Readers Beware

It was getting late, too late to read poetry at least, better for sitting with a good mystery. Even when there might be more murders than necessary, a mystery keeps the reader alert and interested in finding the motives for the crime. Val couldn't stomach the cozy style, which is essentially a lack of blood and guts and an absence of police or detectives. Solving the crime is in the hands of an untrained individual who feels entitled to jump in and find the murderer. The amateur sleuth is often, but not always, a woman who happens onto a crime scene.

Valentina Madeira had discovered a new author who wrote about Maine as well as countries in Europe. Her protagonist, Africa Dans, had a series of titles that had her traveling to Italy, Scotland, Portugal, Slovenia, and other places Val might be challenged to find on a map. There were also stories that were set in Maine and New England. Africa was fluent in five languages, which may have been why she was called on to serve as consultant to law enforcement units that all worked according to different cultural norms. It wasn't clear whether her credentials always lived up to the needs of the cases on which she collaborated, but Val thought she was legitimate, and well trained.

It was going on midnight and although her shoulders were slumping a little, Val could not put down the latest novel about Africa. The detective was running into a series of challenges, first and foremost from the weather. She inched along an icy path of the Pyrenees in search of a fugitive who had placed a bomb in a shopping center. She raced across a wheat field after the murderer who had dumped a half-burned body among the stiff stalks of grain, on a day when ninety degrees was as cool as it got. The pace lulled Val to sleep, oddly enough; following the main character was exhausting.

Ten minutes after dozing off, Val suddenly awoke and sensed there was a storm brewing. She went to the window of the living room and pushed the curtain aside. Her gaze was met by rain lashing at the glass as if determined to pierce it.

An awful Tempest mashed the air—

The clouds were gaunt, and few—

A Black—as of a spectre's cloak

Hid Heaven and Earth from view—

The creatures chuckled on the Roofs—

And whistled in the air—

And shook their fists—

And gnashed their teeth—

And swung their frenzied hair—

She let the curtain drop, shaking her head as if to whip away the heavy drops, and turned back to where she had left her book, open on the arm of the sofa, and picked it up. Just one more chapter…

Africa was unstoppable. She was now in hot pursuit of a killer whose method of torture of his victims was unthinkable. Nothing was going to prevent her from capturing her prey. The storm of the century was brewing, and there were frequent cracks of thunder accompanied by lightning that threatened to fracture the clouds but failing. It was eerie. 

Val shook her head again, this time to pull herself out of the violent battle between humans and the earth. The novelist had put everything into the description of the chase and Africa’s determination to succeed despite the elements that sought to wash her away. This time Val went to a different window, the one that looked out onto the street, and watched the occasional car slip through the driving rain as if it, too, were in pursuit of a fiend.

It struck me every day

 The lightning was as new

As if the cloud that instant slit

 And let the fire through.

It burned me in the night,

 It blistered in my dream;

It sickened fresh upon my sight

 With every morning’s beam.

The real world was much more of a threat than Africa’s fictional one. There was no escaping from the howling and the slitting of the Maine sky. Thunderstorms were much worse than snow, even a blizzard. The whiteness was silent and fell without complaint. The biggest damage came afterward, as mountains of heavy snow needed to be removed from streets and driveways. The effect was calming. Not like rain falling in sheets and washing the face of the world into the nearby ocean.

There came a wind like a bugle;

It quivered through the grass,

And a green chill upon the heat

So ominous did pass

We barred the windows and the doors

As from an emerald ghost;

The doom's electric moccasin

That very instant passed.

On a strange mob of panting trees,

And fences fled away,

And rivers where the houses ran

The living looked that day.

The bell within the steeple wild

The flying tidings whirled.

It was wild outside, it was as if the world were about to burst into pieces or be shredded by spiked winds. Val hadn’t seen rain and wind this bad since she’s moved to Maine. It was quite possible the power would go out, but it was too late to go buy a generator.

How much can come

And much can go,

And yet abide the world!

I thought that storm was brief,—

 The maddest, quickest by;

But Nature lost the date of this,

 And left it in the sky.

Yes, it did look as though the sky-splitting bolt and the rolling of thunder like enormous rocks rolling down hillsides had tattooed the sky. It would never look the same again.

The novel was at the point where Val could not put it down. She had to push forward because the suspense was too great to leave off now. The same thing had happened when she was reading Stephen King’s Insomnia. She hadn’t been able to sleep until the last chapter was done. She had been totally absorbed by the book and had become one of the characters who inhabited underground Derry without ever closing their eyes. King was that good. Derry always had ferocious storms that seemed as if they might rip the city apart and flood the subterranean passageways that connected the streets. Val was always impressed by the prowess of the author; he could give you massive thrusts of precipitation as well as the best splatterpunk scenes. He did it with settings that made Maine proud, you might say. Africa’s author had a ways to go to compete with him, but she wasn’t far off. Maybe eventually…

There was a loud crack and the wind was once more gusting and everything outside the house was set in motion, like one of those chaotic musical compositions by Philip Glass. Val was worried and went again, this time to the window by the back deck. She knew what she would see: 

The wind begun to rock the grass

With threatening tunes and low, —

…

The leaves unhooked themselves from trees

And started all abroad;

The dust did scoop itself like hands

And throw away the road.

The wagons quickened on the streets,

The thunder hurried slow;

The lightning showed a yellow beak,

And then a livid claw.

The birds put up the bars to nests,

The cattle fled to barns;

There came one drop of giant rain,

And then, as if the hands

That held the dams had parted hold,

The waters wrecked the sky,

...

It was a horrible scene that met her eyes. Maybe there was no blood dripping from a knife and no body parts had been hacked off by a maniacal madman, but the potential for harm was real: a fallen tree, bringing down power lines and bursting through a roof. There would be flooding for sure.

Val sought to escape by returning to the story of the valiant Africa Dans. She had only two chapters left and was confident that the protagonist would get her man despite the opposition of a nature that seemed bent on destroying her. That was the good thing about a series: you knew the hero would survive.

On the other hand, Emily Dickinson did enormous damage with her portraits of a world whose weather was far too possible and far too dangerous. That was why Val never read poetry at night. It was too real, too like a photograph or a film.

It gave her nightmares.