This is one of the very first "serious" short stories I ever wrote. I finished it in the summer of 2008. I decided to share it because it has been sitting in my documents for years now, only seen by my eyes, and what good is writing if I am just hoarding my stories? I hope that you enjoy it as much I enjoyed writing it. Also, please be kind, I was eighteen when I wrote it. haha
Respect For Storms
By Jake T. Allport
The smell of red cedar mulch in a withering flower bed is at it’s best on a very humid day just before a violent storm. Something about the air is mixed just right that the woodsy scent travels farther, blowing in on a breeze through flowing curtains. An earthy aroma, almost tricking the nostrils into believing that the neighborhood has been torn down and reverted back it’s natural ways of sprouting large trees and shrubs. The rain will be good for the plants. The heat had plants slouching like a child in class, bored and fatigued with their task of growing. One cannot blame the plants in this despotic heat, for humans are the same, slouched in their couches, brows collecting sweat, their backs stuck to the leather, agony and discomfort the only themes of conversation.
The first drops seemed to be the heaviest blow against the invisible embers that had been showering down on everyone. Those first little droplets of water, soon to be followed by the crass percussion of booming thunder and sharp clean lightning, brought the temperature down drastically. There is an unspoken sense that lingers in the intuition in everyone, which makes the ears prick up, the spine slightly more erect, the eyes flutter, and necks crane to see the very first drops of rain, making small darkened spots on the sidewalk, before the whole sidewalk turns to that complete darkened, wet hue. The dogs of the neighborhood all pretend to hate rain, hiding on covered porches and dog houses, but discreetly leave their front paws hanging over the edge, catching the rain.
On Livingston Boulevard, there is a lot of movement in the hot moments before the big storm came in. John Withers, a retired auto worker pulls a large blue tarp over his half completed car project, a Ford GTO. Newlyweds Ken and Kathy Dooley are quickly wheeling a grill towards safety, protecting their ever sacred meat cooker. Ms. Peterson (formerly Mrs. Clark) calls for her eight year old son to get back inside before he get’s struck by lightning. They have all seen those first drops hitting the pavement, and they have sprung into action, almost as if by routine.
First the clouds suddenly envelope a sky that seemed to be forever blue. Those clouds, white as clean sheets will suddenly fade, light gray, to gray, to dark gray. The air becomes thinner, and there is a salty taste that can faintly be felt on the tongue. The whole process can take a whole day to develop, or in a matter of minutes.
John sat on the couch underneath the large picture window in his living room. His face poked through the curtains and the blinds. He stared through the screen of the window at the rain pouring down. He felt the cool air relieving his sticky body, curing the wicked fatigue he had been experiencing for the last five days. He could almost feel his tongue hanging out, eagerly trying to lick the rain drops that were come in through the screen.
“Watching the rain?” His mother Jane said coming out of the kitchen and looking at the progressive rainfall. John just nodded his head yes.
“When it really starts coming down, shut the window.” She said. It was a constant reminder she made every time it rained. She would find window sills soaked, destined to warp by the time it dried. She could not separate her son from his fascination of storms.
Jane had the look of a tired woman, the kind from old movies, wearing a floral apron which has seemingly become an actual body part, with swollen ankles screaming with pain from the day’s labors. It seems only natural that when Jane walks into a room, she should have an old wicker laundry basket under her arm or arms stretched out as far as she could, folding white cotton sheets.
She was not that old fashion black and white image of a mother though, regardless of what her appearance hinted. While she longed for rest, and gave huge sighs whenever she sat, Jane held large reserves of energy. Not visible, jittery, manic energy but a modest, long running, well maintained engine deep within her stomach that kept her moving, kept her working, kept her from collapsing.
Her youngest son was similar in that regard. He spoke rarely, ate in meek amounts, worked with a diligence that left for few mistakes. John though was different. The older of the two brothers ran on indulgence. Though wire thin, a skeleton with a sheet of skin wrapped tightly around those frail milk white bones. He had a voracious appetite for knowledge, a mind sputtering out great bursts of hypomanic steam. The ambition made him headstrong and stubborn, rushing into things and causing many mistakes. Jane had taken him as a young boy to the doctor, convinced he may be ADHD, only to find that she had a normal growing boy with an unbelielly high amount of energy and spirit. She always feared that he would fail miserably in life. It was a thought a mother never wanted to have, but one that she shared with Frank.. She was relieved to find he had similar concerns.
Frank was a failed novelist. A former tweed jacketed twenty something college kid, previously locked in an corner of his dorm room he deemed ‘The Office’, working on a novel of statuesque qualities, a blue collar epic about the closure of an auto plant. His roots in the motor city had steeped in such loyalty to working class men like his father and his grandfather ahead of him. Now in his late thirties and never sold a single manuscript, he feared for his older son’s future as well.
He walked into the living, seeing John watching the storm. He knew the look, he knew what was happening. John wasn’t watching the rain fall, he wasn’t listening to the thunder, he wasn’t just enjoying the cool breeze. Frank knew his son was observing, looking for the deeper meaning in something that is unable to communicate it‘s brilliance.
He stood behind his son, who didn’t even seem to notice his father’s narrow frame shadowing over him. Frank didn’t say anything at first, just stood and looked out the window at the rain as well. He never wanted to discourage anything. He bucked at that nagging notion in him, as a father, to beg his son to become a paramedic, or go to a good business college.
John finally turned around and looked at his father. He didn’t say anything for a moment, and then turned back to look back through the screen before he started to speak.
“It’s odd, the word.” He said.
“Rain. When rain falls, it’s something we cannot control. Rain is uncontrollable. It comes when we want it, it comes when we don’t want it. It’s not up to us to decide when the rain comes.” He said.
“We can’t control a lot of things.” Frank added in, waiting to see where he was going.
“Yet we have another word. Reign, different spelling, same pronunciation. A word that basically means to control. It means having control over things, to bring control to something. The word we use to express control is the word for something we absolutely we cannot control.” He said. Frank just nodded. It was those similar complex ramblings that linked him and his son so close together. It was also what scared him so much.
Rob didn’t scare Frank like John did. Rob wanted to be a doctor, a physical therapist, and open his own practice. He read through thick medical textbooks, and sat under a desk lamp for hours, not making a single noise save for pencil scratching against loose leaf. A foil to John, the daydreamer staring at the rain, or singing loud and out of tune in the shower, his bed full of worn spine paperbacks of all varieties, all of them Frank had given him when he showed an intense love of literature and fiction in general.
“Very interesting.” Was all that Frank could muster up. Though John was 19 years old, Frank and Jane both considered him the ‘boy’. He still had immature tendencies, laughing at sexual innuendos, occasionally disappearing into the garage, only to reappear with a box of toys he though long forgotten, spending the day roaming the dusty attic, rejuvenating his childhood imagination.
Frank wanted to say more. He had so much more to say, but just couldn’t decide. He then tried to talk some more, but nothing substantial came out, just small talk.
“Rain’ll be good for the heat.” He said. John turned around.
“It’ll be bad for the heat. It’ll be good for us.” He corrected him. Frank just nodded.
“Of course. Did you get any writing done today?” He asked. John shook his head no.
“I haven’t written a word in 12 days. ‘And the heel of the shoe snapped’ was the last words I wrote.” He said. He was speaking of a short story he had been working on. He had dozens upon dozens of short stories, some half a page, some four pages, some even going towards twenty pages, none of them completed. The latest was, from at least what Frank could piece together, was a credo to falling in love with ugly people. John never let anyone read what he wrote, only sometimes reading the first few lines to his parents, asking their opinion and then going back to work, never mentioning the story again.
Frank then quickly changed the course of the conversation. He scratched the top of his head, his finger touched the slightly graying, thinning hair that he carefully tried to avoid acknowledging in the bathroom mirror.
“So, have you looked around for work?” He asked. John went into a tirade, jumping off the couch, his concentration on the storm completely broken.
“Why choose such a moment to have such a conversation! What is the obsession with the job?” He said, his hands, open pawed in front of his face.
“Me and your mother-” He began.
“Mother and I. And I know you want me to start working. And I will get a job when one becomes available.” He said correcting his father a second time. They had been having the same argument since a week after graduating high school last summer. He turned back to the screen, his face pressing against it.
“It’s a wonderful smell.” He said, suddenly calm again.
“What smell?” Frank asked.
“You ever smell those wet woodchips?” He said, taking in the aroma with his nose.
“Used to love the smell when I was little.” Frank said, sitting down on the couch, and pressing his face up against the window screen. He could smell the woodchips amongst other things. It all smelled so clean and fresh, as the rain drops continued to hit the concrete.
“You forget about smells.” Frank said.
“Good smells at least.” He added taking in a large nose full as well.
“The smells during rain. The smell of gasoline. I used to love the smell of gas, embedded deep in my hands after cutting the grass.” Frank said. John gave a smirk.
“It’s the smell of accomplishment.” He could feel himself becoming whimsical, unearthing those feelings that he had buried long ago. The importance of small things.
“You ever write about the rain?” Frank asked him. John shook his head no.
“Been done too many times. Nobody wants to read about rain.” He said. Frank gave a small chuckle.
“Writing about the rain is the greatest discipline a writer will ever undertake.” He said.
“Did you ever write about rain?” John countered his father. Frank simply looked at the rain drops in the puddle in the unevenness of the driveway.
“I wrote about it every time it rained. Every time a drop of moisture fell from a cloud, I tried to capture it on paper.” He said. John was aware that his father had aspired to be a writer when he was much younger, though he knew that his father hadn’t written a word since the day he was born.
“What would you say about this storm?” John asked. Frank suddenly stood up.
“I don’t know. I’m not a writer.” He said. It was true, he wasn’t a writer, he may have been once, but not anymore.
“Does mom write?” John asked. It was an obvious question that up until that point had never been asked. Frank gave another small chuckle.
“No, your mother has never enjoyed writing. She enjoys work, labor. Like your brother.” Frank said. He didn’t specify what he meant by that, but John knew it to be a reference to Rob’s boring linear existence, which Frank approved of, but not wholeheartedly.
“And I get…” John began, trailing off.
“You got all my terrible awful quirks and mind games. You got restless legs and an even more restless mind. Some call it genius, other call it unfocused.” He said.
“Which do you call it?” John asked. Frank let out a small sigh.
“I call it energized. Neither good nor bad, just a state of being.” He said.
“It’s weird how the traits translated to the two of us so rigidly.” John said, standing up off the couch and walking towards the kitchen. Frank followed.
“I have all your traits and Rob has all of mom’s traits.” He said, opening the refrigerator and grabbing a can of pop. He popped it open, the tight carbonation making it’s own lackluster thunder roll as the can opened.
“Well, your brother has some traits of mine.” He said. John started laughing.
“Like what? You have similar shaped toes?” He said, laughing some more. Frank gave just a wry smile.
“No, he’s terrified of lightning.” He said. John shrugged his shoulders.
“So what?” John said, sipping the pop, before pounding it back.
“He get’s that from me.” Frank added.
“You’re afraid of lightning?” John said, taking his post at the window once again. The rain outside was not letting up at all. The rain kept pouring and pouring, the brown grass soaking it up, trying to wean itself off life support, trying to live again. The storm drains filled, hollow deep sounds of rain water running down in the sewers would be heard when the rain slowed.
“I was afraid of lightning. Terrified actually. Not my whole life though. Just for a few years when I was in college.” He admitted.
“At that point where you become responsible for yourself. That point where you are supposed to be your own person. That day you dream about as a kid, when you can buy thirty tubs of whipped cream and mountains of candy bars when you go to the grocery store because you control your life. That point comes, and it can be a real culture shock for some.” Frank started, sitting back down on the couch. There was sudden loud boom of thunder. Frank shifted slightly, only briefly perturbed by the sonorous noise.
“When I became an adult I didn’t have that sudden feeling of liberation that I had dreamed about. I didn’t have tubs of whipped cream on my mind like I had always fantasized. Instead, all I felt was burden. Like large stone tablets, all carved with new precautions, rules, and procedures I would have to follow were being dropped down on me, one by one.” He said, his face was suddenly not the strong emotional base that he typically was. John could see a bit into his father, a gentle, exposed, weakened state.
“I became cautious. I became paranoid. I was a newly anointed adult and I had to take care of myself. If I didn’t take care of myself, who would? So I began to trace out everything I would have to do to survive in this world. And for the most part, I lived a normal life. The map to control over my whole life was sketched out in fine detail all up in my mind.” He stopped for a second.
“But there was just one thing. One thing that I knew I couldn’t control. One thing I could not protect myself from. The one thing humans, with infinite technology, cannot control.” He stopped.
“The rain.” John said. Frank nodded his head.
“Yes of course. That lingering presence, that constant reminder that complete control is impossible. And because I couldn’t control it, I feared it. Simple as that. An adult needs to control his surroundings, so what was I supposed to do about something I couldn’t?” Frank said. He had up to that point not realized how deep he was getting with his son. John was thrilled to have the deeper side of his father being lamented to him. He enjoyed seeing the rare glimpses of that well spoken unpublished writer. He enjoyed seeing a man much different from his father, a man who did not speak in sentences but in prose. A man who did not speak in statements but in themes.
“It started simply, a bolt of lightning hitting a tree before my eyes. From there I retreated indoors to hide from lightning. But of course I would see stories in the paper about lightning striking houses. Man can hide from all but lightning.” He said, staring out the window where frequent bolts were striking the earth, and the loud aftermath of thunder, clouds cooling the damage.
“It became like a sickness. And, as all ailments untreated go, it progressed worst. It went from having to be indoors during a storm, to having to stay away from windows, and then it was avoiding outside walls when there was a storm. Finally, I locked myself in a closet one storm.” He admitted.
“I spent an hour just sitting the darkness of a closet. That was when everyone else suddenly realized I had been hiding something for awhile.” He said. He pressed his face near the screen again, taking in another scent of the cedar mulch in the flower bed. The bushes were not growing well, and the flowers would be dead soon. But the mulch smelled amazing.
“Did you know your grandma was afraid of lightning as well?” Frank said.
“No, I didn’t.” John said, sipping his pop, now sitting right next to his dad, listening intently to his story.
“I didn’t know either until she came and sat next to me in that closet.” He said.
“She sat right next to me, and told me about her own fears of lightning.” Jane walked into the room, but she saw her husband and son both on the couch looking out the window, deep in conversation. She simply bypassed them quietly, her feet not even registering in their ears.
“And she told me how to beat my fears.” He said. He shifted his body again.
“You know what she told me? She told me that a lot that we fear are things we have too much respect for.” He said. His mother had been the exact replica of the old black and whites mother.
“I had never thought of anything that way. Too much respect. And she was right. Who couldn’t have loads of respect for a storm. Who couldn’t marvel at the supremacy a storm has over everything. A storms does as it wants, and knows no discretion. It can shift the course of everything in a matter of moments. What is not impressive about that?” Frank asked.
“Respect and fear, John. I want you to remember those two are interlinked.” He said. He looked at John to make sure his message was being received. The look he saw on his son’s face was certainly one that he was hoping to see. One of genuine interest and scholastic curiosity.
“Because that was the only way I could overcome. I had to acknowledge my place in the universe and respect the hierarchy of the storm. Knowing where you fit in the world and being content.” He said. He knew he was trying to make his speech to his son sound like writing, and in the back of his mind he felt a guilty pleasure.
“So, it was through writing that you respected the storm?” John asked.
“Of course. From then on, every time it rained, instead of locking myself in a closet, I would try to set to paper the beauty and dominance of the rain. It’s a most daunting task though. Because to put it onto paper, to translate it into words is to some degree an effort to control a storm. And, you so plainly stated earlier, and correctly, that it simply cannot be done.” He added. John suddenly lit up, his face full of epiphany.
“The greatest discipline a writer will ever know is to write about a storm.” He said. Frank smiled.
“Look out the window. Tell me what you see.” He said. John just turned his head and looked through the screen. He didn’t speak for a second.
“What do you respect about it? What do you like about it? What do you hate about?” Frank said, staring as well.
“The unpredictability. The chaos.” He said,
“Wrong.” Frank said, grinning mischievously.
“What do you mean wrong?” John said, turning away from the window and looking back at his father.
“There is no chaos. The storm has complete control over itself. It’s a rigid routine. The rain always falls top to bottom. Thunder always follows lightning, and it travels in a tight knit cluster. No, there is no chaos in a storm. The only chaos is us. Our inability to gain control over it causes chaos amongst us, but not the storm itself.” Frank said. John just nodded.
“Why did you stop writing?” John suddenly asked.
“I grew out of it.” He replied back automatically. John shook his head no.
“I don’t think you did.” He retorted.
“You can only take so much rejection before you go and pursue a regular life.” He admitted dismally.
“How many rejections?” John asked. Frank didn’t want to discuss it with his son.
“It doesn’t matter.” Frank said, a slight curt, agitated tone lacing his voice.
“Do you still have your manuscripts?” John asked. Frank shrugged his shoulders.
“Maybe somewhere in the attic.” He said, again dismally. What Frank was trying to avoid was admitted to his son that he was just as guilty as his son was when it came to their writing. He never let anyone read what he wrote, every page was bound, ready for submission and then dropped into a shoebox, never to see the light of day on an editor’s desk. His magnum opus only had his own fingerprints on it, and he had never sent it out at all. Of course, he knew his son could read his face, an expert poker player who held the same cards as his opponent.
“You don’t let people read your writing.” John said. It wasn’t a question but a statement. He had called his father out on the foible they shared as father and son. Frank just shook his head.
“No, I never let anyone read it.” He said. A bright flash illuminated the room, and they both looked out the screen and saw the tree in the front yard had split into two. The thunder was still rolling, shaking the whole house. Rob and Jane came into the living room, Rob visibly shaken up.
“I hate lightning.” He professed. John suddenly wondered if the conversation he had just had with his father would’ve been better to have been with Rob. John pondered that for a second before concluded it would not have done any good. Rob would overcome his fears much like their mother had, through persistence. His skin would have to thicken by small layers, his jaw would have to clench more, his fist would have to become closed tighter, his foot steps heavier and heavier. He would have to tough it out.
He heard his family begin to speak about the severity of the storm, Jane asked that the window finally be closed. Their conversations dimmed quickly to John, who turned his attention back to the open window, and stared at the tree.
It had burn marks down it, and a small fire had brewed in the scorched cavity, which the heavy rain droplets quickly extinguished. Through the smell of the burnt tree, John could faintly smell those wet woodchips that he loved so much, and knew that the world was doing just fine, and so was he.
