Free I Will Send Rain by Rae Meadows Page A

bones again.” He handed Fred a small tin of petroleum jelly. “Wipe it in your nose.” Fred shook his head with distaste. “Go on. It’ll keep the grit out some.”
    Fred smeared the goo inside his nostrils, disgusted by its cool sliminess. He wiped his hand on his shirt and then pouted, picking at the cottonwood bark.
    â€œYou okay?”
    Fred pulled out his notepad and flipped to a page.
    â€œCan’t God make it rain?”
    Samuel couldn’t help but smile a little.
    â€œI ask myself the same question. I mean, yes, I suppose God could make it rain. But why He doesn’t, I don’t know.”
    Fred found his pencil. “Noah?”
    â€œNoah? You know that story. God was saddened by the wickedness of man who he created.”
    â€œGod sent rain,” Fred wrote.
    Samuel nodded. “He did.”
    â€œHe’s sad again?” Fred wrote. He coughed and wiped at his nose. When He was done punishing them with drought, would He punish them with rain?
    â€œIt will come again,” Samuel said. “The rain. I’m sure of it.”
    They sat together for a long while, the shade shifting, the sun hot on their necks.
    Fred thought about rain, the rising water. He found a clean page in this notebook and began to draw. When he was finished, he held it up to his father.
    It was a picture of a boat.
    *   *   *
    S AMUEL, WRENCHED FROM sleep, found himself dry-mouthed and shaken, alone in the bed. He had the momentary, sleep-gauzed panic that Annie had deserted him. He careened into the kitchen. She was sitting at the table with a cup of tea gone cold.
    â€œI was worried,” he said, “when you weren’t there.”
    â€œI couldn’t sleep.” Her hair was messy, her prominent collarbones visible above her nightgown. She looked away.
    â€œI’m sorry if I kept you up. A bad dream,” he said. “Another one.”
    He wanted her to ask him about it, but she was quiet and suddenly he felt shy about sitting down at his own table. He had not told her about his visit to Pastor Hardy the week before. In the light of day there never seemed a good time to bring it up. He pulled out a chair, the scrape loud against the floorboards in the night quiet. She recoiled, the slightest retraction of her shoulders. And Samuel had the awful urge to slap her.
    Annie smiled at him as he sat, and he was grateful for that.
    â€œHungry?” she asked.
    â€œYes,” he said, though he wasn’t. “Or a little brandy maybe?”
    She nodded. “I’ll get the glasses.”
    Samuel reached behind the sack of cornmeal on top of the icebox and got down the bottle, pulling out the cork with a satisfying thwop. He poured a finger for her and two for him.
    â€œRemember that first night?” he asked. “There was that tear in the canvas of the wagon and if we scooted to one side we could see the moon through it?”
    She nodded and smiled, hands around her jelly jar of brandy.
    â€œI was scared we’d get eaten by coyotes. Or the horses would run away and we would be stuck in the middle of nothing,” she said.
    They had arrived at their parcel, marked by a small stake with a number painted on it, barely visible in Indian grass two feet high. Their horse-drawn wagon was lined with a mattress, and around it were packed tools and jugs of water and boxes of canned food. Roped to the back was a trunk filled with dresses, linens, and dishes her mother had insisted they take. It was 1916. The wind carried the cow stink from the ranches over miles of grassland. They had been jittery from the bumpy trek south over the plains. The next day they would start digging out their house. But they could do little in the dark. So they lay together in the wagon, and as he held his wife in the cool spring evening Samuel had felt blessedness swell deep in his chest. Annie Bell, he had said. Annie Bell.
    Samuel finished his drink with a