MARY ROSENBLUM

THE RAINMAKER

Mary Rosenblum is currently working on a mystery series set in Hood River,
Oregon. The first novel Devil's Trumpet is due out in about six months.

Mary calls this new story an example of "American Magic Realism," but it seems
to me we need a better term, something akin to "Southern Gothic" that could
apply to stories of the Pacific Northwest (like the recent novels of Nina
Hoffman and Jack Cady). Hmm, that's a bit of a stumper. Fortunately for us all
we don't need labels to enjoy poignant stories like this one that explore
classic American myths.

SO HE'S A FRAUD?" DAD SAID.

"Well, have you ever heard of a genuine rain-maker?" Uncle Kenny cut a neat
triangle out of his stack of pancakes. "Sandy, I swear these could be Mom's
hotcakes. I never could get 'em right."

"You'd say anything for a free breakfast, little brother." Mom ruffled his hair
the way she does mine, and she flipped three more of the browned cakes onto a
plate. "Better eat these, Donny, before your uncle talks me out of 'cm. So how
come you don't arrest this man, if he's a fraud? You're 'the Sheriff." She
planted her hands on her hips. "It's a crime, cheating folks around here. Who
has any money to waste, with the cattle market so bad?"

"We sure as hell don't." Dad pushed his chair back. "Got to check those
heifers." He reached for his hat. "We're gonna run out of pasture in about two
weeks," he said in a tired voice. "Guess I'll have to ship a bunch out, in spite
of the beef prices. Once they start losing weight, I won't get squat for 'em
anyhow."

"Hey, you could hire this rainmaker." Uncle Kenny speared the last sticky
forkful of pancake and wiped the syrup from his plate with it.

"I kind of wish I could." Dad wasn't smiling. For a moment he held Uncle Kenny's
narrow stare, then he turned away. My uncle shook his head.

"John sounds like he wants to get religion." He laughed.

Don't, Kenny." Morn was collecting dishes. "It's tough right now."

"It's always tough for him, isn't it? This rainmaker dude is slick." He changed
the subject abruptly. ',He doesn't promise anything. Not in writing, anyway. If
folks want to be stupid and give him money, it's not a crime."

"He's trading on faith." Mom's face had gotten tight. "That's a sin, even if
it's not a crime."

"I sure agree with you." Uncle Kenny sighed, and kissed her as he got to his
feet. "Wish you made the laws, Sis. So, Donny-boy." He grinned down at me. "You
ready to ride?."

Mom was looking at me, and I had to say yes. I'd been just about willing to kill
to ride with Uncle Kenny, sitting shotgun beside him as he tooled the green and
white Sheriff's Department Jeep through the sage that was mostly what makes up
Hamey County. Everybody liked Uncle Kenny. It used to make me feel real
important, seeing how respectful everyone treated him. I licked my lips, trying
to think of an excuse not to go. "Sure," I finally said, and pretended not to
notice Mom's eyes get 'narrow.

"You'll make a good deputy, kid." He slapped me on the shoulder -hard enough to
hurt. "Let's go."

Uncle Kenny put his sunglasses on when he got into the car. I didn't say much as
we drove back into town. It was hot, and I had the window down all the way, but
the July heat washed over me, making me hotter. There isn't much to Bums. The
high school. A few streets on either side of highway 20. A lot of sage beyond
that, in gray-green clumps. You got rocks, too, and dust the color of a buckskin
mustang's hide. I saw a ghost in the distance, just walking through the sage. He
was carrying a bucket.

I see them a lot -- the ghosts. Sometimes I think the desert preserves them,
like it does the old homesteaders' cabins that are scattered all through the
sage. Or maybe the ghosts are everywhere, but it's just easier to see them out
here. I told my morn about them when I was six. She went in the bedroom and
cried, after. I heard her through the door. I never talked about 'em after that.
They don't pay us any attention anyway. I wonder if they even know we're here?

"You're sure talkative," Uncle Kenny spoke up. "Can't shut you up for a second.
Something eating at you, Donny-boy?"

"No sir." I could feel his eyes on me, but I couldn't stop looking at the ghost.

"Maybe we need to talk," he said in a real quiet voice.

I sneaked a quick look at him then, and yeah he was looking at me. I stared at
my twin faces in the mirrored surface of his glasses, and my stomach kind of
folded in on itself, so I could feel the lump of the pancakes I'd eaten. Then
his head jerked a little and he turned sharp without warning, so that I had to
grab the door. We were pulling into the parking lot of the motel across the
street from the high school, tires squealing. No siren.

This was Wednesday in late July. The lot should have been empty -too early in
the day for the truckers to be stopping, or the folks passing through on their
way to somewhere else. But it was full -- so full that Uncle Kenny pulled up
behind two big Ford rigs slantwise, not even bothering to look for a parking
space. A green and orange patio umbrella stuck up over the crowd at the back of
the lot, out where the asphalt left off and the sage began. Everybody was back
there, crowding around like it was a booth at the county fair.

"Let's go, Donny." Uncle Kenny threw off his seatbelt like he was mad. "Time to
further your education."

Relieved, I scrambled out after, wondering if I could find someone I knew and
get myself invited over for the afternoon. Uncle Kenny would buy that.

The crowd around the umbrella parted to let my uncle through, and I followed,
looking hard for a face...any face. I saw a bunch of people I knew --Mr. Franke,
who managed the Thriftway, and the lady who always worked the cash register at
the Payless. No kids, though. Then I saw Mrs. Kramer, my English teacher. I
stopped short, like I was skippin, g school, even though it was summer. It made
me feel funny, seeing her there in blue jeans like anybody, with my uncle
pushing past her.

"We see the world clearly, when we're children." A man's rich voice rose over
the murmur of the crowd. It sounded like velvet feels and it sent shivers down
my back. "When we're very young, we believe what we see. It's only as we grow up
that we learn to doubt B to disbelieve the things that we once knew were real.
When we were children, we knew we could summon the rain -- or wish it away."

"I don't remember making it rain." Mrs. Kramer spoke up in her late-homework
tone and I craned my neck trying to see, because I bet that guy was cringing.

"Our yesterdays change to suit today's belief." The man sounded like he was
smiling. "Haven't you ever listened to the arguments at a family reunion.* You
don't really need me, but if you can't remember how to bring the rain
yourselves, you can pay me to do it."

I forgot about Uncle Kenny and pushed forward, not even noticing who I was
shouldering past. The man's words made me shiver again -inside this time, like
taking too deep a breath of frosty winter air. I was waiting for Mrs. Kramer to
cut him off at the knees, like she does when you tell her how the goat ate your
homework, but she didn't say anything.

"You got a vendor permit, mister?" Uncle Kenny spoke quietly, but everybody
stopped talking right away. He was like that. He could walk into a noisy bar and
talk in a normal voice and everybody would shut up to hear him. "You got to have
a permit to peddle stuff in this town." He stepped forward, and I could see the
man now, squinting from the umbrella's shade. He didn't look like he sounded. He
was small, kind of soft and pudgy, with a round sweating face and black hair
that More would have wanted to neaten up. I was disappointed, I guess.

"I'm sorry, Sheriff." He spread his hands. "I didn't know I needed a permit to
talk."

"Folks work hard for their money around here." My uncle hooked his thumbs in his
gun belt. "The government takes a big bite and maybe, if beef prices are high
enough, we can pay the mortgage and feed our kids on what's left." He paused,
looking around at the faces that surrounded him. Everybody had moved back a
little, making a ring, like you do when there's a fight out behind the gym.
"What you do should be against the law." He turned his attention back to the
little man. "It isn't, but we don't have to put up with your slimy kind." He let
his fingers curl loosely over the top of his holstered .44. The little man
nodded at the gun, his lips pursed.

"Are you threatening to beat me up or shoot me?" he asked mildly.

The silence around us got real tight and I looked away, thinking of the winter
night when I had watched through the steamed-up windshield as Uncle Kenny beat
up this ranch hand who'd been starting a lot of ugly bar fights in town.
"Sometimes you got to know the right language," he had said when he returned to
the car. He had wiped the blood from his hands carefully on a towel he pulled
from under his seat. "Jail doesn't scare his kind much. But now-- he'll mind his
manners. I'm just tryin' to save him from knifing somebody one night, and
getting himself a prison sentence for it."

I'd believed him. I watched my uncle's lips tighten.

"Tell you what," he said in a hard voice. "You're so sure you're God's
messenger, Mister Rainmaker, let's make a little wager. You make it rain on my
place, I'll pay triple your fee." He tilted his head slowly back to stare at the
hot, hard sky. Not a cloud anywhere-- not even a wisp of cirrus. "It don't rain,
then you move on and don't ever set foot in Hamey County again." He lowered his
head, his eyes as hard as the sky. "You willing to put it on the line,
Rainmaker?'

Whatever you want." The man shrugged. "But I don't make rain. I just call it."

"How 'bout you call it right now?"

"I can start right now." The Rainmaker pursed his lips into a little frown. "It
takes time for weather to happen. I don't do Hollywood special effects. We're
talking a shift in the jet stream, cold fronts and warm fronts. Big masses of
air and moisture. Takes time to move that much around."

"Yeah, got you." Uncle Kenny turned around slow, talking to the crowd now. "So
if it rains sometime next Christmas, you did it?" He winked. "That's how it
works?" People laughed, but the clear space got bigger around the umbrella and
the little man. Only Ms. Kramer didn't move .

"I don't think my cows can wait till Christmas," someone said.

"It won't take that long." The man answered solemnly, as if Uncle Kenny had
asked a real question. "Couple of days -- maybe four." He shrugged. "When it
gets close, I'll let you know."
"And it'll rain right on my land, huh.? Just there?"

"Why not our south pasture?" I spoke up. "Grass'd sprout in a couple of days
back there if it rained. Dad could put the heifers in instead of sellin' 'era."
I looked at my uncle. "You don't have any cattle. You don't need the rain."

"Good idea." Hiram Belker, our neighbor to the east, spoke up from the crowd.
"Maybe some of that there water'll land on my back forty." He guffawed -- was
answered by more laughter.

"Why not?" Uncle Kenny slid his sunglasses into place and turned his shiny
mirrored gaze on me. "Hell, do my poor brother-in-law a favor. We'll make it a
public event. I'll put up a notice on the bulletin board in the Courthouse lobby
when our wizard here decides the rain's comin'. We can party." He grinned around
at the crowd. "Don't forget your umbrellas, folks."

He turned away and people turned with him, like he'd given an order. I looked to
see if the Rainmaker was mad about that, but he just looked tired. He noticed me
looking and gave me a small smile. I smiled back, wondering how he meant to do
it, then flinched as my uncle's hand landed hard on my shoulder.

"How 'bout we go get a burger, Donny-boy? We can watch for the clouds to show
up."

"It's kind of early for lunch." My voice sounded squeaky.

He opened his mouth to reply, but just then one of my uncle's' deputies tapped
him on the shoulder. "Kenny? Ronny Carter just called in." He shook a Marlboro
out of the squashed pack in his uniform pocket. "You'll never guess what he
found out in the sage on his summer range-over by White Horse Creek? The Roias
kid's old beater Chevy."

"Is he sure it's Rojas's?" Uncle Kenny pushed his hat back on his head. "I
thought he took off to Mexico to visit his mother, way back in November. Did he
find a body.?"

"Nope." The deputy dragged on his cigarette and blew out a blue lungful of
smoke. "Found the registration. Coyotes had all winter."

Uncle Kenny turned to me. "Let's go, Donny-boy."

"Excuse me." The Rainmaker had finished folding his umbrella. "I don't know my
way around here." He brushed dust carefully from gray slacks that looked prissy
alongside the jeans everybody else pretty much wore. "Perhaps your nephew could
show me where you expect this to fall? Or are you free to escort me?"

"Sure," I said, before Uncle Kenny could say anything. 'I'll show you."

Uncle Kenny just looked at me, long and hard, and then shrugged and spat.
"Whatever you want, kid." He turned his back on us, and walked off with his
deputy.

The motel lot was almost empty now. The crowd had left a scatter of crumpled
burger wrappers, pop cups, and cigarette butts to mark where it had been. I
remembered our one trip to the beach, when I was eight --how the tide had left
the same litter of dead seaweed, trash, and broken shells on the clean white
sand. I'd found a dead seal, all bloated, with empty eye sockets and grinning
yellow teeth. There were ghosts there, too-- harder to see, like shadows, but
they were there.

"What's your name?" The Rainmaker was looking at me with this thoughtful sort of
expression.

"Donald," I said.

"Dimitri." He offered me a pudgy hand and I shook it solemnly. Dimitri sounded
foreign. Russian or something. "Saturday hours are precious ones," he went on.
"Thank you for giving up a few of them for me. Here." He handed me the folded
umbrella, nodded at a dusty blue Dodge Caravan parked on the far side of the
lot.

It wasn't a good car for the desert. But when he opened the back, I saw camping
gear, some canned stuff in a box, and a couple of five-gallon water jugs. Full.
Okay, he wasn't stupid anyway. I got into the front seat beside him, wondering
how he'd explain it when the rain didn't come. "What?" I said, when he just sat
there staring at me.

"Your seatbelt."

I buckled it. Only Morn ever nagged me about the seatbelt. "Left on Highway
Twenty," I said. "Take the first right after the gas station."

He turned the key, frowned as the engine sputtered. When it finally caught, he
gunned it and pulled out of the motel lot. Clogged fuel injectors, I wanted to
tell him. Pour some cleaner in the gas tank before you have to pay to get 'era
fixed. "Turn here," I said, when we got to the track that led back to our spring
pasture. 111 get the gate. A ghost was walking along the fence line as if he was
checking the wire. He had a weathered face and wore tattered work pants held up
by suspenders. I waited until he passed by before I unhooked the wire gate and
pulled it aside.

When I climbed back into the front seat, the Rainmaker was staring at the place
where the ghost had vanished. He looked at me, nodded, but didn't say anything
more as we bounced slowly along the track. Something metal was rattling in the
back. Pots and pans, sounded like.

"Do you really call the weather?" I licked my dry lips, wishing he'd go faster
so we'd get a breeze. "Or are you a phony?"

"That's a refreshingly direct question." He chuckled. "Your uncle thinks I'm a
phony." We topped a rise and the Rainmaker halted the car. Turned off the engine
and opened the door. "This feels like a good place," he said.

He walked away from me and stopped right on the edge of the slope. A pronghorn
lifted her head from the sage, eyed us for a second, then trotted slowly away,
her white sides flashing in the scorching sun. I wiped my face on my sleeve. I
swear the Rainmaker wasn't even sweating. He stood there, looking like he was
standing on a city street, just staring out at the sage and rock and dust that
stretched to the horizon. This time of year, dry as it was, there wasn't any
grass left to speak of. Just sage, and greasewood, and rabbit brush.

I got out, too, thinking that this was stupid, that this guy was a scare, and
he'd wave his hands around, and then sneak off when nobody was looking. And I
realized I was thinking all this in my uncle's voice. So I quit. And just
listened to the desert. It talks, you know. Real quiet-- the sound of dust
sifting against rock, and wind whispering through sage stems, sand shifting
under a mule deer's hoof or a jackrabbit's paws. It doesn't notice us much. I
told More about that, too. Once. She didn't cry, but it bothered her. I could
tell.

The Rainmaker stood there in the blazing sun, arms at his sides, just staring
into space with this kind of distant look on his face. And for a moment...just a
few seconds, I guess...I felt something. It was like the air got solid. I don't
mean I couldn't breathe or anything. But it was like I could feel it -- the air,
could feel the clouds in it, hung up and leaking on the Cascade Mountains, could
feel the cool dampness beyond them where all that water evaporating from the
summer ocean was pushing inward. And I could feel...a weak spot. Where that nice
damp air could push our way.

A ground squirrel scuttled over my toes. I jumped back, startled, and lost the
feeling. Figured I'd just imagined it. I kicked a shower of dust after the
vanished critter. Looked up to see the Rainmaker smiling at me.

"Tomorrow evening" he said, like he was agreeing with me. "We were lucky --
finding that weakening in the high pressure ridge."

I nodded and swallowed. Because his eyes were older even than old Mr. Long's,
and he was a hundred and two, The Rainmaker looked out over Dad's pasture again,
and now he just looked sad. "It's tough to believe in what you see," he said
softly. "When everyone knows it can't be true. Come on. I'll take you home."

I shivered, and didn't answer him as I got back into the car. He drove me back
down the track, and then up the main driveway to our house. And it wasn't until
I had gotten out at the front door and he was driving away that I realized I'd
never told him where I lived.

THE SKY WAS CLEAR that night, with just a sliver of a moon, and the Milky Way
swept a white path across the sky, so clear that you could believe that it was a
road, like in the old Indian tales, where you could ride a horse up it, right up
into that sky.
"Hey, it's gonna rain tomorrow." Uncle Kenny had dropped by for dinner, like he
did just about every night. "Can't you tell?"

"I'd sure take it, if it came." Dad popped another beer. "Hell, I'd pay the
man." He helped himself to a slice of meat loaf with a grunt. "Pass me the
potatoes, will you, Sandy?"

"Did I tell you we found the Rojas kid's car?" Uncle Kenny said. "Back along
White Horse Creek." He reached for the meat loaf. "I guess the coyotes cleaned
things up."

"Julio ?" Mom paused, the steaming bowl of potatoes in her hand. "He went back
to Oaxaca. To visit his mother."

"Guess not?" Uncle Kenny forked meatloaf onto his plate. "Drug deal gone bad, is
my guess."

"No!"

"Don't kid yourself, Sandy." My uncle chewed, reached for his beer. "He was
selling. Everybody knew it."

Hard to believe." Dad tilted his beer can to his lips. "He was a hard worker,
that kid. Worth his pay-- and that's rare enough these days. Kids don't know how
to work anymore. They grow up and figure that an hour with a shovel'll kill
'em." He looked at Mom. "You gonna hold onto those all night?"

Mom looked down at the bowl in her hands. With a jerky movement, she set it in
front of Dad. Then she carried her untouched plate into the kitchen. Uncle Kenny
finished his dinner and went over to click through the TV channels. Dad opened
another beer. I slipped out of the house and walked up the rise behind the barn.
You could see over toward the spring range from up here. Julio used to sit on a
rock that stuck out over the dry wash behind the barn and play his guitar. He
taught me chords. He told me how it was, growing up in Mexico. I told him about
the ghosts once. He told me that his family had a party for the dead every year
--that they're around. Same as us. I was about to go back to the house when I
spotted a ghost walking along the lip of the wash. It disappeared near the rock
where Julio used to sit. Early in the spring, I found some withered flowers on
that rock. I went back to the house where Mom shoved a too-big piece of apple
pie at me and didn't ask me where I'd been.

"Sky cloudin' up yet? Smellin' rain in the air.?" Uncle Kenny laughed and forked
pie into his mouth, but the look he gave me stung like the flick of a quirt.

I told Mom I was tired, and went on up to bed.

"He's in love," I heard Uncle Kenny say as I climbed the stairs.. "He's got all
the signs."
I got onto the bed, but it was still hot up here, even with the fan on. I turned
the light off and just lay on top of my sheets in my T-shirt and shorts. When I
heard Mom's footsteps on the stairs,. I realized I'd been waiting for her to
come up. I pulled the sheet over me and sat up in the dark.

She didn't turn on the light, and she didn't say anything, but I felt the edge
of the bed sink. For a while we both just sat there. The air was thick with heat
up here, and for a moment, I felt it again --clouds, rain, wind -- like a giant
quilt that was constantly changing, shifting, moving above us. "Uncle Kenny's a
good Sheriff, right?" The words sort of came out on their own. I didn't mean to
say anything, hoped she'd let it pass.

"Yes, he is." She brushed the hair off my forehead, like she did when I was
sick. "Julio didn't do it, you know.* Sell drugs. He was so lonely." Her voice
faltered. "He was in love with a girl in Oaxaca. He made up songs for her on his
guitar. What's wrong, Donny?" She had her hand under my chin now, so that I
couldn't look away from her. "What happened between you and Kenny?"

I swallowed, but the .words had balled up in my throat. I could only shake my
head, glad it was dark.

"This is a hard place to live." She stood up. "He's a good man, Donny, even if
he has to be hard, at times. Justice means everything to him. That's why he's
good for the county."

I didn't have anything to say to that. She took her hand away after a while, and
stood up without ,saying anything .more. I lay on 'my back, staring up at the
ceiling for along time after she went downstairs. I heard my uncle drive away in
his county Jeep, I heard my parents come upstairs to bed. Dad stumbled on' the
stairs and it sounded like he fell. Mom said something in the tone she uses when
a cow is having trouble calving. I waited until their door closed, then I got up
and went to the window. It was cool outside now, and the stars still glittered.
But as I leaned over the sill into the night, I could feel the distant rain
pressing against the air,. pushing at it. It was on its way.

I waked before the sun was up and left the house just as it got light. The
eastern sky had gone pink and soft gray as I followed the wash down across the
east pasture. When it rained, the steep-sided little canyon filled up with
water. Fast. My dad and I had had to ride out in a freak storm one spring, to
move cattle out from where they'd holed up in the bottom, before it flooded. I
remember that afternoon real well --lightning breaking across the sky in blue
forks, rain falling in stinging sheets, the homes snorting and trying to bolt.
The cattle milled in the shelter of the willow brush in the bottom, not wanting
to move. Uncle Kenny had showed up on his rangy black mustang to help, still in
uniform because he was on duty. The three of us had finally gotten the twenty or
so cows and calves started up the bank -- just as a wave of brown water had come
foaming down the bed. It had caught my pony, and he had reared, bellydeep in an
instant. I knew we were goners. But then Uncle Kenny had grabbed the reins and
hauled us both out of the flood. "Too cold for swimrain'," he'd said, and
laughed.
I left the wash and climbed the slope, squinting at the first blaze of sun above
the distant horizon. I stopped to get my breath on the ridge. Down below, near
the highway fence, a dusty blue Dodge Caravan was parked by a crooked juniper.
The Rainmaker was sitting on a little folding stool beside the car, a steaming
mug in his hand. He smiled and nodded as I reached him, and stood up as if he'd
been waiting for me to show. "You can tell me the good place for breakfast," he
said.

The good place, he'd said. I thought about that. "The Spur," I said.

The parking lot was crowded. The Rainmaker didn't say anything as he parked at
the edge of the lot. He turned off the engine and started to open the door.

"Can I do it?" I said. My voice sounded too loud, or too soft, I wasn't sure
which.

"Do what?" He didn't turn around to look at me.

"Call the rain." I swallowed. "I can feel it coming. It's gonna get here soon."

"Tonight." He still didn't look at me. I thought he'd be glad, but his shoulders
drooped, the way Mom's did when Dad had to take out the loan to pay the feed
bills. "Yes." He went quiet again for a minute. "You can do it. But once you do
-- you don't live in the same world with everybody else anymore. Think about
that." He opened the door suddenly, letting in a gust of hot dusty wind. Got
out.

I wanted to ask him more -- lots more -- but he wasn't going to answer me, so I
didn't say anything as we went inside. It was crowded. The booths and
formica-topped tables were mostly full and cigarette smoke drifted beneath the
wagon-wheel lights with their yellow globes. It felt .like evening instead of
bright morning. And it got quiet while the waitress hustled us over to a table.
I recognized a couple of faces from the motel parking lot yesterday. And Uncle
Kenny was there-- drinking coffee in his regular booth by the door where he
could see the whole room. He was sitting with one of his deputies, and I could
feel him looking at me as I walked past like I hadn't seen him.

I sat down with my back to him and stared at the typed menu in its plastic
sleeve. The words didn't make any sense, but I wasn't hungry anyway. "Can I have
coffee, please.?" I asked the impatient waitress. "And a cinnamon roll."

The Rainmaker ordered the breakfast special -- steak and eggs with hashbrowns
and toast. He looked up as the waitress bustled away and Uncle Kenny took her
place. "Good morning, Sheriff." He smiled a bland, ' kind of tired smile.

"It ain't raining." Uncle Kenny pulled a chair out with a scrape that sounded
way too loud in the utter silence that now filled the room. "So you chose up
sides, huh, kid?"
From the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of movement. A Gray-haired old man
was making his way down the aisle with a check in his hand. As he reached the
cash register, he vanished.

"I'm talkin' to you, kid." My uncle's tone pulled my head back around like he'd
tied a string to my jaw. "Your mom know you're here?"

I nodded, wondering who the old man had been, why he walked here, and made
myself meet my uncle's eyes. She loves you. The words started swelling inside me
like bread dough. Do you know that? That she loves you? More than me. More than
Dad, even. Little brother.

"Easy," the Rainmaker murmured. Like I'd spoken out loud.

Uncle Kenny looked away-- at the wall, with its pictures of bronc and bull
riders, Warm Springs Indians on rough-coated Paints riding beside cowgirls with
satin shirts, spangles, and silver-mounted tack in rodeo parades. "So when's the
show.*" He pushed his chair back, talking to the Rainmaker like he'd forgotten I
was there. "When do we get our rain.?" He was talking loud and everybody in the
place was listening to him. "Hey, we're spending the money. We want to be there
when the curtain goes up."

"It'll probably rain tonight." The Rainmaker leaned back a little as the
waitress plunked the big oval platter with his steak and eggs down in front of
him, set down the smaller plate piled with toast, and whipped the coffee pot
over his cup. She didn't fill mine, gave me a dirty look like I was drinking
whiskey and not coffee as she paraded away.

"You don't sound too sure." Uncle winked around the restaurant, got chuckles and
skeptical grunts on cue.

"No." The Rainmaker cut a precise rectangle of steak. "Nothing is certain in
real life." He placed the meat neatly in his mouth.

Uncle Kenny snorted and turned his back. "I'll come wait with you tonight." He
didn't look back as he strode across the restaurant. "You all are invited, too."
He gave the room one last grin that seemed to focus on every person there. Got a
couple of hoots in reply. "It's my party. Take the gate just west of the Highway
Motel...north side of the highway. Look for my rig on the road. And bring your
umbrellas." Chuckling, he pushed through the door. I heard his car start up
outside.

The Rainmaker didn't seem to notice the stares as he ate his breakfast. They
made me want to crawl under the table, but I sat up straight and turned my empty
cup around and around, wishing the waitress would give me more coffee. Finally
he was done and we got up to go. When the cashier told us he was $1.50 short, he
looked up at her so sharp she flinched. "He never got his cinnamon roll," he
said, with a nod in my direction.

He had noticed, and not said anything.
I wasn't sure if I was pissed or not.

WE DROVE BACK out to the dry wash where we sat in the shade of a twisted
juniper, watching its shadow creep across the ground. Waiting for the rain, I
guess. The flowers on the rock had blown away a long time ago. "You wore going
to tell me," I said. "How to do it."

"I never said that." The Rainmaker gave me a severe look. "It's not something
you can teach. So you have decided to stop being a part of the human race?"

"You're human." I tossed a pebble at a fence lizard basking under a clump of
bittergrass, watched it scuttle indignantly away. I tossed another when he
didn't say anything. I kept remembering the way people had looked at him in the
restaurant. "It's just because you're a stranger in town." The words didn't
sound very convincing.

"You better tell your mother where you are." He crossed his arms on his knees.
"She's worrying."

I got up, dusting off my jeans. Because she was. Movement flickered across the
draw. The ghost again. You can't see them very well in the bright sun. I don't
think it really shines on them, or even through them. The light sort of covers
them up instead. This one sat on the shelf of rock where the flowers had been.
The Rainmaker noticed him, too. He looked at me and raised one eyebrow, but I
turned my back on him and ran up the side of the wash, and all the way home, so
that I came into the kitchen soaked with sweat.

Mom met me with her fists on her hips, face stiff with anger, as if I'd skipped
my chores. "Kenny told me where you were." Her voice trembled. "You go straight
to your room, young man."

"Why?" I blurted out the word, angry myself, now. "What's wrong with having
breakfast with..." I couldn't remember his name. "With the Rainmaker," I
finished lamely.

"He's a fraud." She got angrier. "Where are your brains?"

"He's not a fraud."

"He's a crook. Cheating people."

"Who has he cheated, huh? You tell me who."

"Kenny said..."

"You always believe Uncle Kenny." I was yelling now. "Uncle Kenny is so damn
perfect. You won't believe me, but anything he says..."

She slapped me.
For a moment I stared at her, face burning where her palm had struck, the sudden
silence ringing in my ears. Then I turned and ran out of the kitchen, pounding
up the stairs to my room. I slammed the door, and threw myself down on the bed.
Mad at her. Mad at myself. Because a part of me had wanted her to tell me for
sure that he was a fraud.

I lay on the bed, waiting for her to come upstairs, watching the sun move across
the cloudless sky and sweating in the still heat of the upstairs. What if it
didn't rain? I wasn't sure how I'd feel about that -- or maybe I just didn't
want to know. But she didn't come upstairs, and that hurt, too. And I guess I
fell asleep after a while, because it was dark when I woke up, and Mom was
setting a tray on my desk.

"I brought your dinner up." She turned on the light and straightened, pushing
wisps of hair back from her forehead. "It must be ninety up here. Why didn't you
turn on the fan?" She snapped on the old box fan, her fingers brisk and
impatient on the switch. The sudden gust of air felt cool on my face, and I
imagined for a second that I could smell rain, the way the animals can.

"Your uncle went down to where that...man is camped." More sounded uneasy. "He's
worried that a lot of people might show up. That they might get...rowdy."

"They'll come because he told 'era to." I didn't look at her. "They'll beat up
the Rainmaker. Because he wants them to."

"No."

"Don't you get it, Mom?." I leaned forward, but she wouldn't look at me. "People
always do what he wants 'em to do."

"Don't talk about your uncle like that." But she said it mechanically, in a dull
tone without anger. "We couldn't make it without him. I couldn't make it." She
got to her feet and walked out of the room.

I went over to the window, a fist squeezing my stomach until I thought I'd be
sick. To the west -- in the direction of the distant ocean -the stars ended in a
band of pure darkness above the horizon. I felt the fist in my stomach loosen a
hair, fixed my eyes on a small pair of dim stars. They vanished. A twinkling
yellow star above them vanished a moment later. "Mom," I called out. "Clouds."

She came back to stand silently beside me at the window. I heard her swallow. '

"Let's go down there," she said softly. "Your dad was going to haul the heifers
to auction tomorrow."

We went downstairs together, tiptoeing through the living room, where my dad
snored on the sofa, one hand loosely curled around a can of beer. I had never
heard him snore before. His face looked soft and flushed. "Dad?" I stopped.
"He's all right." Mom's face was as still as a winter pond before a flight of
geese lands. "He's just drunk." Her voice was without inflection.

I had never seen my father drunk. But I remembered his uncertain tread on the
stairs every night, and her tone as she coaxed him to bed.

I thought Mom would take the truck, but she walked into the sage, as sure in the
faint moonlight as if she came this way every day. I stumbled after her,
tripping over sage stems and clumps of grass. I didn't catch up with her until
she had reached the lip of the wash. The Rainmaker's camp was visible in the
light from a single propane lantern. At least a dozen men milled in a loose
circle around him. I recognized Uncle Kenny. He wasn't in his uniform. Suddenly
he stepped forward, one hand closing on the front of the Rainmaker's shirt,
lifting him onto his toes.

"You think we're a bunch of dumb cowboys, don't you?" His voice came to me on
the wind, edged with violence. "We'll just grin and shuffle our feet and hand
over our money to you, 'cause you're so smart, and we're just dumb hicks."

The men around them growled and shuffled forward, as if they were puppets, and
he'd yanked all their strings at once. I took a step forward, caught my toe in a
sage stem, and fell flat on my face. Eyes full of grit, I struggled to my knees,
spitting dust. I knew what was going to happen -could see it, like on a movie
screen. My face was wet and I wiped it on my sleeve. Crying, I thought, as I
staggered to my feet. I'm not crying.

"Kenny!" Mom's voice was shrill and strange, and down below, my uncle paused,
his fist drawn back, his other hand clutching the Rainmaker's shirt front. He
looked up at her.

More water hit my face. Cold water. I looked up and laughed.

It was raining.

The stars had vanished, and the rain came down all at once, like someone had
upended a cosmic bucket. It pounded on the dry ground and made the sage shiver.
Below, the bunched, angry men were milling like nervous cattle. Uncle Kenny
still held the Rainmaker by the shirt, but he had lowered his hand. My mom was
running down to him, her wet hair plastered to her head. She looked like a kid
and I realized suddenly how old my dad was. One of the men whooped, and somebody
pounded on the Rainmaker's back.

By the time I got down to the Rainmaker's camp, I was soaked to the skin and
muddy. People were still hanging around. I knew who they were. All of them. They
were watching the first streams of brown water run down the bottom of the wash.
I looked up at the rock shelf where I found the flowers, and yeah, the ghost was
there, standing on the very edge. And it was really dark, but I could see him
better than I ever had before --like there was a spotlight shining on him.

Julio Rojas.
He looked sad. I looked at my mom, and she was staring at that rock, too, but
she didn't see him. She had her hands pressed tight against her chest, like she
hurt inside. And Uncle Kenny was looking at her, too. Water was starting to fill
the wash, brown and foamy as chocolate,, pouring down into the low land across
the highway. When I looked again, Julio had gone from his rock, and I thought
about the flowers, and my more running down through the sage like she knew the
way.

And I could feel the water, like I'd felt the rain. I guess it was rain -only on
the ground now, and not in the sky. And if it ran down the east side of the
draw, it would cut away a lot of the dirt beneath the rock shelf. I took a step
away from everyone, staring at that chocolate flood, feeling it like it was a
wet rope sliding through my hands, and I didn't really think about it, I just
started to pull.

A thin stream welled over a low berm of silt and stones from last winter's
floods, pushed a small rock out of the way. I was sweating. The rock tumbled
down the slope and more water welled after it, pushing more stones out of the
way, dissolving the dirt. Then, suddenly, the berm gave way and was gone as if
it had never been. The flood divided, sweeping now along the steep east wall of
the wash, eating away the dirt below the shelf.

Uncle Kenny stepped up beside me, not noticing me, his eyes on that dissolving
bank. His shoulders were hunched and his hands clenched into fists. The rock
shelf tilted and wavered, and I heard him take a fast, short breath.

It tilted some more, slid very slowly into the churning water, smashing flat the
sparse willow stems that lined the sides. Something showed in the hole left in
the bank. Something not dirt colored. "Look!" I pointed. "Over there, along the
bank."

I guess a couple of people looked, because someone broke away from the crowd and
walked along the lip of the wash, hat pulled down against the still-steady rain,
water soaking his shirt and jeans. Mr. Walker. Owner of the Bar Double D. He
stopped above the light-colored object and stepped quickly back. "It's a body,"
he yelled to us. "My God. Someone was buried here."

Everybody went running over, boots splashing through the water, a half dozen
tall shapes in wet clothes and pulled down hats. My uncle didn't go. Neither did
my morn. They were both looking at me. "It's Julio," I said. My mom's face
didn't change, but she made a small sound, like a hurt animal.

"I was sleeping over the night he disappeared." My uncle spoke up in that slow,
lazy drawl he uses when he breaks up a fight. "Remember, Sandy?" He turned to
her, smiling a little, his hand on her shoulder. "Dave and I got to drinking and
I slept on the sofa. After we put Dave to bed."

I could feel his words turning solid in the air, reaching back over the weeks to
change yesterday. I could feel my mom's relief as she started to nod. "No," I
said. "You left. Dad watched to after you were gone." And I had sneaked out,
because the moon was full, and I couldn't sleep.

"Donny...,, More whispered. "Don't."

Uncle Kenny had saved me when the flood caught my pony. He helped us a lot. When
Dad was drunk. We couldn't make it without him. I couldn't make it. I heard my
Mother's voice. Words took shape in my throat, stuck there like fish bones: Oh
yeah, I remember now. You slept over. Sorry, Uncle Kenny.

The Rainmaker was looking at me, and he looked sad. Julio had taught me how to
chord on his old, battered guitar. He had laughed, and missed the girl he had
loved. Up on the bank, two of the ranchers were bending over Julio Rojas's body.
I couldn't look at Mom "I saw you," I said to my uncle. "I was up in the sage."

For a moment, my uncle stared at me, his face all edges, as if the flesh had
eroded away, leaving nothing but bone. "You're dreaming, kid. I was in the
house, asleep, when he took off. Ask your mom." His laugh sounded like something
breaking. "You're the crazy kid who sees ghosts and talks to the damn desert.
Who's gonna believe you?"

She had told him. I couldn't look at her, wondering who else he had told,
chuckling about it over a beer maybe, in the Spur at night. The rain was running
into my eyes, but I didn't try to wipe my face, just stood there waiting for her
to agree with him. Because I was only a crazy kid who saw ghosts, and back home,
Dad had passed out, and there were the cattle to deal with. The ranch.

"He's not crazy, Ken." More spoke softly. "And he's right." Her voice sounded
empty and cold. "You left. I remember because...I had a hard time getting Dave
up the stairs by myself that night."

For a long moment, my uncle and my more stared at each other. Then my uncle
turned away and slogged back toward the road. Only the Rainmaker saw him go. He
was looking at me, standing hatless in the rain, his face as round and calm as
the moon.

"Donny?" My mother's voice trembled. "Julio used to play his guitar for me." She
closed her eyes briefly as we heard Uncle Kenny's car start. "He was so young
and full of hope. He was a poet -- he made those songs up himself. That's all
that happened between us. I swear it."

I nodded, but I couldn't speak. There wasn't anything inside of me. Just night
and rain. After a moment Morn turned away. I watched her trudge toward the road
after Uncle Kenny. You couldn't cross the wash anymore. She would have to take
the long way home-- back to the empty house where my dad snored on the sofa. I
flinched as the Rainmaker put a hand on my shoulder.

"I have to," I said. "Don't I?"

He squeezed my shoulder. "I'll make you some tea," he said, and his voice
sounded as old as the desert. Sad. Two of the ranchers went running back to
their parked cars. To find the Sheriff? I wondered. "No, thank you," I said
politely. "Mom's waiting for me."

And she was -- up on the road -- hugging herself in the pouring rain. She
straightened as I got close. "Are you going to go with him?" she asked softly.

I shook my head. "I used to. listen to Julio play, too," I said. "He was really
good. We'll have to tell someone."

She nodded once, eyes closed, then opened them and smiled at me. "We will." Then
she reached for my hand, and as we walked along the road to our driveway
together, the rain began to diminish to a slow, steady shower.