Wind and Rain
KATHRYN SCHWILLE
T
he Saturday morning the space shuttle broke apart and
spread its shatter from Dallas to Shreveport, Gabriel
Dixon should have been hauling shortwood on Arthur
Oteen’s bobtail truck. But the truck had broken down again
and needed a carburetor they’d have to send up to Eno to
get, so Gabe was frying bacon over his stove’s last working
burner when the crashing boom arrived and the kitchen
window threatened to rattle right out of its frame. Gabe
froze, fork in hand, as the roar pounded on for one merciless
second after another, pommeling his eardrums with a
mighty wrath, burring every cell of him until he shuddered
as keenly as the walls. The egg he’d set out met the floor
with a splat he could not hear, but he reached out in time to
catch his plate before it, too, doddered off the table.
The train of thunder faded, and Gabe looked out his
back door to see three plumes of smoke waggling across the
Texas sky. The sound on his TV hadn’t worked for months,
but he turned it on anyway. Soon he saw a grim newscaster
and a group portrait of the astronauts, all smiles before
their launch. The camera shifted to an empty landing strip
and families being hustled into a bus. Gabe dropped into
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his sofa with the weight of what he’d seen in the sky. The
old cushion rose up around him like a bulwark.
When the phone rang, it was Raymond, the son he could
not be prouder of, who was driving down from Fort Sill
this weekend and bringing with him a woman he claimed
a seriousness about. Raymond hadn’t said much on the
subject of her; Gabe had a suspicion she was white.
“Hey, Pop. You hear it?”
“Sound like a pipeline exploding,” Gabe said. “These
walls been shaking.”
“TV says debris was falling everywhere. All kinds of
stuff, all over the place.”
Gabe stretched the phone cord until he could see out his
front window, through the plastic he’d taped up for warmth.
“Big piece of something, like some kind of foam, right at the
corner by the street.”
“Maybe a tile, or piece of insulation.”
“You still coming tomorrow?”
“Be there about two.” Raymond lowered his voice a
notch. “Pop, something you need to know about Denise.”
“You going to tell me she’s white.”
“It’s not what you think.”
“What do I think?”
“That there’s nothing else to it.”
“You be with who you want,” Gabe said. “No matter to
me. Though your mama, she would have been unhappy.
Don’t be bringing her here if you’re ashamed of us.”
“Her people aren’t rich.”
“No, I don’t guess they are.”
After they hung up, Gabe went back to the kitchen and
sat down at the table to finish his toast. Ants had found a
crumb from last night’s sandwich. His foot found a sticky
spot on the floor, under his chair, where he’d cleaned up the
egg. He despised this floor, a yellowed vinyl with streaks
that once might have been red. Alma’s stroke had come
while she was on her hands and knees washing what would
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never look clean. He used to tell her, don’t. But that day,
two years ago, he was shooting dice with Peego Godett and
Hershel Brown. He wasn’t here to say don’t.
Now Gabe searched out the back window for pieces
of this new catastrophe. The yard was mostly dirt, a few
patches of weeds. In front of a dilapidated shed was a
rusted charcoal grill and a wood pile, next to a lonely bush
of some kind. A chicken wire fence was falling over the
plot that Alma had favored for butter beans and squash.
When Raymond was little, he used to follow Alma around
and beg her to let him help. “Okay Little Man,” she’d say,
“put me some seed in this row. Careful now.” He would set
in a seed, then do something funny, like spit on it, or sing it
a lullaby. “Why you do that, Little Man?” Alma would say.
“You’re sure a silly farmer.”
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