The Weather and Women Treat Me Fair

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The rain could have fallen harder, in larger drops, been more persistent, or insistent, but that would have made it something else, not rain at all; as it was, it was balancing on the far edge of its definition. When the storm was but five minutes old it promised flooding. The black sky suggested no relief; there was no crack to be found in the swollen mass, not a boundary to be seen. Ten minutes passed and the gutters were useless, the drains couldn’t suck down the flow and the water stood or rushed over curbs toward homes. I was there, I was watching, such a storm the likes of which I had never seen. Cars stalled and why shouldn’t they have, the water by now waist-high in spots. Our house was atop a high hill. People had laughed at me for years when the coming of snow forced me to abandon my car at the base of the steep slope. But now they were not laughing. They were swimming, wading, bailing, paddling, assessing, and regrouping. And the rain did not slacken. When I purchased this house, my wife complained about the hill, the rather severe decline of the back yard — several times our children had lost footing and rolled down into the briars — but this day she was silent. No, she did not complain; she was dry. Besides, the children always healed. In fact, we’d raised veritable mountain goats. On many occasions I would insist to visitors observing our youngsters at play that examinations beyond their shoes would reveal hooves. My wife would glare at me and offer to show off the kids’ scars. “Disgusting,” I would say, and once as she walked away, I uttered, “There will come a flood.”

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