Rufus

It had stopped raining. The yard, no longer the place we played, gathered acorns, taught Rufus to fetch. It now was a mirror reflecting a sky slashed by lighting, accompanied by the sound of a river in the distance, turned to thunder. It had rained for thirty-two days straight. The calendar on the back of the door displaying the vivid marks of acceptance.

The river Green would not let Black Creek, which flowed by our house, escape. It displayed its vengeance by slipping its banks, seeking the freedom a loosed spirit must find, to understand its purpose.

The roads have been abandoned, bridges only a memory, a picture on someone’s mantel. We sat on the porch, listening for the reason the silence of the roofs tin was abnormal. We had grown used to the drumming, sometimes maddeningly loud while at other times with the seductive cadence of a sleeping cat. It was the soothing murmur that strolled our thoughts to a place where the sun shined, and the grass stood above a ground that offered the solidness we understood, expected.

The crops had failed, as did all the things we had taken for granted. Now, only a remembrance, as though it had been a dream. Lights that responded to the switch on the wall, a refrigerator that kept our meager amount of food from turning to a putrid mush, that even the crows would not touch.

The conscious contrast came suddenly. It was as if we went to sleep in one time, and awoke in another. The ground had turned to stone from lack of rain. Its face resembled that of a age, crevices deep, the furrowed lines distinct, smiling a toothless grin. And so we prayed. But when prayer failed to bring the rain to coax the seed from the ground, all that remained was hope.  We watched as it too, dissipated, the clay soil turning to dust.  Like devils breath it danced with the wind, causing our eyes to burn as though punishing us for looking into the hell the drought had brought.

And then the fires came and devoured what remained. When they had had their fill, they disappeared, leaving only the charred silhouettes of a life’s work and millennium of evolutionary strides. Then, as if suffering were not enough, we were evicted from what remained of our lives. It began to rain, and rain, and rain. It ceased conditionally this morning. 

The sun looked down on us from the tumultuous clouds that bubbled in the sky. The first time in weeks the drumming had stopped. We waited and watched, knowing that what had been foretold had come true. It was a reminder that to ignore the obvious, can be, and often is, a fatal mistake.

The yard, now a mote around our house. Fish swimming past the oak tree from which the swing hung. It’s ropes independently moving in a choreographed dance, no longer encumbered by the worn slat of wood that gave them purpose. The bloated carcass of a deer lay by the fence, only it’s horns visible above the muddy water. The landscape had turned to a reflection of the sky above and the mud below, that remained hidden out of respect, I supposed.

We watched as the winds blew hot, the inky mildew crawling the walls, the doors become swollen, and the glass fall from its moorings. The water began to recede as the river coerced the stream once again to join it on its travels. By morning, the water had subsided, but for the islands that dotted the yard and fields. 

I made my way onto the spongy grass, now covered with the brown sheen of mud that clung to everything it touched. I went to the door to the space beneath the house, where Rufus slept. He was our guardian, our alarm system.  He kept the skunks, possum, and racoons at bay. I pulled his chain expecting to see him emerge as always, sleepy, tail wagging, whimpering for attention. The chain remained taught as I pulled, and then as if it had given up the notion of remaining obstinate, it relaxed.  Rufus floated through the opening and lay beached at my feet. 

Several racoons and possums followed, as though they too were tired of playing the game; it no longer being fun. My father watched from the porch as I unfastened Rufus from the chain and began to cry in response to his snobbish irreverence for life, his own. 

We buried him in a shallow grave on the top of a small knoll. My sister and I made a cross of two old fence lath, tying them together with the collar I had removed from around Rufus’s neck. We said a prayer, and sang an old church song we remembered from Sunday school.  The church and it’s teachings had washed away, in the first week of flooding. 

My father said the school also had been rearranged, as well as the bus that picked us up and brought us to its door. The roads were submerged in muddy water, or had disappeared altogether from its force. All we had left, was the remembrance of what we mustn’t forget, if we were ever to return to a time of normalcy, family.

I sat on the porch watching the swing ropes move, buffeted by a hellish breath. The cross that marked Rufus’s grave was pushed into the water, and disappeared downstream. The sheep and pigs were let lose to find their own salvation.  We watched them pick their way down the gravel less road to freedom.  Father said we would have to leave as well. “Nothing left but memories,” he said, as the humidity settled around us, making it even more embarrassingly difficult to breathe. 

The rain returned, light at first, introducing itself in spurts; barely noticeable, as it began once again to tap out its tunes on the rusted tin. Father said we had better hurry, we needed to get to higher ground before darkness, made it all one. As we left the porch the sky again exploded with flashes of lightning and the deafening sounds of thunder. The leaves danced with the increasing wind, as the bruised sky blocked the remaining blotch of sun, giving a look of madness to what was left of the day.

As we left the house the winds increased. We were told to lay on the ground in a small ditch that ran the length of the drive. As the sky lit up and the rain drops swelled, I watched the metal of the roof begin to be peeled back and then disappear into the blackness on the horizon.

It was the first time I remember actually praying, as it were for keeps, meant something. No longer an exercise, going through the motions. It was the simplest way to comply with fate; accepting I had no choice, but to do so. 

The herculean wind diminished as quickly as it had come.  The rain continued to streak towards the ground like spears thrown by the hand of Zeus. The lighting unveiled the foundation stone, the front step standing alone, and only a memory, where our home once stood. 

We were told to hold hands, stay close, as the life of the woods was as frightened as we were, and would react out of fear, clinging to instinct to survive.

I asked where we were going, and was told, “Anywhere but here.”

Having reached the crest of a hill we stopped. I turned towards the valley below as the lightning once again raked the sky exposing a portrait of hypnotized reality; roof top islands, mired in blackness for all time. There was no place any longer to run to, no place to hide. I stood knowing the reality promised had finally arrived, and there was no longer any excuse to offer, or anyone to blame, but ourselves. Praying, was no longer even an option.