Her quiet voice echoed; in the strained, still, quiet that the wind let them have for another moment. “Yes, tomorrow will be fine,” Spoke the woman loudly. “Tomorrow will be fine,” She shouted over again. The woman laughed now, a sort of desperate, forced, cackle that belongs solely to the dead. She held her baby close and cooed to its cold, lifeless body. Her eyes darted everywhere, searching for something, someone to hold to, but they saw nothing. There was a light in them still, an eccentric, wild, brilliance that hid her fear and despair. Her hair was a nest of thick, matted, coils; a layer of grime, dust and perspiration covered her body; and the skin under her eyes had swollen to purple bags; but she was exuberant. Her husband watched the woman he once knew dance across the decrepit room, the dirt on the hem of her dress crumbling into the storm, her feet placed carelessly on the splintered boards, and he knew. She was a stranger now. Not to him, no, not only to him, to this world. She had wandered her way so far from reality that she had lost herself in her imagination, in the false promises of optimism. Had it been his persistence that it would rain again, his refusal to leave the farm, his meaningless planning, his rejection of her realism? The demented woman in his living room held her frail baby in the air. She spoke softly to her child’s corpse. He heard the way her voice looped and dipped, the laugh that came of her joyful face. Yes, he had done this to her.
“Ellen, let’s put on some tea,” He turned to look for his wife. She held her baby on her hip and rushed towards the dusty window.
“Oh, Paul, look, it’s raining.” She watched as her baby pressed his little hands against the window. “It’s raining, boy,” she whispered in his ear. She quickly inspected his face for the smile that should be forming. The baby’s mouth was still in a little circle shape. He must be very tired, she thought. She held the child a little closer so he could sleep in her arms while she watched the rain. Oh, what a blessing it was.
Water had soaked through the ground now. Droplets covered the windows, tracing rivers through the dust. The rain mixed with the dusty fields until the soil dark and rich. The horses came out to drink the fresh water and other animals too, ones she hadn’t known they could afford. “Paul, you never said we had a baby lamb, oh, and a good fat hog,” but she didn’t care if he had kept it a secret, after all he must have been waiting for butchering time. The water glossed the barn and made it shine brighter red than the day they had painted it. She could see sprouts coming up through the freshly plowed fields, soft green shoots. “Oh, Paul, you were right. Let’s go outside.”
“Ellen, no, you can’t, it’s storming,” He grabbed her sleeve as she walked through the door. “You’ll be killed,” Fear echoed through his face, in his eyes, his hands. He watched his wife as she straddled the threshold, with one foot on either side. “Ellen, what do you see?” His short, hot breath tainted a ripple of the stale air between them. The woman pulled her socked foot across the doorstep.
A battered, wistful, gust blew as the door slammed shut.