Dry Rain
The dry rain came, yet no one could see it except the
homeless guy and me. We sat on the
curb, watching the invisible drops crashing through the leaves.
“You see that?” he asked, as we shared a cigarette.
“Yeah, I see it,” I said, watching the women in sun dresses
and the men in khakis go in and out of the stores.
“The dry rain is never good,” he said, taking the butt from
my hand and drawing deeply.
“What does it mean?” I asked, looking at the road and seeing
no drops of rain splattering on the blacktop, or on the trashcans set in the
gutter waiting for the truck that would come in the morning.
“A change, changes always come after the dry rain,” he
licked his lips. “Got another
cigarette?”
“Yes.” I dug in my
bag, pulling free a pack and handing it to him. I didn’t know him, he was just a guy I’d seen pushing a shopping
cart to and fro. Sometimes I felt sorry
for him and wanted to run out and give him things … things I couldn’t even
discern, but it seemed he had all he needed in the shopping cart.
He took a cigarette from the pack, lighting it with an old
butane silver lighter, which had something engraved on the outside. “Just
watch,” he said, handing me back the pack.
I took the box and pulled out a butt and lighted it with a
Bic, settling as well as I could on the curb.
“Just watch,” the old man said, dragging on a cigarette that
probably only cost me about forty cents, but the cost and the waste made me
nervous. Who was this old, unshaved man
pushing a shopping cart down the streets?
“Just watch, it’s
like clockwork, once the dry rain comes …. Don’t you see it?”
I looked back at the horizon and at the trees, and saw the
rain falling. I looked at the ground
and on the street and at the brick before us and saw no evidence of water,
rain, or anything liquid.
“It’s not raining,” I said, settling in on the dirt behind
the curb, resting my old bones into the dirt.
He glanced at me, drawing deeply on the cigarette, his
eyebrows raised. “Now you don’t see
it? You saw it a couple minutes ago.”
I looked into his eyes and wanted to deny what I had
seen. I wanted to be reasonable. It wasn’t raining, but I had seen the
rain. I shook my head, looking down at
my lap, as a chastised child would do, and then looked into his weary eyes. “I saw the dry rain.”
He smiled. “Keep
watching, it’s always this way.”
I found I was almost lying on the dirt in my denial, staring
at the clouds in the sky and I felt drunk, although I hadn’t had a drink. I struggled to sit forward, to observe the
things he wanted me to see, but my stomach retracted and would not bend or
give.
The old man reached for me.
He smiled as he set me up on my ass, and turned my face to the street
and the things he needed me to see.
“Just watch.” He pushed my hair
from my eyes, and touched my jaw, making sure my eyes were focused on the
block.
My eyes fell to where some ants struggled on a piece of
something I couldn’t identify in a break in the blacktop crossing the expanse
between us and the shoppers.
“Wake up, girl! You
drunk?” He leaned into my face, and his smell shook me to the core. Was that garlic, onion, or cinnamon?
“I’m not drunk,” I declared, the scent of him sending a
bright light through me. I sat forward,
my eyes on the place he wanted me to see.
“Good to know, just never forget the dry rain.” He pointed to the trees lining the street.
I looked and saw it again.
I wanted to sleep; it couldn’t be real.
He shook my leg.
I woke, and observed the trees hanging over the block. A shiver worked through my body as I saw the
elusive rain. I turned and studied the
old homeless man who traveled with a shopping cart, and I shook my head.
“Look!” He demanded, and I watched the street filling with
people as the movies, restaurants, stores, and diners closed early, and the dry
rain fell on them.
I lifted my eyes for a moment and saw the tree above me, it
was a huge Magnolia, the limbs descending to the ground large enough to lift a
truck, and I saw the dry rain. I felt
drunk, stoned, and crazier than any good acid trip, but I wasn’t – I had simply
stepped outside of the house. I knew
the old man was telling me the truth, he was simply showing me reality. The ground called me again, but his hard
bony arms pulled me forward like some skeletal cage.
“Look, God Damnit!”
I looked, I watched, and I felt the people thrown from their
regular safe places. I saw anger, the
stiff backs, the girls falling, and the women wailing. I witnessed three fights
and saw the people slipping on dry ground as I looked above and saw the
invisible rain falling. I was reminded
of an ice rink I saw sometime in my past, but there was no ice, no rain, and
yet the people stuttered, slid, and tried to grasp something solid as they left
the familiar places. I glanced at the old man.
“ ‘nother cigarette?” he asked
I handed him the pack.
“Keep it,” I said, no longer worried over the cents I may have or may
have not spent.
“Take one,” he said, handing me a butt.
I thanked him, smiling, and happy for my own cigarette.
“You’ve seen the dry rain.”
I looked above, seeing the rain that didn’t exist crashing
on the leaves, and turning my eyes to the chaos and screaming on the street, I
nodded.
“Never forget, the dry rain is always about change,” he
laughed, his eyes crinkling and resonating the words.
I smiled, laughed, and reached to hug him …
I woke later, cold and alone, on the sidewalk, and found my
way back into my space. Luckily, it was
my weekend off as I read of the death and chaos that happened outside of my
apartment. I wondered if it was a
dream, if the old guy with the shopping cart was simply an illusion, and I
tried to find peace in the fact that I no longer saw him.
I spent two days sleeping on the screened in porch listening
for the old man, and heard many who carried his sound, but they were not
him. Sometimes it was just someone
pushing a lawn mower; sometimes it was someone pushing a broken
motorcycle.
The old man is gone. Maybe he disappeared in the chaos that happened in front of my
windows, which made the news. I wish
I’d given him more than half a pack of cigarettes.
So here I am today, watching the dry rain ….
I wonder what he would have said …
