Iron roof

Lily stood, arms crossed, leaning against one of the many beams that lined the once grand veranda of her not-so-grand-anymore family home. The veranda wrapped itself around the old Federation style home, engulfing it like the land did the home itself. 

It was hot. A heavy, dry heat. The type of heat where you don’t sweat, or you do but it dries as quickly as it appears as a thin layer of salt on your skin. The type of heat where you feel permanently dirty.

Lily had lost count of the day since it had rained in Nanima, New South Wales, where her family farm stood. Like when you’re forced to do a plank in PE class and each second seems longer than the last, every day that passed seemed to stretch for more hours, more minutes, more seconds than the last. When would Lily slump in a heap on the floor? How many more days of the drought could she tolerate? The weight of the last three years sat on Lily’s chest like a sack of bricks. Crushing her sternum and her spirit. 

The heat haze hung on the horizon. Distorting the outlines of trees in the distance so there was no sharp edges. The orange sky blended with the yellow, red and terracotta tones of the earth.

Closer to home stood a huge river red gum. Like the house itself, it had seen better days. But like any family patriarch or matriarch, the branches which remained tried their hardest to offer protection and safety. Shading the collection of dirt mounds and lovingly crafted crosses that marked the graves of the many family pets who had walked the corridors of the family home and wandered the property.

She stared. Not at anything in particular, just stared. The dry, sun-scorched land in-front of her stood still. If this was a Hollywood movie a tumbleweed would blow across the set. The camera would be fixed on Lily’s face, emphasising her stoney gaze, then slowly it would pan out, taking in the vast veranda before following the weed as it blew, left to right across a weathered, dusty plain. But a tumbleweed would suggest movement, and movement would suggest life, and there was no life here. Not for Lily at least.

Then, out there, away from the shelter of the veranda Lily saw flakes. White-grey flakes. Dancing. Drifting effortlessly and without purpose through the air. Zig-zagging from one side of the sky to the other like a bird when they extend their wings and just let the wind carry them. Then finally and in one sudden movement the flakes hit the ground, staining the sun-dried earth white-grey. More came, blowing across the rusted, corrugated iron roof from the south-east. She looked on in bewilderment. Snow? Stranger things had happened. For one, she’d ended up with the family farm despite being the youngest of five. 

Gingerly, Lily uncrossed her arms and extended her left arm out into the space in front of her. Her skin was tanned a dark brown and spattered in freckles from years of harsh sun exposure. Her leathery skin aged her, and certainly the weight of the last few years had made her feel older than she was, but in this moment she felt like a child grabbing at dandelions. Stretching her arm out she twisted her palm upwards and begun clenching and unclenching her fist trying to grab at the white specks of hope.

“It will rain today,” the Pastor had said at that day’s service. “Do you believe that?” He had asked the small group of people who had come. Some came because they were believers, but the reality was most were there because they needed the connection, the community, a reason to leave the house and to hear the promise that it could –– and it would –– get better. “Somewhere, some place, it will rain today,” he answered.

As Lily continued to grab at the sky a single white speck brushed across her forearm and stayed there. Landing like a butterfly, delicately and fleetingly. But it’s didn’t feel as she had anticipated. All she felt was warmth. Bringing her finger to her forearm she brushed at the grey particles. They disintegrated under her touch leaving only the faintest colour of white-grey on the tip of her finger.  

Air-borne ash from the fires that had been burning for the past two months to the south-east had blown hundreds of kilometres in-land. To her farm. Coating the old federation home and everything around it in a sheet of white ash like when the first dusting of snow comes in winter to the Snowy Mountains. Thousands of hectares of land had been ravaged by bush-fires. So much of the Australian bush was an inferno, burning vegetation and species with a ferocity that only nature can unleash and be forgiven for. Her country was on fire and her she was day dreaming about snow. 

A single drop of water hit the ground, turning the red dirt a dark brown. But this was not snow. And it sure as hell was not rain water. It was salt water. A tear had escaped Lily’s eye. She’d allowed herself to soften, to dream. She shook her head, trying to shake sense back into herself. Any hope or wonder or optimism evaporated as quickly as the tear on the ground. 

She couldn’t help but think of the time she had sought comfort from her father, distraught after missing out on selection for the State soccer team. “It’s not fair,” she had cried through a face full of tears. Ever the pragmatist, her father had replied, “life isn’t fair.”

Shaking her head again, she heaved herself off of the beam and turned to go inside. As she walked back into her family home she muttered to herself, “it sure as shit isn’t”.

Weeks later, Lily lay in bed. A light sleeper, she woke to a sound. It started lightly, and then grew in volume like the sound made by her old family dog, Hiedi, as she tried to sneak from the living room to the bedroom in the middle of the night. Initially, the old cattle-dog’s claws would tap gently on the wooden floor boards, but by the time she had made her way to the door of the bedroom she had become drunk with excitement, so pleased with her progress so far her original care was all but abandoned as reached the foot of the bed, dropping her ageing body to the ground with a huff. Satisfied with what was in her mind a perfectly executed covert relocation plan. 

The tapping grew until it was deafening. It was raining. A proper, drenching, saturating rain. The type of rain that makes your roof leak and leaves pools of muddy dirt around the property for days. Lily lay in bed still but eyes wide open. Pleasure started to pulse through her body. Like an orgasm that just keeps washing waves of joy over your body so you throw your head back and let it wash over you again and again. She listened and let the sound take over her. 

Sure, sex was great. But had you ever heard the sound of rain –– real, hard, drenching rain –– on a corrugated iron roof ?