The Weather and Women Treat Me Fair Read online

  The Weather and Women Treat Me Fair

  Percival Everett

  Dzanc Books

  5220 Dexter Ann Arbor Rd

  Ann Arbor, MI 48103

  www.dzancbooks.org

  Copyright © 1987 by Percival Everett

  All rights reserved, except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher.

  Published 2014 by Dzanc Books

  A Dzanc Books rEprint Series Selection

  eBooks ISBN-13: 978-1-941088-97-5

  eBook Cover Designed by Awarding Book Covers

  Published in the United States of America

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  For Al Bearce and Zack Hemenway

  Contents

  A Real Hard Rain

  A Good Home for Hachita

  A Good Day for the Laughing Blow

  Cry About a Nickel

  Last Fair Deal

  Hear That Long Train Moan

  Thirty-Seven Just to Take a Fall

  Esteban

  Turtle

  The Bear as Symbol

  Still Hunting

  Gaining the Door

  Chacón, Chacón

  Nice White People

  The Weather and Women Treat Me Fair

  A Real Hard Rain

  The rain could have fallen harder, in larger drops, been more persistent, or insistent, but that would have made it something else, not rain at all; as it was, it was balancing on the far edge of its definition. When the storm was but five minutes old it promised flooding. The black sky suggested no relief; there was no crack to be found in the swollen mass, not a boundary to be seen. Ten minutes passed and the gutters were useless, the drains couldn’t suck down the flow and the water stood or rushed over curbs toward homes. I was there, I was watching, such a storm the likes of which I had never seen. Cars stalled and why shouldn’t they have, the water by now waist-high in spots. Our house was atop a high hill. People had laughed at me for years when the coming of snow forced me to abandon my car at the base of the steep slope. But now they were not laughing. They were swimming, wading, bailing, paddling, assessing, and regrouping. And the rain did not slacken. When I purchased this house, my wife complained about the hill, the rather severe decline of the back yard—several times our children had lost footing and rolled down into the briars—but this day she was silent. No, she did not complain; she was dry. Besides, the children always healed. In fact, we’d raised veritable mountain goats. On many occasions I would insist to visitors observing our youngsters at play that examinations beyond their shoes would reveal hooves. My wife would glare at me and offer to show off the kids’ scars. “Disgusting,” I would say, and once as she walked away, I uttered, “There will come a flood.”

  The water was something; it rose and rose and covered many houses. Many people floated away, I assumed, to other towns. This was what I told my children. We waved to their friends and their friends waved back. My daughter asked me why their waves seemed so different from ours. I told her that if situations were reversed our waves would appear just as theirs—or more so. We learned that squirrels could swim, at least many could—now, at least in our part of the world, all could. The storm was extensive, covering at least the state, probably much more. All radio and television reception failed.

  Then the rain stopped and everything was more still than when nothing moves. The clouds broke up and a bright sky shone. There were many birds on our roof and in our trees. We were an island in a vast lake or perhaps a minor ocean. At any rate, we were alone in this malignant, newborn body of water. The houses and trees of the town were lost to view. There were no people. I had not known before, but our house was set on the highest point for many miles in any direction. We were by ourselves and I felt bad for having bought up the adjacent lots. Peering at the sky through the windows, my children wanted to run out to play. I told them it was too deep out, that a slip and roll into the briars would mean a great deal more. My wife did not speak. I had become something of a deity in her eyes, temporary as the office was.

  “So, what are we going to do?” she asked finally.

  I gazed out the window and observed the sea. “First of all, let us be thankful that we are alive.” I let this soak in for the prescribed time, then turned to their blank faces. “We can’t just sit here.”

  “We’ll starve if we do,” said my daughter.

  I smiled and passed over her remark. “We have to see what’s left of the world.” Something higher, more noble.

  For years I had been just the father, he who stared at clean paper in the typewriter and somehow managed food to the table, he who mumbled and forgot things and where he was going, once washed the same car twice in a day. But now, I was he who had insisted on buying the house on the hill,, the home with the deadly backyard, the inaccessible winter retreat, the last dry spot.

  “Dad, are we going to die?” my son asked.

  I smiled at him, then turned my eyes to his mother. I studied her for a long second, watching the anxiety swell within her. “No,” I said. I thought she might fly around the room like a released balloon, such was her sigh of relief. I loved it, the power, and I knew I’d best love it good and fast and remember it, for soon reason would return. Reason, the spoiler, the party pooper. Ha! I laughed at reason. It was reason which nearly had us in a split-level down there. I would remind my wife of this when she believed her thinking to be clear.

  “Surely we’ll starve,” said my daughter. Food on the brain, that child. An eater from day one, a nipple hog—two at once if she could have managed. And a plump little thing she was. This flood would do her well.

  By looking at my son I knew he believed, though I had told him contrary, that we were as good as dead. The little coward, him with his Donald Duck nite-lite and foul-smelling blankey. He was a penny-pincher, too. For someone so sure of the end, he had certainly planned for the future.

  Somehow we would set adrift, probably in the raft in the garage if it was still good. My family looked more interesting to me. To my thinking, there is nothing which makes people fascinating like their being about to be drowned. They followed me outside toward the garage, but stopped at the sight of the eternal pool surrounding us. I, too, was taken with it Through the windows, it had seemed less real, as if just a show, but here it went on forever, forever wet, forever deep. We could see nothing but light playing off the surface.

  I pulled the raft down from the high shelf above the tools and work counter. Clouds of dust were kicked up and, for the first time ever, the dry, floating particles did not bother me. I didn’t even fan them from my face. None of us did.

  My wife went and stood at the open garage door, a child on either side, all facing and staring at how the driveway fell so steeply into the water. I inflated the raft with the bicycle pump.

  “What do you think?” I asked, pumping steadily.

  “Think? Who can think?” She did not look back.

  “We’ll need provisions,” I said. “Even if we don’t venture far away, we’ll need food sooner or later.” I paused to catch my breath, observed the now larger plane of rubber. “We’ll have to rely on our memory of the layout of the town.”

  They were not listening. The disaster was creating some distance between us. The situation had moved me lifted my spirits by charging my curiosity and sense of adventure. For my family, it was another story. I wanted to express to them that since we were doomed, we’d best enjoy it But the right words would not avail themselv
es. I finished the raft and stood away, slapping the luscious dust from my hands. My family turned to view me. Their eyes said, “We’ll wait here.” I tried to appear disappointed, dipping my head and stepping into the house, but I was not. I looked forward to drifting peaceably, alone. Better that I checked the worthiness of the boat alone anyway.

  First things first, a nap was in order Actually, I just lay on the sofa and imagined the grid of our town. The market was straight down three blocks, at the bottom of the hill. The water there had to be many tens of feet deep. What I needed was an aqualung, but I had none. For additional food, we would have to try fishing. Worms would be plentiful in the back yard. I sat up and studied the faces which studied mine.

  “Pack up food and dry clothing,” I said. “We can’t stay here. We’ve got to see what’s out there.”

  “Water is out there,” said my daughter.

  “Beyond that,” I said. “Start packing.” I watched as they slowly wandered away to collect items.

  “You’re not taking that,” I said.

  “Mom!”

  “What is it, honey?”

  “Daddy won’t let me take Cubby.”

  “Tell him there’s no room for non-essential items,” I said.

  “There’s no room for non-essential items,” she said and turned back toward the kitchen.

  “Cubby’s not a non-sential item,” my son said to her back and my front, “he’s a bear.”

  “No Cubby.”

  He stormed away, passing in the hall his sister carrying a collapsing dollhouse.

  “No.”

  This went on.

  “No.”

  “Non-essential.”

  All this while my wife was gathering food together. Silence is a clue that either too little or too much is being done. She’d packed two baskets and a chest, all waiting for me to carry them to the raft. I lifted a basket, groaned, and felt the muscles of my face tighten.

  “What do you have in here?”

  “Food.”

  “Are they all so heavy?”

  “Probably.”

  “Do we really need so much?”

  “You tell me. You’re the flood authority.”

  The magic was wearing thin. Well, I understood the station to lack permanence. Soon I would again be reduced to husband-father status.

  “I’m not sure the raft can hold all of this.”

  She hurled a can of tomato soup into the sink, then braced herself against the counter. “Then you do it. You do it.”

  “I’m not being critical.”

  She began to sob. I went to her, turned her around and embraced her. The children appeared and observed from the doorway. The gravity of it all was settling in.

  Still, it seemed clear that we must set out. I looked at the packed baskets. We would need all of this food. A fact occurred to me which I would not mention to my family. Almost certainly, we would be unable to find our way home once sight of it was lost.

  Our house looked so welcoming there on its little island. We waved to it like morons as we floated farther away. A silence came over us, the silence I usually associated with my being the focus of anger. Somehow I had become the responsible party. The flood was my fault. I seemed unafraid, so it must have been my doing. I said—

  “You know, all of this is beyond my control.”

  No reply.

  “I’m as scared as any of you.”

  Nothing.

  I paddled us onward. Looking down, we could see our town through scattered debris. There was Turk’s Garage, Marietta Karper’s house, the 7-11. I think we were all expecting at any moment to come upon a floating cadaver, but we did not. We did find a good-sized rowboat manned by a large, mongrel dog. The animal seemed happy to see us, anyone. The children were delighted to see him. I, however, saw him readily as just another mouth to feed and a fairly unreliable witness to the things he had seen. Finally, the trade seemed fair, food for the sharing of his larger, more sturdy craft.

  The presence of the dog did lift my family’s spirits. Being licked in the face does this. Of course, one thing was certain; if there were any fleas anywhere, they were here.

  Now, instead of paddling, I rowed. My family and the dog basked in the warm sun.

  I stopped rowing and studied the sleeping faces. When the kids awakened they would name this dog Noah. I’d no doubt of this. My wife would make pimento cheese sandwiches for us and we would eat them and wash them down with Cola from a two-liter bottle. We had no cups. The speck on the horizon that was our house was now gone. I was not even sure in which direction I had last seen it. I took the oars again. I would row until they were awake and the sandwiches were made. After the meal, I would row some more. The flood had made everything quite simple. I would row until I was too weak to continue. We would eat until there was no more food. We would find land and perhaps people or we would die.

  My wife’s eyes opened and she looked at me calmly. “How could such a thing happen?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “What has happened?” She sat up and gazed at the water.

  “It rained real hard.”

  A Good Home for Hachita

  Vista. It was a view that could make you not just pause, but set up house. So thought Evan Keeler as he craned to observe more clearly the Rio Grande Gorge snaking across the plateau below, carved deeply and cleanly through earth and the ages. His eyes moved to the ochre hills, their shadows creeping in on them, as he began the roll down the other side of the mountains toward Taos.

  He’d stayed in Santa Fe longer than he’d have liked, haggling over prices with a couple of gallery people. He had little to say about art peddlers that was good, except that they kept a bit of money in his pockets. In fact, he wasn’t doing so badly. His prints were popular. His canvases found homes. But he hated dealing with the owners and managers of galleries. Nor was he crazy about the kinds of people who bought his works or any work for that matter. It was unfortunate that those coughing up dollars for his paintings were wheeling and dealing, trading and bickering, anticipating in the high grass anticipating his death and a jump in the value of his signature. He liked the infrequent shows. He’d perch off in corners and watch children study his paintings, watch those with no money summon a friend to share a look, a feeling, a bit of something, anything, breathing easily or hurriedly, maybe smiling. That was rare. Too rare. It made him question himself and his talent. Such insecurity was for younger men, however. If an old man fell to such doubt, his organ would shrivel right up, like a plastic straw above a flame. And that would be it. Evan Keeler needed his organ.

  Evan Keeler liked women. Loved women. Liked loving women. If the art world beat down his faith in mankind, women re-ignited a kindling flame of human possibilities. A flame, a light that his being, he thought, served more to dim than fuel.

  It had been a short marriage. It had been his over-fondness of women which ruined it. There had been a spark, a flame; a belief that time was upon him. She was not beautiful. He told himself that beauty did not matter. He lied. The spark was not enough, not enough to sustain his interest, for in the end that was all it was, interest. When his wife figured out not only that he had been with other women, but why, she became what Evan Keeler termed agressively insecure. He entertained fleetingly the notion that had he married earlier in life all would have been fine. That was dismissed as excuse; a rather pitiful attempt not to seem so pitiful. Finally she left, talking to herself, taking with her the only construction of their marriage—their one-year-old daughter.

  He did not know his daughter. Since her departure he had seen her but three times. Twice in two summers while he was still living in Albuquerque and once when he dropped in to visit her in Seattle. In Seattle the child’s mother had not allowed Evan Keeler to their house, but arranged a meeting in a mall. He did not blame her. He had been a shit. Better to be mad than a wimp, he had told her when they broke up, which only made her angrier.

  Elaine was seve
nteen now and, in recent photos at least, very pretty. She was discovering boys in Seattle and they were no doubt discovering her. The only bit of advice offered to her by her father was etched on the back of a postcard with a thirsty jackass on the front. It read: Stay away from boys and men. It surely upset the girl’s mother to have to agree with him. He could hear her adding, “—men like your father.” It was sound advice. It was the very advice he offered most women both before and after he slept with them.

  He wondered how his daughter imagined him, whether her mother had, sadly, painted a reasonably clear picture. Was he, in the girl’s eyes, a bum who hustled young women in galleries? Was he the artist whose work she’d seen in the several art magazines in which he’d been featured over the last ten years, vital, bright, innovative? He laughed to himself, at himself, contemplating which in fact he was. He was a little of both or all of the former. Elaine’s mother’s desire to be a liberal had certainly supported a more favorable portrayal of her father, lest her hatred of him be construed as racially rooted.

  The highway became the main thoroughfare of Taos. Gas stations, taco joints, adobe motels lined the road which seemed perpetually under construction. He rolled on, slowed to a dusty crawl into town center. He pulled into the plaza and drove around the square, out a side street. He parked near the library, opened the back of his station wagon and took out three canvases.

  “Evan!” came a voice.

  He shut the tailgate and looked up to see a middle-aged woman at the gate of the library courtyard. “Hello, Gert,” he said.

  “Hello, Gert? Is that all I get? I haven’t seen you in three months.” She stepped toward him.

  “Long time no see?”

  She was smiling and shaking her head as they embraced. She leaned back, her hands on his shoulders. “You’re looking good.”

  “Go ahead and finish it. ‘For an old man.’”

  “Hardly.”

  “You look good, too. How’s it going?”