AN ELEMENT RIDE

AN ELEMENT RIDE

By

Les Clark

When it’s late October in New England, and a light but deceptive drizzle is falling, and you’ve been on this Earth long enough to know the meteorologists are in their glory predicting inclement weather, your umbrella and snow shovel better be rubbing shoulders by the front door.

That was me, Mikey Trenton, with his hand out looking skyward at roiling grey clouds sending out their first drops. It was light enough for me without getting blinded but enough for my sweatshirt to get dotted. I looked at my bird feeder. Nothing seems to bother three or four varieties of sparrows noshing on what this company thinks is gourmet seeds mixed in with chopped almonds and raisins.

A while back, I ran out of my trail mix and had, you know, one of those brief bizarre whisps of irrationality of crunching a handful of theirs as I was about to fill this squirrel-proof thing for the umpteenth time. Haha. I watch them gathering in groups sizing up how to successfully assault the goods costing me ten or more bucks a week. Three fence panels down a mated pair of mourning doves squatting on the rim were giving me the sad eye. When one of them cooed, guilt overtook me.

“Sorry,” I yelled.

Now, I’m in the yard, waiting for a good storm to quench the grass I mowed earlier today. I think it’s the last cut of the year before I service my mower for the last time.

Amy, my wife, came out but stayed under the safety of the porch.

“You hoping for the rain to water those endangered hairs on your head, Honey?” she said, leaning against a pergola support.

“Snarkiness is not your long suit, Love.” It was coming down harder, using my emerging bald spot as a target. I could hear the drops pinging on the metal roof of the feeder. There was a flutter of wings as the last of those fat balls of fluff took refuge in the trees. I took the hint and joined Amy. She hooked her arm in mine. A cool breeze urged us toward the patio door.

I didn’t like the way the weather had changed. It’s always fast in the Northern Kingdom. Amy made tea while we listened to the wind whipping around our home, a log cabin I’d erected on a plot Grandpa had handed to him by generations of Grandpas going back to Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys. This thing is solid, warm, filled with everything we need. We sit surrounded by oak, maple, fir and often visited by black bear, moose, bobcat and hikers hoping to use our bathroom. We Vermonters tolerate all, even the occasional kid from town at Halloween. We’re careful about separating kids and bears when they trick or treat. The kids get the good maple candies. The bears get whatever they want.

Tonight, we listened to heavy rain battering the house. Amy looked out the bay window.

“Those drops are getting fatter and fatter, Hon.” Her face was golden framed by the porch light. After I darkened the room, we turned the living room chairs around to watch nature play checkers with the remaining leaves leaf-peepers paid good money to view from the safety of their tourist busses.

Me? I got to rake them hourly and free of charge in September and early October. I make mulch piles with fertilizer and dirt and by spring, when the worms have done their job, I have brand new soil. We have more than enough eggplant and tomatoes and cukes to fill our farm stand five times over and still have enough for ourselves to last the winter. Amy won a blue ribbon for her gherkins in town last year. The kid we gave maple candies to last Halloween was one of the judges. I see nothing; I know nothing.

Tonight, the rain is coming down straight. Well, for a while. The porch light has turned it into a kaleidoscope. It’s almost hypnotic. Amy got up and after a few minutes, brought back two glasses of red wine. When weather is unscripted, who needs reruns on TV, the laugh track following every faux comedic line or the contrived crime shows.

This is New England, you know, which someone once said if you wait five minutes, the weather will change. We were getting mellow from the wine, the warmth of the fireplace and the soft patter of the rain when things went south.

“Mikey!” Amy said with mild alarm after a weak thud came from the roof. “I know what that is. We’re getting bonked.”

From above, there was one, then several and finally a continuous pelting of hail bounced off our house. We turned to the front window where Mother Nature had decided to drop thousands of perfect, baseball-sized balls of ice. Rat-a-tat! Rat-a-tat for minutes on end. Good thing they were vertical and not sideways. Amy took every seat cushion and built a castle wall around her like we used to do when the kids were toddlers.

“Very dramatic, Love. I’m posting that picture for the world to see.” Amy is an Army veteran so marital threats like that have no effect. “When I was a little kid, Amy, thunder and lightning sent me right under the kitchen table. My grandmother would say ‘Michael, it’s just the angels bowling.’”

My wife’s arm snaked out of her upholstered stronghold.” I shouted, “Are you laughing at me?” as the barrage on the roof, I thought, might register on the Richter scale. She pushed up a cushion. “Wanna get under the kitchen table, Mikey?...Wink, wink.”

I joined her, instead, on the couch and made a tent with her mother’s Afghan. “Remember Greenfield Street, A?”

Before the kids made their appearances, our first home was in a hardscrabble mill town north of Boston. We bought a small cape on a postage stamp lot. We loved the shade from several oaks in the back yard. Being young and ill-informed, no one told us about oaks. During the first late fall, we thought the neighbor kids next door were chucking fireworks onto our lower back roof. It was acorns. Acorns by the bucketful. They fell like meteorites. Moses never had a plague like this. I wished I had my dad’s World War Two air raid helmet, a carryover from the previous war. When the bombardment first started, I went out the back stairs to see what the heck was going on. Boink. Boink! BOINK!

Giggling, Amy hugged me. “Those nuts almost knocked you out, Hon. I coulda been a nut widow.”

“Remember how we met the neighbors? I realized I couldn’t rake those acorns, so I used my shop vac to suck them up.”

My wife rested her head on my chest, snuggled tightly against me. “Yes. You burned that thing out. Smoke blotted out the sun. The earth went cold.”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” I mumbled. But she kept on.

“Then Pete came over with his vac and a six pack. You know what his wife and I called your efforts?”

We bust out laughing. “Don’t say it,” I said. “Remember, you’re a lady.”

“Mikey. Listen.”

The heaven-sent fusillade had stopped. Aside from our crackling fire, it was dead quiet. Cuddled under that heavy blanket, we fell asleep. Filmy sunlight made its way through our east window, enough to rouse us. We yawned and stretched.

“I’ll be right back,” Amy called over her shoulder.

I put on my slippers and shuffled to the side door. I took a few steps onto the patio, kicking feathery snowflakes out of my way. The air was brisk, invigorating. My chest filled with clean freshness. I let the soft snow fall on my head, marveling at so many acres blanketed in white.

Amy followed in my footsteps. She wrapped her arms around my waist. “God, that is so beautiful,” she whispered into my shoulder. For a few minutes, we let the snow envelop us.

“Cocoa?”

“Cocoa.”