Hot Summer Rain

Hot, hot breezes blow through the yard while we play by the warm glow of the Security Light. Lightning bugs waver unsteadily in the force of the wind. Glancing up from our game, we see bursts of light behind the dark clouds in the distance. A thunderstorm is rolling in.

The first fat raindrops fall one at a time. Plop. On my elbow. Plop. On top of my head. Plop. On my brother’s eyebrow. Plop. Plop. Plop. As the hot dust under our feet turns to gooey muddy madness, we run and jump and shout and twirl, soaking the rain into our skin.

“Get in here! You’re going to get struck by lightning!” Nana calls from the front door.

Grudgingly, we take our time trudging, jumping, splashing our way back to the house.

The inside air is sharp and cold against our hot, wet skin. We shiver and toss our wet clothes on the floor, instead piling on socks and sweats and blankets. Nana brings us a Zebra cake and sweet tea as we watch blocky images dance across the TV screen. The jolting, robotic voices and stuttering scenes mean that the storm is blocking satellite reception. Soon we only see a black screen with floating blue words telling us we need to check with our service provider. The signal has been lost. Outside, rain drums against the windows and thunder threatens to shake the whole valley awake.

We lose power. Nana starts lighting candles all over the house, which were standing at the ready just in case of an outage. We all end up in the living room, our faces glowing warmly in the candlelight, and I feel like we’ve stepped back in time. Every Little House on the Prairie story I’ve ever read is coming to life in our living room. Well, except for the one about tying up a pig’s bladder and using it to play catch.  In this moment, we all sit quietly, almost reverently silent, watching the flames dancing at their stations around the room and listening to the rain.

In the morning, the ground is damp and springy and giant earthworms slither and creep through the yard. Grandma Dori told me once that a little boy found a bunch of earthworms and picked them up, but they were actually baby snakes and they bit him and he died. I have been terrified of making that same mistake ever since. When the worms get too wiggly in my hand, I’m certain I have made that fatal error and toss them quickly to the ground.

In the misty morning sun, our yard has become a tropical rainforest with trilling birds and chirping insects and heavy humidity. Another summer storm has come and passed. We race to the creek knowing it will be full and flowing. Our next Summer Adventure awaits.

When the nights get cooler and the dark comes sooner, my brother and I play in the light cast by the Security Light. A power line runs through the yard, and we play a game. The high, thick, black cord is our target. A small Nerf football, with little holes chewed in the sides, is lobbed back forth across the wire. You get points based on “over it,” “under it,” or “hit it!” You get the most points when you hit it. We play this game for hours. Talking about everything and nothing, all at once.

At Christmas, we got fake laptops. The kind that look like real computers but are really full of dumb learning games like Hang Man and a music maker. Instead of using it to learn math or “spot the noun,” we play like we are in Twister and we run behind the tool shed, dodging tornados and trying to calculate the next likely touchdown in our area. My brother got a Terminator doll – excuse me, action figure – for Christmas too. When you push the buttons he says, “Hasta la vista… babay” and “Aisle be bach.” His arm is plastic flesh, and you can see the machinery underneath the skin.

Someone, Mom or Dad, tied up an old tire to the side of the barn and I practice pitching to it. I hate practice. I always get tired, and then I get worse, and then they want to make me stay longer until I get better again. But I’m not going to get better. At least, not tonight. They keep making me pitch the ball at the tire, trying to hit it dead-center, right through the heart. Those are strikes. "Keep going until you get 10 strikes." I hate it.

When I’m not playing or practicing, I’m reading. I read everything. I get in trouble for it sometimes.

“Sarah, we’re going to watch this movie as family. Come inside right now or you won’t get to watch it at all,” they say.

“But I only have 2 chapters left!” Oh, the humanity!

“Fine. Stay out here and read, but don’t think you can come in and watch it with us later. You made your choice.”

But I don’t care if I miss the movie. I’m reading about someone far away from here, someone grownup and free and setting out on exciting adventures and falling in love. Who cares if there’s a ghost man who plays on the basketball team? The Sixth Man is a dumb name for a movie, anyway. You can’t have six players on the court at one time. Everybody knows that.

Okay, maybe I do kind of want to watch it. Too late. I chose the book and now I can’t go in. That’s what you get when you make choices around here. Stick-to-it-iveness. Even when it’s against your will. I sit and read by the light of the Security Light, content in this other world that I wish was mine. Somewhere far away...

It’s so dark here. Security lights form constellations, lining the neighbors’ driveways up and down the road. Cars pass and their high beams cause the deer and dogs in the pasture to have eerie, glowing blue-green eyes. Looking up at the sky on a cloudless night, you can see every single star that ever existed, and then some. The moon is huge and round and sometimes has dark blots on it, but sometimes it’s perfectly smooth and shiny.

The bats love the security light. They flutter and flap and seek out their prey - the bugs. The bugs are drawn to the security light in the drive way, and at night we watch the bats swoop and swerve as they make chase. A life-or-death game of "Tag, you're it."

Crickets and katydids and bullfrogs and whip-poor-wills perform a flawless evening symphony. On some dark nights, we camp out in the camper on The Hill. Nana’s family graveyard is here. I don’t mind the graves during the day, but at night it is spooky and scary and I’m afraid our family ghosts are going to decide to take one of us back under the soil with them.

As we get ready for bed in the camper, Papaw pulls out the cassette player. It’s small and portable and shaped like a Troll, the collectible ones with neon hair and jewels for bellybuttons. We have a set of bedtime stories on tape, but always listen to the same one. It’s about Frances and she’s not ready for bed. She keeps putting off sleep by asking her parents for a glass of milk or other favors. Eventually, she has to stay in bed but then cracks start to grow in the ceiling and the shadows grow on the floor and she gets really scared too, hugging her teddy bear. We must have played this same story a thousand times. We don’t have speakers, but we all listen carefully. “Shh. Be quiet,” we scold each other.  Our heads so close together, our breath mingling. We lay silent and still, listening to the headphones with the volume cranked to the max.

One night, Troy and maybe Papaw bring home their trophies after gigging frogs. They have the most enormous toads on a string. Really, it’s twine with a metal piece in the shape of needle on one end and a big knot on the other end. You shove the frogs on one by one, stabbing them through the belly. They are still alive. Somehow, they end up dead and someone starts cleaning and battering and frying up the legs. Frog legs. We eat them.

They also have a snake. It’s long and thick and shiny in the moonlight. Someone tells us to stand back, and we press against the slats on the porch, forming a sort of stage. The head of the snake is sliced off. I don't get to see. But it dies. And yet it doesn’t. Its body continues jerk and thrash and its poisony snake blood slings everywhere, forming tiny blood rivers on the boards of the porch.

All the while, the bats are circling overhead, sticking close to the security light, chasing bugs, paying us no mind. But we aren’t the ones with no minds. That would be the snake.