Crazy Hot

Heat makes some people crazy. Not me. Never me. Oh sure, I hate the heat, same as everybody else. But I figured out how to break these horrid heat spells, so common where I live, in a high desert plain in Idaho, huge emphasis on desert.

And dry heat?  A hundred and five, it don’t matter the humidity or lack of same.

Hold on, now, I’m getting ahead of myself, the curse of old age. I’ll race myself to my own grave, I swear. Not yet though, today is a day for someone else to die of the heat.

But first, let me tell ya how it all started.

Hot day, that day, crazy hot. Killing hot too.

Since it’s summer vacation, eight-year-old me is standing outside our nasty, narrow tract home. Dad sent me out to not bother him while he’s drinking and watching a game. I’m licking a Popsicle fast as I can and still can’t keep it from dripping all over, bringing ants. I’m stepping on the ants in my bare feet. And burning my toes on the broiling concrete sidewalk. Hate the heat.

My dog, Bones, ‘cuz he loved ‘em, is laying in the shade of a tree. Now that shade’s in the street, so that’s where he lays, all tongue hanging out, panting.

Fool dog.

Down the street comes our stupid teenage neighbor boy in his dad’s truck. Going way too fast for a neighborhood, any neighborhood, even one with broader streets than ours.

Everything in slow motion, I watch the truck head straight for Bones. I scream, loud as I can. My dog raises his head to look at me just as that truck runs smack over him, squashing his head flat.

Rest I don’t likely remember much, except a bit later, after Dad, grumbling the whole while, buried Bones in the back yard, the heat broke with a huge thunderstorm. I thought the skies were crying along with my sobs.

The heat stayed broke for weeks after, but returned with a vengeance like it sometimes does here in high desert Idaho in September. It made going to school a vile misery. No air conditioning in those long ago days.

Then Grandma, my favorite person in the world, died. Stress from the heat gave her a heart attack, Dad said. Again, like before, the heat got chased away by a storm, more sky tears—and didn’t return until the next summer. Bigger sacrifice, longer effect, I figure.

Next heat wave, I decided to test out my theory that a killing is the way to kill the heat. I snuck over one night to that teenage neighbor’s house. All the windows were open, and easy enough to quietly pop the screen on his bedroom one.

And easy enough to stick my pocket knife in his throat as he lay sleeping, right where that big vein pulsed blood to his brain. Sure, he’d apologized for running over Bones, but I could tell he didn’t mean it.

They never did figure out who killed that boy. After all, who’d suspect a nine-year-old little neighbor girl. I did have to buy me another pocket knife though, with my own money to boot.

And the heat never did quit, either. I figured I must be mistaken about sacrificing to whatever heat demon there was.

That is, until a few weeks later, when my favorite teacher of all time died in childbirth. I didn’t know until after the thunderstorm had passed through, leaving everything clean and cool, that she’d died that morning.

Ah, I realized I needed to care about the person being sacrificed.

That made it a lot tougher to find my candidates, and some years I just had to suffer through, especially when I was younger. Still, I managed to fill my life with tragedy.

My dad died, heart congestion they said, when I was but 12, a particularly bad summer, that year. Nobody checked for signs of suffocation, he’d had a bad heart for years. Then at 14, I lost my best friend, a hot, hot, still 98-degree summer night, when she “fell” from the top of one of the highest buildings in Boise. We’d been up there drinking.

On it went. Lost six dogs, seven cats, three husbands, a bunch of close friends and lots of elderly beloved relatives.

Nowadays, it’s even easier to kill that darn heat. More necessary too.

Because I’m an old frail sweetie of a woman now, bent-backed and rosy-cheeked from high blood pressure—and of course the heat today, past a hundred, easy. And me living in this old tin can of an RV in this so-called Retirement Center, should be called Old Peoples’ Poverty Center, outside Boise—nasty thing heats up like the baked potato it resembles.

Like I said, it got lots easier after I got real old and moved here. Old people are supposed to die. And lots of them die from the heat. Helped along by the foxglove that grows all over here. Nobody misses a few flowers. I make up my own digitalis tinctures and make sure to spice my dishes to cover up the taste.

It’s a good thing I’m making my signature biscuits and gravy to have my new bestie, Betsy, over for a meal. That’s what she asked for. How anyone could eat biscuits and gravy when it’s so hot, I don’t know.

Biggest problem I have is finding new best friends after I bury the old ones. But that’s a problem for next summer.

My solution to this heat wave is knocking at the door.

Overweight, adorable Betsy stands outside the cheap aluminum screen, a cake pan in her arms.

It’s a mercy killing, truly, the heat makes Betsy half-crazed, and a hundred percent miserable. She’s got a heart condition too, like so many of us oldsters here, and like my Grandma. I’ve got to kill her before the heat does.

“Come on in, before you die of the heat,” I say.

She trundles in, saying, “Oh, I brought over my lemon fluff dessert. Let’s eat it first, cool us down for the biscuits.”

I want to say no, Betsy’s lemon fluff tends less towards the fluff and more towards the sour lemon. But she’ll be gone soon enough and who am I to deny her?

We squeeze into my tiny eating banquette, fan going full blast. She serves me a big heaping amount of fluff. I dig in, wanting to get to my biscuits. Or rather, wanting Betsy to get to my biscuits. This time, I’ll pass. Now that I think on it, it’s best I’m filling up on fluff, good excuse for not eating my biscuits with the special sauce.

After a few moments, Betsy, instead of following my lead and eating, says, “You know, I’ve been thinking about your stories about how a thunderstorm always seems to follow a death, like maybe God’s angry at the loss.”

I nod, still munching away.

“Or maybe somebody’s not angry anymore,” she continued. “Maybe something gets appeased by the death.”

I lower my spoon, sour lemon fluff dripping from my lips. My chest tightens. My vision blurs.

“I’m really going to miss you, dear friend,” Betsy says. ”But I just can’t stand this heat.”

Over the roaring of my racing heart, I hear the far off rumble of thunder. Heat breaking storm coming.

Well, at least it won’t be too crazy hot for my funeral.

The End