It's Raining. No, it's Pouring

The pressure change was hell on his back. For several weeks he had convinced himself that taking it easy, drinking lots of fluids, and sleeping on a new Postur-medic mattress had cured him. When the tropical storm came through he could hardly walk, and he figured maybe it was finally time to see a doctor. He would need a new prescription of pain killers, anyway, but he dreaded the inevitable ring around the referrals. He would probably end up at a spine specialist who would like nothing more than to make another Porsche payment by sticking metals poles in his back, or worse, telling him that he was getting older.

The tropical storm, a real named one, was a welcome relief compared to the hurricanes the news folks loved to doom and gloom about. He had never seen a person so happy to be standing in the middle of hundred mile an hour winds telling distressed viewers why it was so stupid to go outside.

Plus they needed the rain. The north of the state had caught fire and filled each morning with a thick haze, smelling faintly like pine wood forests, and causing everyone to drive like an idiot. They also said that there was a risk of the aquifer drying up if the drought kept on too much longer.

He liked the rain, despite the problems with his back, and he liked to sit by the window and listen to the soft pattering of droplets against the roof. When he was having trouble sleeping, the hippy girl next door recommended a nature CD with sounds of rain and thunder. It was garbage. He listened to it for several minutes before throwing it out. It was too synthetic, with birds chirping, the same clip of thunder every few minutes and other crap.

It was really coming down. He felt guilty about ordering pizza and making the driver deal with the downpour, so he tipped him an extra two bucks. He seemed like a nice kid, probably working his way through school and planning on becoming a meteorologist. He should get used to it, then.

When it got late he used both of his arms to lift himself out of the chair by the window. Sitting wasn't so bad, nor was standing, but the transition was a killer. He took two aspirin and got dressed for bed.

With some effort he turned off the light in his room and sat on the side of the bed, planning his move. As he sat there in the dark he listened to the rain and thought about the tin roof when he stayed at his grandparents' house in North Carolina as a boy. During the summer months it would rain every day for half an hour and he would sit and watch the puddles fill up, and hear the cars swish down the road. When the shower was over he'd run outside and take in the clean, fresh, cold smell before the humidity set in, and he would walk along the rows of grape vines in the garden.

Finally he tried lying down in bed, slowly, trying to take the aspirin-dulled pain piecemeal. When he reached the point where he was lying down more than sitting up, a stab of pain shot up his back, and he was down on his back, but not before hitting his head on the headboard. "Damnit," he said, and then he fell asleep, feeling pretty silly.

He snored like a great freight train, which would have earned him a stiff elbow in his side at one point in his life, but tonight he was allowed to dream. He dreamed of canoeing down Crystal River before it turned green, then of fishing, and then of being back at work at the plant and something had gone terribly wrong and he could hardly move, like the air was a thick soup. He would forget all these dreams. He slept soundly until daybreak.

Diagonal shafts of light penetrating the wooden blinds on his window shortly after sunrise, and woke him up. The older he got the earlier he rose. He hadn't slept past ten for probably fifteen years. The rain was still coming in waves, heavy then light and he could hear the morning birds calling out to each other. His head and his back still hurt like hell. All he wanted to do was lie still, close his eyes, and listen to the rain.