Clouds for Rent

 

Clouds for Rent

—I originally wrote this story in Spanish. I must say that Spanish is my native tongue. If you read some of my stories, you'll notice it. I must also tell you that English is a tough language to master (now, I have a valid excuse for my mistakes). I would also like to point out that this story feels more real when the weather is 110 degrees.

 

 

 

  

 

 The landscape could not be more horrible and devastating. The land looked sad and gray, and its dryness was intense.

That was the land of my father at that time. It remained fertile, but that fertility needed water. Water scarcity that we had suffered since I was born. Eleven straight years without rain.

The sadness was visible on my father's face, and he began to look like his land, for he had already shown arid furrows in the forehead and around his eyes.

Any desert could have more life. Indeed, there were deserts in the world with more joy—arid lands but full of pride and used to living without water. Land disintegrated and converted by the extreme heat into grains of sand. Impossible to create life and nourishment.

I was glad to see my dad happy, but his happiness was also in short supply.

Sometimes before going to bed, he'd leave the house and look at the sky, hoping that the clouds were more pleasant and friendly and finally come together to celebrate a miracle—the miracle of rain. But the next day, the sadness of my father accumulates seeing his desolate and dry land. The communal water was gone, and the river seemed like a vein, empty and dry, on which not a drop of blood was running. It was as dead as the people's hope in the surrounding areas; some neighbors had already migrated to the cities.

And I prayed to God and implored him to send water because it hurt so much in my heart to see my father sad. He didn't notice I saw him drinking a glass of water to quench his insatiable thirst, and he'd saved the last sip for the little plant in the pot we had in my window.

And I saw in the news that other parts of the world had floods, hurricanes, and torrential rains that razed everything in their path. And I asked God why it was so unfair, and why he didn't share his exaggerations, and why not bring a little of the excesses over there to our shortages over here. And why the poorest people were always the most affected by all the world's miseries.

Thinking about it, it occurred to me that there should be a way of gathering clouds in a specific place and forcing them somehow to drop their water, not for the pleasure of seeing the rain, but to satisfy hunger and the most basic needs of country people. Also, my three-year-old sister had never seen rain. And so I went to bed one night, thinking about bringing the rain and making my dad happy.

And that night, I dreamed of "Wet Cloud," an Apache chief from the tribe: "Sinsolnisombra," who taught me the rain dance. His supernatural power to attract the clouds and fame had already crossed borders. The heavenly paradise envied the vast lands of his tribe. I don't know how, but within the dream, I realized I was dreaming, everything looked authentic, but I knew it was unreal. And that forced me to pay more attention to learning the rain dance to apply it the next day in my father's land.

Well, I did learn it, and in the morning, before going to school, before my bath, and before breakfast, I danced as authentically as I could. With a pot and a spoon, I tried to imitate the beat of the drums. Everything was fine until my mom grabbed me by the ear and led me back into the house, saying she'd take me to the loony bin if I did not behave like ordinary people. 

We hadn't seen any water running in the river for three years. My sister didn't know what a river was. If they released water from the dam or lake, it would only wet the river bed briefly because the thirsty ground had been so dry. We were many miles away from wherever the water was born. And every time I passed the empty river, so torn and dry, it reminded me of my dad and his sorrowful heart.

One day I saw my dad with a tree branch in the form of a "v" walking tirelessly around the ranch. According to him, he was looking for groundwater, and all he found was a great thirst in his throat. Disappointed, he went to sit in the thin shadow of the last living tree left. He may need a bigger stick.  

My dad's concern caught me, and I just thought about our grave water scarcity day and night. Before bed, my mind revolved around my thoughts, and I only saw water in my brain. 

 

 One morning, I woke up to good news on television. Somebody had found a way to make it rain and invented a magnet cloud. This magnet could gather clouds in a couple of hours, and then guns or missiles launched from earth would explode above the clouds, forcing them to release the water with fright. But all this ended abruptly when a civil war began between neighboring peoples, claiming they had stolen their clouds. And they yet appeared larger and more powerful magnets until the government banned them.

Our concern grew when water for bathing was also considered a waste. In the house, there were no live potted plants, dogs no longer stuck their tongues to avoid sweating, and thus saving them a trip to their dry containers.

At night, I no longer prayed to God. Instead, I criticized him without fear and asked him to get off his cloud and lend it to us for a while, and I would remind him what I had learned at school: Seventy-one percent of the earth's surface contains ninety-seven percent of the water on the planet. 

 

 And I wondered why he didn't distribute it equally or why he didn't remove the salt from the seawater and make a million new rivers. Then the sun's heat could evaporate some of the water, and then this evaporation would turn into clouds, rain, rain back into the rivers, and so on—a nice never-ending cycle. And so, with much rainfall, the world would become a paradise on earth, and no one would ask for anything anymore. He would be resting in peace for all eternity, or He could go to other universes to create a new life with another Adam and Eve. I didn't think this was too complicated for God.

Looking more deeply, we could move to where there are large floods, and at least we wouldn't be so bored with this terrible dryness. My dad says it is very complicated, and we need at least ten years to adapt to such a drastic change. And I say that I would like to have been born in the middle of the water, and I say that in ten years, we will continue without water or rain. And he tells me to shut up and not to jinx it. 

I don't want to sleep; I don't want to dream anymore. Oh well, I still want to dream that I wake up drowning in a massive lake of fresh and cool water, well, not drowning. I want to live, enjoy my happiness, and see my father's face without wrinkles and furrows. I want to see his face with a perpetual smile, to come out and jump with me in the rain, looking at the sky with our mouths open and receiving water within our souls and hearts and letting it run through all our veins. That's what I want, to dream and never wake up.

But I awaken again. And I think I hear it's raining. But I don't get excited because I know I'm dreaming. But I can listen to my father and sister jumping out, screaming, and laughing in the rain. And then my mother comes to my bed, grabs my hand, and tells me to get up and see how much rain is falling. And I answer that I don't want to because I'm asleep and dreaming. She returns with a bucket full of water and empties it on my face. And then I wake up and get up and celebrate the rain miracle. And we jump together holding hands and get tired, but we're no longer thirsty. 

And I'm going to sleep, and again I wake up, and it's still raining.

And it's still raining.

Edmundo Barraza         

 Lancaster, Ca 01/09/2014