Recipe for a Storm

              My hand struck the cutting board and a cloud of flour erupted from the counter, the small white flakes sparkling and dancing in the morning sunbeams. I squealed in delight. I didn’t want to make a mess, I just wanted to watch the sunbeams sparkle. The sun was shining bright and the warm spring weather made my feet want to jump and play. For some reason, the weather was always nice when Granny Gran made pie.

           “Avery, child!” Granny Gran’s voice hollered from the back porch door. “What did I tell you about doing that with the flour? That’s a good way to get ants, y’know!”

           “Uh-uh!!” I protested. “Wasn’t me! Wasn’t me! The wind blew it!”

           “Fiddle-faddle!”

           The screen door scratched the floor as Granny’s seven-foot-tall body walked into the kitchen. She pointed her head down at me and put her hands on her hips. She was angry. Her wispy white hair always poofed up when she was angry.

           “I raised you better than to blame your mischief on innocent gusts of wind! You want the wind to get mad at you, huh?”

She pointed her bad eye at me. I looked at the floor and tried not to cry.

“Hmmph! I thought not!” Granny said with a smug grin. “Now we need to clean up all this mess on the floor. You run to the closet and you get the broom and dustbin. Get goin’ now!”

Granny turned her back and began to shovel up the flour on the counter with her hands. I ran down the hall, worried that Granny might yell at me again. As I opened the hall closet, my nose crinkled at the funny sour smell inside. I reached for the broom when something bright and flashy made me look up. On the top shelf, I could see weird yellow and white splashes of light bouncing off the closet walls. Was Granny hiding a toy from me?

I glanced back and saw Granny busy wiping down the cooking counter, her back towards me. I wondered if her bad eye could see out of the back of her head.

 Without a second thought, I crouched down at took out the metal step ladder. I’d teach Granny to get angry at me.

Standing on my tippy toes, I barely reached the top of the closet. My fingers inched along the side until they touched the smooth glass walls of a jar. I squeezed my little fingers around it and slid it to the edge of the shelf so I could see up through the bottom.

It was incredible!

Inside the jar, a small group of black storm clouds billowed and churned. Streaks of lightning popped inside the clouds and the whole jar buzzed in my fingers. I needed to get a closer look.

I pulled the storm jar closer. As the glass tilted over the edge, I tried to move my hands underneath but the small jar was heavier than I thought. As it toppled over, it slipped through my hands and fell to the ground with a loud thud.

“Avery?” Granny’s voice echoed from the kitchen. “Get me that broom and don’t mess around with anything! Are you listening?!”

I jumped down from the step ladder, my heart pounding in my chest. I didn’t want Granny to get any angrier with me. I picked up the jar. It felt like it weighed a hundred pounds! I shoved it on the first shelf and grabbed the broom.

That’s when I saw the small crack near the bottom of the jar. It was a tiny crack, no bigger than a penny. The clouds and lightning inside swirled around fast, like Granny’s washing machine. I bit down hard on my lip.

“Avery, I’m not going to tell you again! Where’s the broom?!”

I grabbed the broom like somebody put a jolt of electricity through me.

“I’m coming!” I shouted. Before I left, I quickly turned the jar so the crack wouldn’t show and hid the jar behind a wad of dishtowels. I slammed the closet door and took the broom to Granny Gran.

The next morning, Granny Gran left early to take some of her special sunflower scones to the Dawson family who ran a big farm on the other side of town. She left me with Gramps for the day who spent most of the morning reading the newspaper in his big chair until he fell asleep just after ten o’clock am. I figured he’d be out for at least a few hours.

I tiptoed to the broom closet and dug behind the pile of folded dishtowels until I found the jar I had dropped. For some reason, the jar didn’t seem nearly as heavy as it did yesterday. I pulled it out of the closet and almost screamed.

The jar was completely empty. Absolutely no swirling black clouds, no lightning, no claps of thunder making the glass buzz and rattle. Only an empty glass mason jar with a small crack in the bottom. Had I dreamed the whole thing? Was Granny Gran playing more of her tricks on me?

I heard Gramps snort in his sleep, and I threw the jar back and covered it up with the dish towels. Best to play dumb just in case Granny Gran needed that jar for anything.

The days went by and the summer heat began to bake the green fields golden brown. Granny Gran never asked me about the strange bottle or gave any clue that she even knew about it. Sometimes Granny would fix me with her bad eye and I could tell she waiting for me to say something.

That summer was hot, hotter than any other season I can remember. The well water sank lower and lower. All the townsfolk were talking and whispering. It hadn’t rained since spring. I was helping Granny Gran dust the kitchen one day when one of the Jones brothers showed up on her porch.

“Ya gotta help us, Eunice!” Barton Jones pleaded. Eunice was Granny Gran’s adult name. “We’re dying over at the farm! All the crops have withered away, the well is dry. I won’t be able to feed my family soon, let alone a farm. Please Eunice, I’m begging you here!”

“I hear you Bart, I hear you,” Granny lay her wrinkly hand on Mr. Jones’ shoulder. “But there’s only so much I can do. I’m praying the autumn rains come early this year.”

Mr. Jones made a face like he had a tummy ache and then leaned in close to Granny.

“Can’t you help us out with some of your watermelon tarts?” Mr. Jones whispered. “Nobody around here is going to have much of a harvest unless we get some rain soon?”

“I’m no fool, Bart! Of course, I know that!” Granny snapped. “I’ve had problems with my stock. I lost one of my key ingredients. Ain’t nothing to do but wait until I can pick up more.”

“Well dammit, Eunice!” Mr. Jones’ face puffed up like a tomato. “You’re just going to have to find more, or me and the rest of the farms out here will be dust before the rains come!”

Granny made herself taller so her head was looking down at Mr. Jones. I stepped back behind the hallway corner, my eyes still peeking out onto the back porch. Granny looked at Mr. Jones with her bad eye.

“Don’t take that attitude with me, Barton H. Jones!” She said in a low voice. “I don’t slave away in the kitchen all year long to hear complaints from pig-reeking farmers! You keep it up and I’ll see your farm barren as a gray mule with or without rain!”

Water started to pour out of Mr. Jones’ fat red face.

“Alright, alright! I’m sorry Eunice!” He said, “I just don’t know what to do or what I’m going to tell the kids and everyone. I didn’t mean anything by it, I’m just desperate, that’s all!”

Granny nodded and turned her good eye towards Mr. Jones. “Times are tough,” she said gently. “But sometimes, there ain’t nothing that can be done but to have patience. The rain can’t stay away forever Bart. I’ll be sure to bring you some of my tart as soon as I can, got that?”

Mr. Jones nodded and wrung his hat in his hands as he stepped down the path. He turned back and called out from the driveway.

“Any idea what happened to that key ingredient of yours, anyway?”

Granny half turned her head. Her bad eye swiveled to the corner where I was hiding.

“I wish I knew,” said Granny.

It was another burning hot morning in early September when Granny looked out at the yellow-brown grass and sniffed at the air.  

“Hmmm… it’s still not ready…” She muttered.

“What’s not ready Granny?” I asked, looking up from my comic book.

“The storm’s not ready,” said Granny. “We’ll be in for one whopper of a storm with all this heat. That’s why there’s no rain, y’know.”

Granny saw my confused look and continued. “The storm is drinking up all the rain now. That’s how it gets bigger. It’s greedy, Avery. It starts small like a caterpillar and then slurps up more and more rain leaving nothing left for the poor farmers.”

I looked out at the cloudless sky over the dry grass. “Granny, the storm is gonna come back, right? There’s gonna be rain again?”

Granny nodded. “The rain always comes back, but it’s going to come as one big fat storm! Just look at all the dry dirt out there. Imagine the godawful mess it’ll make after it turns to mud. There’s gonna be floods, lightning, the wind might even kick up a twister.”

“And…people could get hurt?” I asked. I looked down the road at the schoolyard.

“Could be…could be…” Granny said quietly.

I wanted to know more. I wanted to ask Granny about the storm she had in her closet and if she knew it wasn’t there anymore. She must have seen it by now. I had to ask her if that’s why there was a big storm drinking everyone’s rain.

Granny’s bad eye twitched. I jumped down from my chair and ran straight to my room.

On the very first day of fall, the first black clouds rolled in from the east like a gigantic dragon. They swirled around the edge of the sky, hovering behind the mountains miles away streaking the sky with bursts of lightning. Everyone stopped what they were doing to inspect the storm, but nobody was sure whether to cheer or take shelter.

The next day the wind started to kick up. Everyone raced to tie down their tools and board up their houses. Clouds of dust started flying through the streets knocking over dead trees. I watched from my room upstairs as Gramps raced through the house to board up windows and lash down the water tanks. The rain pounded hard and heavy on our thin metal roof. I wasn’t really scared. Not until the thunder began to shake the house, anyway.

It sounded like an oak tree splitting in two. My toys buzzed and slid off my bookshelf. A flash of white light hit me in the face, I wasn’t even looking at the window! Then another clap of thunder rocked through my room. I yelled and hid myself under the blankets. I stayed there, holding my ears while I tried to sing hickory-dickory-dock louder than the thunder. When I finally pulled my head out, it was either night, or the storm was blocking all the sunlight. I couldn’t take any more. I grabbed my flashlight and pattered downstairs.

I found Granny downstairs sitting at the kitchen table with a candle mounted on a saucer. The flame danced and jumped in the draft blowing in from the cracks in the walls. The flickering light cast Granny’s shadow out behind her, huge and jet-black like an ogre.

“Granny, why is it so dark?” I asked over the rumble of thunder.

“Storm’s knocked the power off,” Granny said as she gazed into the candle. “This is the big one. We may not have a town after all this.”

“Where’s Gramps?” I asked.

“Sleeping dear, like he tends to,” Granny answered.

A blast of thunder shook the house. A ceramic statue of an old cat clattered off the top of the fridge and shattered on the floor. A piece of the tail hit my foot and I jumped and screamed and buried my face in Granny’s lap. She stroked my hair and traced her long nails down my back. I started bawling.

“Granny! I…I…I broke your jar! The one with the storm!!”

Granny stopped stroking my hair and held me by the shoulders. She looked at me with one bad eye and one kind eye, urging me to go on.

“I…I just wanted to see what was making all those lights! I couldn’t hold it and it fell! It broke and there was a crack in it. I’m sorry, Granny Gran!”

Granny’s face hardly twitched. She didn’t yell or look at me with her bad eye. She just waited for the thunder and wind to fade a little before speaking.

“Go to the same closet and get the step ladder. Go up to the top shelf and bring me an empty jar just like the one you cracked. Hurry up.”

I wiped away the tears from my eyes and went to do as Granny said. The empty jar at the top was light as a balloon compared to the one I broke. I ran back to Granny as she was finished putting on her leather boots.

“Good boy,” She took the bottle from me and looked at it closely in the candlelight. “Now go get your rain boots. You’re coming outside with me.”

“What?! I don’t wanna go out into a storm!” I wailed.

Granny face broke open in rage, and she twisted her head to stare at me with her bad eye. The eye glowed in the flashes of lightning from the storm and I felt my spine freeze solid.

“You come with me this instance, Avery Rodney Gurner!!” She hollered. Two invisible hands grabbed my ears and started to twist. I tried to grab them, to shake my head, but the ghost fingers pinched my ears with an iron grip. I yelped at the top of my lungs.

“Okay! Okay! I’m sorry!”

My ears came free and I ran for my boots.

A few minutes later Granny and I slogged through the thick mud, bracing ourselves against the howling wind. I almost fell down a few times but Granny grabbed me by the back of my coat and hoisted me up.

“Not much further, just to the top of that hill!”

I peered through the curtains of rain and saw an old tree standing on a hill a dozen yards away. Granny trudged ahead while I struggled to step through the mud. It felt like walking through glue.

 Finally, we made it to the top. Granny took down the hood to her rain jacket, her white hair flailing in the wind.

“You grab hold of that tree and don’t let go!” She yelled at me. I didn’t dare disobey her.

“But Granny! What if it gets hit by lightning?!”

“That tree won’t get struck by lightning! You hold on tight and watch!”

I hugged the tree for my life and stared as Granny walked a few yards away and raised her face to the storm. Rain poured down but she stared with both her eyes into the churning sea of clouds above her.

She unscrewed the jar.

Suddenly I felt something like a ghost rush through me and every hair on my body stood on end. With an ear-splitting crack, a bolt of lightning crashed down on Granny Gran and made me close my eyes tight. When I looked up, Granny was standing tall, holding her jar with both hands high above her. The lightning crackled and writhed and began to spin into the jar. My hood flapped up as the wind shifted. The rain swirled around the lightning as the vortex picked up speed. I watched with my eyes popped open as the clouds and wind were drawn in across the open prairie and shrunk down into Granny’s mason jar.

Along the horizon, the sky began to get lighter. More clouds, rain, and thunder rushed into the jar but Granny’s hands held the glass steady. Sunlight began to peer through the clouds along with patches of blue sky. At last, the final stream of rain whipped around Granny’s head and into the jar. She slammed the lid down with all her strength and twisted it shut.

Standing in the bright sunlight that reflected off the mud, Granny swayed on her feet.

“Avery, come help your Granny,”

I was just in time to catch her before she fell. Granny grabbed a hold of my shoulder and breathed in deep before standing back up. She looked down at me, her kind eye sparkling.

“Good boy,” She handed me the jar, now filled again with bright flashes of light and dark swirling clouds. “Why don’t you carry this in for me and put it back where it belongs? And be careful now!”

“I will Granny Gran!” I said, my heart swimming in my chest. “Will the farmers be able to grow food now?”

Granny smiled. “That’s right. Why don’t we go bake some of those watermelon tarts for them?”

“Okay!” I yell and start skipping down the hill, taking care not to drop the jar of storm.

“Oh!” Granny calls after me, “And fetch me the jar of hail! I think I want to add a little zing to my recipe. Get going, now!”