch. The mother and father smiled at one another and began to head back inside. 

The mother suddenly stopped and raised one hand to her head. The father turned to her. In a moment he was sprinting to her. The daughter’s heart dropped. Then she saw her mother fall out of her father’s arms. He could not stop her from falling to the ground, and he just knelt in a muddy puddle beside her. The mother was not getting up. The daughter leapt up and ran to the front door.

The rainstorm blasted her ears and pelted her face. She couldn’t force her eyes to stay open. Still, she stood in the doorway with water soaking through her clothes and cried as loud as she could, “Come on! Come inside!” The only answer was a crack of thunder and gust of wind forcing the door shut. She opened it again. “Come on!” No one answered again, but now a truck was backing itself into the side of the field, and a person emerging from it. With her father, they helped her mother limp to the truck and drive off.

The daughter stood still as rain continued to pelt her body. She could hear sirens blaring, but could no longer see anything except for a wheat field under a dark sky. The railing on the porch was beginning to shake. She felt a surge of energy fill her body, like she could have scratched at the railing with her own hands. Instead, she stepped outside and slammed the door behind her. She tried not to slip on the front porch steps.

The ground immediately met her as a puddle of mud. There was already so much water against her skin that she did not care. She began to cry, but the storm muffled out both the sound of her shaky gasping voice. She imagined her mother walking in the field, pausing to surprise her father with a hug, smiling as she eats tuna salad, relaxing inside in the exact spot where sunlight pours in through the window.

It was as dark outside as the barnhouse in the winter. The sun was nowhere to be seen for the first time in months. With a sky of gray clouds and a field of wheat looking like swaying bones, and raindrops swarming the daughter from every direction, it was almost difficult to tell up from down. Still, the daughter walked on. She passed the wheat field and continued until the house was no more than a speck. She kept walking. 

When the daughter reached the river she only paused for long enough to gaze at the water crashing on the rocks. It was a long way down, and the currents were strong enough and loud enough that they completely absorbed each raindrop as it fell. The daughter began to walk along the edge, stepping on slick rocks and tufts of twisted grass beat down by the storm. She placed one foot in front of the other, although the wind was in her face and she could not see through the pelting water. She found another rock and stepped, then a grassy tuft, then another rock. 

Suddenly, thunder cracked. The sky lit up in total white. The daughter slipped. Her back hit the grass and her feet came up, and she was falling head first into the roaring water. She caught glimpses of the shiny rocks below, water splashing against them. She prepared for impact, either to feel it or to lose feeling altogether in an instant. 

But then she woke up. It was all a dream. She was tense. She tried to relax.

Her father leapt onto the pillow with her on the windowsill. He licked her nose, which she rubbed with her paw.

“I was dreaming,” she said. “It wasn’t real. Right?” I dreamed that she got hurt, and there was nothing we could do but hope she was okay. It wasn’t real, right?”

The father continued to brush his nose over her fur. He gave a soft, sad, purr to try and calm her. 

“Oh no.”

“I’m so sorry,” he told her.

“Why did I have to dream it? It was so clear. Now I have to live it all over again. It’s like she’s suffering double.” 

The father closed his eyes and opened them. He hopped from the pillow and looked at her. His whiskers always created the shape of the frown that was not yet inside him. The daughter stayed where she was and tucked her paws in closer. 

“I’m glad you dreamed.”

“Why?”

“Dreaming gives you a choice. It shows you what you could do, without you actually doing it.”
She thought for a moment, then jumped down beside him. He pressed his chin between her ears. “I don’t understand,” she said.

“Do you remember how you felt in your dream?”

“Yes. I was afraid and sad, and I did not care about anything.”
“I see. Is that how you feel in real life?”

“Yes.”

“That’s the first thing you have to ask. Second is, when you felt that way, did you like what you did?”

“I ran away and almost got really hurt. I don’t like it, but that’s what I wanted to do.” 

He pressed his chin harder. “It’s okay to dream of that. Now, because you dreamed, you get to make a choice.”

The daughter stepped back and thought. She walked to the window. Outside it was still a rainy day. They had not seen the mother since the day before. 

“I think this time I want to stay with you. We can hope together that she is making it home.”

“That choice would make me very glad.”

“Then I’ll do it.”

The father came and sat beside his daughter. They both stared out the window. 

“I’m glad I dreamed of running away,” she said, “because that was what I really wanted, but I’m also glad it was just a dream.”

Her ears were twitching and her claws flexed, but she leaned her head on him and he leaned back. She took a breath like a soft purr.