Storm Story

Through the window, a thin, silver vein outlines the distant trees. Hovering above it is a blackness. Below, the trees shake from time to time because of the wind, or maybe fear? Noah hears a muted sound, like the rumbling of an angry train, as he sits in the living room of his Grandfather’s lake home, 23.4 miles West of Bemidji, Minnesota. On the TV screen is The Weather Channel. A tallish, busty woman is tracking the oncoming storm using an old-fashioned pointer, wooden with a black rubber tip.

Noah loves the pointer. He thinks, “The pointer reminds me of blackboards, eraser dust, poorly maintained film strips about hygiene, and nuns.” Noah shudders, but is not aware of it.

He thinks “If my parents were alive, being able to track weather conditions around the globe, and sometimes on other planets, would fill their days with wonder. Their ashtrays would overflow with coffee-scented cigarette butts as they talked about how the rain in some ‘piece-of-shit-Third-World-toilet’ was going to effect the price of coffee, and ‘why was such a precious commodity controlled by people who probably don’t wipe after they crap in the streets, and who still entertain belief in the magic of rocks, animals, and birth defects?’.”

Noah watches the tallish, busty, weather wench as she moves her arm, the pointer arm, up and down following the path of the storm as it’s replayed, pixel by pixel. She conjectures about where and with what impact humans will be inconvenienced. As her arm moves, he sees her bosom sway towards places on the map. He imagines that if she moved just a few inches east, her left breast would be just above his cabin, and going outside to be absorbed as it lands gently across Beltrami County.

Noah places this thought aside as he concentrates on the task at hand. He looks to see if the VCR is still recording. It is. He uses the VCR out of tradition. It was the first, and only, nod to technology ever made by his Grandfather. He bought it so he could record all the game shows he truly believed he could win, if only they weren't run "by those commie faggot Left Coast TV hippies". He also recorded the cartoons Noah's parents didn't want him to watch.

"Where do they get the idea Deputy Dawg is a fascist tool of the state? I's a goddamned cartoon! And Muskie and Vince aren't gay! That wasn't the time for that. No goddamn agenda there."

He goes to check on the generator. It’s in the basement, a place that used to scare the shit out of him when he was a kid. His Grandfather was a German, therefore cheap, and didn’t care that a single 40 watt bulb would not only not properly illuminate a room filled with oddly shaped bric-a-brac from the Old Country, it would also provide comfort to creatures that enjoyed doing unspeakable things to small boys send into basements to get their “Grampa’s bottle of Old Crow over by that stuffed badger, the one that killed them 4 dogs when it was a breathin’ thing, and, oh yeah, if you see it move, by God, you better high-tail it outa there before it does the same to you, Schnigglefritz”. Grampa would laugh a laugh that began as a soprano cackle and ended in a liquid burble. Noah would hurry into the basement because to be devoured by the unknown was better than listening to his Grampa’s rotted lungs sing their death-song.

The generator sits in the Northwest corner of the basement, next to the stuffed badger, now just 4 paws nailed to a piece of wood. Teenage courage, a warm can of his Father’s Hamms beer, and an M80 felled the beast during the autumn of 1965. Grampa was dead by then and the badger was not missed.

Noah checks the gas tank for the fifth time. An anal bastard, he. Full. He gives the chord a trial pull and the generator comes alive. When he shuts it off, there is a sound akin to the words “AW, FUCK”, but in machine language. It’s comforting to know there is a desire.

Noah goes back upstairs. He walks to the kitchen. A cold can of Hamm’s beer is chilling in the freezer. He takes it out and opens it. There is the feel of ice against his teeth as he sips the foam. He looks at the beer clock on the wall. 4:17 p.m. The plump weather tart said the storm should hit at around 6’ish, CST. She also said that at 4:25 p.m., CST, (5:25 EST) she would hold the pointer in either her left hand or right hand, signifying whether she was wearing panties.

Funny story, that.

Noah had met her at the Punchline Comedy club in Sandy Springs, Georgia 7 months earlier, and they had gotten on very well indeed. She came to 3 of his shows over the next 2 weeks and they would sit afterwards drinking tequila and talking about how cool it was to know things about the world immediately. They would end the evening mercilessly entwined, then drift off to sleep, the Weather Channel on low, an eccentric lullaby.

E-mail took the place of proximity, because she loved Georgia and he loved traveling. Her part of the relationship is the pointer/hand/panty thing. His is to tape every one of her broadcasts and send her a critique. This arrangement works well for both of them: it keeps her excited about doing her show, and it makes him write.

Noah sits on the red/green plaid couch. He opens his fine, brown leather notebook. Nora, the weather mistress’s name, is describing conditions in the Southwest. She looks somewhat bored, but then the weather in the Southwest can do that to a person. People there pray for natural disasters and biblical plagues, just to break up the monotonous choice of hot, hotter, or a hollow point to the head.

4:25 p.m. Noah takes his pen in hand and starts to write. He stops. Nora is holding the pointer in both hands. Not the left (pink panties), nor the right (no panties). Both. Noah is confused and excited. He begins writing, but seriously this time.

“Kinda queer how and when the Muse inspires us” says Noah to the can of beer as he takes a sip. He writes until he hears the morning bird chirp, telling him to rest.

He looks outside. The storm has passed.

“How rude”, he thinks.