The day started out dark with the clouds twisting viciously in the sky. Rain fell and stopped. Fell and stopped. It was a black day, an appropriate day for the donkey to die. It didn’t have to happen, of course, but it did. The donkey was old, but he was in good shape and he enjoyed walking around the pasture. His name was Junior and he waited for his master to come out with treats. Instead, two drunk teenagers drove down the road and saw the donkey. They decided to put a bullet through his left eye and two in his heart. The donkey would no longer meet his friends at the gate.
Mid-autumn in east Texas and the weather is always unpredictable. My neighbors and I stood on the banks of Cyrrus Creek and watched the bank climb higher.
“Last flood was ten years ago,” Luther Adams said. “We have been lucky for a long time.”
“I’m going to go ahead and start sandbagging my lot,” Sarah Holmes said. “I don’t trust this creek anymore. It winds along with one snake eye, just watching us, picking out our weak places.”
“Did you hear about Junior, the donkey?”
“Yes, wasn’t it a shame? That donkey had been in the family for fifteen years.”
“It’s a pity all right.”
I looked for Russell, my black Lab. He had taken off down the trail. “Russell, COME NOW!” He stared back at me with his forehead wrinkled, like I was someone he used to know and kinda liked. “I do mean now!” Reluctantly he stopped perusing for rodent creatures and turned around. He sauntered toward me, disappointed that we couldn’t go for a hike.
“Well, I’m going in the house for awhile, but I’m not going in to work to draw those darn cartoons today. They’ll just have to use a filler for my space. If anything changes, let me know.” I waved goodbye to my neighbors standing forlornly on the bank of the creek.
Russell and I hit the back porch and the phone was ringing. My Aunt Martha was on the line.
“How does the river look?”
“Not too good, “I’m afraid.”
“I heard about that poor little donkey,” said Aunt Martha.
“Yes, I know, the family is quiet upset.”
“It’s a tragedy, the animal was old and they weren’t going to have him much longer anyway. I don’t understand people, what gives them the right?”
“Nobody knows. Kids are angry these days, I think the whole world is angry sometimes.”
“Well, I know things look dark now, but cheer up. The rain is gonna stop someday and it will settle down. Meanwhile, keep an eye on that river, you know if you want, my door is open,” she said.
“Thanks, don’t worry Aunt Martha,” I said.
I could read between the lines and catch a glimpse of her loneliness and pain. She had worked in an accounting firm for twenty years and they had purchased a new computer system. It wouldn’t be long before Aunt Martha was no longer needed and she knew it. The signs were all there.
“No, you don’t have to stay late and learn the new system, you just go on home and get some rest.” They would tell her. Even with Aunt Martha seeing things as they were, it wasn’t easier to handle emotionally. She had come a long way since the days she had started her life working for a catering company. Aunt Martha learned to lay the tables out and carve the meat and fold everything so nicely. Back then they delivered food to the rich folks along Bayou Bend where the live oaks, moss and magnolias draped the lawns of the Wannabe-Leftovers of old southern charm.
Aunt Martha had decided early on not to spend her life chopping onions and laying out salmon, so she went to night school to become a keeper of books. She liked debiting and crediting and outlining numbers in the green ledger books. Then one day, the computers arrived and those machines could debit, credit and sort much faster than a clerk.
Though I didn’t want to work, I sat at my desk and thought about Lucy Thornbottom, my latest cartoon creation. I could make her sit at a desk with a giant computer looming over her, or even have two little stocking feet sticking out from underneath a giant printer. Automation Attack: where have all the good people gone?
Mid morning approached and the river remained constant. The clouds twisted and churned overhead.
“Come on Russell, let’s go to Aunt Martha’s for awhile,” I said.
She lived further down the river away from the immediate threat of the flood zone, and I was glad because she had plenty of things to worry about. Russell jumped into my jeep. He liked to hang his head out the windows of the car and let the wind blow his ears back. He made a nice contrast to the color. So there we were, Russell with his wild, wind-blown ears, driving down the winding roads to Aunt Martha’s.
Her house stood slightly uphill and had a large front porch. I stood outside on the steps for a few minutes looking around. Clouds swirled in swift, dark concentric circles. I thought about when my cousin Tommy and I were little. Aunt Martha made us chocolate pies and read The Three Little Kittens. Once we made a go cart from some old boards, but something happened with our homemade wheels and the cart wouldn’t roll. I remember hours of trying to get the thing to go down that red, mud hill, but the wheels kept falling off. His brother, Shelton would laugh and make fun of us.
“That’s about the stupidest thing I ever saw!” he laughed.
I tried to conjure up another cartoon image. Maybe something political with two kids in a go-cart and a shiek holding the motor with some sort of caption relating to foreign oil dependence.
Aunt Martha’s house. It really wasn’t a bad place, may be she could just accept retirement and be happy, why not? She was getting too old to be out there fighting the world everyday, but again it wasn’t my decision.
“Ellen, that you? Come on in, I see some bad clouds off in the north there. They have me worried.”
“I can see them, we had better catch the weather,” I said.
Russell whined and lay down on the porch.
“So, you’re not going in tow work today?” I asked.
“No, I called in, I think a lot of people are staying home today.”
“Can’t blame them. Just don’t know what could happen on a day like today, it’s so depressing,” I said. “Well, any news from anybody?”
“Your cousin Shelton called from Chicago the other day.”
“Oh really, so how is he?”
“He’s still playing at being a lawyer,” said Aunt Martha.
“Oh great. Thought he would have gotten tired of telling everybody that garbage up there. Looks like they could see through that southern gentleman crap. You know those clients ought to be able to tell he’s just a paralegal, but he can sure snow them,” I said.
“Someday he’s gonna grow up. He’s not half as bad as you and Tommy made him out to be. Just wait and see,” said Aunt Martha.
Another cartoon image flared up, but I quelled the desire. Lawyer jokes were overdone anyway.
“Guess who I saw the other day?” Martha asked.
“Who?” I responded.
“Wymon Lindly, remember him?”
“Oh my gosh, the preacher of the Christ In Us Church?” I said.
“That’s him. Rain into him down at the corner butcher shop. He was handing out pamphlets. I said, Wymon, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen you. He did manage to say hello, but all the time he was expounding on how true believers don’t celebrate Thanksgiving because they know what their place is gonna be after this world of suffering and sacrifice and that the road to heaven is narrow and growing more so.”
“Yes, it sounds like his standard martyr theme. I can still see him waving those hands and looking down his nose at others. Make yourself miserable because payback time will come when that flock gets to heaven.”
Cartoon examination. I could picture a preacher with long, bony fingers, and deep eyebrows. Maybe even run those eyebrows together. He would be a giant, pointing those fingers out over his flock. I wasn’t sure what the caption should read…
Russell whined and looked uncomfortable. I noticed there was an eerie stillness in the air as though a spider’s web had ensnared us all right here in the little gray world with no promise of sunlight. About that time the radio blared a tornado warning now in effect.
“A tornado has been spotted….all persons in the listening area should take cover immediately….”
“Listen to that, can it really be a tornado?” asked Aunt Martha.
“They didn’t say a word about tornado conditions this morning.”
“Well, I don’t see anything,” I replied.
Somewhere there was a cartoon, maybe something about not being at home anymore, maybe something about searching for a heart. Then we heard it. A noise like a freight train on top of us. Something big and dark had descended upon the house. The walls shook, glass was breaking. We thought the earth would move from underneath as we ran for the closet. We sat in the dark for endless minutes. Me, Aunt Martha, and Russell sitting there looking at one another a midst coat sleeves and Christmas wrapping paper.
“I’ve been meaning to clean out this closet,” said Aunt Martha rather calmly.
“Maybe now that I won’t have a job much longer, I can get to it,” she smiled.
I was surprised. She didn’t sound upset anymore. I looked at her and detected a faint trace of a tear on her cheek.
“It’s okay, dear. It happens, but I still have a long way to go. There’ll be other things to do,” she said.
“Well I’m glad. I agree with you,” I said.
Then a syrupy stillness enveloped us, it was so close that you could cut it with a butter knife. It seemed like an eternity as Aunt Martha asked, “I don’t hear anything, do you think we should step out and see if I have a house left?”
In the house, things weren’t too bad. Twister material, really. We spotted minor damage, mainly the few broken windows, shattered glass on the floor..
“Aunt Martha, I’d say you were lucky.”
“I agree. Never knew what one of those things could do, but I’ve heard about them,” she said.
The radio was sputtering back to life.
“We have a confirmed report…day of disaster as some places along…..Creek have flooded….twisters sporadically touched down….”
Outside, I thought of my jeep. We ran around to the side of the house and looked. There was a trail to the river and I followed it on out. There at the bottom of the river was the jeep turned on it’s side looking like a wounded animal. Metal entwined with metal.
“Doesn’t look like you were as lucky,” said Aunt Martha.
Another cartoon, but my humor was fading fast. Maybe a jeep with big eyes running from a snarling twister with the snake river winding below waiting to capture it.
“High insurance rates, what are the options?”
- “No, guess not,” I said as I looked at the river ebbing, flowing, climbing, rising and running around my jeep in the water.
“Russell and I will be walking for awhile,” I said.
“Oh no, take my car, doesn’t look like the garage was touched,” said Aunt Martha.
“No, I could use the walk home, I want to see what else the tornado has hit,” I said.
“In this weather?” she asked.
“Aunt Martha, the storm is over now, it’s okay.”
“Well, I guess you’re right, it already seems to be clearing up.”
“I need to get started, call me if you need to, I’ll be home,” I said.
“Better call the insurance company first thing,” she said.
Walking on the path homeward, the atmosphere felt as though a war had been fought. A few trees stood like broken soldiers in the battle that had engulfed us all. Russell was happy to finally get out and inspect things. I just wanted to check the river at my end and breathe enough air to stay calm in case any more surprises came my way. I noticed the horses were out in the pasture. They looked like a watercolor painting beneath the gloomy sky. There was no humor here, only the dark side of life and luck. I caught myself looking for Junior, then I felt that sick, lonely empty feeling as sadness enveloped me, and I remembered his plight.
